Mutazione
Game
Documents about Mutazione
Game Developers Conference22 min
Multiple Middles & Mutazione
The narrative design of the 2019 game Mutazione utilizes a structural approach termed multiple middles to facilitate an ensemble-driven, soap opera-style narrative.
- The 'multiple middles' narrative design approach prioritizes exploration-based discovery over traditional branching dialogue or multiple endings, allowing players to engage with an ensemble cast at their own pace.
- By structuring the game around mandatory 'A-plots' and optional 'B' and 'C' subplots, the narrative ensures that all characters receive development while allowing players to choose which interpersonal dramas to investigate.
- To maintain transparency and player agency, the game uses a diegetic journal system that clearly distinguishes between mandatory story-advancing actions and optional content, giving players control over when to trigger the next time-of-day transition.
Game Developers ConferenceNov 2020
Game Developers Conference32 min
Kill the Hero, Save the (Narrative) World
The traditional hero’s journey, a narrative structure inherited from cinema, frequently fails to sustain meaningful stakes or thematic focus within the extended timeframes of modern video games.
- Modern video games should transition from traditional, singular hero-centric narratives to ensemble-based models to better sustain thematic focus and complex social dynamics over extended playtimes.
- Adopting structural rhythms from long-running television soap operas allows developers to foster genuine narrative jeopardy and represent interconnected human relationships more effectively than the standard hero’s journey.
- The game Mutazione demonstrates the efficacy of an A, B, and C plot system, which prioritizes character-driven exploration and intergenerational themes over traditional, objective-based problem solving.
Game Developers ConferenceMar 2020
Companies behind it
As the documents state it.