Creating a Game Plot The Process

Creating the Story The Big Three: –Character: This is who the story is about and through whose eyes the story is told. –Goal: This is the physical object the character wants to obtain: the princess, the treasure, the girl, the bounty, the recognition, and so on. –Conflict: Conflict is what is between the character and his goal. There are three forms of conflict.

Three types of Character Conflict 1.Character vs. Character 2.Character vs. Environment 3.Character vs. Self

Other Elements of the Story Location: Inciting Moment Story Question Theme Need Ending/Resolution

The Basic Story The lights dim. In the first part of a story, a hero will be introduced. He/she will have some flaw that makes them human-like us. Something unexpected will happen that throws his/her world into chaos. For the next hour or so, our hero will go through a series of trials, aided by friends and challenged by foes, trying to restore order to his/her world. In the last part of the story the hero will be crushed, only to rally for one final showdown against his/her challenger. He/she succeeds or fails-usually succeeds. We all celebrate or cry.

The Hero The character through which the story is told.

The Mentor/Friend The ally that helps the hero

The Herald This character announces the ‘Call to Adventure’ and delivers other important information throughout the story. This role sometimes shifts from character to character.

The Villain/Antagonist An evil character who provides the conflict and is the main enemy of the hero.

Game Plot Conflicts Brains vs. Brawn Rags to Riches Good vs. Evil Role Reversals Courage and Survival Peacemakers Tempting Fate Fish Out of Water Ship of Fools Buddy Stories Love Stories Quests and Journeys

Difference between a Movie Plot and a Game Plot Beyond the obvious differences in running time, scope, complexity, budget and resources the animated game requires directness, clarity, simplicity, and economy of structure, plot, and assets not found in movie films.

Making the Long Story Short The Game plot for our assignment should have one theme or concept that the piece communicates and one conflict that intensifies or gets worse. It should have at least three characters (needed for you to be able to create them in ZBrush), about five or more locations, and only props necessary to populate the scene appropriately or drive the story forward.

The Long and Short of It Remember our most basic definition of a story: a character wants something badly and is having trouble getting it. When you are looking for ideas, this is the basis of what you are looking for.

The Rules Story Is King Keep it Simple Know Your Concept, Theme, or Meaning Avoid Cliché Create a memorable Character Emotion Drives Action

The Rules Create Conflict Know Your Ending Entertain Your Audience Use Humor Write About Something You Like

The Ideal The most linear path for getting and developing ideas comes from knowing your concept first. If you know what your piece is about, it is easy to determine early on which elements you need to tell your story: the situation that will best convey your message, the characters that will be in conflict with your situation, and then, your genre, time period, characters, costuming, backgrounds and everything else will fall into place.

Concept Statement Concept Statement: A concept is basically a general idea of what the story is about. Think of it this way: you have one line in which to write what the story is about. Maybe you can, or you give up and take three lines, but that's the limit. A concept is a very concise general statement - very short on specific details. What do you put in a concept? Following are some very basic concepts I gleaned from movies: Orphaned tall man meets short brother, Detective and slobbery dog, Man marries genie, Man rooms with woman disguised as a man. These concepts put unusual people together and a story comes out. Every part of the story is dictated by the concept. Concept is usually extended to encompass more of the story. For example, Aladdin: A poor orphaned young man and an overprotected princess fall in love. Aladdin tries in vain to win her hand with wealth, then rescues her from marrying the villain, with the aid of a genie. But he wins her only through being himself.

Proven Research Games increase the talents and skills of a children, adults, and or student's in the following areas: multitasking, problem solving, focusing and the ability to understand the material faster, vision and motor skills. As long as people find games interesting they will learn from them. Glen Rhodes writes, “It is the story line of the game that will extract emotion from the player. Through the story, the player will maintain a greater interest and a higher sense of purpose in a game. The story provides the motivation to progress and work toward the resolution” (Rhodes 17-18). So basically it is the strong plot of the story that attracts the player rather then the violence. This also allows the player to be more focused on the tasks that is required to succeed instead of the violence that is involved in the video game itself.

A moment to talk about some ethical issue surrounding games Today the publics’ stance on video games is that they are the cause of children’s increasing aggression in their behavior and in their actions. They say it has contributed to violent actions imitated by violent video games like Doom, Halo’s 1, 2, 3, etc... Examples are given such as the incident at Columbine H.S where several students were hurt and killed by two students. It was said that the two students got the idea from playing a video game.

A moment to talk about some ethical issue surrounding games Whether you believe this to be true or not you need to remember how much of what you develop for games really affect the people you develop it for.

A moment to talk about some ethical issue surrounding games Games portray women as being incomplete somehow without the stronger masculine counterpart, degrading them by the extremely revealing clothing, and this is dangerous influence that seems to be prevalent in games today.

A moment to talk about some ethical issue surrounding games These images send a message to both males and females that all women are expected to look and act like these characters. The pro side of this argument is that it is just a game, not real, and people are over reacting. Some girls look up to the characters and they want to emulate them because they think guys are attracted to this type of female. Guys really should not be attracted to this imaginary persona when it really does not exist. It is your responsibility as game designers and writers to understand what you do ultimately affects lots of people.