GAME WRITING INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING

What we’ll do? LECTURES / semester ONE  Intro: Immersion and game writing  Defining ‘game writing’  Purposes of game narrative  Game writing process – discussion  Player in game writing / Player agency/ Player experience CLASSES / semester TWO  Pragmatics of game writing  Game writing process – workshops / writing and the graphic department  Game world / story  Structuring the story  Characters  Artifacts / assets  Cut scenes and scripted events: Hollywood format vs. what’s needed for games  Dialogue engines / dialogue editors

References  Rafael Chandler, ed. Game Writing Handbook. Boston, MA: Charles River,  Chris Bateman, ed. Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames. Boston, MA: Charles River, 2007.

IMMERSION, INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING AND GAME WRITING A LOOSE COLLECTION OF REMARKS

Immersion  Some say it’s a myth  Some say it’s what’s in your head  solipsism and virtual reality and video games  Some say it’s what you feel  Some say it’s what you experience  Most gamers say, nonetheless, it’s what really matters in video games  How does immersion happen, anyway ?

Immersion and Virtual Reality  Virtuality  Simulation  Interaction / Interactivity  Artificiality or / and Fictionality (how about ‘reality’ then?)  Convention? Is willing suspension of disbelief necessary?  Does suspension of disbelief actually require ‘believing’ in what’s being shown to the immersant / audience?  Multisensensory illusion  Telepresence  IMMERSION

Telepresence Allows a user / immersant / person  to feel as if they were present  to give the appearance of being present  or to have an effect at a place other than their true location  Transparency of telepresence  Dillemmas surrounding transparency  mimesis or diegesis ? How about video games? Are they mimetic or diegetic?  Non-diegetic interface. Why?  Telepresence ≠ immersion!

Reality and realism. Not the same thing.  Simulated reality  Virtual worlds  Simulated environments  Mediated environment  Projected environment  Full immersion environment  Realistic and real…  Can telepresence and immersion (in ANY MEDIUM) suffer due to too much realism?

VR and philosophy  solipsism  platonism and neo-platonism  reality as a construct  Subject and the construction of reality (Descartes)  consensus reality

Real uses of VR  Simulation  Telemedicine  Military technology  Science  Interactive entertainment?

… is often thought to be kind of different. Yet, immersion in interactive entertainment…

Immersion and video games  Immersion – one of the attributes of games that create high playability  Is immersion about a realistic experience ?  Multi-sensory engagement  Evolving controllers, photorealistic graphics, ecology of sound  Game ecology:  Coherent gameworld  Sound environment  Solid characters and NPC’s  Convincing AI  etc.  In short – everything that hinders the experience destroys immersion, while everything that makes the experience more ‘fluid’ enhances immersion

How? Gameplay is immersive  What the game is… rules of the game/ how things are done / how things happen in the game  ‘A series of interesting choices.’ - Sid Meier.  ‘The structures of player interaction with the game system and with other players in the game.’  ‘One or more causally linked series of challenges in a simulated environment.’  ‘The experience of gameplay is one of interacting with a game design in the performance of cognitive tasks, with a variety of emotions arising from or associated with different elements of motivation, task performance and completion.’  ‘the interactive gaming process of the player with the game.’ (industry figures, quoted after Wikipedia)

How? Game design is immersive  Immersive experience requires coherent game design and level design. E.g. players know what to do in the game and when they don’t game and level design offer rational and coherent solutions. Otherwise, frustration grows, the magic’s gone…  Performance-optimized game design makes the experience as flawless and fluent as possible.  Interface design often makes games unplayable or ‘unimmersive.’  Etc.

How? Graphic Art is immersive  Coherent high quality graphics make the game world immersive.  Graphic assets need to fit the gameplay, and need to be optimized for performance.  etc.

How? Sound design is immersive  Well researched and designed ecology of sound makes the game world more immersive  Sound effects and soundtrack need to be optimized for performance  An interactive movie? Not quite… Yet both diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds make the experience more immersive – like in movies, although on different levels – sound communicates action and its context to the active player, not to a passive audience.  Flawless, communicative, well written, well played, and rich dialogues need to be consistent with gameplay and level design. E.g. dialogue cues need to be triggered when the player has a chance to hear them (so, not in the middle of an explosion – so much for realism… : )) – yet – stichomythia / dichomythia.  Another example: dialogues need to be optimized for performance and platform capabilities (e.g. against the number of possible sound samples / tracks being played simultaneously), yet at the same time they cannot be overrepetitive.  Etc.

… if these definitions are good, they should work with every immersive game… … is it likely that a game that would feature all of these elements would still do poorly to engage players in an immersive experience? Yet…

Can you think of immersion in PONG?  After all – these are just some poorly rendered squares and rectangles…  No sound. No real game world (really?) No real level design.  Context? What context?  Gameplay is what matters! For real?  FOR REAL !  Yet, context established by the story / writing makes the game ‘more immersive’  (well, what’s the story in PONG…?)

Games are done together!  Producers  Programmers / coders  Graphic artists  Game designers  Level designers  Sound designers  Marketing department  Last but not least… Writers

What do writers do?  Help the game ! The game (and hence gameplay) comes first  Establish context:  develop backstory  help design game world  develop game and level storylines and story arcs  develop characters and character arcs  design game assets (artefacts, buildings, vehicles, creatures, etc.)  Write dialogues and often monitor voice shoots  Write cut-scenes for story driven games and often monitor cut-scenes production  Influence immersive gameplay by designing possible choices within the story, which relate both to the narrative and to the gameplay and game design, e.g. moral dillemas, choices pertaining to sidekick characters, etc.  Work with other team members throughout the production process to ‘defend the story’ in the game and keep a coherent narrative within the game.