Inside Mac Games Volume 6 #3

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¬†¬† ¬† ¬† ¬† by Richard Rouse III ¬† Tell Me a Story These days, it seems as if every game publisher and developer is determined to make computer games that tell stories, one way or another. In the early years of computer gaming, when nearly all computer games were found in arcades and games such as Asteroids and Centipede reigned supreme - the "stories" found in computer games existed only as general settings for games; flying around in space shooting rocks in Asteroids or killing bugs in a garden in Centipede. No one seemed to complain overly that there wasn't more of a traditional narrative to these games. These days anyone who fails to put some sort of story (it's actually quality being seemingly irrelevant) into their computer game is promptly lambasted by the press - witness Quake's chilly reception and near universal chastisement for doing away with the story altogether. (Strangely, its sales seem to have been unaffected.) Quake II would appear to be a direct result of such chastisement, featuring a shell of a story to accompany a game which is, for all intents and purposes, the same. Closer to home on the Macintosh front, Double Aught's Greg Kirkpatrick - one of the key level designers and story architects for all three Marathon games - stated on Usenet some time ago his opinion on gaming storylines: "Computer games tell stories. That's what they're there for." Granted I'm quoting Kirkpatrick wildly out of context, but his statement makes for interesting reflection. Is storytelling really what games are for? Many traditional, non-computer games feature no story at all. Poker, Checkers, Pictionary, Solitaire, or Chess have nothing like a story to them. Chess does seem to have a medieval warfare theme to it, but it's not something one thinks about while playing the game. In fact Chess's extremely limited use of storyline as setting is very similar to a classic computer game's use of the same. For example, compare it with Centipede. Chess has a medieval theme while Centipede has an garden/insect theme. Chess takes real-life characters - kings, bishops, knights - and limits their movements in the game-world in a way which bares little to no relationship to the real-world. Centipede does the exact same thing with fleas, spiders, scorpions and centipedes, making them behave in the game nothing like how one might expect. The setting in each provides some color to the game, giving each a bit more life than if the games were played with generic pieces and adversaries, but it's not something which keeps one interested in and of itself. That is provided solely by the razor-sharp gameplay featured in each game. Another branch of non-computer games that do tell stories are role-playing games (RPGs). In these games, instead of pitting equal adversaries against each other, one of the people involved with the game isn't really playing at all, but is rather regulating and guiding the game. This person is called the Game-Master (GM) or - in the popularized, trademarked T.S.R. word for the job - Dungeon-Master (DM). While all the other people playing the RPG have characters whom they control in the game-world, the GM instead acts as a regulator for the game, explaining the situations that the other player's characters are facing, and regulating - hopefully in a fair way - what happens to them. Though combat between characters and non-player characters (NPCs) is handled through a predetermined and often quite complex rule set, all other interactions between the players and the game- world are handled relatively on-the-fly by the GM. Though the GM almost always works from a pre-written story-outline, a good GM will be able to alter the story to complement a player's actions; instead of saying - as computer games so often do - that "you can't do that," a good G.M. will be able to quickly reconfigure his story to react appropriately to whatever the players want to do in the game-world. Playing Roles, Creating Stories Of course in a computer RPG (CRPG), the GM is replaced by the computer. Though the computer is more than skilled enough to regulate combat and the like - number crunching is basically all that computers can do - it is far less able to dynamically react to the actions of the player. In short, the computer is stuck with whatever storyline the game's designer gave it, and many designers will have supplied only one narrow storyline, not anticipating very well (if at all) the different actions the player may try to perform. Over the years many CRPG designers have recognized this limitation and as a solution - instead of working on complex, non-linear storylines - have made their CRPGs combat-intensive and storyline-light. But why is it that we as designers want our computer games to tell stories? I have a couple of theories about this. One is that most of the entertainment mediums popular in the U.S. - movies, TV shows, books, pop music - tell stories, and we want our games to be as popular as possible. The computer gaming industry's desire to tell stories in its games may well be just another facet of our nasty case of "Hollywood envy," a concept first put forth by Chris Crawford and which I explored in a pervious column (Computer Games, Not Computer Movies; Inside Mac Games 5.8). We want to be more like movies - or at least more popular like movies - and as such we foist linear storytelling methods into our non-linear medium. No, No, What I Really Want To Do... Even worse, it often seems that many of the designers working on computer games secretly wish they were making movies or writing books instead. Witness the recent shift to movie production of such industry heavy-weights as Chris Roberts (designer of the Wing Commander series, now directing the first movie based on that property) or Robyn Miller (co-creator of Myst and Riven) who left Cyan to pursue film-making. It's a simple case of lack of pride in the work we do and the games we create that leads many of us, when given half a chance, to jump ship and go work in other art-forms instead. After all, what sort of respect do computer games get in our society? I think this frustration can manifest itself as designers working to tell linear stories in their games, as if practicing for the day when they'll get to pursue their novel-writing careers. I think another explanation for the obsession with storytelling is that marketing people love it. As I've mentioned in previous columns, it's hard as the dickens to communicate excellent gameplay to a potential consumer on the back of your box. In video arcades a player only had to invest a quarter to see if the gameplay of the game was any good; if it was, she could then keep dropping quarters, playing the game again and again. Hence Atari didn't feel the need to foist a story onto any of its classic games from twenty years ago. To this today, the games you find in arcades really don't have much story attached to them, and no one seems to be complaining. But for the home- market, where there's not only the all-important back of the box that needs to be filled up, but also oodles of puffy preview articles to be written about upcoming games, having a storyline to write about is all but essential (since storylines do convert awfully well to the written word, unlike, again, gameplay). A sure sign that storylines are nothing more than marketing tools when marketing hacks work them out for game designers before the gameplay is even designed, and said designers are told to use the storylines regardless of whether they can feasibly be integrated into the gameplay or match in any way with the game being created. Let Me Tell You About My Dream But there's still another reason why everyone's interested in games with storylines; simply put, putting the gamer in the middle of a storyline and letting him make the decisions is a damn compelling idea, and one that has enraptured me for the last decade. I've been interested in storytelling in general for the same amount of time if not longer. I always thought of stories as a way of showing people interesting situations and the consequences of decisions made in those situations. To me, the logical extension of this to a more interactive media is: "Wouldn't it be more interesting to allow the reader/viewer/player to make the decision themselves and see the ramifications of any given decision?" That's the dream, anyway. Getting it to actually work is another matter entirely. But it's such a compelling notion, who wouldn't want it to work? Who wouldn't want stories in computer games? The problem is that how stories have been used in computer games thus far has not been working toward the end of allowing the player see the ramifications of her actions. Most of the stories we've been presented with have been largely linear affairs, where at any juncture there are two possible things the player can do: the Right Thing and the Wrong Thing. Often there are multiple Wrong Things, but this still pigeonholes the player into doing the only Right Thing or losing the game. Some games have tried to have multiple Right Things, with varying results. I'm quite concerned when probably the most famous designer of adventure games, Roberta Williams, seems entirely uninterested in allowing the player multiple options that still lead to satisfying resolutions, as I discussed in a previous column. (My Dreams Are Non-Linear, Inside Mac Games 5.6) The notion that the player needs to see everything the designer puts into the game is a misconception that leads to a disinterest in non-linear storytelling. For if the player's not going to see it, why put it in? If there are multiple paths that all lead to a positive resolution for the player, if a player only plays the game through once - which in all likelihood he will - he'll be missing a whole section of levels, art, music, and the like. And those things cost money, don't you know, and if the player's not going to see them, isn't it just a waste? Of course, it's not a waste to a game designer interested in non-linear storytelling, but a business-centered thinker will realize that instead of paying for the art and whatnot in multiple game-paths, the developer could spend double the money on one part of the game, force the player to be able to see only that section, leading to all-the-spiffier screenshots for the back of the box. Of course, the back of the box has little to no value to the game- player once he's removed its contents, but by then the publisher already has his money. ¬† Multiple Mixed-Up Media Stories have often been melded onto action games in the worst of all possible ways, through the dreaded disjointed cut-scenes. The action game itself stays relatively unchanged, but between missions or levels, the player is presented with an entirely non-interactive affair which endeavors to tell the player the story. The cut-scene is often of the full-motion video variety (either using real actors or pre-rendered 3D animation), the visual appearance of said cut-scenes usually barely matching with the visuals in the actual gameplay. The player then returns to the interactive part of the game, playing on as if nothing has changed. Some games actually make an effort to work some of the storytelling into the gameplay itself, or at least have the game-worlds reflect the storyline which enfolds in the non- interactive cut-scenes. But this entire way of telling a story is inherently flawed and frustrating to the player. Suppose that you went to a movie, and at one point, the projector stops, the lights come on, and you're asked to read the next scene from a book. This would serve only to frustrate you. If you're at the movies, you want to be watching a film, you don't want to be reading a book. Similarly, then, if you're playing a computer game, do you really want to be watching a movie? Though expository moments where the player isn't directly interacting with his game-world may be necessary, they should at the very least be smoothly linked into the standard gameplay and their time should be kept to a minimum. Perhaps, instead of investing vast sums of money in pre-rendered or filmed cut-scenes - sometimes as expensive as the entire rest of the game - we should concentrate on developing new storytelling skills which allow us to communicate storylines from within the actual gameplay. My action game, Damage Incorporated, had it's own faults in this department, probably relying more than necessary on overly-long mission briefings between the actual gameplay sections. At least the player could page through the briefings and fast forward or rewind through the accompanying audio at will, giving these non-game elements some hint of interactivity. Efforts were made on my part to bring the storyline more into the game by having the player's team-mates continually talk to her, sometimes sharing their thoughts on the current mission and what the player's team of Marines were being asked to do. Though the player couldn't speak back to her team-mates, their lines did occur during the actual gameplay, and I think it helped to communicate a story while gameplay actually progressed. Efforts were made to have the levels the player was moving through and the tasks the player was asked to perform lock in somewhat with the storyline, though whether this was more successful than in other games is debatable. Puzzling Stories Adventure games have been somewhat more successful in storytelling and working the storyline into the actual gameplay. Unfortunately, far too many adventure games have placed logic puzzles into storylines in obviously contrived and unbelievable ways. Often when playing adventure games the player will instantly say "Aha, I'm making a jig-saw puzzle!" when trying to assemble the parts to some complex apparatus or "Oho, I'm playing Towers of Hanoi!" when attempting to shift some boxes from one part of a room to another without toppling the stack. These are the worst cases, in which the designers came up with interesting puzzles first, and then cobbled a story around them. Players may indeed be entertained by the playing of these logic games, though the usefulness of a storyline in such situations is debatable, as it ends up being little more than window-dressing around the actual game. Sometimes these bells and whistles are necessary to cover over what is otherwise a mediocre game, but in the case of a truly good puzzle game, they're nothing but an annoying distraction. Funny, no one ever complained that Alexey Pajitnov's Tetris didn't have a story. Interestingly enough, when Tetris first came out it was entirely pushed (from a marketing standpoint) as a "Russian Computer Game!" The reason to buy it was to be in the spirit of detente with our new Russian friends, not because it was a fabulous game. Indeed, how could anyone market such amazingly innovative and unique gameplay on the back of a box? The game's subsequent financial success was based almost entirely on word of mouth. Surely, without the whole Russian angle, how would the marketers and publishers have initially sold the game to consumers and (perhaps more importantly) retailers? Perhaps they would have foisted a storyline of some sort onto it? Or perhaps it wouldn't have been published at all, a much more likely scenario, as it featured none of the extreme violence, cutting edge technology, or full-motion video that businessmen continually seem to think game-players want. The storyline for my computer game Odyssey - The Legend of Nemesis, which I consider a hybrid adventure/RPG, came before any of the puzzles. I tried never to think "This would be a cool puzzle, what storyline can I conjure up to justify it?" Certainly I understood what was possible using the technology or "engine" I was working with, but with that initial limitation in mind, I worked out what story I wanted to tell and what situations I wanted to place the player in. I presented the player with various moral and human interaction problems, and tried to consider what the different solutions to a given problem could be, and which ramifications would result from these different solutions. To nearly every situation in the game there are multiple, positive actions the player can take, though often there are not as many different options as I would have liked. And though these different situations and solutions don't always make for the most interesting puzzles, they function properly and, I think, believably within the story. Almost by force of habit - perhaps from having played so many computer role playing games - I threw some abstract puzzle sections into the game, almost divorced entirely from the plot. In the end these were probably what frustrated and confused players the most (aside from the downer-ending, my defense of which is worthy of a column all by itself). I think a similar story-first approach was taken on Jordan Mechner's masterful The Last Express, wherein the player is confronted with puzzles which almost always work seamlessly into the story; the question for the player is "how do I dispose of this body so I don't get caught" instead of "how do I solve this abstract puzzle so I can get through some story and move onto the next abstract puzzle?" I originally started working on this column because I thought it would be an easy subject for me to write about, since storytelling has always been at the forefront of my reflections on game design. But as I worked on it, I found myself wondering just why I was trying to put storylines into computer games, and, if I could figure that out, just what new and useful ideas I had on the subject. Here I've presented a lot of what's wrong with how stories are being told in computer games now, and offered little in the way of solutions. That's because I don't really have any. I'm so bereft of solutions that on my current project (which must be completed in far too little time) I'm focusing all my efforts in making the gameplay as smooth and sublime as possible, pushing the storyline to the side. For, as I firmly believe, computer games really don't need to tell stories to be brilliant in their own right. Nonetheless, I still can't help but wonder how we can make computer games function so that the computer can act more like a real-life Game- Master, creating a story on the fly to suit the player's needs as they make their own, unique choices in the game-world. Storytelling is something that computer games have only barely begun to explore in any meaningful way, and as of this writing, I don't have any easy insights into how we should move ahead toward the dream of truly interactive stories. But I'll keep thinking about it. ____________________________________________________ Richard Rouse III is a game designer and programmer working out of Washington D.C., whose published titles thus-far are 1996's Odyssey - The Legend of Nemesis and 1997's Damage Incorporated, both published by MacSoft. Having recently been run out of New York City, Richard would like to show some respect to the institu- tions that made his stay in that fairest of cities so lovely: The Film Forum, Village Comics, WSOU, Candiria, and Panix. Feedback to this column is (politely) demanded at paranoid@panix.com. ¬†