Creating Narrative Context for Store Cosmetics

Welcome to my talk creating narrative context for store cosmetics. Today we'll be discussing how your narrative teams can help you create highly valued cosmetics for your game store. But first, hi. My name is Tory Shafer and I'm a senior narrative designer for the studio Proletariat. I'm currently working on the game Spellbreak, a multiplayer action spell casting game. My work on Spellbreak varies a lot including creative quest content, writing dialogue, and a lot more. But today I'll be talking about my work with the cosmetics team. I help the cosmetics team create titles and descriptions, but more than help I help them more than that I help them develop narrative for cosmetics. But what exactly does that mean? And why is my studio paying me to do so?

Today I'll discuss with you why do you cosmetics need narrative context, how do we give cosmetics narrative context, and do cosmetics with narrative context perform better? Given that GDC agreed to let me do this talk, the answers may not surprise you, but let's go through them anyway. Why do you cosmetics need narrative context? Spellbreak has found that a lack of narrative context for cosmetics tend to lead to poor sales. It also leads to a lack of artistic direction especially when outsourcing cosmetics. A lack of narrative context also makes it hard to analyze store sales such as what themes sell well, what should we do more of or less of? Having a strong narrative direction can help us answer these questions and plan better for the future. When giving narrative direction to a cosmetic, the most important aspect is the theme. This can be anything from cutsey witch or evil zombie. Here I split our cosmetics into four categories.

We first have strong theme, strong sales represented by our outfit Starweaver in the upper left corner. Next is weak theme, strong sales represented by our outfit brooding corvid in the upper right. Then weak sales, strong theme represented by our outfit Troubadour Enchanter on the bottom left. And finally weak sales, weak theme represented by our outfit Valiant Balter on the lower right. I'll be breaking down each of these categories and how these outfits represent them throughout the presentation. Starting with Valiant Balter who represents both weak theme and a weak sales. Valiant Balter was designed based on our game spring step rune, an in-game ability. This ability allows players to spring forward, a quick action that allows them to maneuver. This theme isn't particularly strong, but it is shown within the costume's use of little springs. The question does come to mind though. What's the player fantasy here? What narrative are we building? When a player

wears a skin we want to give them a narrative experience of role playing as this character as they play through the game. Unfortunately, there's just not much you can role play as this character. We identified the lack of a strong theme to be a direct result of this outfit's poor sales. But what about an outfit that has a strong theme but poor sales? Does that happen? Unfortunately, our game's Troubadour Enchanter is an example of this. His theme is very evident. He's a bard. He's handsome and dashing. He's paired with He's paired with a lyre to strengthen this theme which the player can purchase alongside him. This is a strong player fantasy. Bard is a very common fantasy trope. However, we found that this theme did not resonate with our players leading to poorer sales than expected. We'll discuss later how power is a strong theme that resonates with our power and our players. And upon reflection we

found that the bard trope may not feel powerful to players thus leading to its poor sales. So, what did we learn through these failures? First, as my talk would indicate, weak themes lead to weak sales. As shown in this selection here, even outfits with solid designs and aesthetic choices can sell poorly. If an outfit isn't portraying a strong player fantasy, it's less appealing to purchase. On the flip side, the outfit's theme could be strong but not resonate with players. However, strong themes allow us to analyze player purchases. We can evaluate those themes, discover which ones are the most popular, and create new cosmetics based on those themes. Um thus our team on Spellbreak came to the conclusion that cosmetics need narrative context. Surprise, surprise for all of you attending this talk. Now, as a narrative designer I wouldn't have much to do with cosmetics generally, right? I mean I come up with the names

and descriptions since I'm also the team's writer, but usually that comes after visuals are complete. Narrative design tends to be relegated to NPCs that feature in the game story. For example, I may request a spunky character have short hair to show that she is spunky. But for cosmetics, the characters don't have dialogue or story significance. Does that mean they shouldn't have personalities, stories, themes? Well, I'm here to argue that giving cosmetics narrative context leads to compelling character visuals. In turn that leads to stronger overall player engagement and sales which begs the question, how do we give cosmetics narrative context? With Spellbreak we start with narrative prompts first and foremost which are created by me. I come up with these themes through team suggestions, research, and requests from store product owners. Here I show an example of some narrative themes I came up with for Halloween content. I like to

have at least a placeholder name to help solidify discussion. Maybe that placeholder name tends to be the final name, maybe not, but you know, just a so that we're referring to that cosmetic by name during discussion and then later on when the visuals have been finalized and the theme isn't finalized, finalizing that name and description as well. The narrative direction is short and to the point. You're even linked to simple visuals to emphasize my point as you can see in the blue text within the Excel sheet. While I may just I may suggest visual directions to help with the theme, I try not to be too specific. Ultimately, this is just a starting point for discussion. It is in no way final. I create many, many themes which are then selected by product owners to move forward with. Some may be rejected completely and that's just the way it goes. As for all of these prompts, all five were approved and were moved forward with for our Halloween holiday cosmetics outfits.

But today we're going to focus on a different skin. Our outfit Starweaver is a great example of how we create cosmetics. Here's how all of our beautiful, beautiful cosmetics start. An Excel sheet. We start off with narrative themes I generate. Here I created the narrative theme of a celestial theme with star motifs. I also like to have some short personality prompts. Here I selected daydreamer and elegant which then leads us to our next step. Our visual brainstorming session. This brainstorming includes the narrative team, the character team, and other artists who contribute to cosmetics such as our VFX artists. Everyone collects visual reference for the discussed cosmetics. During this process we decide what we would like to explore and what we like to avoid in the visuals as well. So there is a collection of visuals as well as verbal discussion as well. From early on the idea was pitched that the Starweaver's outfit would have

starry skin and cool emissives as in exciting emissives not just cool in color. We wanted space themes, but for it to not look too science fiction. After all, our game is in the fantasy genre. Our brainstorms will have dozens and dozens of references collected by the various team members, but the character lead will then comb through the photos and choose a select few. From here the artist will begin to draw concepts of the character based off of those visual prompts as well as the narrative prompt as well. Feedback is given primarily by the character lead, but at certain points the larger team will have a chance to give feedback as well. As a narrative designer, my feedback is focused on if the visuals match the decided theme. I'm not here to talk about color theory, I'm not here to talk about specific visual anything honestly. I'm not an artist, that's not kind of I'm not trying to give art direction. Um I wanted Starweaver to feel obviously

celestial and elegant. Of course, the theme may shift and change throughout the course of the concept phase. Here you can see that the prompt daydreamer isn't really present which is fine. Just as I may request visual changes to better suit the theme, I can also tweak the theme to best represent visuals that the team is really excited about. The effort is a collaboration between the two teams with the final goal of a strong theme and a strong visual. We want to have both within this outfit. And here's the complete product, our outfit Starweaver. We also paired her with an artifact cloudburst and afterglow that players can purchase in a bundle. So she has star filled wings, celestial splendor, and a starry train. The bundled cosmetics are all thematically and visually paired with the outfit. This helps both strengthen the outfit's theme and gives players a chance to usually match their various cosmetics. So, if you really like Star Weaver and you want to have an artifact

Cloud Burst and Afterglow that matches her, you can just purchase her bundle and they all kind of match. Um they're created to match her. Also, like, you know, having a celestial-themed outfit that then shoots up stars as she falls to the ground and then has stars like twinkling by her feet as she jumps up and down. That just really lends to her whole theme of being celestial and elegant and, you know, quite frankly, very awesome. I I absolutely adore this skin. Uh so, do these cosmetics perform better? Given that I'm giving you a GDC duck on the subject, I think we all knew that the answer would be a very definitive yes. Our team has found that outfits with strong narrative contexts lead directly to stronger sales. On average, our higher-performing outfits sell four times better than our underperforming ones. Of course, even strongly themed outfits aren't always a success. We're constantly analyzing which outfits do well and which outfits

do poorly, but we do find consistency with themes that do well and we can build on this knowledge with similar themes. For example, I might create another celestial outfit based off of the success of Star Weaver cuz we know that our players really dig the idea of a celestial theme. Um so, let's head back to our girl Star Weaver. She performed wonderfully in our star in our store and it's not hard to see why. She has a very strong theme that is clearly shown in her visuals. Because of her theme, we gave her a unique shader and emissive elements, which led to not only strengthen her celestial theme, but to create interesting and creative visuals. This all leads to a strong player fantasy of playing as a celestial magical being. And we saw this reflected not only in player engagement, but also in strong sales. You know, a lot of players purchased her and they also really talked about her on social media a lot and forums as well about how much they dug her. Now,

Brooding Corvid here is a bit of an outlier that should still be counted. He was not created with a strong theme in mind. In fact, he's a retexture of a base outfit that we had when we launched the game. However, his aesthetics are very strong. He's dark, he's brooding, he's mysterious. We By analyzing his visuals, we were able to get very early data on a type of aesthetic that players enjoy. From there, we were able to create themes that make the best of these aesthetics, such as assassin or demonic character or villain, etc. Uh these types of themes have gone over very well with our players as Brooding Corvid predicted. So, we can um by analyzing both themes and also visuals, we can then create themes that work off of that data and create things that we think will further excite players. So, what did we learn? This pipeline works. Starting our cosmetics pipeline

with a fleshed-out narratives helped create stronger cosmetics overall, which then in turn leads to stronger sales. We were also able to analyze which themes resonated with players strongest and then in turn created cosmetics with similar themes. Overall, our cosmetics collection is much stronger because of this pipeline. So, we here see here some popular themes are mysterious, powerful, uh magical. Uh so, Black Knight, she's very mysterious, you know, she has this mask that's covering her face. She's kind of got blues and blacks on her outfit. Um Blade Master Sakura, she looks very powerful. She has, you know, samurai armor and this big katana on her back. Um And Wayward Sorcerer is definitely looking very magical. He kind of looks like uh your typical mysterious warlock kind of guy. Um and these all sold very well and are also themes that we definitely recognize as being popular and that we want to do more of.

Uh so, taking the idea of themes to the next level, the Spellbreak team decided to create bundles around outfits and these include artifacts, objects that float behind your player, cloud bursts, the VFX that plays when you drop down on the map, and afterglows, the VFX that plays when you jump up in the game. The bundling these four cosmetics together help create a stronger sense of theme. For example, that Blade Master Sakura skin that I just showed, having a katana on her back really emphasizes her samurai theme. Uh for example, for this slide, we gave our River Dragon outfit a watery dragon head cloud burst. Uh this furthers his theme and allows players to create visually cohesive cosmetic loadouts. It also increases sales for our non-outfit cosmetics since players are more drawn to cosmetics that match their chosen outfits. Uh here we have Sleebro Conjurer with her awesome staff behind her, uh River Dragon that I talked about, and Sensational Soothsayer with a witchy cauldron with some tarot cards to show that she is a soothsayer,

you know, being able to look into the future and all that. Just creating things that then strengthen the theme overall. Um and making sure that everything is very cohesive and adding to that theme. Unsurprisingly, holiday skins are also exciting for players to purchase. These skins were all timed offers we sold during the specific holiday that they represent. But even within these holidays, we want to stick with themes that we know will excite our players while still staying true to the holiday it's representing. These four outfits were very successful while being sold during their respective holidays. I'll give you guys just 1 second to guess which holiday is represented by which skin with a little bit of cheating that we have two skins for the same holiday here. Um Go ahead and get your guesses in now cuz I'm about to go over them. So, uh the first skin is Rose Sorry, the first outfit is Rosebloom Darling

and she was Valentine's Day. As you can see, she's very pink, she has roses, she's very much representative of romance and love. I made sure that her outfit really conveyed that. Next up is the Baron, who is a Halloween skin, if you can believe it. Um very spooky and mysterious as long as as well as Snow Wraith, who is based off the Yuki-onna legend. Yuki-onna legend, she is, you know, also mysterious and powerful, you know, a ghostly kind of figure. And then Prancing Lion, who is a Chinese New Year skin as well. So, well, skin. He um is based off of the dancing lions in the parades for Chinese New Year. Um all skins that we were very excited about as they were being made and they sold very well and players seemed to really like them as well. So, just showing how we can tie holidays and themes together to create outfits that players are really excited about.

Um the Spellbreak team also decided to create this concept of ascending cosmetics. So, these outfits upgrade as the players complete quest content specific to that outfit. So, for example, you can deal damage with ice in our game and that helps you upgrade the Ascending Valkyrie outfit. This setup marries player action with player visuals. The stronger, more experienced you become in game, the stronger, more experienced your outfit looks. It also plays on the theme of power, which our players really resonate with. These characters become more powerful-looking as they are upgraded, which players really enjoyed. Um so, Valkyrie and we also paired them with specific elements in the game. In Spellbreak, you can fight with uh ice, lightning, air, toxic, fire, and wind, I believe I said those things correctly. Uh so, Ascending Valkyrie was our ice-themed skin.

Uh our Corsair Ascending outfit is pyromancer-themed, and then our Ascending Titan skin was stone. Did I say stone in my listing? I'm This is off the the top of my head. So, he was representative of stone. So, if you really like playing as a frostborn ice mage player, you would definitely be drawn to Ascending Valkyrie as you also have to play as that class to upgrade her and make her more powerful. And we found that players really like this idea and really dug it and, you know, obviously very happy about that as well. Put a lot of time and effort into creating exciting themes for these outfits since they are more labor-intensive and also making sure that um you know, they have something that players will definitely resonate with. So, this is just accumulation of all of our research of what themes do well and how can we create visuals to tie together with those themes and things like that. Um very exciting stuff, I suppose. I also did help um

implement the quests for these outfits as well. Um which is funny that you know, that my other job of doing quest stuff then ties into my cosmetics gig of helping with themes and things like that. Um so, to reiterate the point of this talk, the the thesis, the main point, I believe that cosmetics should have narrative context. Whether this is decided by a member of your narrative design team, your writing team, or your art team, starting the process of creating cosmetic by first creating narrative context is a good thing. It can help you create cosmetics with stronger visuals that resonate with your players, ultimately resulting in more sales, more player engagement, and a happier game community. I hope you can take this talk and you can kind of, you know, if you desire to do so, implement it within your own cosmetics pipeline and try it out or just, you know, see how we do things and what works for us, which I think is always exciting to see

at a good old GDC. And that's it. That's my talk. Thank you so much for attending. If you have any questions or wish to contact me, here is my website, my Twitter. I'm also posting up my email. Um feel free to shoot me any questions. I think at this time I'm also within the audience answering questions hopefully as well. So you can always message me through the GDC app as well. And I hope you all have a great GDC. And once again, thank you for attending my talk.