Player as Performer: Setting the Stage for Your Audience

[Music] so little primer uh I was given half hour initially to do this talk and now I have a full hour so we're going to just go through this and then we'll have a lot of time for Q&A after so hopefully we can just kind of glide through this and have some interesting discussions on what we're talking about today so what are we talking about today uh I'm going to guide you through a framework I've been really enjoying thinking about design with which is treating the player as a performer so what does this mean when we're talk about performers this is a pretty wide range of skills and styles and behaviors but the unifying thing is that it is something that requires rehearsal it requires understanding it requires communication and most importantly I think this lens brings us an approach that treats the player as

fundamentally adding something to our design we create the environment we create the world the story but the player is the one that executes it they're the ones that are sitting there essentially studying what we've made and trying to bring the most amount of life to this key experience and as a result it's up to us to provide good direction and just like a good director in film or stage or choreography that's fundamentally a positive relationship we were trying to Foster something where is space for vulnerability and criticism and all of that then eventually leads to some truly transcendental and Beautiful Moments where that barrier between you and the character and the player all just kind of fall away and you've generated something special but before we go too far into that uh who the heck am I uh my name is Evan Hill I've had about 10 years experience in the game industry as a designer currently I'm at obsidian working on outer Worlds 2 and before that I was at na dog making The

Last of Us Part Two I've also worked on a few other titles like tormen Tides andera solar Ash Pia and I've even done a couple talks here before on some of my work on the Museum of last of us too and how uh we used improv to make a bunch of the weird weird moments so how do we understand gameplay as performance best way I've been able to sum it up is no matter what type of game you're making be it a rhythm game a fighting game or or cinematic third person action game you've cast the player as the lead actor and they haven't read the script this takes us to the first layer where I think a lot of level design focuses its understanding which is this uh demonstration and communication of what and where where does the player stand what are they trying to do we construct space craft lighting and otherwise sculpt the experience to guide the player through the stage you know as if we're just gesturing off uh to stage left trying to get them to stand where

we want them to stand and do what we want them to do and this is excellent and helpful and essential to all good level design but the thing I want to talk about today is a layer beyond that not just the layer of telling the player where to go what to do but giving them space to discover how to feel while they're doing it there's a difference between just navigating a level and fully acting out a scene a character moment and what are the things that we can do to better guide players into that experience so one of the things that's helped me out the most has been uh reading the work of one Judith Weston she obviously wrote In This Book uh directing actors and she's a legend in theater and film she's basically known as like the director Whisperer she comes in and essentially teaches people who manage actors performers and the whole range of a production to be better

at collaboration to provide more consistent positive relationships between all the collaborators on a project and I think some of her ideas are massively applicable to our relationship with her players also uh thanks to the work of renowned dog and game lier Tim Rogers uh who I think in a lot of his videos has summed this up very elegantly uh he talks at length about playing games multiple times just to on the second or third time get it right to do Cloud Strife Justice by performing him the best way possible and this goes beyond just beating the boss as quickly as possible but literally walking around the right way noticing the right things being there for Aeris or Tifa depending on the situation just with his controller and minor interactions so again you've cast the player as lead actor they haven't read the script it's our job to Be an

Effective director to the player but how do we actually do this so the first thing we need to consider is the dramatic Persona what is the player to this production what are they trying to do who are they a lot of games it's a pretty clear and simple answer and the result is the often you feel like X we've all seen it we've all played it we all like it but what are the things that take us there what takes us to what I call a critical moment where it goes from oh I'm role playing at b as Batman to I am Batman and elevates a performance even on stage from just a recitation or a wrote rehearsal of a set of gestures into a transformative performance so that's the whole goal of this talk how do we build towards these critical moments it doesn't matter what we really call whether it's flow climax

alignment or vicity we all know what I'm talking about here we've all kind of experienced it it's that moment where you feel like you have lived a powerful fictional moment as a character and it doesn't matter that there was a controller involved it's that gliding on stage nailing a performance type feeling it's when you are playing Batman or Spider-Man where you were just in it when you're kicking ass or saving the day and again we're going to be using Judith Weston to help get us there her core philosophy is one of connection and vulnerability and letting go of control like one of the number one things that I think as designers we can relate to is something that directors also feel is this idea of dictating or micromanaging the experience or just the momentto moment delivery of what we've crafted and I think if you read anything from her book one of the best takeaways is is just letting go of that and I've kind of

synthesized that into like a six-step process the first is pretty much the easiest it's going to be communication that's the clarity and the type of what and where we've talked about earlier the next though is this idea of cultivation not only just providing the player with space to navigate but space to rehearse space to express and experiment and kind of do the dry run of say the boss fight do the dry run of that big intense story moment so that when they finally get there they feel prepared they feel aligned and then we take that alignment and we push on it and push on it and push on it with pressure that takes the player from just doing rote rehearsals to actively being the thing doing the thing without having to consider or plan they're just in it and that all comes together through our composition to create that critical moment let's get

started what do we mean by communication for me the best way we can describe it is facts and motivation facts are just the stuff on the ground what is happening what are the obstacles but motivation is the much more difficult element of that which is how do I actually convince the player that they should do the thing that I built the level for like two want to save the day two want to get the end to want to mess with the gardener and I think the first step to that is Clarity again going back to like this essential core of most level Design This Clarity is the fundamental if you do not have this you're going to be lost players will not be able to navigate they will not be able to advance the story Advance the game it's critical essential but beyond that I think we need to focus on the clarity about the facts of the world what are the stakes the characters the obstacles and how we

convey that is vital so a good example of this to me is pathologic 2 it's excellent at directing the player on where to go but it's even better at directing them on how to feel and instead of saying you should feel desperate and Afraid alone isolated constantly on the brink of death it doesn't need to say that to you instead it communicates something very simple as emphatically as humanly possible and then the next step is not only just communicating what's going on in the world but what are the limits of the world where are the boundaries we all hate it when we deal with invisible walls but there's more to Invisible walls than geometry they are the gaps in expression the things that we can't do because we didn't have the scope or the mechanics don't allow for it and that's only a problem as long as the player isn't being fostered with a motivation to do these things that we can't do instead we try to kind of guide them

away from it with signposts geometric guides Quest logs uh visual language that helps us cultivate this sense of communication between us and the player where even if in Legend of Zelda I can't say destroy buildings it doesn't matter because I understand that it's not about destruction it's not about cultivating or building a settlement like in Minecraft it's about exploration and the game conveys this it establishes the fact this world and then critically it lets the player find their motivation it doesn't grab you by the wrist and say explore it doesn't tell you oh man puzzles are great you should do them it just puts them in front of you and leaves you alone and then maybe kind of glances backwards as you mess with your chica slate and start moving magnets around and just kind of nods happily to itself because it's done well and I think a really good example of this is goose game

there is nothing intrinsically in this game that is telling you to be a chaos Gremlin and yet we all really really just gravitate towards it really the only piece of guidance and sign posting this game provides is just the psychotic notebook of this Goose we could ignore it but instead of telling us to the game just leaves it there just as an option and then knows that the player being a human being who likes fun will take them up on it so there's no need to try and force or tell the player how to feel it's all about cultivation so when we've established these facts when we've let go of this idea of demanding the player to feel a certain way and let them feel it themselves we have that first bit of the engine about this momentum they're not only engaged but they're actively adding to our design so the next step is

channeling that motivation into the character's dramatic Persona so how do we do that expression and rehearsal so even in an improv group you don't just get up on stage and go 30 seconds after signing up or joining a production there is there is a process of rehearsal there are multiple steps to rehearsal there's isolating certain elements certain deliveries character perspectives Rhythm between actors all of these things are this long list of checks like honestly like a technical check on an airplane often that all are required to produce the intended Outlook and games really aren't that different what is core combat except a rehearsal for a boss fight what is uh a low stakes entry area other than an invitation to experiment and evolve how you view your toolkit and your your character when you're playing middle

Gear Solid it's not a matter of oh what would snake do in this situation it's the player deciding who snake is is he the type to constantly [ __ ] with people leave dirty magazines around and then shoot people in the back of the head or sneak in without anybody knowing and core combat allows us as designers to give the player this space to explore and develop it lets them customize and prepare in the same way that an actor can cultivate a dramatic persona for their character like what's this guy's accent how does he gesture with his hands how disagreeable does he come off or is he much more of a quiet threatening presence like you only just need to look at how many different variations of Shakespeare characters there are to understand the depth and the breadth that this perspective can lend us and you see it a lot in games too like really what is a skill tree and a perk tree but providing the player with ways to validate their choices for the dramatic Persona in the context of our systems what is crafting if not

preparing and customizing for what's to come like there is this pre-engagement this idea of like oh we're gonna have a fight scene later apparently I'm gonna have 18 explosive arrows and it's G to get messy and It All Leads to this idea of playable choices and this is actually Judith Weston's uh terminology not something I'm synthesizing for games it's the idea that you are presenting your actor or your player with this open space a blank page to help render out what they feel is valid for this character this does not necessarily mean dialogue choices or any kind of branching narrative at all this is the thing that I was talking about earlier the Expressions the gestures the rhythm of how a person's delivery goes because fundamentally most theater is linear most theater is not some kind of branching dialogue and yet people love acting people like all the variations of the performance and I think

games can better utilize this framework for interactivity great example of this is seen all over naughty dog um take for example in Last of Us 2 we just have this seemingly small throwaway moment with bear it brings you a ball you're able to interact with him and there is nothing stopping you from playing with him for 20 solid minutes there is nothing stopping you from ignoring him entirely there is nothing stopping you from taking the ball and throwing it over the fence and listening to him whine and all of these things help you as a player Define to yourself who Abby is it's not to say like oh ab's evil or all these other things like this is right after you get control over her like there is a strong argument that all of those options are valid for Abby like she's having such a bad day she doesn't want this dog to have a good day throw she needs to pick me up she's going to play with him for 20 solid minutes well everybody else around her is waiting for her to get the mission

started or just ignoring the little guy because she's a little too busy but notice the player is the one toci signing that that is not the narrative team that is not the level design team they simply provided the stage for them to act this out so we've channeled the players motivation we've given them tools to express themselves what's the next step it'd be one thing to just let the player go off in any direction and kind of scribble all over the screenplay and make edits and additions wherever they want but fundamentally we're still putting on a show we're still putting on a game we're still trying to build on our vision so the next step is one of alignment alignment is when the players dramatic Persona adds to the designer's vision and I think this is a really really important way to look at it a lot of us even myself included early on in my career it was much more about oh how do I do I get the player to do what I want how do I get the player

to just do the thing so that they feel the way I want them to feel and do the things that I want them to do because they're my you know little dollhouse toy and I am the master of this world versus holy crap they did what I never even [ __ ] that to me is way more interesting and way more vital and way more aligned to what makes games so freaking special that feeling that you're kind of you know generating and adding to this game in a meaningful way I think that's why live streamers are as big as they are even for linear games for any type of thing like there's this performance quality just intrinsic to any genre any style that is compelling in and of itself even if you don't have an audience even if you're just playing by yourself at home I think all of us can relate to Tim Rogers uh expression that like wanting to play a game the right way to be the character the right way authentic to them authentic to the

story and this goes way further than just your standard you know premium narrative games I think the best example is Doom the original Doom did not need a story and yet many people came away from it with this deranged Vibe and it just fed back into itself into the modern era where it just owns it and provides every tool in the kit to make sure that you like to rip and tear and the way it does that is with good feedback different games have different styles of feedback too some games can be pretty harsh intense even where there's this almost uh clawing quality to it where it's just going to grab you by the heartstrings and rattle you some games are kind of like Hitchcock Toby Fox I'm looking at you I don't know if I still forgive him for making me cry that much and the way that he did

it pathologic is also a very good example of this but other games can be more like NCO Yamada or yod rowski where they're much more hands off they're much more about letting the player just write their own story just giving a concise sandbox to build the mood and the character that they want Legend of Zelda is perfect for that like think about the choice that you can either be line to ganon's Castle or spend 600 hours collecting every single Coro seed while as able to just waits in the dungeon they're fine both ways but the next question comes which is what is good feedback to me good feedback is about clear response it's presenting a set of options and new choices and I think most difficult uh making it the right scale the right size some good examples of good feedback Goose game like it's very hands-off it doesn't punish you in any way for not doing all the gremlin stuff but the positive feedback the immediate

Joy of watching somebody scramble around dealing with your shenanigans is just so enticing that you eventually just opt in to this mental framework that the game asks you to uh The Last of Us also an excellent example of this again not this deeply punishing sense where if you do something wrong we're just gonna blow an airhorn in your face and say do it again we let you rehearse and linger and meander about get to know the characters approach combat in the best way that you think same with Resident Evil and dune they just throw you into an environment and let you deal with what emotions come mle gear of souls hit man but another example that we can dig into is what kind of constitutes bad feedback and to me that's when it's really just too narrow or too general or Worse contradictory and confusing uh I could go on for a bit too long so I'm just going to cut through this I don't like Red Dead Redemption 2

because the feedback is so strict and so narrow if I linger too long in a train Heist air horn do it again if I'm circumnavigating around an enemy encampment and want to go the opposite direction or cut through guns blazing air horn do it again there's a very specific narrow way to do every one of the story missions and it honestly just takes me out of it because like I want to maybe play my cool slit Cowboy as this Meandering kind of uh Smith and Weston style character who just does not give a [ __ ] but I need to as Arthur Morgan give a sufficient amount of [ __ ] so that this timer doesn't run out and I've always not really jelled with it uh I think BioShock Infinite is an example of something being too broad you don't really have any feedback that's guiding you towards a general mindset in that game it's it's just make it through get to the end of the level there's not much

about the combat system or any environment that gets you thinking about who Booker is as a guy what his combat choices reflect about his perspective or his ideology or just even a Vibe like is he angry is he melancholic or is he just kind of put upon or uh yeah like you contrast it with something like like Gordon Freeman like this guy feels still like a scientist he's solving puzzles coming up with Solutions taking a gravity gun into a zombie infested hell hole and coming out the other side Co in blood that's interesting that conveys character that lets you feel like this kind of M scientist energy that I think infinite unfortunately doesn't another example is uh contradiction and that's you know standard Ludo narrative dissonance like who is Nathan Drake oh he's the chipper good guy Indiana Jones type character who will also pull off a guy off a cliff and then joke about him as he Carin to his death get some mixed

signals but that then kind of drifts us to pressure so we've given the player feedback we've gotten them to align with our vision we've gotten them to express motivation we've given them clear sets of what to do what the boundaries of the game are and then we push them we throw them into intense situations we limit their choices we limit their time to react and this is where things get interesting because just like with Jude thon's framework this type of pressured risky situation leads to extreme or unconscious actions and that's where the most interesting performances come from where the player has to just scramble they're not overthinking it they're not underthinking it they're just existing so how do we do this it's pretty simple honestly it's intensity surprise it's uncertainty it's anything that destabilized izes this rigorous set of

rehearsal that we've given them we've created a safe space for them and then we break it in some way we ask them to perform when they're not expecting to we change the game up on them we push three times as much as we said we were on top of them and it leads them to these unique experiences where you're not going to perform perfectly you're going to maybe use too much ammo or get hit or run away or figure out a new technique just by flailing at the buttons but but a really important thing to understand about this Dynamic is what we're essentially forcing the player to do and asking them to do is be vulnerable in these situations and when we don't acknowledge that that's I think where a lot of negative player experiences can fundamentally come from when a game will ramp up the pressure but be too punishing when a game will not give good enough feedback and then ramp you into a situation where you're just lost and struggling but I think like Resident Evil is a

perfect example of doing this right Resident Evil the Remake especially with Mr X is this constant shifting guide of pressure where you were thinking that you understand the assignment you understand the layout you understand the environment I've got all of my resource oh God footsteps scrambling running into zombies turning the corner and seeing him hanging out with a liquor great that's what I'm going to remember that's what I'm going to feel that's when I'm not myself playing a game that's when I'm Leon scared for his life and so the important thing is kind of mentioned with the player is fundamentally being vulnerable in these moments I'm kind of raw at this point so we as designers need to understand how to reward these risks to reward this uh moment of vulnerability and this isn't necessarily to say like oh give them resources oh give them flashy things but just cultivate ways to give good feedback to acknowledge that risk to acknowledge to make it feel feel that like oh yeah you got murdered by a liquor and Mr

X but it's fine I'm not going to sit there and go w w you died in the Dark Souls style I'm just going to let you reset let you cool down start in a clean safe space and say he's probably not going to be in the same spot again you you're fine you can go back there and it probably won't happen that way again maybe but I think this is really critical because this understanding not of just of oh the player's cognition but their emotional cycle through your game is what can then lead us to this Holy Grail that I've been talking about this critical moment where we put pressure we've aligned them all of these things are in there they understand this character now and then the next step honestly is just letting go entirely and letting them be this person but how do we get there how do we

develop this and this brings us to composition I think the best way to sum this up in one sentence is we don't need to do everything all at once moments are allowed to do one thing you can have down beats you can have spaces to build rehearsal teach the player new skills you can have moments where are just dedicated to pressure you can have moments that are dedicated to alignment where you're testing to see if the player is understanding some core element of the combat Loop or some core element of the character cut scenes or the variations like just look at what you're doing keep it simple and ask what is it doing and is it doing it well because as I've kind of been talking through this entire thing like when we're talking about theater production it's not a simple straightforward process there are different facets there's table reads there's live dress rehearsals there's one-on-one sessions with the director all of these things are key steps in building that final production but I think also importantly of like this doing one thing at a time

thing is we're able to present to the player new facets to explore it's when we do things like increase complexity demonstrate diverse content we're able to allow the player to sink further and further into the breth of a dramatic Persona or style of play you know we give them places to rehearse and prepare to kind of again cultivate this character and for like some really in-depth uh process on this I would recommend my two other talks on Last of Us two Museum there's basically a lot of what we're talking about just straight there that style of composition that rhythm of Storytelling that then leads us from who am I what am I doing to I am Ellie or I am Joel I'm living in this moment and that's where we finally get the critical moment itself so as I've talked about this is that space where you feel like you're living a fictional moment it's more than maximum it's more than maximum pressure or the climax of a sequence it's a substantial act that

changes or radically defines this Persona that the player has been cultivating for this entire time really key examples of this like the end of The Last of Us this is you being Joel and demonstrating to yourself to him and the world what that means and I think most critically is what's not in this screen there is no pressx to kill the surgeon there is no Direction the player can do it without it because they've built trust with us as designers and them as performers that they got this they understand what's going on and that authenticity that that style that format of moment brings is some of the stuff that's stuck with me the most in my entire gaming career like I'm still not over the end of Metal Gear Solid 3 where you're just lingering and the game waits for you to pull the trigger on the boss of course I did it or dealing with Old King of lant in

the first Demon Souls game like everything up to that point felt like a dress rehearsal for that [ __ ] the fact that he teleports still is not okay to me or dealing with the rakai and Mass Effect uh for me personally I did an entire second Renegade playthrough and broke at this moment I could not bring myself to do it even though I uh intentionally tried to be this hard evil character at that moment I realized I was lying that my character was just an [ __ ] with a heart of gold and then I played through the other two games with this new deepened understanding of a pseudo Renegade character that always broke into the right thing at the last moment and that was because this game provided all of this leadup it provided space to explore and attempt and experiment and tweak and the result was

electric you know the director doesn't need to be off stage Whispering certain notes on the final night of release they get to be in the audience because the actors know what they're doing they've done a good job they've directed them and I hope this helps you develop that in your own games and I kind of want to close out just giving a uh second like very big thank you to do with Weston I can't recommend this book enough special thanks to Tim Rogers and all of his amazing work on YouTube if you like anything I've ever talked about he does this but more for hours and it's kind of messed up that he's so good at it but thanks for listening uh we're gonna shift to Q&A so we can just kind of use this next half hour to kind of discuss or poke at any questions in this framework and stuff like I said the original plan for this was a half hour talk I thought it would be good to just kind of do some discussion on on this framework see what you guys think about it but before we do that though I have

one last little thing a bit of a teaser on something I'm working on soon we're going to be announcing this project uh tomorrow but uh it's not a video game but it's an experimental thing with audio drama that me and some close friends are doing so keep an eye out for it we're going to be doing a story focused studio uh in addition to a lot of our game work but uh yeah Q&A time thank you for the talk it was very good thank you um so I wanted to ask about you the the idea of building up the dramatic Persona as the main character an example like Last of Us most of the game is played with a companion and throughout that time you're the companion is kind of building its own persona but there are moments where you get to personify that companion what's

your take on how to handle that situation so how do we deal with situations where you have a key companion character in NPC that you have for most of the game but then suddenly are presented with control of this character um I think there are a few good ways to do it but I don't think there's many wrong ways to go about it I think all of the same ideas apply but we're given the benefit of the leadup like the fact that in Last of Us by the time you take control of Ellie you've been next to Ellie for8 hours you know what she's like and you can play through and even if you just wind up playing her exactly like Joel that winds up being very informative it it almost like innately suggests that she's now mimicking Joel after spending so much time with him she is approaching situations in the same way and any kind of variations you do are also equally valid is she more fearful is she more intense is she more Cutthroat all of these things can kind of coordinate and focus there but I think the bad ways to

do it are anytime where you would maybe present the player with too many options for this established character there might be examples where like if Ellie could be too brutal at that point in the game or offered maybe too much agency or too much power to then feel just misaligned with the performance that happens before and after hi uh thank you so much for the talk uh especially as a user researcher like seeing the player become the actor just like was words for the soul um and I was wondering actually how like play testing or concept testing and like speaking to players um kind of LED you to this you know players as an actor yeah so I think uh I think you did actually hit on what really did lead me to this framework so the question was uh how does talking to play testers and players uh kind of inform this perspective and I think I think fundamentally it was seeing how similar

the conversations I was having with not only my colleagues were playing things but players of work that I've built and contributed in hearing it over the years or just in Cy play test where it started clicking that oh hey I've read about something that feels similar to this and I've also directed actors myself and this this feels more close to that than not this feels more like you know somebody who really did add to a production in the same way that my colleagues did you know somebody walks up and says they had an amazing time with a game that I made and you know it kind of I feel like it has a similar vibe to somebody walking up after performing in an Off Broadway production of your show and saying oh I loved being this character thank you and even though there's this degree removed it's still this idea that I am able to provide that relationship that feedback loop to somebody to help them not just perform well but also articulate the emotions that are embodied with that character well and that's the other thing that uh

maybe like if I were to expand this talk about that importance for the player themselves to perform a character it's not just a matter of like oh I'm doing something on stage but there's something cathartic and deeply therapeutic about performance and that we get to provide that to players with this vulnerable consistent relationship through game design you thank you so much um I was wondering if you had any thoughts uh in terms of allowing the player to feel comfortable being vulnerable with the emotions that they may feel or that you may want them to feel however you want to think about it um when playing games especially maybe ones that are not um that that actually do require more vulnerability for you to feel just as a person you need to feel more comfortable to feel sorrow or Melancholy or whatever it is is then the joy over killing monsters and doom or whatever

how do you apply the ideas in your framework to like priming players to get there the time that you want them to rather than just kind of dumping this request upon them I think that's a great question so for the audio sake um the question is how do you compensate or build towards environments or situations that are fundamentally more emotionally taxing or vulnerable it's one thing to get the player aligned with having the joy of killing a cool monster and another to deal with the loss of a loved one and I think the question itself I think kind of leads us to where I think doing it right is achieved which is being very considerate of that fact realizing that certain emotions need more leadup than others and that if you don't do that sometimes you do risk alienating or losing people through the shock or intensity of it I think we took that risk specifically on the Last of Us two

and a lot of the negative feedback and intensity around it really resulted from that not to say that I regret or don't think we should have done it the way that we did but it's more a demonstration of what happens when we do just slam the big red button and let those intense emotions flow and uh you know for those that have played the game and enjoyed it I think uh the aftermath The Grieving scene you know where Ellie is uh cuts to Ellie at the grave and exploring the house is what we tried to do to provide that space to feel very vulnerable it'd be one thing if we just cut directly midday to Seattle to at Le slicing and dicing up people like that would not have worked instead we let you grieve but for some people the lack of a leadup was going to be fundamentally alienating and that was a risk that we deliberately took thank you hi uh I was curious about your thoughts on games that sort of start with that pressure moment before you

give the actor a chance to rehearse the role so like games that start with you fighting a boss you're supposed to lose to or like dead space where almost the first scene is when everything goes wrong and you don't really have a chance to get into the character first so the question is how do you what do you think about games where it just starts with pressure like an example of being classic Dem Souls classic Dark Souls where here's a big bad monster you're going to lose to it immediately or dead space where it just starts with the alarm on um I think it really varies on genre in both of those cases I think you can see that it's it's fairly successful in that like disruptive tone like dead space I think is very well suited to that because you never meant to feel comfortable it is not a game about the violation of your comfort it is the constant destabilization of identity and self and your ability to not get eaten and it just starts there and it provides the same thing within this framework which is it's helping align the player with the tone and the direction and the style of the genre and then the same

thing with Demon Souls where yeah you can't win this boss fight and even if you do we're going to kill you with a chess afterwards because we are not playing the game that you think we're playing this is a game about failure and so cutting to that getting that as quickly as possible I think is vital if it was the same setup but an hour into the game after drip feeding and being only positively reinforcing to the player I don't think the franchise would have kicked off it would have just been well it was fun for the first bit and then derailed the entire thing with the giant demon so I think there's a time and a place for that and it really is just uh why I think approaching it as a framework is important because depending on the genre depending on your goals starting with Pressure Works or doesn't it's very contextual awesome thank you so when it comes to uh first of all great talk just phenomenal but when it comes to uh perfect or true endings do you feel like

that hinders player like improvisation or their ability to kind of co-contribute to this work so the question is for uh linear or like perfect endings or good endings do we feel like that Limits The Player's ability to express in this framework I would argue mostly no honestly uh kind of expanding on what I was talking about like with the end of Last of Us 2 and like with any good performance it's often less about the branch or the final state of the world versus what does the actor actually contributing they're contributing timing tone approach and it cannot be in I think games that have a perfect ending or a linear ending uh it's important that that critical moment is not do I choose to end this race or blow up this building or save these people and more like middle Gear Solid 3 which is all about how long does it take you to pull

that trigger how many times do the gears spin in snake's head before the game ends and that's the type of thing that I find most compelling to me as a player you know the ending of mass ofc 3 was not the part that hooked me the most the most interesting thing was a lot of the Preamble a lot of the moments where I'm in the thick of it forming Commander Shephard even in combat where I'm deciding how he's navigating through a situation What's the timing what's the tone what's the approach and I think yeah servicing that is the way to go when you have a perfect or linear ending thank you so much hello thank you for the talk um bear with me with this question it's a little hard to phrase um how do you think this framework applies to games without an explicit dramatic Persona games where you are creating or

projecting into the character and there really isn't a whole backstory or character that's provided do you think this framework works for that or if or or does it not so the question is what about games without an explicit dramatic Persona where there is no Spider-Man for you to be um I think from hearing your question you can uh add to this like a good example of this might be things like a rhythm game or a fighting game where there's less a explicit character for you to inhabit uh another example might be civilization a rim world where you are more this overseeing manager but I think even in discussing that we can start outlining that even in the case of something like a rhythm game one of the most popular Rhythm games of all time is Guitar Hero there is still this intrinsic property by the fact that you have a human playing your game that they are going to play as somebody be it as the superstar version of themselves or the

myestro on the DJ Maxx panel there's this quality of it where they're cultivating and trying to perform as somebody you know otherwise why would they keep trying to perfect it why would they try to build this sense of Mastery for themselves uh fighting games I think present the same type of thing where you see like at its height you have somebody like Dao who is his own dramatic Persona through Street Fighter thank you yeah so um my question is kind of uh building off of a couple other ones that I think um just got asked but um in term actually almost sort of an opposite case from um the last one and just that uh in the case of uh strongly linear games right often ones that have really strong themes or messages like for example uh The Last of Us Part Two I think there's a lot there's a big Camp of people that sometimes feel like like well this doesn't feel fair that I'm being told by the game like that oh you did this thing

and you should feel X Y and Z reason for it um because I didn't have any choice and there was no other way to progress in the game um and I've been not necessarily been in that camp but I'm curious if you think that there's sort of a way um to use kind of the tech techniques you were talking about to um rather than uh letting the player sort of Express that character in their own way sort of putting them in the shoes of that character and getting them ready to think like that character and feel like oh I did do that thing even if they didn't really actually have a choice to do it yeah so I think the distilled version of that question is how do you really get to that moment that we've been talking about where say we're doing something that maybe certain players might not agree with out of hand how do we take them and put them into the player shoes enough that they build and are kind of agreeing to to do the thing um I think fundamentally it's one of alignment kind of as we talked about in

the talk it is uh providing not just the raw facts of the matter and I think that that's the approach that you kind of highlighted where it's how do you put your player into the shoes of this character you create a situation like the beginning of Last of Us one where yeah sure you could stand around holding Sarah but everything is on fire and zombies are running at you those are facts of the matter so you run to the place that's not on fire you don't need any kind of prompting or alignment with that but as with the previous question that's also a much more immediate easy to ramp into emotion than I'm going to kill every person I see in Seattle and I think fundamentally there's also something that I think like applies to theater casting as well which is kind of being okay with that a lot of people are going to have different needs and timelines for that and it's essentially impossible to cover everybody in the same way that like certain actors might not be good for certain roles not

because they're bad actors but because the range or the style of the character just doesn't align with their personality or their style of performance or their range and I think last of us two kind of presents something that reached a scale where enough people play it where we couldn't ever produce a wide enough bucket to get everybody totally aligned with it 100% of the time and I think not to say that I think the process of doing that was perfect I feel that yeah there are some valid critiques on how quickly we try to get you to shift into Ellie's mindset because I think there was I think fundamentally an interesting disconnect between the way the designers of the first game were writing Ellie and understood Ellie and how people playing as Joel perceived Ellie which is kind of an interesting dichotomy there like Ellie was always this like violent intense type of person that's why she Maul David the way that she did like she was always this on edge

kind of vindictive individual who by interacting with Joel was raised to become better but a lot of people's perception of Ellie was in that myopic view that Joel had for her too and I think there was a little bit of a disconnect there that yeah some people maybe needed more of a ramp because they weren't just Reckoning with Ellie as herself but Ellie as them as Joel remembering her cool thank you so much hi so I wanted to ask something that might not be following a similar train of thought but how do you feel about things that bring single player experiences um players experiences kind of together without having to uh directly interact with one another the the example I'm thinking of is like the end credit scene of near aom where you're asked to wipe your save in order to help players actually finish the the bullet held to complete the game are these sorts of things gimmicks are there

like meaningful ways to connect players together uh so the question is are pseudo multiplayer experiences like the end of neotoma interesting ways to connect people together I would say most often more often than not yes but I think uh it's worth kind of emphasizing like how interesting and poignant of an ending that was to neara because I think it fits really well into this critical moment framework the game presents you with a choice that the entire game feels like a rehearsal towards making like this idea of sacrificing yourself to help somebody else giving instead of just going through after especially being helped you do the end credits first with all this help from all these other people and I think the fact that it's multiplayer or not is almost immaterial to the alignment and the delivery of the central message to it I think it is brilliant piece of design to do something so outside of the box because the game up until that point was

in no way multiplayer was in no way linked so it creates this extra layer of grandiosity of surprise where it's like oh this is Network this has been you know you've all been living in the same world this entire time oh my God it's almost like we've been talking about that this whole time but uh I think yeah multiplayer connectivity I think a good example of that is like the entire soul series like it has that kind of pseudo single player quality death stranding I think does it well I think basically as a tool it can be utilized for almost every piece of this framework giving players space to rehearse giving players feedback and Alignment letting them perform to others like I think it's a it's a really good tool overall I don't see any negatives in approaching it like that thank you one of the more with Last of Us in that example one of the big things about that game at least for me was that the motivation for Joel and the dramatic Persona that the player inhabits changes through throughout the G and it goes from like this is a job that you have to do to oh here's like a daughter figure

how do you cultivate a change in motivation and a change in the uh dramatic Persona of the player without just kind of forcing it on them so the question is how do you kind of guide the player towards a change in Persona uh without forcing it on them and I think it's really just using the same exact tools to build the Persona in the first place like the player is coming from a point of not being one way and then becoming one way and then as the hours tick by and the game develops and the story turns you keep providing those same tools to take Joel from dramatic Persona A to B from Joel the hardened Smuggler to Joel the very protective loving dad because not only are you living through those moments of change with him because you're fundamentally already aligned you're already being guided through these things but then we're just using the same tools over again to not just affect you but affect Joy he's given feedback from the world he takes risks and is receiving like punishment and reward for it he is

interacting with Ellie and it is viting how he sees the world and how he changes he's basically going through this exact same framework at the same time as we are and in a way building a new persona out of it okay cool thank you hi fantastic talk and totally agree Judith Weston's awesome I'm going to reread it through a different lens now thank you I was curious um what you think about the designer as a director in a multiplayer experience is there anything that you would do to effectively model this for a multiplayer game uh yes so the question is how do we look at this framework specifically as the designers director for multiplayer games and I think there's a lot that can be applied um it's really just a matter of how the community and the extra material around it get structured uh as personally as a fan of valerant I think Riot does has done an excellent job kind of cultivating and building what it means to play Valor what it means to be

an agent what it means to operate inside of this sport by like a lot of its marketing material a lot of its design choices its Aesthetics and then also just how it runs its orts how it cultivates and builds certain types of character stories and player stories so that like when you sit down to play valerant you have that sense of like all right we are going to be this intense itical team nobody's going into valerant to be like we're going to goof off like it's among us we're going to throw grenades all at once like a lot of people just kind of Buy in and align to this like way of playing the sport well and I think yeah the best way to think about that is as a multiplayer game I think fundamentally you have to consider a lot of the stuff outside of the core experience itself and you know really deal with things like Community management marketing extra material and that can provide a lot of these same things but you know you have place to rehearse you have training modes all

these same types of things and I think it's all relevant move this back a little bit hi there I want to thank you first for your talk I really enjoyed it I I wanted to ask you if you feel like there might be some inherent Risk by playing so hard into all of these different methodologies to get the player aligned with the character especially in instances like Prototype 2 with Alex Mercer or Last of Us Part Two where then it feels like a different actor is playing a similar character because it's a computer controlled character at that point and it feels like there's that dissonance of what you felt like when playing that character in a new story so the question is do you feel any risk of trying to align the player to this character giving them ownership over something that then you rip away from so an example is you play Alex Mercer in Prototype one you define who he is but he's a a very different character potentially in Prototype 2 in Last of Us two you play as Ellie and

then perceive Ellie outside of your control and what happens when there's a misalignment there I think yeah fundamentally there's a lot of risk in that anytime that you're I said it's the same amount of risk I'd feel that you recast a main character with a different actor uh I think there are ways to approach doing it which is again being really tight and concise with the alignment with the style with the focus of what's Happening um so that you and the player will always be on the same page that eventually happens I think Alex Mercer is an example of such a radical shift that it was I think kind of unresolvable um but where Last of Us two I think we did a decent enough job to kind of showcase how your actions were perceived more than like oh Ellie's doing three more days in Seattle and she's getting even more murdery than you wanted to be murdery with her instead it's feeling more of like the consequences for your actions so I think that's a very fine line and an interesting uh consideration because

it's fairly uncommon but uh definitely pretty relevant and I've felt that in a lot of other games like Metal Gear Solid 2 is kind of a good example where snake's kind of a dick yeah like Devil Man Cry 4 you got Dante is just super silent all of a sudden yeah yeah yeah yeah thank you so I think we're running out of time and uh doesn't look like we have any other questions so I can let you guys out a bit early thank you again so much for listen in uh if you found this format and this talk really helpful I hope you guys rate it pretty well and I'll see you around the convention [Applause] [Music] soon