1. The Game Development Guild http://groups.google.com/group/g- d-g/

2. CSE1GDT – Story Time Paul Taylor 2009

3. Chapter 1 – What makes a story?

4. Interest Curves Inherent Poetry Projection

5. Story Story is an element that can influence all three of the types of interest – The impact can be both +ve and –ve – There are many other elements to your games – Story is one of the trickier ones

6. What is a story? A sequence of events – Hopefully interesting – Possibly so interesting that the listener will want to tell someone else My Story: There was a green frog and it died. The End

7. Does Story Integrate? Story works VERY well in books Story can work well in Movies Story in games is ??

8. What’s happening? Is storytelling passive?

9. Do people listen passively or actively? Do you wonder what is going to happen? Does intrigue make you guess at the future? Do you empathise with the characters?

10. Stories are NOT passive! My Story: There was a green frog and it died. The End

11. How fat does a story need to be? Chess Final Fantasy Tomb Raider 1....7 Naughts and Crosses Tetris Pac Man

12. Pipe Dreams A Completely Interactive Story where players have complete freedom, doing what they wish, and culminating wonderfully The Reality – It’s not going to happen, if it did, it would mentally break people – This doesn’t mean we can’t create a great immersive experience using story!

13. The two headed snake Game players love the freedom to choose their own paths Stories are designed to have one ending

14. Solutions to integrating story in games String of Pearls (Rivers and Lakes) – Performs well with interest and difficulty curves – It is linear – Almost entirely pre-scripted The Story Machine – The Sims is a story generator – Very unscripted – Directly/Indirectly controlled by the playa

15. What about branching stories? A branching story has many different paths that can be taken This leaves the designer with either multiple endings, or trying to tie all of the players choices back to the one (or few) ending(s)

16. Issue #1 Good stories have unity Unity – ‘state of being undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting.’ So unity means the story is resolved in ALL aspects – This conflicts with the “I can smell a sequel ending” ?cheapening the game?

17. Issue #2 Combinatorial Explosions What if you had just three choices at ten points in your game? 3^10 = 59049 Different paths!!! Fusing outcomes together is not a great solution The story will end up with inconsistencies and contradictions

18. Issue #3 Multiple Endings Suck Is this the real ending? – Silent Hill 5 Do I have to play through the whole game again to see the other endings? – BioShock Exceptions do arise – Good vs Evil – Knights of the old republic

19. Problem #4 Not Enough Verbs Verb = Action word Videogame characters are not very expressive! They tend to have verbs like – Run walk shoot jump throw crouch Movie characters – Talk convince shout plead scream Book characters – Ponder insecure angered calmed worried

20. Problem #4 Not Enough Verbs We are left to tell the story with at least one of the main characters unable to fluently express themselves.

21. Issue #5 The Tragedy of Tragedy The freedom you afford the player will generally remove the inevitability from the story. When you limit the player to introduce this it can frustrate them Having a save point removes the players worry about the death of characters

22. Ideas for story Steal from Hollywood 1)A character with a goal 2)Obstacles to keep them from reaching the goal 3)Rising above the conflicts to ‘win’ To this end you must relate all the challenges in your game to the story

23. Simplicity and Transcendence Simplicity is inherent in game worlds – Grass is just grass – Climbable objects are usually more obvious Transcendence - ‘of climbing or going beyond’ – Giving the player power – Allowing them to go beyond normal

24. Simplicity and Transcendence Typical Themes with inherent transcendance Medieval Futuristic War Modern

25. Consider the Hero’s journey A book by mythologist Joseph Campbell 1949 ‘The hero with a Thousand Faces’ The book describes the ‘monomyth’ which describes the underlying structure of almost all stories Star Wars was based on this book!

26. V2.0 Christopehr Vogler 1992. ‘The Writer’s Journey’ A practical guide to writing based on the archetypes of the monomyth This one was believed to be used by the writers of The Matrix

27. Games are usually all about a Hero Google it, you’ll get all you need from it. Synopsis from TAOGD: The Ordinary World The Call to Adventure – Challenge the disrupts life Refusal of the Call - Excuses Meeting with the Mentor – Wise figure Crossing the Threshold – Leaving ordinary

28. Tests, Allies, Enemies – Minor challenges Approaching the Cave (as in caving-in) The Ordeal – Life / Death The Reward – Survival + Reward The Road Back – Return to the ordinary world Resurrection – Climax Returning with the Elixir – Life+1

29. Interest curves again If you look over the hero’s journey you’ll see it!

30. Use your story as a tool! Hardware limitations – Fog Complexity Issues – GOW AI

31. Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy ~Decomposition: If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.

32. Keep your World Consistent and Coherent!! It doesn’t need to be controlled by the rules of the real world, but must be internally logical If eating pigeons is ok at the start then it should continue unless the story dictates the change and notifies the player!

33. Make the world accessible Accessible != Realistic – Pirate ships are incredibly slow – Cars are Very Fragile – Shooting lots of people is bad

34. “I’ll be back”

35. Be careful with Clichés! Negative – They can cheapen the game – Bore players with predictability Positive – Familiar to the player – Comprehensible and relatable Perhaps combine new and old?

36. When Words Fail Go back to pre-school and get drawing! The Book - Treasure Island was imagined on a small map Robert Stevenson’s stepson was painting Some ideas just look better in pictures

37. Chapter 2 – Indirect Control

38. Bob Bates – Game Designer “Story and gameplay are like oil and vinegar. Theoretically they don’t mix, but if you put them in a bottle and shake them up real good, they’re pretty good on a salad.”

39. This lecture is about merging the story you are creating with your gameplay through indirect control. The problem we must solve is the two headed snake from before:

40. The two headed snake Game players love the freedom to choose their own paths Stories are designed to have one ending The Solution: Indirect Control

41. Indirect Control Players love their freedom, it is what makes gameplay fun So we must give them freedom? No!

42. The Feeling of Freedom What colour should the next slide be? Red Blue Green Orange Purple White Black

43. It doesn’t matter! You didn’t have freedom of choice, but all the same you felt like you had choice I used a constraint to ‘help’ you choose within the scope of freedom provided

44. The Biggest Indirect Control Goals

45. The Biggest Indirect Control Goals

46. The Goals you have set in the players mind will largely guide their behaviour through the game If players believe they need to hide, they will search for a place If they believe the building is collapsing they will run

47. Interface Remember your juicy interface? It should be transparent to the immersed player Physical Interface Limitations – Guitar Hero – Rock Band – Wii-Zappers

48. Interface Virtual Interface Limitations – The type of avatar (persona) – The way the interface does (or doesn’t) react to game objects

49. Visual Design To make life simple we can look at some different artwork and photos

50. www.artsjournal.com/dewey21c/LatteArtWeb.jpg

51. http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/08/ 05/wednesday-morning-coffee-and-links/

52. Real or Fake?

54. Characters Using story to make the player empathise with, and care about the characters Characters are a great tool to manipulate the way players play the game

55. Music It works in restaurants and at train stations – High Energy – Creepy – Quiet and relaxing – Techno – Etc – Silence

56. Collusion ‘- an agreement, usually secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage ‘

57. Lao Tzu – Chinese Philosopher “When the best leader’s work is done the people say “We did it ourselves!” This can be summarised down to the game colluding to draw the player along a path

58. The End!