Storytelling in Games
polycounter lvl 18
Storytelling within games has become more important over the years.
Lately, I've become interested in learning about this- The fundamental process of story development, as well as breaking it down into story boards for Cinematics.
Does anyone have tips, links or knowledge that they'd like to slap down?
Lately, I've become interested in learning about this- The fundamental process of story development, as well as breaking it down into story boards for Cinematics.
Does anyone have tips, links or knowledge that they'd like to slap down?
Replies
Here's a couple of papers from my bookmarks:
The Self, Presence and Storytelling, Thomas Grip, Frictional Games
Dynamic Narrative Systems in The Novelist, Kent Hudson, GDC 2014
Likewise nowadays, I started playing dark souls, and the opening cinematic I couldn't make heads or tales of-- in fact it was kind of stupid. But when I started playing the game, I immediately understood what it was all about. Movies don't give you the ability to look around and touch stuff and just observe, which I think games can take for granted as a means of story telling.
Granted, all of this is probably aside to what you're asking, but I think the best 'stories' in games are the ones you actively take part in and are not just shown.
a thousand times this. i think the best story telling done in games is done through experiencing the world you're in. Sure the plot and dialogue are important, but I feel like giving me that without a well thought out world for them to belong in is like cooking a perfect steak and asking me to eat it off the ground.
I needs a plate.
What this means to me is a lot of people spending a lot of hours sitting around and talking about a lot of things that will never be DIRECTLY communicated to the player - but will be evident in the world as background noise. which, unfortunately, costs a lot of work hours with very little visible payoff.
Conversely, giving the player too much control can lead to some really anti-climactic moments. The player can be absent or distracted for key plot points, or the systems of the game can become really evident and ruin the immersion.
Games are the only medium where the audience can stop and smell the roses. I agree, the best writing comes from that area but because its so different, most writers (who are used to mediums where the audience has little/no control over pacing) often have a really hard time with that.
My point is that storyboards are great for key plot points, but for "ambiance", I think a general historical writeup of wherever the game is set is more beneficial. From there you can probably figure out the particulars of environmental focal points and what would be on the population's mind during the game.
Thanks Ben :icon60:
ben. i want somebody to just compile all your posts into one thread so i can get my book list going.
If you are set on creating a game with less player agency and more author-controlled storytelling, I would just urge you to lean into it. Use the recent TellTale games as an example. There are plenty of ways to inject agency into a more linear narrative without spoiling the experience. If the divide between the narrative and gameplay is too broad, you run the risk of losing or annoying some players. This is a common complaint leveled against the Metal Gear franchise.
As far as storytelling itself, I would strongly advise you to flesh out the story in writing before moving on to story-boarding. Story-boarding is more fun, but writing the outline of your story out first will help you to catch plot holes and logical inconsistencies. A good story needs a skeleton to hang the muscle and skin on. Once you've got a solid outline, then you can grab the wacom and start sketching the boards.
It's interesting to hear how some cinematic approaches in games, while a heavy burden on those producing it, can actually be annoying. To the point of losing some players. It makes sense that taking away a players control can ruin the entertainment experience that everyone's striving for. Nobody wants that
I agree that Telltale's a good example of injecting the narrative into the gameplay experience without spoiling it.
Who else is doing it right these days?
However, I think it really depends on what type of game you happen to be making. There seem to be infinite approaches to game design. If we were to categorize them we might end up with something like The Four Lenses of Game Making where story or narrative is just one of the categories. Depending on how much emphasis your game has on narrative you'd end up with a certain type of game. Obviously story would probably be essential in a visual novel for example.
Daniel Cook wrote a great blog post Loops and Arcs, which goes into some depth about how gameplay and essentially narrative feedback are delivered to the player through "loops" and "arcs" and what they are good for and what purpose they serve. Definitely worth reading.
On the topic of storyboarding, I would imagine it could easily lead to how you would frame each shot in a 3rd person fixed camera survival horror game such as the early Resident Evil games for example and thus be a very useful design tool. So I'd say there's still much to learn from film and cinematography that we can adapt to the medium of games.
@reverendK:
Thanks for the compliment, I'm always happy to share
Ben is right. There's nothing wrong with making a more linear narrative experience with less player agency. There's ample room in the industry for that type of storytelling. The issue is not with making games that involve less gameplay. The problem and disconnect come from games that swing violently between the two extremes.
I bring up Metal Gear because of the series sharp divide between the gameplay and storytelling elements. Metal Gear has constant and lengthy cut scenes that snatch control away from the player, often for extended periods of time. The cut scenes aren't bad, they are often very entertaining. It is the hard transition that is jarring.
Tell Tale's recent efforts work because the whole experience blends together much more smoothly. They do not allow the player control over the camera, allowing them much better control of the framing of each scene, whether interactive or not. The player's options for gameplay are always limited, so when control is taken away it is not as abrupt and doesn't take them out of the experience.
If a more narrative experience is what you are shooting for, go for it. Just don't go the constant cut scene route. Figure out ways to blend player agency into the experience with out hard transitions.
Problem of most games are, in my opinion, not story telling. It is " NOT HAVİNG A DECENT STORY AT ALL".
Best example: Watch Dogs.
Great looking cinematics. Even the game world inhabitans offers a lot of story pieces with playability ( like following a wife to save her from her angry to-be ex-husband).
But what is "my" story ?
Big bad people killed my wife and kid, and now I am going to avenge them by killing everything that moves.
U-huh. Good job mate.
oh dear.
everything is important. blanket statements are idiotic. (see what i did there?)
seriously though. Characters don't exist without a story. the two should inform the development of one another. characters without a story are just...doodles. they'll never be complete characters without an environment to believably act out in. The less believable and fleshed out that world is the less successful the characters will be.
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Heavy Rain and Beyond:Two Souls are great examples of games that show off a great story with little gameplay. In both games, the only gameplay that exists is the occasional button press for a quick time event, and sometimes you'll walk around an area. I could be wrong, but in Beyond:Two Souls, I think it's also impossible to even "lose" the game since you don't have any health. While the gameplay would be considered shitty by most people, the games are both well received and this is due to the fact that both games can successfully draw the gamer into the lives of the characters.
One could argue that characters are more important than anything else, though. You can look at JRPGs for an example of that, considering most popular JRPGs have completely far-fetched stories but they are enjoyable because of the characters. Persona 4 comes to mind, it's about a bunch of highschoolers that try to catch a murderer by going inside of a world that exists within the TV. Many consider the game to have a great story though, and it comes down to the amazing character development.
Ultimately, you have to look at the crowd a game is trying to cater to. If you want to please the average gamer for example, the guy that primarily plays Call of Duty and Fifa, then you shouldn't really worry too much about character development in the game because that person surely doesn't care about the characters.
A little correction there; a good story is a "consistent" one, not a "realistic" one. These are two separate things.
High-schoolers catching murder in TV is not a "realistic" story BUT it is a "Good Story` because it is "consistent" , because it is well-thought, detailed and doesn't contradict with itself at many points.
Here's my argument on this:
I've never walked away from watching a movie and stated "I was in that story, that story was me - I lived through those experiences." Not to state that movies aren't engrossing, they certainly are, but the movie is never MY story - I can state "I really connected with that actor/character, I know what their going through, I have X memory that's comparable" - but I can never state "I lived that story".
With both video games, and books - I can state that story was MINE. I did that, I went on an adventure through Middle Earth, found The One Ring to Rule Them All, and helped in the slaying of Smaug. That was me!
Let me say this:
If, in a game with a story as it's centric-point, the player EVER has to think about the storyline in terms of the characters their seeing and is not thinking about the story in terms of what they're experiencing then - you're doing it wrong.
A story, being given from the platform of a game, should be about the player - Which is why I'd like to punch whoever at Riot made the above comment. The most important part of a story in a video game is that the player has the ability to make it their own - otherwise, they'd just go and watch a movie over the same story.
Additionally, I find that using cinematics to further the story where the player-controlled character in the story does some type of action is actually taking away from the player's experience of that being his own story. This isn't to suggest that cinematics do not have their uses, they certainly do - but it shouldn't be used as a suedo-movie to try and TELL a player what his/her decision just was at a certain event.
Instead, cinematics should be reserved to supplement the player's story based around other actors. A good example of this is the historic cinematic in FF7 where Sephiroth comes flying down and sticks his sword into Aeris. This cutscene shows exactly what Cloud/Player would of been feeling at the time - helplessness. He's watching his helplessness - the player is watching their helplessness and in this instance the cinematic was appropriate because it wasn't conveying what the player done, but what they couldn't do.
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