The Design in Narrative Design

[Music] whatever um I'll just do it the manual way so hello I'm Yuri hornman uh everyone has slides with had names on it but you know I have this so I've been making games since 1991 and I've uh worn a lot of hats uh in that time and today I'm here wearing my my game designer hat right and so now I'd like to little know a little bit more about you uh who here thinks of himself primarily as a writer okay that's not as many as I expected okay wrote the whole thing for writers um narrative designer okay that's a bunch yeah okay uh game designer okay all right uh who here thinks storytelling in games would be better if writers were consulted more and and more often and especially earlier okay that's enough people right great great great cuz that's like the whole talk like collapses if if people saying like whatever so okay uh so that's a very pernicious problem very complicated very systemic and I am not going to for you

like a the the solution right I'm not going to say does it a silver bullet does don't exist uh but I I hopefully I can cast a new light on this problem by showing you a design approach that I found extremely useful in game design and that sort of has you know is relevant to that problem right so I'm going to start with some quick definitions uh some examples then I'll talk about this design approach and then I'm going to talk about what that means for storytelling in games so first uh I'd like to ask you to to uh suspend your disbelief for the the duration of this talk and to accept two simple non-academic definitions of terms that I'm going to be using during this talk just for the sake of argument because terminology in storytelling in games I found to be a very uh uh complicated issue so when I talk about story I talk about this I talk about something that was pre- offered and it's about something happening to someone because people get confused by what is meant by story and games uh including me and then so I I mean pre-offer story I don't mean an emerging story I don't mean the story that you're telling me about the game you played last night I don't mean the story as it's happening while you're playing I don't mean

backstory right I I mean this right okay and the uh so fictional I'm going to talk about this a lot this this an important concept for this talk uh this is about willing suspension to disbelief so fictional means related to things I'm asking you to pretend they true right so I'm as designers as as game creators we are asking people to believe that this bunch of pixels is is a plumber and that's a barrel and that's a monkey right and then that's uh kind of a core okay so an example let's say you have a game where you have hit points right so we've been using hit points as a mechanic for decades works very well it means that if the player hits an enemy she's not killed instantly you can sort of take that away a little bit so hit points okay so you need to show the player how many hit points she has left right because otherwise you don't get the right Dynamic going very common design problem so how do you do that well the easy solution is you know what Doom does and what you know billions of games have

done is just put the number on the screen right there it is very clear people know what's going on works great now let's say that you you say you know you want to really immerse the player in the world you don't want any gaming numbers on the screen because you think that breaks suspension of disbelief right so what do you do well if you're a valve and halflife and you're working on halflife you find an explanation in your game setting right you say well you know this is slightly sort of sci-fi game so what if the player uh the player character puts on this sort of high-tech exus suit that has an actual heads up display and then we can show all the different numbers that are important for gameplay right there even though you know why a an industrial exos suit would show the amount of bullets you have left in your gun you know like doesn't really make sense but you know it's it's it's good enough right so beautiful solution makes total sense or well almost total sense in the world of the game but now let's say you love this idea of not having numbers on screen but your game has a fantasy setting and you know you you you know you don't want to try and come up with a fantasy exo suit right so

so so what do you do well if you're team ieko you take out hit points all together right you think about well why do we even need hit points what is what what are the Dynamics we're trying to to generate uh why do we need why why do we want the player to to know about them and so instead you make all the situations in the game very clearly deadly or not right in IO I find it sort of cool it's like if it looks like a kid would die falling from that height he'll probably die right it's it's it's very obvious right you don't need to think about there's nothing to explain it's very clear and then you know the enemies they don't actually harm the the player character they just slow him down while His companion you know princess yorta is being dragged off into into the void and then the game ends right so just by by so they they have this kind of delay mechanic in there and they have kind of the same Dynamic and effects as from M points but in a different way and without requiring any numbers on screen and I think it's uh it's great you know it's also a lot of work because they have to reinvent all the stuff you know it's like oh let's get the off the shelf hit point module uh and and it affects

the whole game there are certain things they cannot easily do put in their game uh by using this but you know it's a wonderful solution so what do we just see here um we were looking at sort of two sides of the game the the mechanical side which is the rule side and then the the fictional side right and I find it an incredibly useful way of looking at g game design and it's I I I've been I've been using that this approach a a lot since you know quite a long time uh I know other game designers have to it's not something particularly new but you know and they may not use these exact words but it's it's very very useful and you look at your games from these two sides you try to make things come together into one sort of pleasing experience that that you know the experience that you want to achieve because if you don't balance those two sides you get dissonance you can get dissonance and which you usually don't want and you risk breaking the the player suspension of this the mechanical side of a game is really abstract right uh it's it's the

fiction that gives the game meaning and of course the mechanical side has a big effect on the experience because otherwise you know why why do it and also you know their game so but if I if I just say you know when when this counter hits zero the game ends that can sort of mean anything that is very cold very abstract right and so the fictional side is is what we're asking like I said earlier what we're asking players to believe when we talk about suspension of disbelief and every design element can be seen from the mechanical and from the fictional side and it's it's important to realize that these are two sides of the same thing right they're not separate there they are aspects or Dimensions or perspectives on one thing right so to balance the fictional anim mechanical often involves explaining a mechanical element and justifying it within the game setting and the sort of fancy word for this is diis which is a word that the way I use it comes from sound design you know if you watch a movie and you see uh a radio

and the R Radio is playing music and the characters in the movie can hear that music that is called diagetic music and if you have like you know like the typical Hollywood score that you can hear but the the characters cannot unless they break the four fall uh that is called non- diagetic music right it's a very simple concept that's used in sound design but I also find it very useful for uh game design and what you do when you explain the mechanical when you when you make things diagetic is really World building you're in inventing how the world Works you're inventing which creatures and characters exist in the game why they behave a certain way why they act a certain way so I want to just show two more examples actually three just to show of a couple of things that you can make diagetic that you can sort of explain and justify in inside your setting so character death is a Convention of video games and has been around for decades right your your guy

dies and you have to start all over again uh but actually it is it is uh harmful to suspension of disbelief and so various games over time have tried to sort of explain it and integrate it and and one solution that I find really cool is the one they used in Prince of Persia sense of time where the entire game has this framing story of like the main character narrating his adventures right and which fits really well with the whole Arabian kns uh setting and when you do die in the game the character goes like no no no no that's not what happened and and sort of goes back a little way and and and tells it again right and I find it a really cool uh solution now another Convention of video games that we don't really think about a lot is like there that there are these levels these situations which have been created for the player to challenge the player and to to test them and you know that's like you know why you know who does that like the the question I used to ask a lot when I was doing role playing games in the '90s was like well who built this dungeon like and why does it still still work after thousands of

years right and and you know uh it's a convention and you don't think about it that much but it's but it's there and so one game which has sort of um explained that is Portal and it's and I think it's probably the most brilliant thing about portal to me they have explained why these levels are there and they have explained it in in a completely unique way and they've even given a a they have put the level designer in a way the game designer as a character into the game right as as as GLaDOS uh and I think that's brilliant and uh another game which does the same thing is Manhunt where a uh in the game a very I must stress this in the game a very sick and Disturbed individual has created uh all these all these levels uh in a decrepit part of town and is forcing your character to go through and and kill uh you know not going to say innocent people but you know kill kill people uh for his Amusement while literally whispering in your ear right uh and that makes manhand a very very special um experience

so what happens when when when I do this design you know when I when I use this approach in the design process I tend to go back and forth between the mechanical and the fictional right you find some explanations for mechanical elements and once you've done that that may trigger new ideas for the mechanical side because you go like Okay so we've we've added this to the world to to so that this makes sense and then like hey but that means that you know blah ah and that means these new mechanics this is super cool and it's not uncommon to sort of go back and forth a couple of times right uh and here's an example from um this is a screenshot from uh Dex Invisible War uh and in in in dex1 and DX SQL you have these uh these biom mods right these augmentations that you can sort of slot into your body and they give you new powers right and apparently one of the designers of on Invisible War sort of went like you know there's something deeply creepy about taking some machine and just slotting it into your body and then it modifies you and like oo you know and what if those machines don't come from a a corporate ation that you trust and that that you know has QA

processes and all that stuff what if it comes from the black market right what if it's like you buy it from some guy you don't know but it has really cool Powers but it might have some downsides you know you don't know and then that's how the idea from the for the black market biom mods came along so so I find it very cool you know to it's not always going from one side to the other it's definitely back and forth because it needs to balance right you can also you know decide not to explain a convention and to leave mechanical side as this because it is a convention right and sometimes it's better that way um because you know sometimes the solution of of make making it diagetic is as worse than just leaving it so here's an example from a game called uh the getaway uh for the PS2 done by Sony uh this is sort of a GTA like game set in a very realistic depiction of London and the game you know you're in a mission the game is telling you where to go can anyone tell where you have to go from screenshot

yeah to the left exactly it's it's the indicator light that shows you not where you are going to go like in real life but it shows you where you should go and so that is sort of like it's not like real life and it's kind of subtle you know whereas you know GTA did this you know it's like a huge Pink Arrow you know it's not subtle but it works you know because it's such a convention that it doesn't really it's not that grading it really you know you sort of ignore it very quickly right um so I I think that's an an important lesson uh conventions also evolve over time right common justifications become to Common Place you know think back on do I have time yeah 11 minutes I can talk to this think back of like early novels where it was all like oh I'm I'm I'm writing you this this letter and then this letter is like novel length and that to just to explain why I'm talking to you and then later people like no you readers can deal with the fact that I'm just reading this text and I don't know where it's coming from right and it's the same in games um some things have just become a little bit uh too commonplace a bit cliche in my opinion like uh convenient placed audio Diaries as a way to

optionally tell backstory like in BioShock right it it was great in System Shock uh I think by by the time of Bioshock well I must admit I played Bioshock very late like was a couple of months ago first time I played it so I was like oh really audio diers again you know uh so it's it's a great solution but it has become in my opinion has become bit of a cliche the same with you know the convention that technically it is very very hard to show another character walking around with you and and interacting with you in a 3D space right that is super hard so the convention is not to have those characters walk around with you but you know maybe to have them talk to you through walkie-talkies or through loudspeakers right and that is by for me has also become a little bit like oh again you know uh and so when I see a game and again Bioshock right um all these loudspeakers everywhere and and sort of people are talking at you through these loudspeakers it's like ah you know I've seen it and and you know players are smart and they they can spot overuse explanations they get used to certain things and then you don't have to explain it explain it anymore

so what does this mean for game teams well working on this fictional side of design uh requires skills that you probably know well if you're a writer and it requires World building inventing characters places situations reconciling rules and fiction which is not unlike re reconciling plot and character when you do when you write an actual story uh you know you're adapting the gamees fiction to the constraints of a medium right and those are skills that every writer and every Storyteller knows or should know right but they have nothing to do per say with story you know according according to the definition I I I started with they are a subset of the skills that you require to tell a story so virtually all games and if you want to talk about virtually then you know come to to the spillover room or the whatever that room is um if virtually all games have a fictional side then all game teams need storytelling skills right so those skills become essential to game development for most games and

most companies in my opinion will benefit from looking at game design this way and having these skills in the team so does that mean all game teams need writers no I don't think so but you know because don't hate me um each company is different right uh the writers in-game teams question goes beyond like I said it's a very complicated problem it goes beyond what I've been talking about here and you know feel free to ask me afterwards my opinion of the the economic aspects of that problem and the producer psychology problem uh aspect of that so you know um shoot more game teams have writers yes you know probably yeah definitely so shoot more games seems have narrative designers even though there's someone in the audience Lee Sheldon who has strong opinions about the job title of uh of narrative designer and I and I totally respect his opinion I invite you to ask him what what it is later um yeah dieo he's sitting right there um I think you know a lot of gam SC could probably benefit from having narrative designers

right so I I think in general it's a is a positive uh development should more game designers learn about storytelling even though they they don't work on games that have story in them right I think yes I think it's important to be aware that you know this is like a a second part of the like you know a second part of the game right uh you can just look at the mechanics and at the systems sh more writers learned about game design definitely yes because you know that will help you first of all maybe you can get to work on a game without being called writer also it will help help you work with with game designers right um so I think really the important thing is to to separate the skills from the job titles and to separate these skills from the ideas about writing that that you might have which I know in my case and in other cases I've seen you know my idea of writing uh your idea of writing as a writer right those are not necessarily the same thing right A lot of people I I I didn't use the word writing much because I know for some people it's like oh yeah that's when I write an email right you know so separate skills from these from ideas from writing uh ideas

about writing and from job titles and that's it uh right thanks so thank you for listening I'm on Twitter I'm an email uh I want to thank a friend of mine Verena ridle who helped me with the images you should hire her she's a kick-ass producer mobile producer yeah she's right there yeah anyway do you want to do a couple minutes of Q&A here yeah sure have a few yeah if you want to ask questions yeah yeah we we have a little time left actually in this one so for once uh let's do Q&A in the room before Yuri goes to room wrap up room to entertain War questions wrapup room so yeah wrapup room yeah yeah yeah spill over room I don't know why yeah yeah oh yeah MC Yuri yeah so there's hello hey Yuri hi um so you talked you talked about conventions a bit and about um diis and stuff like that I wonder you know using the you

know the black market mod example in DSX or any of your examples you know you talk about how this back and forth between the the fictional Framing and the design gave this interesting element yeah but at the same time I would I would it would be my opinion that the genre conventions even of a genre bending or expanding game like J DSX so so grossly overpower the the interesting things that they've done as to almost make the the meaning of like that black market mod almost Irrelevant in the context of how how overwhelmingly powerful the conventions that they're leveraging in terms of hit points and mana and all of the other you know guns and bullets and reloads and all of these other things that are just um distilled convention that Define the game way more than one minor little piece and I wonder what your thoughts are versus how powerful convention is yeah thanks for not calling me out calling me out for saying that uh mechanics have no meaning cuz I

was afraid you were going to ask about that um you're probably right you know uh the thing for me was I needed an example and I wanted to have an example of something actually happening in actual game development and this was the only example I could find like where Harvey told me like this this is the way it happened like it went back so I know that when I do game design I do often go back and forth uh and you know but I if I go like well there's one game I worked on five years ago blah you know nobody knows about this uh so that's why I picked that example right because I I figure people would know it you're probably right that the the overall experience of of DX you know it's not the most important part uh you know I guess I'm asking do you think we could do a better job of tearing down the conventions that are that are you know homogenizing some of our games and focus more on on some of the more interesting things that we can get through this process yeah I I've been once I started working on this I've definitely felt you know certainly you know it's like one of those things where you start finding conventions everywhere

uh and and it helped me uh reframe sort of why I think uh portal is interesting you know and manhunts right uh so certain suddenly you see stuff where you're like hey actually that's we do that because that's a convention and then you go like hey what if you do it a different way or you know so yeah so uh thanks for the question anyone else yeah here hi where is wait here here oh sorry yes hi yeah sorry I yeah hi um do you have any recommendation um as a game designer on how to learn to write how to do what sorry how to write how to learn to write uh I I am a huge reader on how to write which if you know how to write you know you will know it's actually completely useless uh and the the number one advice I've always uh have seen is just right right which is actually the same for game design it's probably the same for every skill so then the question question is like well you know

you you don't just go sit down and just instantly go like hey you know like uh I'll just write Moby Dick or whatever right so doing the right writing exercises in the right order uh is not something I've personally uh corrected you know I'm I'm I don't call myself a writer uh so I don't know uh immerse yourself in it try doing it uh maybe uh work on swine games I I've started doing that recently and I found it really useful as a sort of yeah as a a writing SL interactive storytelling exercise so I hope that helps I mean there are definitely I again if you if you I wouldn't want to recommend anything like you know I don't know what do this piece call people called mck and all the all those books because I know uh lee will kill me all right so sorry uh I hope that helps a little bit yeah thanks yeah anyone else no all right thanks