Premises in Story Games

In a business as fluid as ours, it's always something of a shock to be reminded that art flourishes when form freezes.

Public spectacle crystallized into Theatre 2600 years ago in Greece, and it's with us still. Prose tales crystallized into the novel when Cervantes invented the Western form in 1605, and it hasn't changed that much since. Movies crystallized more than 60 years ago; that's why people can write books about their inner workings with such stupefying confidence: Robert McKee's book on dramatic writing, Story, and Jonathan Katz's directing book, Shot by Shot, offer two examples. To be sure, movies are still evolving, but there's not much difference in form between It Happened One Night, released in 1934, and Sleepless in Seattle from 1993, or between The Lost World of 1925 and The Lost World of 1997.

And all these forms crystallized around storytelling.

Game structure is still in flux. It used to be that if a game depended on story it was an adventure or RPG. But other genres are crystallizing, and now it's not unusual to see shooters and flight simulators with plots. Human interest in the deep mysteries of human behavior, destiny, and fate is such that, when all else has been formalized, storytelling remains an endless wellspring of novelty for creators of books, movies...and computer games.

CGDC is a big event for most of us, a time to step back from the daily grind and contemplate the Big Ideas. During my three roundtables we tackled these:

1. Do games and storytelling mix?
2. Where do stories come from?
3. How do we conjure them?
4. What kinds of stories work best in games?
5. How do we pick the right ones?

And here's what we discussed (please excuse me where I have failed to credit opinions with participants' names... roundtables are kind of hectic):

(1) Do games and storytelling mix?

According to the sixty-odd folks who attended, the answer is a simple yes. The tenor of all three sessions of my RT was quieter and more civilized this year than in the past, chiefly because the number of attendees who believe games simply cannot incorporate stories seems to have dwindled significantly to about one per session.

Some topics that started up were:

a. Will the storytelling trend continue?

b. Is technical innovation enough?

c. Is gameplay novelty an alternative?

It seems sensible to question the need for storytelling. After all, CG technology has helped modern movies evolve toward theme-park rides. The overall consensus, however, was that stories are firmly embedded in games and spreading across genres.

An interesting objection was that game stories fail because they can't evoke laughter & tears. Several people identified genuinely funny story games, although no one could think of a sad one. Several of us pointed out that games evoke other emotions having to do with sports tension, accomplishment, satisfaction. Maybe that's enough.

Moreover, Steve Meretzky, a story game designer of note, could not think of a single game that became a favorite because of the story itself.

Worse, somebody thought that stories will migrate away from games to the Internet, where MUD's, chat rooms, and the text-heavy ienvironment offer natural support.

Finally, every year it amazes me to hear several attendees confuse contests or historical proceedings with storytelling. Stories are, in effect, the recapitulation of extraordinary fictional events and characters. They demand an author. Contests often suggest story-like narratives--sporting events, where one team comes back from a huge deficit to win, are a good example. Certain kinds of games provide the elements for narrative invention and rely upon the player to fill in the blanks. In general these narratives are constructed on the fly by the spectators or players themselves, and are actually histories of their real activities in a virtual world. They only seem like stories.

Somebody described an online world in which people can agree to have kids, and then these NPC offspring have characteristics like hunger and need for attention, like Tamagotchis.

Someone else pointed out that these narrative threads seems to emerge from the same part of the psyche as stories do, which may account for the difficulty of distinguishing between stories and histories.

Another noted that such narratives are rarely well written, because they are subject to the imaginative limitations of the player.

Indeed, one of the pleasures of being entertained by an author is being in the presence of a vivid imagination that enlarges one's mental life in some way. Overall, the larger purposes of crafted storytelling, the evocation of mythos, the hints at explanations of the mysteries of life, the observation of human character, the distillation of human triumph and failure, are generally absent from these create-your-own-story games.

So far so good. Although there was some mild dissent and qualification, in general we agree; games can make good use of stories. Now then to the important questions...

(2) Where do stories come from?

The purpose of the roundtable was practical, not theoretical. Although deep down, writing is a mystery (like all creativity), writers know that the practical answer to this question is: stories start with a premise. And what is a premise?

A few examples:

(3) How do we conjure stories?

There is no sure formula, but some of the practical methods are:

(4) What kinds of stories work best in games?

In order to understand how premises work in games, we must observe some properties of various kinds of story structure:

Anyway, some premises work better in games than others:

And some premises don't work as well:

Observations from the trenches:

Someone from Red Orb adapting a Tom Clancy novel pointed out that a mission can fail in a book in order to advance the story, but not in a game, where the player must always win. The solution to this problem? Surprise the player by turning an espionage mission into a very difficult combat mission, where the surprise and threat of failure conveys the right sense of shock even if the player succeeds.

Steve Meretzky sees a natural tension between play and story, the more of one, the less of the other. The trick is to find a good balance. (Clearly, the story of Jedi Knight should be simpler than the story of Curse of Monkey Island.)

Mr. Meretzky also offered the belief that mysteries don't work.

Someone noticed that game stories need more of a hook than books or movies, because we must keep the player involved when pace falters.

Michele Em believes we should look to comic books for inspiration; their stories are short, simple, vivid.

Someone suggested delving into the mythological underpinnings to find appropriately vivid story material.

Someone noted that game play and story must evolve together. No one wanted to see more games in the sytle of Seventh Guest.

Scott Kim offered a way to think of puzzles as game elements: they fit into games the way songs fit into musicals.

Several participants wanted to find the balance between non-linear and linear plots. I sense that this topic still could generate a lot of heat.

One attendee called attention to a jarring aethetic problem that occurs when cinematic scenes used to unfold the plot don't resemble the look of the game engine. He likened the transitions between engines to the beginnings and ends of the "slidewalks" in airports.


Final thoughts:

More people wanted to talk about character than premise, that's for sure, and some interesting observations were made. Steve Meretzky believes that the best game stories don't focus on character.

Bob Bates disagrees. He thinks we need to keep focusing on people until we get it right.

Someone mediated these opposing views with this thought: in games there are gaps in players' imaginations about character the way novels have gaps in readers' imaginations about physical settings. They both work, though. Art forms don't have to do everything equally well.

And one fellow believed that, in a game, all things should seem real and be like real life, not just believable in a fantasy way.

Personally, I'm lined up with Meretzky, but not because I don't love traditional literary character. Instead, it's because I believe complex character isn't as vital to games as to other art forms: when the player is immersed, the player (or his avatar) is the most important character. Elements like setting start to become more important, because the player knows his character well, and the trick is to measure him/her against the environment of the story (will I freeze to death in that water? Boil in the lava pond? Out-negotiate that evil landholder?) The situation is so extreme that I've come to think of character in games less as a set of traits and more as the sum of a player's capabilities.

So there's still room for plenty of argument. See you next time and online.

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