Narrative in Games - Role, Forms, Problems, and Potential

[Music] thank you let me start out by saying never buy a new computer one week before GDC because you don't know how to work it so the first thing is those of you who know me know that 25 minutes it's like ridiculous and I'm gonna rip through this and if I don't get through it all I'll just finish it out there and do a poster session or something so we'll see how far we get so what I want to talk about today is what we can learn from other narrative media that's not anything so unusual just by itself plenty of people talk about that but I hope I can surprise you at least a little today there are some things I think we can learn obviously there are things we could learn that we haven't yet learned but most important to me anyway as a contrarian is that I think there are some things we shouldn't learn all right and there are things that are sort of

seductive and obvious but I think will hold us back as we become the medium we are capable of becoming so just I know myself well enough to know that at some point probably several points in this talk I'm gonna say something like you shouldn't make games like X Y & Z or you should make games like a B and C in in those cases just assume I'm exaggerating to make a point or a really bad joke or both it's not my place to tell people what kinds of games to make or what kind of games to like sometimes I just can't help myself now why is it important not to be too judgmental it's important because imitating other media seems to be a natural even maybe necessary stage in every new mediums development building on a foundation provided by by other media is is pretty normal and natural so I want to talk about how some

other media have done this I mean movie started out emulating theater of course and here's an early Edison film starring the renowned Jean Irwin and Mae rice reenacting something from there their show which was quite the scandal at the time even as late as 1912 a lot it whoops a lot of filmmakers were still stuck in that let's put the camera in the middle of the orchestra and just leave it there because obviously that's what movies are all about this is Sarah Bernhardt and Queen Elizabeth by the way it took a fair amount of time a decade even more than a decade after the the creation of the earliest films before cinematic storytelling as we know it today I came into a sort of widespread use the techniques have been a bit cinematic storytelling radio as well radio borrowed plenty in terms of

bringing people from movies into radio and bringing radio stars into into film this is the Jack Benny show now we just thinking I don't know why I come out here every show and I keep saying thank you thank you thank you and look what I'm thanking you for you get in here for nothing so this is 12 Angry Men television 1954 movie version 1957 you can see the similarities I hope and given that I have 25 minutes I'm going to stop here okay so this has been going on for a while every medium does it maybe you know we should - but what about games what does any of this have to do with game narrative now this is a long quote I hate doing that but this is a pretty small book first-person and the important part of this is video games

include more of the building blocks of storytelling than any single medium has ever offered us how could we not tell stories and I totally can get confused when people say okay I'm shouldn't tell stories you know it's crazy I find that silly and amusing but this seemingly simple statement that we that we can tell stories because we combine all of these other media characteristics got me thinking is that all we are now you know no medium is survived without changing and growing beyond its borrowed roots and if we're nothing more than an amalgam of conventions borrowed from other media we're in a world of trouble and it is interactivity then the one thing we offer I mean that's an abused word almost as abused as transmedia not quite but almost is that the only unique feature we have to offer are we just all these other media plus interactivity now clearly we can be movies with

interactivity and just before anybody gives me a hard time these are my two favorite experiences in the last year I came to heavy rain a little late but I think we can do much more than then even these games are doing what we have to do is understand how other media make meaning and adopt the conventions that work for us but know enough about them to jettison the the conventions and techniques that work against us the key for me is to do this consciously to understand why we borrow something and when we borrow something and so I want to run through that very quickly talk I'm going to talk mostly about movies and then go into some other media even more quickly the similarities between movies and and video games as indicated by those you know my two favorite gaming experiences in the last year so it seems so obvious you're probably wondering why we should bother talking about it at all

they both you know hey they have moving images you know we have moving images they're projected or reflected on a screen we both have color and synchronous sound you know we both sort of create a convincing illusion of life you know formally we share a lot of characteristics obviously movies and games but you know they're the medium of the 20th century and I can't even run what I meant but United in real-time that's pretty cool okay anyway I'm moving right along here you know I think what you can see is culturally speaking we share a lot with movies as well not just formally the movies were the medium of the 21st sentía century to changed everything it was the first time that everybody in the world basically could experience the same stories the same cultural messages at once now clearly movies and television still fill that that niche today but I think

everybody in this room will agree games have overtaken those earlier media with at least a new generation in reflecting and driving cultural norms so clearly we are borrowing from movies and books and comics and other media and there are certainly similarities even in team makeup and development methodologies that I was going to talk about until I found out I only had 25 minutes but there are also significant differences and and I think we ignore those at our peril and so let's let's talk a little bit about what some of those differences are the ways in which filmmakers communicate by cutting from one image to another to give the illusion of continuous action while in fact breaking things down in ways that are more dreamlike than any any reflection of the way we experience the real world and and despite the success of cinematic games these days and we all know and love cut

scenes don't we all right maybe not I'd argue that that even the most fundamental editing techniques at some point we're gonna go what were we thinking you know they aren't for us so I think we need to jettison some can I see I told you I was going to start sounding like I was saying don't make games like that okay so here's an example of cross-cutting or parallel action I mean it's as as there it's simple as cinematic conventions come the cameras cutting between multiple locations the audience and those things that the characters don't and it's I mean it's the quintessential cinematic moment will he save the girl or not films cut away from action that would reveal the artifice of what's going on in a scene I was working with one director who I can't name out in LA on a project that involved some some fairly horrific scenes and in the in the film

version the plan was going to be to okay this was obviously not a saw a film or something but we were gonna cut away from the really horrendous stuff but in the game we had to figure out how to make that that same stuff palatable and an even enjoyable which was quite the challenge and why I made a Mickey Mouse game instead and we had to make it not I can't believe I just said that anyway the viewers weren't just watching they were actively engaged in the activity in real-time and not just once but over and over and over again that's something I'm gonna come back to a lot in a movie this is this basic cinematic technique is something that you know everybody expect everybody understands it's a great way to invoke a specific emotion in a film but in contrast when we're at our best I think this is this should be unavailable to us we should not be doing this it breaks the illusion of immersion which is critical I think to a game

success it rests control away from players who want to be the directors of their own experience now barring those cinematic films that again I love please don't don't put me in a box of use the guy who hates movies cinematic games but in most games the action is continuous and contiguous we either take full control over the camera ourselves or we leave the player the work of determining where the camera looks and what the here are sees and or doesn't and sometimes we do better with cameras than other is of course and we're going to move on from there in a weird sort of way movies are nonlinear and games are linear in the way they treat time in space it's an interesting paradox and when we really need to remember now just to bring that home if there's a film historian in the crowd I bet you can guess where I'm going with this I want to take a look at two movies very quickly that that take a very game-like approach and you'll see how well it works this is rope Alfred Hitchcock it's

dangerous in Antigua I don't understand I still ruins that you don't appreciate I was down for us three we're asking you is just about ready sway mrs. Atwater particularly this is all the way overnight she did oh no this is you've made a mistake this is Kenneth Lawrence right Canada Tom's dig we'll get to this in a second in rope Alfred Hitchcock was trying to make a game in one take no cuts no editing at all just like games and it was a disaster okay it's unwatchable similarly I mean that that's in a case of borrowing a convention well a convention he didn't even know was going to exist several years later but now lady in the leg Robert Montgomery's big directorial debut and not a very successful one let's see if you can guess what what

damn Greg mentions this emulate yo Yankee you wouldn't understand I don't think another scheme is going to work pardon me mr. Malla do you have the time I'm so matter doesn't your clock work either okay you get the idea movies live and die on on cinematic editing go figure and when they when they borrow again it's kind of a weird reverse borrowing but you know filmmakers very quickly figured out that doesn't work and I think the other the other direction works as well we need to figure out what doesn't work now there there are three other differences that are worth citing here the way games do their pacing is very different than movies and then sorry yeah games and movies right I got that right a movie 90 minutes two hundred and

fifty minutes more or less games six hours to infinite you know I remember I had a conversation with yet another filmmaker I wish I could name actually but it was really cool but I probably can't we talked about his approach to cinematic storytelling effective storytelling and and you know he was saying let's take our time let's let's have you know a normal world that the player explores and thinks it's perfectly fine and and then after half an hour an hour something strange happens and you realize that that that's oh that's a pretty standard cinematic technique a filmmaker can count on an audience understanding how movies work and being willing to cut them the slack to sort of start in a normal world because they know the actions going to come eventually but we don't have that advantage unless you're today academia we have to get

players doing compelling cool fun action II things in what 30 seconds a minute five minutes unless it's a free-to-play game in which case they might play for half an hour but you know if you don't get to your verbs quickly and make them really action II or at least compelling in some way your players going away okay another thing in in games and movies there's a different approach to economical story billing a screenplay what is it ninety ninety pages 120 pages a minute per page of screentime dialogue that reflects the way people actually talk short snippets frequent interruptions no incredibly long monologues now working with with certain game writers who I will not name I've had to take fifty pages of single spaced monologue and say no no no we can't we can't adopt

doorstop novels for inspiration this is a place where I think we can learn something from other media but I mean this is whoops don't buy a computer a week before GDC I that's a script for a movie on the left and that is not a game script but I can tell you for a fact the the script for for a deus ex movie deus ex game is about that tall okay from from the not from the ground I mean you know from the podium so you know the reason for that is it's not well it's often that we just go on at some incredible length but it's it's really that even in the simplest game we have to we have to make sure that the hero doesn't say the same things over and over again cuz remember we're gonna be repeating the same things over and over again you're going to be interacting with non-player characters who are pretty damn stupid which I'll get back to in a minute and you can't

have them saying the same things over and over so you have to find a hundred ways to say I thought I heard something you know it's just an it and of course there are branching narratives and all that stuff that we all know that but the illusion of immersion is instantly lost if you don't have a hundred ways to say what a screenwriter can say just once but here's the here's the coolest thing I discovered working with a bunch of guys in Hollywood they think about wonderful moments in a way that we can't they can't think in terms of one-shot character behaviors set pieces memoral bits of business I was working like with John Woo on a project and I'll never forget this conversation we were talking about the character that we were creating for a movie and a game simultaneously and this guy he leaped out of his chair and start with the movements of a dancer started acting out the coolest thing I've ever imagined a

character doing and I was determined that I was gonna I was gonna find a way to use it in in the game somewhere but I had to explain to this guy one of my heroes the first time the player does that it's gonna be really cool the hundredth time not so much you know the first time dubs fly in front of the camera it's it's really cool once a movie you can get away with it if every time a gun goes off does start flying people are gonna start laughing and similarly you know like flying down a staircase while shooting and I mean it's cool once but if you're doing it a hundred times it really gets silly you know it's not cool now we do have magic moments these are some of my favorites and I'm dating myself I know but you know stuff starts reaching out and grabbing guys and pulling them you know down into the depths of who knows where dogs leap out and surprise you but those work I think because these games well

we'll get to what kind of games those are they work for very specific reasons and not in ways that I think are really valuable to us what's really valuable to us is when we allow players to make the magic moments they're about repeated actions games are about repeated actions where their significance and coolness comes from the context from what the player decides to do even the coolest bit of business you know becomes a bore when it's enacted over and over again okay so real quick I want to talk about some other medium I bet if I asked you guys who had played Dungeons and Dragons a lot of hands would go up how many people would play Dungeons & Dragons yeah okay if I asked you who's cruel red or let's even say it now who reads comic books yeah okay anybody not watch television holy cow you guys are weird okay classic radio probably not so much

and oral storytelling you know yeah right okay but I actually think there's a lot we can learn from this but before I get to that I want everybody to take a second and turn towards Lake Geneva Wisconsin oh my god you're kidding they have five minutes left holy cow I'm halfway through my talk we will be continuing this outside okay okay really Ripon say a prayer thanks to - yeah Gary and Dave okay so there are a lot of things we can learn about collaborative storytelling that's the coolest thing though the recognition that player expression and creativity are what what makes tabletop role-playing cool there's no way I'm finishing in four minutes it's not gonna happen okay sharing just that realization like letting players drive the story if we have nothing else we'd be great but these are things that I think we don't want to learn I mean D is and role

playing ever since has been about you know guys who looked like the Mighty Thor and wield big broad sword I mean they're kind of they're kind of adolescent in their their behavior and and stuff you know we don't want to emulate what a couple of war gamers in Lake Geneva Wisconsin in a basement at the library thought was cool okay I mean we are the first medium that's come along in like 50 years we owe ourselves better we don't want to make games that are about rolling dice how many games even today are about secret die rolls we have better tools we can actually simulate what a door is and how it responds to a big sword or a you know a shotgun why would you freaking roll dice to simulate that it's ridiculous we we don't have a human game master that's a huge problem for us which I will come back to in the one minute I have left okay so these are the important lessons we should absolutely not learn radio

we're just not going to talk about okay except to say audio is really important to games no matter how good our graphics get we're still in a guy's well by George I ain't gonna take this thing lyin down I got proof for all my figures I got receipts for all my tax deductions filed away we're right here in the hall what happened when fibber McGee opened that closet you got the dragon you off the stage okay and what about comment economical storytelling I mean those guys get more bang for their word buck then even then screenwriters do there's a little bit of interaction if you have if you've read understanding comics I mean the the amount of information that players have to provide sorry readers have to provide in in the gutter there is huge and they understand the importance of iconic presentation of

information and characters what we shouldn't get though it's clear that we can learn something from in the shadow of no towers on the right there you can deal with adult material and I think we could learn from that but we probably don't want to deal with what a lot of comics deal with sort of kiddy stuff okay oral storytelling this is the really I'm gonna rip through this because I do not understand this at all my gut is telling me that there's something about the way on a storyteller interact with the people listening to the story that is really valuable to us and I've been thinking about it for a year and if any of you know please tell me okay but you know it's an interactive art that encourages the listeners imagination I mean it's it's pretty crazy we are working in a medium that's about collaborating with our players to tell a story so we are dangerously similar as I've been saying for years to other media if you take a superficial look at what what we do it's very much like

these other media but there's a point where we have to start looking at what makes us unique the four things that I think make us unique we can transfer what we can transport players to two worlds that they can only imagine it's not Luke Skywalker you know in a ship it's you right we can immerse you in worlds that seem like they're there real okay we can remove the obstacles to player belief we can we are the only medium in history think about this the only medium of history that can respond to what players do no one's ever been able to do that in the entire history of humankind except maybe LARPers and they don't care and we're the only medium that I can think of that it's not happening that that can prize the repeated action everything else depends on the unique moment okay so when we're at our best these are the things that I think we need to be doing to take that next step in our evolution players interact with the game world in real

time they're offered significant opportunities to act they are shown the consequences of those actions and the game responds appropriately to create a unique experience at the end of the day player experience comes first okay so in my description I promised in my description I promised that I would I would leave with some specific recommendations for research topics I'm going to do that very quickly okay story structures we suck we have five approaches that I can think of the roller coaster that no matter how well hidden it is and I think both of those games hide it exceptionally well you're really the only choice you're getting to make is do I jump here or not do I what gun do I used to kill that thing it looks complicated but that's the illusion it's really one two three four five there's the retool story I can't believe somebody talked about sports before that was so cool there's the retold story man I was

waiting for that long straight piece and oh my god never came and it sucked that the retold story is really powerful to the person telling it it's probably very boring to the person listening but it's it's a very powerful tool for us and we shouldn't we shouldn't make fun of it actually there's the sandbox where the only story is what you create it's not the he's walking away i won there's no predetermined narrative at all there's the hybrid where where you know you still have one two three four and five guess what these are the games that I make and lots of other people are making them now too but how you navigate that first part of the story is up to you how you navigate the second part of the story and to be frank that's the best I can think of okay which is pathetic we have to find a better answer procedural stuff they're a bunch of experiments they've been going on for about ten years maybe a little longer

they've worked in very small cases but not really in any big stuff you know they point us in interesting directions though I think we need some new structures okay new hybrids whatever I mean if we fail I think we end up the bastard stepchild of every other medium on the planet so that's research project number one number two virtual actors we I mean how do you tell stories you have interesting characters to interact with we're doing better on the character graphics front I think but that's all we seem to focus on the prettier pictures you know clearly we've made progress right but not enough I had to work to find these three examples of anything better than what we were doing you know ten years ago except for prettier pictures this is what the mainstream press for crying out loud is saying about us the characters remain primitive and flat when non-gamers figure that out we're in trouble and when when interaction models haven't changed since 1990 we've got to work

harder you know we've got to work harder I mean the coolest thing we've done is we've attached a timer to branching conversation systems I mean we have to focus a little bit on non-combat AI I get in so much trouble with programmers when I say this oh my god but you know we spend so much time figuring out pathfinding and not having characters fall into holes in the ground you know and stuff like that and and how do we outflank the enemy you know it we spend no time on like going to the women's bathroom and having people notice you know people still walk up to me and say wow that was cool have you ever seen a game where a drink was spilled and a character bonded appropriately I think not have you ever seen a game where there was a spurned lover that mattered that wasn't just a movie masquerading as a game have you ever seen a game where there was a would-be lover that you could interact

with and actually in okay anyway but that's all stupid Hardin we need to do more of that we need to create set that's the next that's what that's a separate research topic I'm hoping some will do we need to start creating sets not not world I mean how many games can you just go into every room and have something interesting happen zero you know the in it yeah okay there you go we need to give players the opportunity to actually go where they want to do what they want if anybody knows how to create a virtual game master you know I mean I mean it's sort of like putting me in a box or something you know are you in a box that would be really cool we've been talking about this since 1989 a junction point Looking Glass ion storm Junction I mean everywhere you know and we still haven't done it but you know good stories are constructed they're not found emergence can't only get you so far and if we can dynamically modify stories based on what players want to do

I mean like in a good D&D campaign you want to screw with the game master you know no I'm not fight I'm not gonna do it you know and the game master actually responds I mean that's what we need to be doing and that's what I mean I want to see a game system that does that okay summing up for all the people who are mad at me now you know we've come a long way obviously I mean I've been talking a lot about the ways in which we're similar the ways in which we shouldn't be similar and all that we've come a really long way I remember the days when when people would get up on stage here at GDC and say story doesn't matter except in you know movies it doesn't it doesn't matter in games in pornography you know and and and I haven't heard the words Warren you're not allowed to say this story the word story ever again in a long time okay so we've made progress and we can get partway to where I think we are capable of going as a medium by borrowing from other media by studying them and stealing from them but we only go so far we need some original

ideas tough problem solved I've just the ones that I put up here are the ones that I care about and I wish I had answers to any of them but I don't which is what's cool and fun you have the opportunity even now 30 years after the creation of this medium you have the opportunity to determine what it's going to become you can change the world okay it's not too late and I challenge all you to beat me to the solutions to those problems good luck Thanks [Applause]