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[In a Gamasutra-exclusive analysis, Krawczyk and O'Connor, writers for the God Of War series and Far Cry 2/Gears Of War respectively, discuss how writers and designers can collaborate smoothly and successfully.]
What does
it take to create a story for a game? A lot of work, for one thing -- from the
concept phase right through to the final draft. The process usually begins with
the creative director or lead designer. At some point, a writer is brought on
board. It's a collaborative process -- and it can be a rocky one as well.
For one
thing, not all games need stories. When push comes to shove and development
time runs out, story can fall by the wayside. It can become a serious PR
effort, internally, just to get the story work bumped up on the list of
priorities.
And there
are plenty of challenges for the team to resolve -- system complexities, time
& resource constraints, and communication gaffes.
So if
story development in games is both hard and nonessential, why do so many
studios make the effort?
Because
even at their worst, stories can enhance gameplay. They provide context. What would
players rather shoot -- a wall, or a Nazi?
At their
best, stories transform gameplay -- and gameplay transforms story. Stories help
us make sense of the world; games bring stories to life in a completely new
way. Immersion and agency create brand-new possibilities for storytelling.
Gameplay gives us freedom; story gives us meaning.
So why do
so many writers and designers get bogged down in 10-car pileups when they work
together? They have the same goal, after all: create a compelling experience
for the end user. The trouble begins when they approach the same problem from
opposite directions.
A game
writer looks for brief moments -- cutscene or otherwise -- when she can take
control of the game so that she can create throughlines, pacing, conflicts,
character development, plot twists and thematic meaning.
A game
designer looks for ways to give
control -- not to the writer, but to the player.
Both the
writer and the designer are right. Stories benefit from structure, and players
love their freedom.
How can
teams resolve this conflict so that writers and designers can collaborate
successfully? We can start by rethinking our assumptions about how stories work
- and what players expect.
The heavy
lifting in story development happens at the very beginning of the process,
months before a single line of dialog is written. In this article, we revisit
the basic building bocks of story and look at ways we can arrange them in new
ways to build a compelling, player-centric experience.
If the
golden age of game narrative really is right around the corner -- and we think
it is -- then writers and designers have the opportunity to redefine how
stories are told, by looking at old problems in new ways.
It's in
this spirit that we are asking, "What if?"
What if we didn't build the story
around the player?
Most game
stories revolve around the player character. This makes sense -- sort of.
Players are the stars of the show. They make things happen. It seems logical to
make them the focal point of every event.
But this
approach also creates problems. The designer can find his options limited by
the story's logic. The team has to struggle to find ways to present the story
events without interrupting the game. And regardless of the quality of the
final product, there will always be players that resist the story, or subvert
it, or ignore it altogether.
So what
do you do if your goal is to create a compelling story that involves the
player? One option is make a distinction, right out of the gate, between the
game's story and the player's narrative.
What does
that mean? "Story" is the sequence of events that take place in the
game - the main character overcoming obstacles in pursuit of his goal. "Narrative"
is the player's unique experience of that story -- the player controlling his
character and/or the game world as he sees fit.
(These
terms are not perfect or precise. Better terms will probably emerge eventually,
as the industry grows.)
Who
defines the narrative? The designer -- by creating the world and its rulesets;
the ways in which the player comes to understand the game.
Who
defines the story? The writer -- by creating themes, characters and plots; the
ways in which the story comes together in the end - the way the game comes to
understand itself.
This is a
subtle distinction; story and narrative are tightly intertwined. But it can be
a useful starting place, for both the designer and the writer.
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Many movies start with an exciting flash forward( for example Starship Troopers). The plot reveals an event from the middle of the movie(the battle on klendathu) first, then shows the events of how johnny Rico joined the Military, then returns to the events of the middle of the story.
In that sense, if the narrative is the player's experience, it has a lot to do with plot, and the tension between the plot and the story. Plot also includes what the player/avatar knows versus what the story actually is.
It seems simple, but adding a term like "plot" makes it easier to conceptualise how both the designer and writer try to achieve a compelling narrative, or player experience. Similar complex plotting appeared in Starcraft, with "parallel narratives" helping to drive the stories in the single player campaigns.
I think there is still a demand for games that feature playable protagonists, but players must willingly take up the responsibility to play the role they are given. It comes back to marketing your game to the right audience, those who want to blaze their own path or those who want to role play and participate in carefully crafted experiences.
I love using Ico as an example for this. A game where the story is strongly reinforced by having the avatar hold hands with the girl in order to have her move with him. Other games would use a button press to call her from afar, but Ico has them holding hands, which tells you so much about the characters' relationship. It's storytelling at the mechanics level. Game mechanics that tell stories, that is what I would like to see more of.
Great article! Story will be an incredibly powerful tool when its developed to its fullest interactive potential!
The article raises some good points and there are a few games out there that have done these techniques in the past, however, it's kind of becoming lost amongst the commercial games at least which tend to focus on blockbuster movie style storylines and familiar gameplay rather than trying to bring the two together in new and interesting ways. The indie scene seems to have a better grasp of how gameplay and story should come together, probably because they aren't hijacked by profit hungry publishers.
That said, I'll enjoy a game with a gripping story that more or less railroads the gameplay as much as a game that has a few scene setters here and there but leaves it largely up to me to make up the story.
What if the story didn't wait for the player? What if the antagonist reveals plans to invade a certain city and the player had to get to that city to prepare it for the invasion but instead the player decides that he wants to track down some cool item he was told about? In current games, the antagonist would simply stop his invasion until the player decided to finally go to the city. It would make things much more challenging if the race to the city to protect it was an actual race. If the player dawdled too long, they would either show up to a ruined city or a city currently under invasion. This would also help progress the story. This would show that the antagonist is a real danger and the player cannot take his threats lightly.
I really loved this: "The player succeeds. The avatar succeeds -- and fails. Both the writer and the designer go home happy." The idea that the player's success can be linked to the protagonist's failure is a really intriguing one.
I agree with Ephriam's opinion, as it seems a really efficient way of having the player embrace the narrative as well as its sense of urgency.
May this lead to healthy discussions and revolutionary changes. :)
It was a radical change from standard adventure games, but the player had to juggle exactly that which drives a story, the personality of characters.
"In games, when the player character says "I'm going to kill that man," the ending is a foregone conclusion. The ending is in the player's hands, and is therefore entirely controllable -- and predictable. "
In GTA 4 when Niko finds the man he has been looking for for the entirety of the game, Darko Brevich, the player is presented with a choice of what to do: kill him or walk away. They are then, via NPC dialogue, made to feel guilty if they chose to kill him or commended for sparing him. Pride and guilt are two powerful emotions and are elicited in this case by allowing the player a choice, and one that's fairly significant in terms of the story, when many games would simply force the player to kill their target or else not progress.
The inability to max out everything was really cool and helped the fairly large amount of content in that title to feel even larger. I played through the game many times, and for the first six or so plays, I was finding new things by playing as different character classes and exploring alleyways and sections of the desert that I had never checked before.
I enjoyed the article, but I dont agree with what I quoted above. First of all, story does NOT give us meaning. It's the other way around; WE give meaning to a story. By that account, a good story needs to be heavily laden with symbolism, characterization, and conflicts (mentioned in the article). One of the issues with shoddy stories in gaming today is the shrinking budgets, but another is where video games are getting their inspiration from: TV shows and movies. I think more game developers need to hit the library and read some literature.
Books are closer in body and soul to games than movies are, anyway. Outside of MMO's, games are played like books are read, at the pace of the player/reader. A movie/TV show, by contrast, controls the pace of the action. I wish games would attack you thematically a little more like a book, rather than aim to stimulate you visually, like a movie. Of course, a great game needs a little of both (and a whole lot more), but it since the article was about story, I'd like to close by saying that story should be taken to a much higher level in games. What I mean by this is: games (that want to have an engaging story) need to be ABOUT something; they need a message.
Games tried the literature approach - Planescape torment, go get it if you haven't played it. In torments case it failed utterly. The average gamer is a drooling idiot lets not forget, "Too long didn't read" is a common complaint from people in games that just want to get on with the game. Game developers have increasingly lost any sense of the essence of gaming - the early arcade and console games that had barebones story and yet made mad money, THAT is the essence of games. I always go back to classic NES and SNES games before all the obsession with graphics and movies became so strong in the industry.
What was the story of mario? Saving a princess from a big lizard, was it text heavy or story heavy in any of the sequels? Nope. Even mario galaxy hardly had any text or story, and yet it is possibly one of the best games I have ever played.
Certain games lend themselves to story, others don't, and for many games we just don't care unless the developers are going to do it right. Stories won't matter if your core game sucks, the core game only needs the most basic skeleton story... such as for RTS games like supreme commander - 3 alien races at war, bla bla bla, we're at war, go do this.
God of war and blizzards games with a few exceptions, have ever gotten the story aspect right without going all graphics mad like the Final fantasies.
The first Prince of persia : Sands of time was alright before they butchered the story, Diablo 1 +2, starcraft, Warcraft. It wasn't until Warcraft 3 that story became a huge focus in Warcraft, if you played the original Warcraft 1 and 2, it was ridiculosuly story light and yet sold like hotcakes.
A lot of the story structures written in here remind me of Robert McKee's writings in STORY, but the principles date back throughout teachings from Aristotle, and Plato and what not.
@ Bob Dillan
I think you may have misinterpreted Bryan a little, since you've entered with a text heavy argument. We have to remember that stories are not written, they are told. The medium is changing, so must our methods.
I believe he meant taking inspiration from the great stories which are timeless, seeking what they sought, rather than languishing in self referential material pre-occupying the medium. Games are almost like audience participation at a theatre, its unpredictable because it's improvised but if the other actors are creative and trained, the story is still delivered in an impromptu fashion because it still adheres to the integrity of stories' context.