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The Game Development

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CSE1GDT – Story Time

Paul Taylor 2009

Chapter 1 – What makes a story?

Interest Curves

• Inherent • Poetry

• Projection

Story

• Story is an element that can influence all three of the types of interest– The impact can be both +ve and –ve– There are many other elements to your games– Story is one of the trickier ones

What is a story?

• A sequence of events– Hopefully interesting– Possibly so interesting that the listener will want to

tell someone else

My Story:

There was a green frog and it died.

The End

Does Story Integrate?

• Story works VERY well in books

• Story can work well in Movies

• Story in games is ??

What’s happening?

Is storytelling passive?

• Do people listen passively or actively?

• Do you wonder what is going to happen?• Does intrigue make you guess at the future?

• Do you empathise with the characters?

Stories are NOT passive!

My Story:

There was a green frog and it died.

The End

How fat does a story need to be?

• Chess• Final Fantasy• Tomb Raider 1....7• Naughts and Crosses• Tetris• Pac Man

Pipe Dreams

A Completely Interactive Story where players have complete freedom, doing what they wish, and culminating wonderfully

• The Reality– It’s not going to happen, if it did, it would mentally

break people– This doesn’t mean we can’t create a great

immersive experience using story!

The two headed snake

• Game players love the freedom to choose their own paths

• Stories are designed to have one ending

Solutions to integrating story in games

• String of Pearls (Rivers and Lakes)– Performs well with interest and difficulty curves– It is linear– Almost entirely pre-scripted

• The Story Machine– The Sims is a story generator– Very unscripted– Directly/Indirectly controlled by the playa

What about branching stories?

• A branching story has many different paths that can be taken

• This leaves the designer with either multiple endings, or trying to tie all of the players choices back to the one (or few) ending(s)

Issue #1

• Good stories have unity• Unity – ‘state of being undivided or unbroken

completeness or totality with nothing wanting.’

• So unity means the story is resolved in ALL aspects– This conflicts with the “I can smell a sequel

ending” ?cheapening the game?

Issue #2 Combinatorial Explosions

What if you had just three choices at ten points in your game?

3^10 = 59049 Different paths!!!

Fusing outcomes together is not a great solution• The story will end up with

inconsistencies and contradictions

Issue #3 Multiple Endings Suck

• Is this the real ending?– Silent Hill 5

• Do I have to play through the whole game again to see the other endings?– BioShock

• Exceptions do arise– Good vs Evil– Knights of the old republic

Problem #4 Not Enough Verbs

Verb = Action word• Videogame characters are not very expressive!• They tend to have verbs like

– Run walk shoot jump throw crouch• Movie characters

– Talk convince shout plead scream• Book characters

– Ponder insecure angered calmed worried

Problem #4 Not Enough Verbs

• We are left to tell the story with at least one of the main characters unable to fluently express themselves.

Issue #5 The Tragedy of Tragedy

• The freedom you afford the player will generally remove the inevitability from the story.

• When you limit the player to introduce this it can frustrate them

• Having a save point removes the players worry about the death of characters

Ideas for story

Steal from Hollywood

1) A character with a goal2) Obstacles to keep them from reaching the

goal3) Rising above the conflicts to ‘win’To this end you must relate all the challenges in

your game to the story

Simplicity and Transcendence

• Simplicity is inherent in game worlds– Grass is just grass– Climbable objects are usually more obvious

• Transcendence - ‘of climbing or going beyond’– Giving the player power– Allowing them to go beyond normal

Simplicity and Transcendence

Typical Themes with inherent transcendance

MedievalFuturistic

WarModern

Consider the Hero’s journey

A book by mythologist Joseph Campbell 1949‘The hero with a Thousand Faces’The book describes the ‘monomyth’ which

describes the underlying structure of almost all stories

Star Wars was based on this book!

V2.0

Christopehr Vogler 1992.‘The Writer’s Journey’

A practical guide to writing based on the archetypes of the monomyth

This one was believed to be used by the writers of The Matrix

Games are usually all about a Hero

• Google it, you’ll get all you need from it.Synopsis from TAOGD:The Ordinary WorldThe Call to Adventure – Challenge the disrupts

lifeRefusal of the Call - ExcusesMeeting with the Mentor – Wise figureCrossing the Threshold – Leaving ordinary

Tests, Allies, Enemies – Minor challengesApproaching the Cave (as in caving-in)The Ordeal – Life / DeathThe Reward – Survival + RewardThe Road Back – Return to the ordinary worldResurrection – ClimaxReturning with the Elixir – Life+1

Interest curves again

If you look over the hero’s journey you’ll see it!

Use your story as a tool!

• Hardware limitations– Fog

• Complexity Issues– GOW AI

Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy

~Decomposition: If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of

sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of

wine, you get sewage.

Keep your World Consistent and Coherent!!

• It doesn’t need to be controlled by the rules of the real world, but must be internally logical

• If eating pigeons is ok at the start then it should continue unless the story dictates the change and notifies the player!

Make the world accessible

• Accessible != Realistic– Pirate ships are incredibly slow– Cars are Very Fragile– Shooting lots of people is bad

“I’ll be back”

Be careful with Clichés!

• Negative– They can cheapen the game– Bore players with predictability

• Positive– Familiar to the player– Comprehensible and relatable

• Perhaps combine new and old?

When Words Fail

Go back to pre-school and get drawing!

The Book - Treasure Island was imagined on a small map Robert Stevenson’s stepson was painting

Some ideas just look better in pictures

Chapter 2 – Indirect Control

Bob Bates – Game Designer

• “Story and gameplay are like oil and vinegar. Theoretically they don’t mix, but if you put them in a bottle and shake them up real good, they’re pretty good on a salad.”

This lecture is about merging the story you are creating with your gameplay through indirect control.

The problem we must solve is the two headed snake from before:

The two headed snake

• Game players love the freedom to choose their own paths

• Stories are designed to have one ending

• The Solution: Indirect Control

Indirect Control

• Players love their freedom, it is what makes gameplay fun

• So we must give them freedom?• No!

The Feeling of Freedom

• What colour should the next slide be?RedBlue

GreenOrangePurpleWhiteBlack

It doesn’t matter!

• You didn’t have freedom of choice, but all the same you felt like you had choice

• I used a constraint to ‘help’ you choose within the scope of freedom provided

The Biggest Indirect Control

Goals

The Biggest Indirect Control

Goals

Goals

• The Goals you have set in the players mind will largely guide their behaviour through the game

• If players believe they need to hide, they will search for a place

• If they believe the building is collapsing they will run

Interface

• Remember your juicy interface?• It should be transparent to the immersed

player• Physical Interface Limitations

– Guitar Hero– Rock Band– Wii-Zappers

Interface

• Virtual Interface Limitations– The type of avatar (persona)– The way the interface does (or doesn’t) react to

game objects

Visual Design

• To make life simple we can look at some different artwork and photos

www.artsjournal.com/dewey21c/LatteArtWeb.jpg

http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/wednesday-morning-coffee-and-links/

Real or Fake?

Real or Fake?

Characters

• Using story to make the player empathise with, and care about the characters

• Characters are a great tool to manipulate the way players play the game

Music

• It works in restaurants and at train stations– High Energy– Creepy– Quiet and relaxing– Techno– Etc

– Silence

Collusion

‘- an agreement, usually secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage ‘

Lao Tzu – Chinese Philosopher“When the best leader’s work is done the

people say “We did it ourselves!”

This can be summarised down to the game colluding to draw the player along a path

The End!