Game Design: Theory & Practice- P9 pdf

game-world and telling them the story as it happens. The Dungeon Master plans out in advance the locations the players will be exploring, has some idea of what char - acters the players will meet in what locations, and probably knows what major conflicts will be presented. The players, though, are in control of what parts of the level they investigate, and how they conduct themselves with the different NPCs they may meet. For instance, the DM probably does not have a script of what the different NPCs will say when approached. Instead, he knows what their personali - ties are like, and how they are likely to respond. When a player asks an NPC a question, the DM is able to come up, on the fly, with a reasonable response. A clever DM will never have to say, “The NPC does not understand your question.” As with the parent-child storytelling experience, the DM will be able to keep the players on track with the overall story he wants to tell, while allowing the players a considerable amount of freedom in how that story unfolds and perhaps even in how it resolves. Of course, the problem in creating a computer version of an interactive story- telling experience such as the ones described above is that both require a human to be telling the story, since a modern computer will never be able to dynamically come up with story developments as well as a human can. So the best a game designer can do currently is try to re-create such an interactive storytelling experi- ence, but, in lieu of dynamically generating the story line, anticipate all of the questions the player might ask, places he might go, and lines of dialog he might want to say. Of course, this is a Herculean task, and no matter how much anticipa- tion the designer employs, she will never be able to think of everything a player might try. At the very least the designer must try to allow for different playing styles and levels of inquiry into the story-world, instead of pigeonholing the player into one way of playing the game and exploring its story. If a designer is interested in truly interactive storytelling, it is her responsibility to make the designer’s story flexible enough to allow it to become the player’s story as well. Places for Storytelling There are a number of ways in which a game can tell a story. Customarily, games use a number of different storytelling devices to communicate their story, with dif - ferent games relying on some devices more than others. The type of story you hope to tell, what technology you will be using, and the gameplay of your game will determine what storytelling devices will work best for your game. The simplest distinction one can make is in what context the storytelling takes place: 218 Chapter 11: Storytelling TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® l Out-of-Game: This is any storytelling that is done on the computer while the game is running, but when the player is not actually playing the game. This includes any cut-scenes during which the player loses control of his character, such as the cut-scenes or mission briefings that occur between levels in Command & Conquer or brief non-interactive sections in Super Mario 64. l In-Game: Logically, this is the opposite of the above, and covers any storytelling that occurs while the player is actually playing the game. This includes the setting of the game-world, the behavior of the player’s opponents, any dynamic conversations the player may have, and any interactive pre-mission planning the player may do. l External Materials: This includes any storytelling done completely outside of the computer, such as in an introduction written in the manual or any paraphernalia that may come with the game, such as a map or a collection of gems. A given game may use only one or all three of the above types of storytelling. Half-Life is an example of a game that included only in-game storytelling; the player never lost control of her character from the beginning of the game to the end. The Infocom games are a good example of games that used both in-game and exter- nal materials to tell their stories. In addition to the conversations and descriptions of the game-world the player had in the game itself, the Infocom games always came with extra documents and knickknacks, which served to enhance the player’s understanding of the game-world, in addition to sometimes being required to com- plete the game’s puzzles. Command & Conquer used in-game storytelling through its settings and mission design, while much of the story line was communicated through the out-of-game, non-interactive cut-scenes. Tekken is an example of a game that tells its story, as insubstantial as it may be, almost entirely through out-of-game cut-scenes: one precedes the gameplay and one plays after the player has defeated the single-player game using a specific character. The settings of the various arenas have nothing whatsoever to do with the story line, and the characters themselves exhibit nothing of the personalities described in the scenes either, though their fighting styles usually relate to their nationalities. Indeed, it is unclear why the designers of Tekken felt compelled to include a story line at all. Perhaps they wanted to give the player something to reward them for defeating the game, and a cut-scene was the only suitable prize they could imagine. Out-of-Game Out-of-game storytelling is perhaps the most prevalent form currently in games, and it comes in a variety of forms. One can attribute the popularity of out-of-game sto - rytelling to its similarity to storytelling in other media. For example, a cut-scene is Chapter 11: Storytelling 219 very often like a film and uses established cinematic techniques, while a text brief - ing for a level is not unlike what one might read in a novel. These are both types of media that have been around for many more years than computer games, and both have an established syntax which allows them to tell stories very effectively. In a way, it is much easier to tell a story through these methods than it is through gameplay. But as a designer you must ask yourself, are non-interactive cut-scenes what games are supposed to be about? If your gameplay is any good at all, players will want to get back to playing instead of sitting through long cut-scenes. Players play games in order to interact. If they wanted a more passive experience, they would have gone to a movie theater or gotten a book from the library. Non-inter - active storytelling may have its place in games, but designers need to be aware that it must supplement and not detract from an exciting gaming experience. As I have discussed, there are a number of different methods that can be used to tell a story outside of the gameplay. A summary of the major methods is as follows: l Cut-Scenes: What are commonly referred to as cut-scenes use cinematic techniques to communicate a narrative to the player. These may take place in 2D or 3D, and often involve cuts, pans, the “180 degree rule,” and other devices that anyone who has watched movies or television will be familiar with. l Text: Many games use text to describe the story or to give the player goals for the upcoming mission. The text may fill the entire screen and then flip to another screen as necessary, or text may scroll by at a slow enough speed that the player has time enough to read it. l Images: Sometimes players are presented with simple images that communicate some part of the story line. These do not qualify as standard cut-scenes precisely, since they do not include camera cuts or other cinematic techniques, though a simple camera pan may be used to sweep across an image that does not fit on the screen. The image may be a map of an area, an “establishing” image of the challenges to come, or a recap of those the player has just accomplished. Images are often mixed with text, sometimes using comic book techniques but usually without word balloons. l Audio: Sometimes players are given directives that are spoken dialog or other audio. This is usually when the budget did not exist to create FMV to go along with the dialog, or when the dialog is presented over other information the player is supposed to be looking at, such as maps, dossiers, or other documents. One of the most important goals to have when working with cut-scenes is to establish a consistent visual appearance between the cut-scenes and the gameplay. If at all possible, the same engine should be used for the cut-scenes as for the rest of the game. In the mid-’90s, as games switched to CD-ROM as the distribution 220 Chapter 11: Storytelling medium of choice, for the first time games were able to include actual video play - back in the games, even if these movies often could not fill the entire screen. Thus came into being the dreaded FMV game, such as The 7th Guest. Typically, these games presented long FMV clips with mini-games between them, resulting in prod - ucts that were more movies than games. In these games the vast majority of the player’s time was spent not actually playing the game but instead watching totally non-interactive cut-scenes, with these cinematic sections usually amateurish below what one would find on even the cheapest TV show. This serves to explain why the genre quickly fell out of favor with players. Other games, such as the aforemen - tioned Command & Conquer and Dark Forces, used FMV sections between the levels that made up the actual game. These games were fortunate enough to actu - ally include viable and compelling gameplay and thereby stood up as games regardless of the inclusion of FMV. However, the FMV sections of these games were created using live actors in worlds that looked nothing like the worlds that the gameplay took place in. Other games, such as MechWarrior 2 and my own Centi- pede 3D, used super high polygon, pre-rendered 3D environments to handle these cut-scenes, creating an environment that looked nothing like the ones generated by the real-time 3D engines used for the gameplay. The result is a disjointed visual experience for the player, something that breaks whatever suspension of disbelief the player may have established. The use of cut-scenes is in itself already a very jarring experience for the player; one minute the player has an active role in the proceedings, the next he has to be passive, content to sit back and watch instead. Using cut-scenes that look nothing like the game-world only exacerbates matters. Chapter 11: Storytelling 221 Cut-scenes in Karateka are all handled using the game engine, resulting in a seamless visual experience for the player. Many games have successfully incorporated cut-scenes that use the same graphics as the in-game visuals, going back to 2D games such as Pac-Man and Karateka, up to such modern RT3D titles as Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Drakan: Order of the Flame. In these games, though the player may lose control of the game briefly, at least the player has a completely seamless visual experience. The artists may complain that the cut-scenes do not look as good; after all, they can only play with the number of polygons that can be rendered in real time. But what may be lost in terms of visual quality is more than made up for by the overall con - sistency of the game. Another strange aspect of cut-scenes in many computer games is their non-interactive nature, which is indicative of the inability of the designer to under - stand the capabilities of the computer as an interactive device. Consider spectators at a movie or a play, or the nationwide audience watching a television show. The audiences for those productions are unable to interact with the proceedings in any way: the performance occurs and then it is over. On the other hand, someone read- ing a book, watching a video, or being told a story is able to experience the medium at whatever speed he wants. Pages can be reread in a book, videotapes can be rewound or fast-forwarded, and a child can ask his parent to further explain or reread part of the story he did not understand. The key difference here is that the audience of the first set of non-interactive media is a large group of people, while the audience for the latter set is a single person. Consider the audience for a computer game. Is it a group or a sole individual? Obviously, for multi-player games the audience may be more than one, but multi-player games almost never bother with cut-scenes of any sort. No, the story - telling games that require cut-scenes are almost all designed as single-player experiences. Why, then, when the text scrolls by in the mission briefing for a game, is the user unable to rewind it? Indeed, why is it scrolling at all? Computers are excellent tools for giving the user control over her experience, and since the player is usually playing the game herself, who would mind if she read the text at her own speed, as controlled by a scroll bar or arrows on the keyboard? Similarly for cut-scenes: why can the user almost never rewind to watch the cut-scene again? What if she missed a part of the story she wants to hear, or just wants to enjoy the presentation again? It seems that the out-of-game sections of computer games are more user-unfriendly than almost any other solo experience medium. It seems likely that game designers may be thinking that they are movie directors and there - fore want to create a movie theater-like experience, despite the extremely different nature of the medium with which they are working. Some games are smart enough to allow the users to control the playback of cut-scenes. The Last Express in particular springs to mind, with its unique “egg” save-game feature that allows the user to go back to any point in his game and re-experience it. The game prided itself on transpiring in real-time or close to 222 Chapter 11: Storytelling real-time, and hence the player was able to turn back the hands on a clock to any particular time he was interested in and the game would return him to that point, a feature which was essential for understanding the game’s complex story. My own game Damage Incorporated used extremely interactive mission briefings in order to make sure the players understood what they had to do on a level. Players could use the arrow keys to flip back and forth between text and image documents. Dur- ing these mission briefings there was also spoken dialog which supplemented the material printed on the screen. Players could pause, rewind, and fast-forward this spoken dialog as they desired using tape deck controls displayed on the bottom of the screen. In this way players were able to read the text at whatever speed they wished and relisten to portions of the dialog that they may have missed. Unfortunately, the only interaction with the cut-scenes that many games include is the ability for the player to skip them entirely. This is essential, since many play - ers will want to skip over the non-interactive sections of the game, as any playtesting session will reveal. Forcing players to watch cut-scenes is a totally unnecessary limitation no game should attempt to enforce. As I explained above, better than complete skipping is to allow players to skip forward and back through cut-scenes as they desire, watching and rewatching them at their own speed. If one stops for a moment to consider the nature of out-of-game devices for sto - rytelling in games, one will be struck by what a strange concept it is to disrupt the interactive experience with a non-interactive one. For instance, when you go to a movie, do the theater workers ever stop the film, bring up the lights, and direct the audience to read a book that they handed out? Sometimes text is shown on the screen, but never in a way that requires the audience to read more than a few words Chapter 11: Storytelling 223 The Last Express’ clever save- game system allows the player to turn back game-time in order to rewatch cut-scenes or play parts of the game again. at a time. Instead, films present a consistent media experience for the audience. Games, on the other hand, still mix media in seemingly unnatural ways, forcing users who may just want to play a game to have to read a bit of a book, watch a movie, and only then actually get to play. Surely there is a better way to tell a story, convey a plot, and introduce characters from within the game itself that is far supe - rior to out-of-game storytelling, at least in terms of maintaining a fluid experience for the player. In-Game There are numerous powerful techniques for telling a story during gameplay. Half-Life was universally praised in the gaming press for the strength of its story. However, if one looks at the game’s story, it is not actually all that compelling, per - haps even hackneyed. Many other games, even many other first-person shooters, have contained stories just as compelling. What Half-Life did well, however, was to tell its story entirely from within the gameplay. The player never loses control of his character, even if he is locked in an observation room, stuck on a tram car, or thrown in a garbage compactor. The story is communicated through a combination of level settings, chatty scientists, announcements over the PA system, and NPC scripted behaviors. By the game’s end, the player is under the impression that the story was excellent because of the compelling way in which it was told. Some of the different techniques one can use to tell a story through gameplay are as follows: l Text: A lot can be communicated to the player through text placed around the game-world. These can be signs explaining directions to locations, pinned-up notes left by previous inhabitants of a given area, graffiti on the wall, or books left lying around for the player to read. l Level Settings: Almost all games use this technique, regardless of whether they attempt to tell a story or not. Consider the garden setting of Centipede, the hell-like setting of Doom, or even the art deco real estate setting of the board game Monopoly. What little story these games have is told entirely through setting, but setting can also be key to telling more complex game stories. The player’s exploration of the game-world can lead to discoveries about the type of people that inhabit a given area, or inhabited it in years past. Instead of reading in a cut-scene that the land is run-down and decayed, the player can simply see that truth by navigating the game-world. Setting is a perfect example of showing a story instead of telling it. l Dialog: Dialog with NPCs during gameplay is another massively powerful tool that designers can use to great storytelling effect. This dialog can be spoken during gameplay through conversations the player has with NPCs, where the player gets to choose his character’s response to the NPC’s dialog, either 224 Chapter 11: Storytelling through a multiple choice of responses or by typing in his own response. Dialog can also happen non-interactively during gameplay, with NPCs, either friendly or unfriendly, speaking to the player during the game and thereby communicat - ing more of the game’s story. Dialog can also come from computer terminals, PA systems, or tape decks, to name just a few devices. l NPC Behaviors: Of course, the NPCs should not just talk to the player; they should perform actions that back up the story line. For instance, say that the player fights two different races of aliens in the game, and according to the story line the two races bitterly despise each other. If the player is ever battling both at once, he should be able to trick them into fighting each other. In a peaceful village, if the player approaches the NPCs with his weapons drawn perhaps the NPCs will flee from the player. In a more hostile town, the NPCs might draw their own weapons and threaten to attack the player if he fails to stand down. NPCs can also be engaged in scripted behaviors that communicate to the player the nature of the game-world. For instance, say the people of a town live in fear of the Gestapo-like police force. As the player enters, he may observe a townsperson receiving a harsh and unjust beating from a member of the police. The Marathon games used text expertly to communicate their story line while never taking the player out of the game. The game featured computer terminals scattered throughout the levels the player navigated. The player could walk up to one of these terminals and hit the “action” key to activate it. Then the player’s view of the game-world would be replaced by a close-up view of the terminal. The player could then use the arrow keys to flip back and forth between different text screens which revealed more details about the plot and told the player what her objective was for the current level. The great thing about these terminals was that while the player was reading them, though she could no longer see the game-world, the game-world was still very much active and the player could be attacked by aliens or drowned by rising water. This sometimes gave the reading of the terminals a certain urgency, keeping the player’s game-world tension active. Of course, the player was able to control the text by flipping forward and backward through the screens, rereading the text at whatever speed she wanted. My own game Damage Incorporated used a combination of NPC behaviors and dialog to give the player some sense of character about the teammates who accompany him through the game’s various missions. The player was able to pick from among thirteen different marines the four he wanted to accompany him on a given mission. Each of these marines had a distinct personality and would commu - nicate this through the dialog he spoke during the missions themselves. This dialog might include the response to a directive from the player, a comment about the nature of the mission itself, or a response to the player’s particularly effective Chapter 11: Storytelling 225 killing of an enemy. Furthermore, different teammates could react differently to being taken on different missions. Some of the marines were less mentally sound than others and if taken on too many missions they would become “shell shocked” and run around the level at random, muttering gibberish all the while. Other marines would have moral objections to some of the missions on which the team was sent. As a result, these rogue teammates would rebel against the player and his other teammates in certain circumstances, shouting their disapproval for the task at hand as they went on a rampage. Thus, a combination of dialog and NPC behaviors created a group of teammates with real personalities, almost all of which was com - municated during the gameplay itself. One of the big concerns some people have with in-game storytelling is that the player may miss some of the story. What if the player fails to see the story being told? Since the player never loses control of the game with in-game storytelling, this makes it possible for the player to avoid talking to characters, witnessing scripted NPC behaviors, or reading signs. It is true that locking the player in front of a non-interactive cut-scene or scrolling text is one way to guarantee that she sees exactly what the designer wants her to see. But, as I have stated previously, one needs to remember that games are an interactive form, and that if the player does not experience every last element of the story, that is the nature of interactivity. If the player is interested in getting all of the story, it is the player’s responsibility to seek it out. If the player would prefer to just charge through the game focusing solely on the gameplay, that is her choice to make. Indeed, having different layers of the story that can be discovered on playing the game a second time can be a sig - nificant incentive for replaying the game. 226 Chapter 11: Storytelling The Marathon games allow players to log onto computer terminals scattered throughout the levels, where they can read more about the game’s complex story. Pictured here: Marathon 2. Almost everyone has had an English teacher who has emphasized the impor - tance of showing instead of telling in creative writing. Instead of being told that the people are wealthy, readers should be able to read the author’s description of an area and from that, deduce that the region is populated by a prosperous people. For games, in-game storytelling is the equivalent of showing, while out-of-game cut-scenes and other methods are telling. For in-game storytelling, players get to experience the story themselves instead of being told it secondhand. In addition to maintaining the player’s immersion in the game-world, in-game storytelling shows the player the story instead of just telling it to him. External Materials Many games have used external materials to tell their stories. This was particularly true in the 1980s when disk space was severely limited and designers could not fit all of the story they wanted to include onto a single 400K or smaller floppy disk. Some designers used manuals to communicate the game’s back-story, writing a nar- rative that would lead the player up to the point where she would start playing the game. Some games, such as the classic Wasteland, even used “paragraph” books, where the game would play for a while and then, when the player got to a storytell- ing juncture, would be instructed “Now read paragraph 47.” Sometimes this referencing of the manual was used as a form of copy protection, in that the player would be unable to play the game without having a copy of the manual. Arcade games also used external materials. Often the names of the game’s char- acters were written on the side of the cabinet instead of in the game. Some cabinets even included a few sentences further explaining the game’s setting and the player’s mission. The artwork featured on the sides of arcade game cabinets used superior graphics to add a small amount of depth to what meager story lines the games may have had. These days storytelling in manuals and other materials is generally frowned upon, and rightly so. We are certainly no longer presented with the technological limitations that necessitated storytelling through external materials. Furthermore, often the stories told in the manuals were not written by the game’s designers or even with their consultation. Therefore these stories can hardly be considered a part of the game itself, but rather the marketing department’s attempt to create a game-world they could hype on the back of the box. I would certainly never use a manual to convey the story in one of my own games since I believe it detracts from the continuous experience of playing the game on the computer or console. That said, some games have used external materials extremely effectively. In particular, the Infocom games always included materials in the boxes which added to the player’s gameplay experience in meaningful ways. Often the games referred to these materials, saying something to the effect of, “The magazine you find is the Chapter 11: Storytelling 227 [...]... in games goes hand in hand with non-linear gameplay: one can hardly imagine one without the other Non-linearity is explored more in Chapter 7, “The Elements of Gameplay.” Chapter 11: Storytelling 233 Working with the Gameplay One of the most important parts of creating a story for a computer game is to match the story with the gameplay as much as possible Earlier, in Chapter 3, “Brainstorming a Game. .. subject than game design A story makes easy copy for either the back of the box or the text of a review, something that is much easier to describe than gameplay These days, game reviewers will be frustrated if your game does not have much of a story, regardless of whether it needs one or not Games without stories are considered passé and archaic The marketing people, and sadly sometimes even the game reviewers,... Chapter 12 Game Analysis: Loom Designed by Brian Moriarty Released in 1990 F or 1990, the year it was released, Loom was a decidedly different type of adventure game Though it had many gameplay similarities to graphical adventure games that had been released previously by LucasArts, Loom endeavored to reduce the adventure game to its core mechanics from a storytelling 236 Chapter 12: Game Analysis:... for a draft change with every game, gives the game significantly more replayability than many other adventure games The musical nature of the drafts and of the entire game is a tremendous break from most other games that can be played with the sound completely off Instead of just using music for sonic wallpaper, Loom beautifully makes the music an integral part of the gameplay The order of the tones... playing adventure games If the player was not already experienced with these twisted and convoluted exercises in masochism, there was a good chance an adventure game would frustrate that player so much that he would feel no desire to try another one 244 Chapter 12: Game Analysis: Loom Story With the game mechanics focused in order to emphasize the game s storytelling component, the entire game would be... poorly executed game There are infinitely many stories to be told, and infinitely many ways to tell a given story Your job as game designer is to find a story and a telling of that story that will work with the game design and technology that you will be using Damage Incorporated’s story was created to fit around the gameplay and technology For me, stories seem to naturally fall out of gameplay I seldom... stories when playing your game If you want to tell a more predetermined story through your game as well, it is important to do everything possible to make the player feel that it is her own unique story The player should feel ownership over the actions in her game, and thereby ownership in the story that is being told Marketing people and game reviewers like storytelling in games because they are a... countless games where the overall plot was completely lost on me; I simply did not care to follow it Often in these games, I enjoyed the gameplay, the situations the game placed me in, and the interesting and amusing characters I met there Since the characters and situations were interesting, it did not really matter if I knew who did what to whom and when All I knew was that I was having fun playing the game. .. the character’s strong personality may alienate players from the game But as a game designer your ambitions must be higher than creating entertaining box copy or simplifying the job of game reviewers Many great games dispense with traditional storytelling entirely Civilization and SimCity immediately spring to mind as indisputably great games which allow players to tell their own story, with the designer... “chapters” of a game s story, often designers find that, though the first and final chapters of the narrative must happen respectively at the beginning and end of the game, the other chapters in the game can happen in any order Of course, issues with the difficulty of the sections may arise, since ideally designers want the difficulty of their games to ramp up continuously This, however, is more of a game design . with the game, such as a map or a collection of gems. A given game may use only one or all three of the above types of storytelling. Half-Life is an example of a game that included only in -game storytelling;. lost control of her character from the beginning of the game to the end. The Infocom games are a good example of games that used both in -game and exter- nal materials to tell their stories. In. descriptions of the game- world the player had in the game itself, the Infocom games always came with extra documents and knickknacks, which served to enhance the player’s understanding of the game- world,