Week 10 Readings
Reading One What Every Game Developer Needs to Know About Story
In this paper, all developers should read this because this will help in the creation of a storyline that works rather than a repeat of the same old stories and mistakes games from the past have made already. It states that selling the same story over and over again will not lead to the development of good games, this leading to the unsatisfactory of the player base.
We also have to remember that “Games are not Movies” they should not be this Hollywood standard of narrative because that will just be boring for the player. We can look at some mistakes that movies have done over the past century and implement them into the development of storylines for game development. Mistakes such as:
Making movies into real stories is not a good idea. This would just turn out to be not fun to watch and was boring whilst the film played.
Making sure that implementing the correct camera angle shot and right camera positions are in play because a moving camera would bore the audience because there is too much happening at once.
It can also be the same for games
Some common misconceptions are that story is dialogue and the story does not matter. A story is most definitely dialogue in some way and also story definitely does matter. We need a story to create conflict within the game or movie. Again game developers need to implement this within their games but not overdo it at the same time, making a game is all about creating conflict because that is what makes long-lasting memories.
Classical Stories are the best example and the best starting point for developers to look at. Classical stories are simple and they work really well there is a list of what needs to be in a storyline like this:
There’s a hero
The world they are in is out of order because something has happened
A gap opens up between the heroes life and ordinary life
The hero takes the risk to overcome this gap but fails and the world punishes him/her
Hero takes a risk in trying to come back
The hero has to overcome a second gap
Another third gap is created
The hero has to take an even greater risk in overcoming the third gap
Having this is a great start to your game development because it allows the developer to keep on adding these gaps creating more gameplay fro the user and ultimately leading to a better and more efficient game.
The character on the other hand should be designed to have a lot of conflicts within. Making it hard for the character to overcome the challenges that they face. They also need to be designed ina way that the character needs to be put under pressure to make choices this is called the principle of antagonism.
Reading Two Mass Effect 2 Case Study
Over the development of game design, it has matured tremendously as a narrative over the last decade but of course, in order for the development of this topic, there needs to be some sort of improvement within story-based-games. Game narrative is an issue in today’s world with cultural and economic consequences.
‘Close Reading’
Mass effect 2 which has been highly recommended with outstanding narrative by various different communities. It follows the classical human methodology of ‘close reading’, which is looking at work in close detail and deconstructing and analyzing the text. Mass effects close-reading looks at their previous work and highlights specific narrative parameters that are within digital games them implements it into the development stage. This method has been tested and has been found to work tremendously when analyzing contemporary games.
A narrative design parameter is meant to examine every aspect of the game, this being the character, story world, narrativized interface, emotion, and plot coherence. In doing this Mass Effect can not only create a better narrative for their game but they can create better games for other game narratives in general just by using these methods.
‘Edge Case’
They also expand on their previous methods through a ‘focused edge case’ which focused on the different limits that a character can have within the game limits of the character such as action and story.
‘Bounded Agency’
Mass effect 2 analyzes its game with contemporary closures of bounded agency and explore and closely looks at how the game creates tension for the player and player conflict in order to create a good well thought out the narrative for the game in order for its success when published. Thus’ helping the player gain a better experience and leaving long-lasting memories from the game for the future, also thus’ making the player stay with the franchise for a longer period of time.
Video Week 10 - Telling Stories with systems
For developers to understand what way of designing a game’s narrative is the best way is a difficult task, This video from GMTK recommends and goes over in his own opinion what type he would prefer to see implemented within a game.
The points suggested where he would rather see a is a dynamic one, this meaning that what the player does in the world is completely up to them and a story is created around the player’s action and is not set out in a linear way. Systemic stories are unique and they make the stories interesting from the players perspective. There are lots of things to do and the small little storyline is present within the game itself. This creates stories with conflict, tension and success. THen the player creates a massive narrative within the game rather than the game presenting a long storyline itself.
Overall we see that the complete linear narrative stories are not only boring because whatever way the developers make the storyline the output will still turn out the same way and the story will end the same way if not slightly different and this isn’t good because the player may be satisfied for a short period of time but this will not leave long-lasting memories as do systemic narratives.
- Video Telling Stories with systems - Link
- What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story, by John Sutherland.
- Mass Effect 2: A Case Study in the design of Game Narrative, by Jim Bizzocchi and Joshua Tanenbaum
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