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Dec 18
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This is a thought that’s been in my head for a while, but I figured it’s time I fleshed it out better both for myself, and for the world at large. The original spark comes from comments from Portal writer Erik Wolpaw in the post-mortem of said game at the 2008 GDC. The basic gist is this: a game tells two-stories, one through it’s narrative, and one through it’s gameplay, and having the two play well together vastly improves the quality of the experience. (Check out Gamasutra’s coverage of the post-mortem, it’s a great read.)
I’m going to suggest that in addition to these two stories, there’s also a third that comes into play: the player’s story. So let’s take a look at each of these in turn:
The Story Narrative: This is the most obvious narrative in the game, and probably also the one that most effort (on the story side) is put into. Traditionally, this has been the main tool in providing the player with motivation to proceed through the game, and it’s also where the majority of the emotional experience of the game comes from. It’s also perhaps the narrative that we best know how to write, as there’s a long tradition of story-telling in many different media, much of which can be adapted to gaming. That said, as a new medium is does have its own challenges and strengths, and there are still great advances that can be made.
The Gameplay Narrative: This is the one that Wolpaw was pointing to, the narrative that’s told through the gameplay. Though not directly a strong method for directly telling a narrative, the best way to look at this is probably in relation to the game’s mood - the gameplay (and the experience of playing the game) can either reinforce it or undermine it. This is something that has perhaps been focused on a lot in the horror-survival genre - the scarier ones routinely have bits of gameplay designed to make the player jump, and to catch you off-guard. At the opposite end of the scale, a lot of old JRPGs are not so good with this, the classic example being when you’re supposed to be in a rush to get somewhere, but there’s actually nothing to stop you from sidetracking as much as you like.
There’s a certain care that has to be taken in balancing these, as anything intended to too strongly dictate how the player proceeds runs the risk of being too controlling, and ruining the enjoyment of the player. The JRPG example is a good one here - these games are often very reliant on being able to explore every nook and cranny of the world, to take that away would be something of a rude shock.
These two narratives - story and gameplay - comprise the greater part of what the developers are responsible for. But one of the defining features of games, as distinct from most other current media, is that they are interactive, and thus, the end user takes on a vital role in the telling of the narrative. Hence my third narrative, the Player Narrative.
The Player Narrative: By virtue of the nature of games, while playing through them the player is constantly making decisions. On a number of different levels, both conscious and subconscious, the player is authoring a side narrative of their own through this. Most often this could be looked at as the player giving their character additional traits (for example, my characters in Fallout 3 have a particular pre-occupation with shooting things in the head).
This is another area where a disconnect with the story narrative is problematic. Someone once said that the player in a game is like an actor who doesn’t know his lines, and in the face of this ignorance, most players will start to fill in the gaps themselves. If you then throw in a situation where the player has no choice but to go directly against their own idea of what’s going on, you can end up with a situation where a player feels stuck because they have no idea what their character would do in the situation.
On the flipside, when a game can pick up and respond to your player narrative, it can make the game that much more compelling. Where this has been done, it’s often been a rather direct method (ie. the player can directly affect things); those levelling systems where the player can determine how their character grows, are probably one of the most common examples of this. The alterative is a more indirect, subtle one - where the game can observe how the player goes through the game, and respond accordingly.
One very simple example of this is an old favourite of mine, Hikware’s Warning Forever. While there’s little narrative in it, seeing your opponents beef up their defences in response to your attack patterns is far more satisfying than simply facing bigger and bigger opponents each time.
This is something that I feel warrants some more exploration in the future… I would love to see a game that recognises certain patterns in the player’s actions, and has that impact the story.
And maybe I’m just gonna have to go out there and be the one that just. No point just twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone else to, right?
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