Write from the Start

So pretty much one of the most challenging parts of making games for the small indie or hobbyist developer is getting the extra help you need. The developer who can do it all on his or her own -- programming, artwork, writing, modeling, animation, web design, yada yada -- is a rare breed with far too much talent and disposable time. When I made Missions of the Reliant way back when, in (gulp) 1994, I could handle most of it myself because things were just...simpler. I didn't have to worry about modeling or animation, and web design meant little more than plain text and a few animated GIFs (mostly I just focused on BBS's and AOL -- and, sadly enough, eWorld). Life, as they say, was so much easier when we were young.

Unless you start from the beginning with a set of partners, it's tough to find people who are willing to put the necessary time and effort into your project, particularly if they're not being paid. But once you start paying people to provide the services you need, the expenses can start piling up fast. That's especially true for modelers, animators, and 2D artists, where the good stuff usually doesn't come cheap. And since the majority of small indie and hobbyist developers who initiate new game projects are programmers, not artists, you end up with a lot of projects that die on the vine because they just can't obtain or afford the artwork that is needed. As one person I knew said, it's cheaper to program than to create art.

A while back, as these thoughts were bouncing around inside my head, I began to wonder how different it might be if a game project was started by a visual artist rather than a programmer. I started a thread on the GarageGames forums to see if people were familiar with any such projects, and it turned out to be a pretty long thread. Some good thoughts there, but not a lot of games that started with the artist and lasted through to completion and release.

That was a couple of years ago, though, and I know of (or suspect) a few examples since. One that came up recently, as reflected upon by Chris over at The Artful Gamer, is the Quest for Glory II remake by AGDInteractive through the efforts of artist Eriq Chang. As Chris notes:

"I call this a 'renaissance' of computer game re-makes because the creative torch has finally been returned to artists. Instead of designing and conceiving games from scratch without any attention to their expressive qualities (as we see in most commercial games), AGDInteractive (has) put artists behind the wheel and allowed them to drive the creative process."

But I'm not really here to discuss how visual artists can drive creative game development. The reason I bring this up is because I was reminded of this topic during a recent web chat about a similar concept.

Back at the Austin GDC last year, I found myself most interested in the discussions and talks on game writing, and through those interactions I was introduced to the Game Writers SIG, a "community of game writers whose goal is to improve the quality of games writing by increasing overall awareness of the craft of games writing and how it fits into the game development process." Although it's not exactly my specialty, I enjoy following the e-mail list discussions from a distance. Anyone else interested in signing up for the mailing list can check out their sign-up page.

One of the topics that often comes up on the list is how to better promote the idea that writers should be involved in the videogame development process much earlier than they typically are. What often seems to be the case, as I understand it, is that writers are engaged well after a game has been designed, such that the writers are frequently asked to fill in gaps or otherwise work within a well-established framework that has little chance of being altered much. As such, there is little opportunity to shape the project from the beginning, or to impact game design and gameplay mechanics through the writing process.

Something like this was brought up again on the SIG's monthly (roughly) chat meeting, which I checked out for the first time this past week. The discussion turned to the creation of a list of arguments the group could use to convince game companies of the benefit of hiring and involving writers. One member, Reid, posed the following question:

"Here's an idea. What if the SIG made a small game to showcase the value of writers when they have more creative control and are brought in early?"

In response, Corvus brought up the idea of using Inform to create a piece of interactive fiction. Nice idea, I would have to say. But then again, there are already plenty of excellent IF games already out there that have been written by, you know, writers. Is the problem that game companies aren't familiar enough with good IF games, and they just need someone to make them take a closer look? Or is it perhaps because companies that make graphical games might not be terribly interested in what text-only IF games might have to offer?

I don't know the answer to that, and maybe I'm missing the mark, but I do know how I feel about the whole idea -- it forms the basis for the Vespers project. When I started this thing, the goal was to create a 3D first-person adventure game that was based on an established interactive fiction game. The main reason was to see how a typical text-based interactive fiction game would mesh with a visual 3D interface, but just as importantly, the idea was to start with a game that was fully designed and written by a writer. That's one of the big advantages to having started with Jason's Vespers game -- the plot, dialogue, characters, setting, puzzles, all of it was already written, tested, played, and critiqued. We knew what worked well, and what didn't. Characters and setting were already nicely fleshed out. All we needed to do (easy for me to say) was to take that entire game design and translate it from text to graphics, while still keeping most of the text.

In the end, Vespers might not necessarily be the best example to show game development companies to convince them of the value of starting with a game writer, but I certainly hope it will encompass this idea and at least help move the field in this general direction. That's the goal, at least.

A secondary but related goal is to use this game as an example of what, specifically, interactive fiction has to offer to the mainstream videogame industry. While I wouldn't necessarily describe IF as a "mature" medium, it has been around considerably longer than most other types of videogames and, as such, I believe it has a maturity that perhaps other genres lack. This extends to some of the more interesting areas of game design (at least to me) -- puzzle design, narrative design, character development, and conversation dynamics, to name a few. I think there is a lot that mainstream game designers can learn from some of the better or more advanced IF games. It's an overlooked genre and community, and it's something I plan on submitting to an upcoming GDC for a lecture and/or group discussion. We'll see if anyone's listening.

Day Three (at the AGDC), Part Two

As I mentioned last time, there were some really intriguing presentations on the third day of the conference. One in particular was a technology demonstration given by representatives of two companies, Emotiv Systems and 3DV Systems, which are developing innovative ways for players to interface with computers or other entertainment devices.

Randy Breen from Emotiv Systems demonstrated what he called their "Brain-Computer Interface", a device that fits on the head and is based on EEG machines. It basically translates brain waves into actions after a period of training. It's compact (I didn't even notice him wearing it during his talk), lightweight, and wireless, and includes a gyro to detect head movements. It can also detect facial expressions (blinking, smiling, eyebrow movement) and can essentially monitor emotional states. It can also detect cognitive intent to manipulate objects. Wild, but apparently true.

During the demo, he displayed the tool's SDK which exposed the various detections, and displayed an avatar mimicing his behavior -- blinking when he blinked, raising eyebrows when he did, smiling along with him. He envisions the eventual ability to move lips along with audio to visually represent speech. His last demonstration was of cognitive action: he was able to move a 3D block on screen merely by thinking about it. He then showed how the tool can be trained to perform other cognitive actions, like making the block disappear just by thinking it. Very slick.

It looked as though the tool and its software still have a ways to go before it is fast, smooth, and widely applicable. But it was nevertheless impressive, and appears to offer a ton of possibilities for games in the future.

Next was Charles Bellfield from 3DV Systems, who demonstrated their camera-based tool for detecting and harnessing player motion. Although I didn't understand much of how it worked, it appears as though a sophisticated camera/detector sits on top of a computer screen or television and sends out light waves, measuring the amount of light that reflects back from the individual and using that information to generate a fairly detailed greyscale image of the person's shape -- parts of the person that are closer appear lighter, providing a real-time, three-dimensional, depth-based representation of the subject. They are also able to specify how far from the camera the light should be detected, making it easy to remove all background and focus entirely on the subject. And, though special techniques that I didn't catch, they're able to make the system track different targets on the subject, such as hands, fingertips, feet, and so on.

The demonstrations were very cool: a flight simulator application where the plane is steered by the players hands mimicing the holding of a yoke (and guns fired by the movement of his thumbs); a kickboxing simulation that responds accurately to the player's punching and kicking motions. Even height of the player becomes important, such as in the kickboxing simulation, since the tool can detect height and translate that into the application, providing a more accurate and detailed response.

This system appeared a little closer to being ready for prime time, and could advance the incorporation of player motion into gaming in a fashion similar to the Wiimote, only without the need for a remote at all. All in all, a very cool set of presentations, and I'd really like to see how these tools make it into the marketplace.

The last presentation that I went to was given by Adrian Hon from Six To Start, who discussed the "We Tell Stories" digital fiction project from Penguin Books. This was the project a little while back that presented six alternative stories by six different authors over six weeks, each using a unique form of presentation. "The 21 Steps" by Charles Cumming was a story told through Google Maps; "Slice" by Toby Litt was a slow-motion horror story that was blog- and twitter-based; "Fairy Tales" by Kevin Brooks was a fairy-tale-maker story with a simplistic, branching narrative similar to a CYOA; "Your Place and Mine" by Nicci French was a psychologic thriller/horror story written in real time, one hour per day over five days, similar to improvisational storytelling; "Hard Times" by Matt Mason and Nicholas Felton was more like an essay, and may have suceeded less because of this.

The sixth and last story was "The (Former) General in His Labyrinth" by Mohsin Hamid, a tale about the now former Pakistani leader written in a CYOA with HTML style, a sort-of hybrid CYOA/text adventure/dungeon map, as Hon put it, although I think that's a slight bit of a stretch. Still, the design is intriguing. The player essentially chooses the path through the story by clicking on different directional arrows; although the movement through the story is tracked visually with a "storymap", the movement is not location-based but rather story node-based. That is to say, movement to one particular node represents a particular choice and reveals a specific portion of the narrative, with the map showing which nodes have been visited, and the story changes based on the nodes that have been visited. What's interesting is that the author designed it such that there is no repetition when re-visiting nodes -- the story changes, even if slightly, when backtracking, and some portions of the storymap are designed as loops that "play" differently when traversed clockwise as opposed to counterclockwise. It sounded like a clever design, and I'll have to try that one for certain.

The remainder of Hon's talk was about storytelling in games, and although it covered much of the usual ground, it was refreshing to hear it from the perspective of the literary scene rather than the gaming scene. One point he specifically made was that most readers (as opposed to gamers) have little to no desire to see interactivity in their stories -- or, alternatively, they don't think interactivity automatically makes story better -- which is interesting in light of the desire of some IF supporters to see the medium reach out to a more reader-oriented audience. He himself believed that stories in games are (or will be) better because they are interactive, but we still have a long way to go -- its not easy to write a story, as he said, and a good story in a game requires writers with sufficient independence and the trust and respect of the designers. Like Andrew Stern's talk earlier in the day, it triggered a good deal of stimulating discussion from the audience, which was refreshing to see, and the sign of a thoughtful, engaging talk.

Day Three (at the AGDC): Stern on Linear Storytelling

The last day of AGDC was an excellent day, with two talks in particular that led to a good deal of spirited, academic discussion about storytelling and a third lecture that demonstrated some very slick next-gen controllers that could have a significant impact in the future on game design and interface.

The first talk of the day was given by Andrew Stern, he of Façade fame, although he did not focus specifically on the accomplishments of that project. Instead, his talk, provocatively titled "Linearity is Hell: Achieving Truly Dynamic Stories in Games," explored the possibility of truly dynamic storytelling in games and how a system like that might be designed. Stern did acknowledge that this was more of a theoretical talk and that he has no claim to a solution for this; rather, he was hoping to express his understanding of what such a system might entail.

He began by describing the well-known problem of combinatorial explosiveness that typically characterizes systems that try to accomodate branching storylines, and proceeded to offer that one solution to this would be "story generativity", or a system that generates story nodes on the fly (akin to "procedural storytelling"), which would be capable of providing players with the Big Three game elements we seem to most covet: freedom, well-formed story, and agency; whereas most games these days are typically able to provide at most two of those three.

Without going into too much detail here, he related this type of system most closely with improvisational theater, and the Oz Project in particular, where improv actors received direction through headsets for a single independent participant. The idea for a dynamic storytelling game, generally speaking, is to accomplish something similar through the creation of behaviors for NPCs which help direct and guide them through a narrative scene, encompassing such things as motivations, goals, dynamics, and dialog.

Interestingly, Stern briefly discussed what he called a "calculus" for NPC dynamics, which comprised defining different narrative states to track, and then using various approaches to compute the narrative state; for instance, with a narrative state of romantic interest, the idea is to use a calculus (fuzzy, algebraic, statistical, etc.) to evaluate things like flirtations, responses to NPC advances, tone and language of the player, and so on. It immediately brough to mind some of the approaches embraced by Chris Crawford, specifically the use of mathematics and algorithms for different aspects of character appraisal and storytelling, so perhaps there are some similarities there.

He did acknowledge that the type of system he described would be more adept at generating sequences rather than sentences, and in that respect the system would probably not be generative enough to be a true end product. But to me it seemed that the real challenge is precisely in going from structure to presentation; that is, while the mechanics of creating and manipulating the components of story, including character motivations and behaviors in response to (or in lieu of) player actions, do appear to have features amenable to mathematical or algorithmic control, it's the process of taking the product of those calculations and algorithms and working them into a coherent narrative where the true challenges lie ahead. And I would propose that this final step, the delivery of the story, is where much of the art of storytelling exists -- stories can easily be broken down to reveal their components and structure, but the presentation of that structure is dependent on the skill of the storyteller. Can that ever be done procedurally? In a way that is artistic and moving?

I'm reminded again of Crawford, this time of the product of his work on the Storytron, after playing a bit with the online demo of Balance of Power: 21st Century. There's much I could write about the system, and it's clear a massive amount of work has gone into the modeling and implementation of relationships and character interactions -- certainly a significant accomplishment. I don't know Crawford's intentions for the system beyond BoP:21K, or whether future storygames (like the one in progress by his colleague, Laura Mixon) will look or play differently, so I could be off base; right now, though, the presentation has the look and feel of a basic story structure and its components, with none of the crucial dressing of language and style that an author provides. That is to say, the storygame is plenty of substance without any style. Does this work? Perhaps for others, not so much for me. Could it be more? I'm not sure.

The discussion that followed the talk was spirited and entertaining. Points raised included how a system like this could incorporate certain issues with language, writing style, and humor, which are notoriously difficult to reproduce procedurally. Others noted that the system he described sounds like something better suited to drama management than actual end-dialog or behavior generation, and that perhaps it matters more how the story is delivered rather than constructed. Stern argued that this type of system does not have to entirely remove the author's voice from the output, and that he sees it as more of a 50/50 relationship. I think the system is still too theoretical to be able to envision that myself.

I guess it really comes down to the question of what we really want from the stories in our games, and which we find more influential: substance, or style? Personally, I think both play an important role, but it's still too difficult to imagine a system that can procedurally handle both with equal skill.

It's fair to say, though, that Stern's talk was accepted by the speaker and audience as mostly hypothesis, with the intention of stimulating discussion and debate. And in that sense, I think the talk succeeded far better than most at the conference. Plenty of people stayed behind afterward to continue the discussion, and it's likely to continue even longer on e-mail discussions and blogs. And it made for a very entertaining and enjoyable experience.

More to come later on the rest of Day Three as I get back in the swing of things.

Day One (at the AGDC)

It was an entertaining first day at the AGDC. It's certainly more fun listening to talks about interactive storytelling, cinematic design, and writing characters in games than it is listening to talks about pharmaceuticals and obscure research findings.

As expected, Chris Crawford's talk was, to a large extent, a rehash of material that I believe he has presented previously. Still, seeing it in person, particularly with his entertaining delivery, was worth it. His talk was titled "15 Conceptual Shifts: Moving From Games to Interactive Storytelling," and it reviewed many of the points he has tried to make over the years -- among other things: stories are about people, not things; the importance of interactivity; and the role of verbs as opposed to nouns. And, of course, the last few concepts dealt largely with his Storytron project, although unfortunately he did not provide a demonstration.

Much of this is material from his book , and there didn't seem to be any radical new concepts introduced in the talk. I will say that I hadn't previously heard him refer to the ideal interface as a "linguistic user interface" or LUI, which sounds like it could be the right approach. He also re-emphasized his distaste for graphics, plot, and spatial relationships -- points that, I think, have some merit, although his inflexibility is curious and, in some ways, probably counter-productive. Still, I enjoyed the presentation, and regardless of your acceptance of his views I think everyone with an interest in interactive storytelling should hear him speak in person at least once.

The presentation also included a portion given by one of his colleagues, Laura Mixon, a science fiction writer who is authoring one of the first Storytron storyworlds. She gave the "storyteller's perspective" on interactive storytelling, discussing things like the components of story and storytelling, and some of the key elements to interactivity in the context of a storyworld. I thought it was good to hear a few words about Storytron from someone other than Crawford, although I can't say I took away very much from the talk, and she did not demo the storyworld she is working on. Then again, she did make reference to the movie "The Red Violin," which is never bad in my book.

After the talk there was a brief, informal Q&A session with Crawford. I didn't know he would be speaking at AGDC, so I didn't have time to prepare any good questions beforehand, but I had to bring up the subject of interactive fiction. So I mentioned how I had read his book a while back and, although I recognized his disapproval of IF, I didn't feel like his explanation was sufficiently convincing, given some of the very sophisticated works that have been produced over the past few years. Suffice it to say that I don't think he was prepared to give an answer -- he just referred to the primitive nature of IF as a medium, which to me only reflected the fact that he likely hasn't kept up with the field.

Although he did not provide a demo of Storytron, he did briefly show the website and described how one of the storyworlds, Balance of Power: 21st Century, is currently playable. I checked it out briefly. There's a lot that could be said about it, so perhaps I'll leave that to another post. I'll just say that, although I can see some of the sophistication that is possible, the system could still use some major work.

I went to a few other talks, mostly centered around interactive storytelling, writing, and design, and although there were some interesting viewpoints and entertaining presentations, there was little in the way of new groundbreaking material.

I will say this, though: I had great anticipation for the last talk of the day that I attended, which was titled "Galatea 3.0: Designing and Writing Great Game Characters" and given by Tom Abernathy of Microsoft Game Studios. I applaud Tom for placing such enormous emphasis on character design and development in games and for preaching and teaching this point in such detail -- it's a lesson that most game designers would be wise to learn. But seriously: can you really have a lecture titled "Galatea 3.0" about great game characters, and not once mention what is widely perceived as one of the groundbreaking interactive fiction games of the past decade by the same name, precisely because of its outstanding game character?

Playing the Protagonist Part, Partly

A blog entry and discussion over at Corvus Elrod's Man Bytes Blog about character and plot got me thinking about that tricky relationship between the player and protagonist, and the expectations (and allowances) game authors often place on their players.

In some games -- typically non-first person games -- the player is asked to play the role of a particular character. In Dreamfall, the player starts out playing the role of Zoe; in Tomb Raider, Lara Croft; in Deus Ex, J.C. Denton. In many interactive fiction games, the same applies, such as the Abbot in Vespers. In many instances, the protagonist has a history, and in some cases a personality, but inserting the player into that role can produce a frustrating conflict when player behavior does not necessarily match what might be expected from the established character.

To a certain extent, authors expect players to perform at least a minimal amount of role-playing with the game's protagonist. In some cases, more than the minimum is expected. As Jimmy Maher once said in a comment on this blog, "I don't think it's too much to ask my player to accept the premise and situation of the story she is in, and to behave in a reasonable manner." Which means that it's generally okay to discourage unreasonable play that extends beyond the border of acceptable behavior--acceptable in general (no, you can't eat your sword), or for the context of the story (no, you can't start punching your friends just for fun).

The problem is that gamers enjoy pushing limits. As Corvus said, "I too often enjoy subverting a game's intended design." It's fun to do, I'll admit it. I've often played games and at times tested the system to see how it would respond to unexpected or inappropriate behavior. It's something of a reward to see a game respond to a particular action that is otherwise inappropriate.

What's funny is that game designers invite that sort of behavior by implementing responses to it. For instance, how many interactive fiction games implement a witty response to the XYZZY command, even though there is naturally no place or reason for using it? If no game other than Colossal Cave had a response to that command, nobody would be tempted to give it a try. And if there is a response implemented for that command, how many other interesting goodies like that might there be to discover? How many of us who played the original Warcraft sat there clicking repeatedly on their individual units to see how many different annoyed responses it would elicit? It's a form of exploration, I suppose.

Granted, this is a bit different than the topic of role-playing, but I think the same principle applies. Still, in the situation of role-playing, accounting for different types of behavior, even bizarre behavior, can actually work to the game's advantage. Take Façade, for instance. Wasn't it at least as interesting to play the game while trying inappropriate or unacceptable actions, just to see how the characters would respond? And in many cases, they did respond -- by being shocked and surprised. That type of behavior was anticipated, even though it did not fit at all with the protagonist's character, and it altered the relationship between the protagonist and the other characters in ways that might be expected, providing a sort of internal validity to the game.

This would seem to support what Corvus said in his blog comments the other day:

"The problem, as I see it, is that the story itself is still widely considered to be a separate layer of the game from the game mechanics. The end result is a severe disconnect between what NPCs are saying to you and your behavior. Until such time as player actions, all player actions, are directly interpreted as components of the story...it’s not going to be solved, either."

In other words, all player actions, not just critical ones, need to be interpreted by the game within the context of the character performing the action (his or her personality and relationships) and the situation within the narrative. So it's okay if a player, who is playing the part of a character not known for violence, really does want to perform a violent act on another character, as long as the game and its story account for it. As Corvus says:

"How much more exciting will that become when your actions have immediate and direct consequences? When the targets of your inanity say, 'Well if you're going to hit me with a bicycle, I'm not going to tell you where the meeting is being held!'"

The difficulty with this approach, at least for the game designer, is that it's a ridiculous amount of work to try and account for every possible action in every situation of the game, and the effect of those actions on all of the different characters in the game. And it's also somewhat different for turn-based games with discrete actions, such as interactive fiction, and real-time 3D games that allow players to run around, jump up and down, pick up and throw objects, and so on, all while an NPC is trying to talk to you about something; the options for inane behavior are exponential. The complexity of a system designed to handle and interpret these actions in all different game situations would be staggering.

I'm mostly rambling here, and I'm not entirely certain what the point of all of this is or where it's going. I guess I'm just interested in hearing what others think about the relationships between designer, player, and protagonist, and the expectations that each brings to the table.

Nineteen Years Later, The Record Is Still Skipping

Yesterday was a birthday, of sorts; it was the birthday of The Grumpy Gamer, the blog site belonging to Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame) for his "often incoherent and bitter ramblings about the Game Industry." Four years ago yesterday he posted his first blog, a reprint of an article he wrote in 1989 which, he says, became the foundation for the design of Monkey Island. And at the time of its reprint, in 2004, Gilbert made the proclamation that "Adventure Games are officially dead."

What I find fascinating is that the article, titled "Why Adventure Games Suck (And What We Can Do About It)", discusses so many of the ongoing issues surrounding storytelling in games that people like me continue to blather about nearly two decades later. This is going all the way back to 1989. Infocom still (barely) existed, and Interplay's Neuromancer was the adventure game of the year.

Apparently, the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.

Rather than just reproducing the whole article verbatim, I thought it would be more interesting to highlight some of the important passages that I think remain relevant and continue to be debated to this day.

The element that brings adventure games to life for me is the stories around which they are woven. When done right, it is a form of storytelling that can be engrossing in a way that only interaction can bring. The key here is "done right", which it seldom is.

We continue to talk about the great advantages that interaction can provide, yet it still seems like we don't have a good handle on what those advantages really are, or how to best take advantage of them. And I'm not so sure, all these years later, that we could yet define what "done right" actually is. We might be able to point at a few good examples, but I suppose it's just another one of those things like porn: it's tough to define it, but you know it when you see it.

They are interactive, but they are not movies...Movies came from stage plays, but the references are long lost and movies have come into their own. The same thing needs to happen to story games.

Nearly twenty years later...but have story-based games really separated themselves from other media like movies? We still hear this same point being made over and over again. The same thing does need to happen to story games. When will it?

In a story game, the player is given the freedom to explore the story. But the player doesn’t always do what the designer intended, and this causes problems. It is hard to create a cohesive plot when you have no idea what part of the story the player will trip over next. This problem calls for a special kind of storytelling, and we have just begun to scratch the surface of this art form.

I, like many others, have made this point in the past -- and of course, back when I did, I'm sure I thought I was all too clever for bringing it up. We continue to gnash our teeth over how to deal with player choice and freedom within a traditionally linear environment. But it's fascinating that, nearly two decades ago, we were just beginning to scratch the surface. If I hadn't read this piece, I probably would have described the current state of affairs the same way. We're still scratching away, and it's tough to know if we're any deeper than we were back in 1989.

Nothing is more frustrating than wandering around wondering what you should be doing and if what you have been doing is going to get you anywhere.

This is clearly true, and as true today as it was back then. I bring it up only because this was one of the criticisms I saw repeatedly for the text version of Vespers, at least at the very beginning of the game. It takes a little while before the seminal event takes place in the game, and some players griped about not knowing what they were supposed to be doing from the start. It's one of those things I'm a little nervous about for the 3D game. I'll have to see what the initial feedback is like, when the time comes.

It is bad design to put puzzles and situations into a game that require a player to die in order to learn what not to do next time. This is not to say that all death situations should be designed out. Danger is inherent in drama, but danger should be survivable if the player is clever.

This is another one of the main complaints about Vespers -- death is a part of the game, and I'm not sure how clever you need to be to avoid it completely. I do agree that death or danger should be allowable, as long as it can be avoided through careful thought and consideration. We'll see how it goes over in the 3D game.

One of the most important keys to drama is timing. Anyone who has designed a story game knows that the player rarely does anything at the right time or in the right order...Give the player some slack when doing time-based puzzles.

Couple of interesting points here. First, he's right about drama and timing -- that's got to be one of the most difficult things to try and incorporate into a story game. It probably relates back to his point about players tending to do things other than what the designer intended, and that we just need to figure out how to deal with storytelling in this kind of interactive medium. But second, it's also interesting to consider the point about time-based puzzles, particularly since the IF version of Vespers is inherently turn-based, while the 3D game is more real-time (although actually it's more of a hybrid). Vespers does include what would be considered time-based puzzles, but that has been one of the challenges when adapting the game to 3D: how to deal with time-based puzzles that were originally turn-based, but are now essentially real-time. I still don't know how well those puzzles will be implemented and received.

The object of these games is to have fun. Figure out what the player is trying to do. If it is what the game wants, then help the player along and let it happen. The most common place this fails is in playing a meta-game called “second guess the parser.” If there is an object on the screen that looks like a box, but the parser is waiting for it to be called a mailbox, the player is going to spend a lot of time trying to get the game to do a task that should be transparent...On one occasion, I don’t know how much time I spent trying to tie a string on the end of a stick. I finally gave up, not knowing if I was wording the sentence wrong or if it was not part of the design. As it turned out, I was wording it wrong.

I point this out only because I think this is one area where IF has really advanced. I think most authors -- at least who have done more than just dabbled in IF -- have taken this gripe to heart and in my experience it's more of the exception rather than the rule to come upon a "guess the verb" or "guess the noun" problem. I think this is something that has kept a certain number of people away from IF for a long time, but I think those people would be pleasantly surprised at how infrequent this issue has become.

If I could have my way, I’d design games that were meant to be played in four to five hours. The games would be of the same scope that I currently design, I’d just remove the silly time-wasting puzzles and take the player for an intense ride. The experience they would leave with would be much more entertaining and a lot less frustrating. The games would still be challenging, but not at the expense of the players patience.

I find it interesting that he brought this up almost twenty years ago, but the shorter-style game really wasn't given much consideration (at least in the mainstream) until more recently -- Penny Arcade's new episodic game being one example, and the casual game market being another. That said, the IF Comp has existed for many years now, and those games are intended to be completed in two hours or less (Vespers being one of them) and I think players have come to really appreciate that. I think Vespers game play is probably more like 3-4 hours, but what Gilbert describes is exactly what I am aiming for with this game: a short but intense ride that avoids a lot of the typical trudge work in games.

If any type of game is going to bridge the gap between games and storytelling, it is most likely going to be adventure games. They will become less puzzle solving and more story telling, it is the blueprint the future will be made from. The thing we cannot forget is that we are here to entertain, and for most people, entertainment does not consist of nights and weekends filled with frustration.

Well, he's certainly right about all of that. I'm just wondering when that beautiful future will finally arrive!

Stan the Absentminded Kleptomaniac Journalist

It was a quiet Saturday evening, and since you had no plans, you decided to spend it with a good book on the sofa and a little classical music on the radio. You had just settled in when you heard a knock on the front door. It was your friend Stan. You hadn't seen him in a while, so it was nice to have him drop by without notice. You invited him in, and he obliged.

Oddly, Stan started scanning the foyer, taking it all in like he had never seen it before. He seemed to take particular notice of all the things there -- the ficus tree, the impressionist painting on the wall, the coat closet. That seemed a little strange to you, but the feeling soon passed. You invited him into the kitchen for something to drink.

When you reached the kitchen, you noticed Stan had not followed. You looked back and saw him still in the foyer. He took a moment to view the nice painting, and then, quite unexpectedly, he lifted the painting to look at the blank wall underneath. After replacing it, he then went to the closet and opened the door, scanning the coats and shoes you kept there. He spent a moment rummaging inside, and then quietly closed the door. Then, oddly, he began poking at the soil and dead leaves at the base of the ficus tree, almost expecting to find something there. When he finished, he took a minute to check all of his pockets, but all he seemed to have were his keys. Finally, he scanned the room once more, almost as if he temporarily forgot where he was. He spotted you waiting in the kitchen, so he apologized and joined you there.

Once in the kitchen, he did that odd scanning thing again, looking all around at everything. It was like he had never been in any kitchen before, much less yours. You went to the refrigerator to get him a glass of iced tea, and as you started pouring it, you noticed Stan out of the corner of your eye fingering the can opener you had left on the counter top. He quietly slipped it into his pocket.

"Did you need a can opener, Stan?" you delicately asked, quite certain you had never borrowed one from him at some point in the past.

"Yes, thanks, I hope that's okay," he said. As you reached to hand him his glass, you noticed he had already started opening some of the cabinets and drawers, leaving each one open as he went to the next.

"Is there something you're looking for?" you asked, now a bit concerned at his actions.

"Nothing specific," he said. "Don't mind me."

He opened the drawer by the kitchen phone and found the set of keys you keep there that unlock the door to the garage. Again, he quietly slipped them into his pocket, even as you watched him do it.

"Stan, those are my keys."

"Oh, don't worry, I'll return them," he responded. "What do they unlock, by the way?"

"I don't think--"

"That's okay, I'll figure it out later." He turned back to the phone, and saw your address book sitting next to it. He started flipping through the pages, curiously interested at the names and numbers inside. Maybe he thought you weren't looking his way, but again you watched as he slipped the address book into his coat pocket.

"Stan, what gives?" you asked. "I need that book."

"I told you, don't worry. You'll get it back eventually. Good tea, by the way."

He sat down at the kitchen table, so you warily followed and sat on the opposite side. Then, unexpectedly, Stan proceeded to grill you with a long series of questions about a wide variety of topics, one after the other. It was almost as if he was checking off a list as he went. The strangest part about it was that most of the questions were about things you thought he already should have known. It was like he was interviewing you for something, like a journalist might. When he finished you realized that you never had the chance to ask him anything yourself.

After the last question, Stan quickly stood up, thanked you for the drink, and walked back to the front door. After one last scan of the foyer and another check of his pockets, he walked out. Just like that, he left, with you still sitting at the kitchen table. And strangely (or perhaps not anymore, at least), he never bothered to close the door behind him.

-----

I suspect that, to a certain degree, this is what life might be like if you were an NPC in an interactive fiction game, and your friend was the player character. We as players exhibit some odd behavior in games. We're absentminded kleptomaniac journalists. I imagine our reaction in real life to a typical player character like this would be something like the astonishment portrayed above, and yet in most games the NPCs rarely respond in an appropriate way to our actions or behaviors, and just sit there blindly accepting it all.

As the Writers Cabal Blog has asked, what kind of NPCs do we want? How about NPCs that realize what we've done? NPCs who have moods and motivations that can shift based on how we interact with them, and as a result have a significant impact on our subsequent approach? NPCs that don't just act like errand dispensers or information booths?

It takes a lot of work and skill to create characters with personality, depth, and motivations of their own. Maybe not even a lot of work and skill, but an incredible amount of work and skill. But isn't that true for everything worthwhile?

Diamonds in The Rough

Diamonds in the Rough: This month’s Blogs of the Round Table invites you to discuss character flaws, or the lack thereof, in video game characters.

I particularly like this month's round table discussion, as some of my recent blogs have been about how games really need to start focusing more on characters and character interactions. In order for that approach to be successful, the characters in games need to have some depth to them, and flaws are an excellent way of adding depth and humanity to characters. My initial reaction to the round table topic is that I can't think of many games off the top of my head that include characters with notable flaws that are somehow significant to the narrative, but I'm guessing that's for two reasons: first, I really haven't played that many games, so perhaps I've just missed them, and second (and more likely), it's a reflection of how little emphasis has been placed on characters (and characterization) as a central developmental focus of most games.

I would also say that part of the issue with characterization and the use of character flaws in games is that, in my highly unscientific and poorly backed opinion, I would guess that the majority of this technique has been used with the player character specifically, moreso than the other characters in the game. After all, there aren't very many games (aside perhaps from CRPGs) where NPCs stick around for most or all of the game. In most cases, NPCs represent only brief or superficial encounters, and there isn't much opportunity to really develop NPCs with any depth. But as far as the player character is concerned, that is probably a different story -- but in those cases, you're now dealing with that nebulous barrier between the player and the character the player is playing, which can be a tricky thing. As a result, it's difficult to convincingly introduce a true character flaw to the player character in such a way that the player is encouraged to play along with it. After all, how many people want to take actions or make decisions in a game based on a defined flaw in their character, which could result in a less-than-ideal outcome? Particularly when the emphasis in so many games is on "winning".

I will say, however, that of all the different game types, interactive fiction probably has done the best job of characterization and the use of character flaws thus far. Well-known IF gems such as The Baron, Galatea, even Varicella and Rameses (and quite assuredly many more) all manage to incorporate and deal with major and minor character flaws in both NPCs and player characters to some degree, some more successfully than others. Perhaps it is the nature of the medium, perhaps it is a consequence of these games being created largely by writers rather than teams of programmers, designers, and artists. I'm not sure, but I know I have yet to play a graphical game that deals with the nuance of character the same way that some IF games have so far been able to.

Of course, that naturally leads me to think more about Vespers. The game received a lot of recognition for the NPCs, including the "Best NPCs" award at the XYZZYs that year, and I think Jason did a great job fleshing them out -- including the player character. But even so, it's tough to identify any true character flaws that come into serious play. Constantin's short temper, Drogo's insanity -- these really come across as features more than pure flaws, and for those of you who are familiar with the game, most of the outcomes during the game are dictated not necessarily by character flaws but more from certain external forces. This also would hold true for the player character, the Abbot, although it could be argued that the setting for the beginning of the game -- the Abbot choosing to close off the monastery to the villagers -- is one of the main precipitants for the events that follow, and may be due to a flaw in the Abbot's decision-making capacity. But even then, it comes across as more of a bad choice made in desperation, not necessarily the result of a particular flaw.

This post is a response to the May ‘08 topic from Blogs of the Round Table. You can see other entries on this subject in the drop down box below, which will update automatically with each new post.

Drama and Choice in Games

An interesting blog discussion is forming between TRC (over at Tales of the Rampant Coyote) and Scorpia (over at her lair) about the apparent conflict between drama and fun in games, and the differences between heroes in movies (who often start off as accomplished heroes) and heroes in games (who typically must work their way up from the embarrassment of "level one").

Mostly, the two points being made are that (1) conventional stories where the protagonist or hero never suffers setbacks or defeats are dull, and (2) games typically allow players to proceed through the game story without having to suffer these setbacks (mostly via save and reload). The player's constant desire to win -- and the ever-present ability to save and restore -- negates any of the story- or drama-building effects of setbacks or defeats.

The result is that game designers must force these defeats upon players through non-interactive cutscenes that are built into the storyline and have to be accepted by players. Or, perhaps, to come up with some kind of system (like TRC's "drama stars" in Frayed Knights) that forces players to weigh different options when it comes to dealing with setbacks.

Scorpia's counter-argument, if I'm interpreting correctly, is that "we must [already] endure endless combats and trivial errand-running to reach our goal. That is certainly work enough; why make it any more difficult?"

Rather than diving into that debate, I thought I would take a step back and consider the situation from a more general perspective, rather than the RPG-centric focus that their discussions typically have. After all, many other game genres (including FPS and adventure games, including interactive fiction) try to introduce failure or setbacks into gameplay, and these usually are just treated the same way as in RPG games, with a save/restore or, in the case of IF, a simple "undo" command.

The existence of save/restore/undo, in fact, is one of the strongest arguments for why there is no true choice in games. And this is what this discussion is really about, isn't it? Choice. As Emily Short once described it:

choice: challenging the player to prefer one outcome of the story over another, and in the process to consider the implications of doing so.

Whether that choice involves accepting a particular outcome of an encounter, or making a particularly important decision of morality, it's essentially the same: the player choosing one path over another. Part of the problem is that, in many games, this choice comes down to a black and white decision related to winning or losing; in most of those cases, the constant desire to win (it's a game, after all) will drive players to restore or undo and try again. But, as Victor Gijsbers has pointed out in the past:

...there have been games that no longer challenge the player to reach the ideal ending: sometimes, choosing which ending is the best one is itself the most important act of the game.

A particularly important response to this, as it appeared on rec.arts.int-fiction, was:

Choice is meaningful in real life only if it is excluding and irrevocable...When you apply the concept of choice to interactive fiction, you'll notice that, from a player's point of view, choice is never excluding and always revocable. Thanks to RESTART, UNDO, SAVE and RESTORE, choice in IF is meaningless.

As it is, arguably, in just about any game genre. This was also expressed quite well by Stephen Bond, also in reference to the world of interactive fiction, but which could also easily apply to practically any game genre:

Morality involves choice, and in IF there usually isn't any real choice. In the new moral IF, I just try all the options without any moral commitment, safe in the knowledge that I can undo and try again, which distances me from my character, and distances me from the game.

The point of all this, I suppose, is to argue that by offering so much player choice -- at least, in the form of save/restore/undo -- the impact of those choices is diminished. And the impact of those choices is where the real treasure is found, in the form of the emotional engagement of the player. The more meaningless that choice is, the less the emotional engagement, and the less impact the experience (story) has on the player.

But importantly, as Scorpia points out:

What we need - as I’ve said before - is less fighting and errand-running, and more interaction with people. A failure of some kind there could open a new story line, rather than just calling for a “reload and try again” situation.

And, in a different but related post:

I think we know that real drama, real tension, comes mainly from the interactions of people with each other. Let’s face it, not getting that lock open is hardly a matter for drama, unless saving the world depends upon it. And you just know you’ll reload if the first try doesn’t work.

Although I agree entirely with these statements, it brings up two very important questions:

1. How do we effectively design interactions with people in games? and
2. How do we design those interactions so that the outcomes are meaningful in the setting of a game that allows save/restore/undo?

After all, I think that NPC interactions are one of the most unsatisfying areas in game design today, and in my opinion, if there is going to be one major advance in game design and gameplay it's going to have to come from this area.

You Want Art With Those Games? (Part 2)

This is the second part of a series of blogs that aim to contribute yet more internet detritus to everybody's favorite age-old argument: Seriously, are computer games an art form?

Part 2: "Games as Art" = "Games as Storytelling Medium"

In Part 1, I proposed that computer/videogames are not yet a true art form, but are capable of being one. To do so a game will need to come along that has a substantial impact on its players because of its beauty, insight, or emotional power, in the same manner as some of the successful works from other forms of traditional media like film, theater, or literature. Without a form-defining piece, the medium will likely continue to make some advances and convince some individuals, but fail to achieve widespread acceptance by the public as a true art form.

For a game to have this kind of impact on its players, the experience of playing the game must be compelling, and that experience is embodied in the communication that takes place between the game (and its designers, writers, artists, etc) and the player. Unlike most traditional media, however, in games this communication is inherently bidirectional, which is perhaps gaming's most unique characteristic. To me, the two most important components of that communication, and thus the experience of playing, are storytelling and gameplay. Both must be compelling for a game to succeed in impacting players, and both should be outstanding for a game to achieve recognition as a true form-defining piece. Too often we see games that seem to focus on one preferentially, resulting in experiences that are fun or entertaining, but still leave something to be desired.

Much of the conversation about "games as art" has focused on the consideration of games as storytelling devices, in much the same way that theater, film, and literature are storytelling devices. Part of the ongoing debate is that it's not generally accepted that games are, or at least can be, effective storytelling devices, and this has led to the profusion of blogs, esssays, opinion pieces, and lectures on such topics as can games tell stories, how games should tell stories, and how games can tell better stories. Nevertheless, if games aspire to the level of a new art form, my sense (as that of others) is that we first need to fully embrace the premise that games are storytelling devices, and then to understand and explore that domain in considerable depth, until we begin to see games that affect us in powerful ways.

Storytelling in games has been covered at length by a number of people with far more expertise than me in writing, storytelling, and game development. Some of the more provocative work, in my mind, has been from people like Corvus Elrod (and his white paper on the story-plot-narrative model); Mark Reidl (who, with others like Andrew Stern, has written pieces on character-focused narrative generation); Ivo Swartjes (and his published works on virtual storytelling and emergent narrative); and, of course, Chris Crawford (for better or for worse). Most of my thoughts here are essentially a synthesis of the information derived from these writings and others.

Elrod, Riedl, and Swartjes have spent a good deal of time individually discussing their conceptions of the structure and components of storytelling, which I think are relevant here. Elrod, for instance, defines the three elements of storytelling as narrative (the physical components of the storytelling process, the medium presented to the audience -- including, in games, the user interface and art assets, for example), plot (the planned events of the narrative and the order in which they ought to occur), and story (the emotional experience of the narrative, the intended emotional experience which the storyteller hopes to convey). According to Elrod, "whereas Plot is concerned with the literal unfolding of events, Story addresses the emotional progression of events throughout the narrative."

This is interesting when juxtaposed with the work by Riedl (and later Swartjes), who both refer to the schema of Mieke Bal which seeks to define the components of narrative, which here is "the recounting of one or more real or fictitious events, usually oriented around a single goal, that are related to each other temporally and causally" (which I have always considered similar to my own definition of story). In this model, narrative is decomposed into the three components of fabula (the sequence of events that take place in the story world -- some of which are exposed, and some of which are hidden), story (the expression or exposure of the fabula through a particular viewpoint), and text (the specific wording and phraseology chosen to tell the story). Swartjes takes an additional step by reassigning these components as fabula, plot, and presentation, where plot is now a selection of the fabula that forms a consistent and coherent whole (where many plots can exist within the fabula), and presentation is the information needed for the actual delivery of the plot in the chosen medium.

The parallels and overlaps between Elrod's model and those used by Riedl and Swartjes are not altogether straightforward, but the purpose here is not necessarily to contrast these models, but rather to (trudgingly) point out the fact that it is sometimes difficult to discuss the concepts of storytelling because of the many ways in which individuals refer to the terms and components. A discussion of narrative from one viewpoint, for instance, might be about something distinctly different than from another; likewise, even using the term storytelling can be confusing because of differing views (including my own) of the term story. In attempting to distill these various schemata into what I think are the important concepts (rather than the terms), I found these four essential elements:

1. all factual events that take place, both exposed to and hidden from the audience, and the order in which they (ought to) occur;
   
2. a subset of #1 which forms a coherent whole, often as seen from a particular viewpoint;
   
3. the medium and physical components used in the presentation to the audience; and
   
4. the intended emotional experience to be conveyed.

Putting specific labels on these concepts will certainly only confuse more than clarify, but nevertheless (for this discussion, at least) I visualize #1 as the omniscience; #2 as the plot; #3 as the medium, and #4 as the impact. To me, when a plot becomes expressed through a particular medium and with an intended impact, it becomes a story. This process of expression is what I think of as storytelling. (As for narrative, I find it curiously difficult to find a unique place for it. I guess I have always considered it to be equivalent to story, and that has not yet changed.)

Right. I'm sure that's all crystal clear now, so we might as well return to the actual discussion at hand.

As above, in my mind, for computer gaming to achieve widespread acceptance as an art form, the experience of playing games has to deliver beauty, insight, or emotional power to its audience, and that experience is embodied in the communication that takes place between game and player. Storytelling and gameplay constitute that communication. The communication is the key -- it is, as I've argued in part one, one of the primary elements of art. Currently, games don't accomplish this communication well enough. But they can -- it just will take a concentrated effort to explore, understand, and refine storytelling and gameplay, and particularly how the two can and should synergize.

With respect to storytelling, if the presumption is made that games are storytelling devices (and the impression I have is that many are already on board with this idea), where might the failure thus far be? You can argue that games already do tell stories; the concepts above of omniscience, plot, medium, and impact are all, to varying degrees, represented in the body of computer games. It seems to me, however, that it is in the impact -- the emotional experience, Elrod's concept of story, the answer to the question, "What is the game actually about?" -- where most games fail. The reasons for this are varied; in some cases, there is underdevelopment or little emphasis placed on the emotional experience, or the intended impact is somehow never realized (often because of other components such as medium or gameplay). But to me the real problem with impact, the intended emotional experience, is that it just isn't profound enough. Too simple, too shallow, too trivial. Developers just haven't figured out how to set the bar high enough.

Why not? This is where, to me, the writing of Chris Crawford is most relevant. Crawford has a lot of opinions on games and storytelling, but if you pick through the chaff you'll find what I consider his most worthwhile observation, the simple, basic truth that stories are about the most fascinating thing in the universe: people. It's the first of his nine breakthroughs (related to his Storytron), the focus of his book on interactive storytelling. And I think it's a critical concept, the one thing which games have not quite figured out.

As Crawford states, "This simple truth...explains the utter failure of games to incorporate storytelling in any but the most mechanical and forced manner." In games, people are, generally speaking, an afterthought -- a cardboard representation. Games, he argues, concern themselves primarily with objects rather than people. But if you look at other forms of media -- theater, film, and literature -- and the works that have truly powerful impact, these are predominantly about people, their emotions, and their relationships, not objects. "Casablanca", "Romeo & Juliet", "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- when you ask, "What are these works about?" the answer is almost universally an exploration of people, their feelings, and their relationships. There are works that focus on or incorporate objects, for certain -- the conch in "Lord of the Flies", or the One Ring in "Lord of the Rings" -- but for the most part these objects do not play central roles; they are metaphors, devices used to assist the larger story about the people and their experiences.

This is not a new thought, of course -- people have been criticizing the shallowness of NPCs and clamoring for more realistic and interactive characters for some time. But people are hard. Modeling people well is difficult; implementing satisfying interaction with people is even more difficult. Creating a game that includes strong models of people, satisfying interaction with people, and which is primarily about people -- that is apparently still out of reach. Yet, this to me remains the one concept that games must embrace and explore in order to achieve the same kind of impact, or emotional experience, that is possible in other forms of media. That will raise the bar, and will get people to stand up and take notice.

Of course, this is not to say that games have not yet begun to explore this area. Mateas and Stern's Facade received a great deal of attention and recognition for being just this: a game about people, where the goal is to interact with them to explore and influence their relationship. This is where I think the game can and should have its greatest influence on the games industry, and in that respect I think it is truly avant-garde. But it is only a step in the right direction; the impact is still fairly shallow, and there are a number of issues with gameplay that limit its effectiveness.

Other recent games that are getting attention around the web are Jason Rohrer's The Passage and Harvey and Samyn's The Graveyard. Both focus on an exploration of people and their relationships, and as with Facade, these are remarkable steps in the right direction. But also as with Facade, limitations with their gameplay essentially restrict the overall experience, and the result is two enjoyable but not quite powerful games.

A number of works of interactive fiction have, for some time, explored the idea of focusing on people and their relationships. Probably the most recognized is Emily Short's Galatea, which she describes as "a conversation with a work of art": a single conversation with a single character, which can end many different ways based on the actions of the player. What I find interesting about it is that the conversation centers around the character's relationship with her creator, and because of that the game provides the sense of considerable depth. It is a short game, however, and as such the depth of it is not as extensive as one might hope in order to achieve a powerful impact. Still, this is a piece that was released some eight years ago now; it is interesting to note that, in the years since, few game authors and designers have picked up on the ideas and techniques offered by this game in terms of its ability to tell a good story about people.

Numerous other works of IF have ventured into this area as well, and perhaps because of this the games industry as a whole might benefit from looking more closely at what IF can do and how it does it. People like Crawford, in my opinion, dismiss interactive fiction too quickly; Crawford devotes less than two pages in his book on interactive storytelling to IF, disregarding it without any insightful explanation or discussion:

"Interactive fiction is certainly interactive, and it's fictional in the sense of being made up, but it's certainly not storytelling...the actual creations remain elaborate puzzles."

It is a relatively shallow evaluation of the medium, using only one or two examples to draw generalizations and conclusions about the medium as a whole. An excellent and thorough review of Crawford's book was done by Emily Short on her blog about a year ago, and as she summarized well: "Crawford has strong opinions about what type of thing interactive storytelling is, how it might be achieved, and why most of the current efforts are sad failures. They are sometimes aggravatingly unsubstantiated."

Nevertheless, the point remains that games just haven't done a good enough job at storytelling, and storytelling is the key pathway to a new art form. The "games as art" discussion has to be about "games as storytelling devices", which means we need to see more games that focus on people, their emotions, and their relationships. And that, in turn, means we need to find better ways of designing games to be about people, better ways of modeling those people, and better ways of creating satisfying interactions with those people. Small steps are being taken, and some games do some of these things well, but we have yet to see a game that does all of these things well enough to produce a truly powerful experience.

As we'll explore later, there is also the other element of the communication between game and player that has an equally vital role: gameplay.

Next: Part 3: The Synergy of Storytelling and Gameplay

You Want Art With Those Games?

This is the first part of a series of blogs that aim to contribute yet more internet detritus to everybody's favorite age-old argument: Seriously, are computer games an art form?

Part 1: Games Are Not An Art Form

By now I would guess that most people with a finger on the pulse of the computer/videogame industry have the sense that there is a growing movement for this medium to be regarded as something more than a hollow, trivial pastime. The "Games as Art" debate has certainly been ongoing for some time now, and unfortunately for everyone I feel the burning need to chime in. Part of the argument that games are not, and perhaps never will be, considered a true art form is that the medium has yet to produce any works of timeless relevance, unlike more traditional media like theater, film, and literature. In other words, the experiences provided by games have yet to (and perhaps cannot) achieve the same level of distinction as that produced in traditional media. But if games, as some (including myself) contend, do have the capacity to produce powerful experiences, why have we not yet seen works capable of attaining the status of an enduring classic? Is it possible for a game to be regarded in the same light as a "Casablanca", "Romeo & Juliet", or "To Kill A Mockingbird"? Can a game establish itself as a popular "classic", a widely accepted work of art? And does a game even need to achieve such lofty status in order for the medium as a whole to be considered an art form of its own?

I think to begin exploring these questions, it first would help to establish what I mean by some of these terms -- the most important being what I mean by "art". Of course, attempting to define the term "art" is problematic, to say the least; it means many different things to different people, and one simplistic definition here will assuredly be insufficient in some way. Still, when I speak here of art I am generally alluding to the fine arts, or rather a generous appreciation of what constitutes fine art, to the inclusion of such forms as painting, sculpture, dance, theater, architecture, cinematography, photography, drawing, poetry, and literature (or creative writing). In this respect, I think of art as an aesthetic expression of an individual or group (whether visible, tangible, or abstract) that can be appreciated by others for its beauty, insight, or emotional power. Although Tolstoy's dogmatic definition of art from 1896 leaves a great deal open to debate, he does touch upon what I think are some key components of art: a means of intercourse between man and man, based on the capacity of one man to receive another man's expression of feeling and to experience those feelings himself. There is an appreciation that art stimulates the human senses and mind, by transmitting emotions and/or ideas, and in that respect art is a form of communication between artist and audience.

With this definition of art in hand, an assessment of the body of work that constitutes computer games would, in my mind, conclude that this medium very much has the capacity to be an art form. But as with my contention above, that games have "the capacity to produce powerful experiences," there are two implications here: first, that no game has yet been able to produce a truly powerful experience; and second, that such a compelling work must exist before this form of entertainment is given serious consideration as a true art form.

With respect to the former, it's difficult to submit any examples of games that truly convey some meaningful expression about the human condition that is in the same zip code as some of the classics mentioned above; I think some games have begun to tread in this territory, and from the discussions around the net it would seem that this is a target firmly within many game developers' sights. As for the latter, I suspect the statement will elicit some debate, but I contend that it is the major obstacle to the widespread acceptance of games as a new, true art form. I think many game developers and players would argue that some games -- Jason Rohrer's Passage, for instance -- should already be considered works of art given their characteristics and accomplishments. And perhaps from the perspective of the restricted community of game developers and players, they may be. But until there is a game whose impact and reach is powerful enough to extend beyond this focused (and perhaps biased) group, we'll only continue to have our simple games, thoughtful games, exciting games, and even beautiful games, but nothing widely appreciated by the public at large as "art".

Nevertheless, as stated above I will contend that within the medium of games there is the capacity to generate a work of substantive beauty, insight, or emotional power. I believe it is possible, and that it will happen eventually. But not until two things occur: first, games figure out how to be more about people rather than objects; and second, we develop a deeper and more meaningful understanding of that unique aspect of games that separates them from other traditional forms of entertainment: the role and use of interaction.

Next: Part 2: "Games as Art" = "Games as Storytelling Medium"

More on Game Writers, Game Designers

As expected, the response to Adam Maxwell's opinion piece that I mentioned previously has been swift and zealous. The article continued to elicit powerful responses on GameSetWatch, including an impressively long entry from Era, with this excerpt:

"Interactivity does not have to suffer from linearity. Interactivity does not equate to choice. Very common misconceptions plaguing both designers and people on the outside looking in. Our medium can be used for more than point/goal based competitions. We don't have to have everything fit into the standard control schemes for platformers, action games, racers or shooters. We can restrict control just as the director restricts a camera to a specific scene. We can restrict the camera on top of control too, but don't remove any of that for the sake of narration."

The piece was also reprinted over on Gamasutra, where, naturally, it triggered a shitstorm of response. I suggest flipping through the comments for fun and entertainment, but for those with better things to do with their time, some of the more interesting responses include:

"To my mind, this is a lot like someone working in the movies saying "Why hire a costume designer when I can just hire an actor who can sew?" Writing is clearly not the art of paramount importance in a game. Bad to mediocre writing will seldom ruin an otherwise good game, much like bad to mediocre costume design will seldom ruin an otherwise good movie. But really good writing will add to a game, just like really good costume design will add to a movie."

"He's right that talking to people takes time away from "balancing weapons." And that as a designer, he's probably got a lot of different teams to talk to. But isn't that just part of his job? If he doesn't like managing people, shouldn't he go do something else?"

"Anyone who says "The work of the writer is inherently linear" has neither read nor thought widely enough to comment on writing."

"This article assumes that game writers have no idea they are in the game industry--that they just one day woke up and started working on a game, while yesterday they were still writing screenplays for film or prose for a novel. If a company is hiring writers that have no understanding of how video games are made, or how important the gameplay experience is, then it's the company's fault for hiring the wrong kind of writers."

"If your point is that a good writer/designer is more valuable than just a good writer, point taken... but if your point is that good writing in games has no value, then you couldn't be more wrong."

And on and on and on. Still, despite Adam's assertion that his piece was intentionally provocative, and not to be denied the last word, GameSetWatch has provided a rebuttal from Brainstem Games' Ron Toland, which formalizes many of the comments being spewed about on web sites across the intertube. To wit:

"Game development teams give us new games to play. You can't have a game without programmers. A game without artists is going to look terrible. A game without designers won't have good mechanics. A game without sound designers is going to sound cheesy. A game without writers (or someone acting as the writer, even if they're called a designer or narrative designer or scribbler-in-chief) will probably be full of clichés. Just like movies, games require a lot of different disciplines to come together and make something fantastic."

Interestingly, Adam gave some additional thoughts on his personal blog afterward, clarifying some of his impressions about why writing in games isn't where it needs to be. He puts the blame on linear narrative, and specifically, "conventional writers and their influence on our chosen medium of expression." Not exactly new thoughts, and neither is his main point, that games can excel by collaborating with players to create the narrative of the game:

"I am sure there are specialist writers out there who can do this, but I also know there are plenty of people working in the industry already who can do it – these people tend to be designers, engineers, scripters, or artists… They are people who understand what games are and how you can use them to collaborate with the player to elicit narrative not from some artificial story channel, but through the act of play itself."

There are a number of people who already subscribe to this approach, although I still have a tough time getting past a disturbingly vague notion of its representation in the real world. It's an ideal that I want to believe in, but without knowing for certain what it really is or might be, I find it difficult to make that leap.

What I did find most fascinating about this dialogue is that it brought out an abundance of posts on the topic of linearity vs. non-linearity in game narrative, and I'm finding that perhaps what many people believe is non-linear (in gaming terms) is actually a form of linear narrative. Sounds like it could be a good discussion. More on this later.

Game Writers, Game Designers

There's an interesting blog tête-à-tête underway, triggered by a (perhaps intentionally) provocative opinion piece by Adam Maxwell over at GameSetWatch on "The Case Against Writers In The Games Industry." In it, Adam makes an argument that writers are perhaps an unnecessary part of game development, and that game designers offer more bang for the buck, at least as far as he's concerned:

"For the same price (sometimes cheaper, I’m sad to say), you can hire a designer who is also an unsung writing hero (they exist in far larger numbers than anyone wants to give the industry credit for) and when the story is done, that same designer can be there to throw his lot into the fire with the rest of the designers and actually make the game fun. He can be re-tasked as needed, and he can be useful at every stage of development.

"For those reasons, and maybe even a few more, my money is on the designer over the writer, every time."

Needless to say, it has provoked a number of opposing comments on the GSW site, with which I mostly agree. A good example to summarize them would be this excerpt from steve:

"This kind of thinking is prevalent in the industry, and while it certainly has some legitimate points (the last one being perhaps most important), it also explains why so many game stories/plots/bits of dialogue suck."

Adam really misses the mark on this one, but I suspect his piece was at least partially intended to raise a few hackles. It was actually an adaptation of a post he made on his own personal blog site, where he is essentially playing Devil's Advocate; in the comments section there, he notes:

"As expected, I annoyed, infuriated and challenged a lot of people with this. To those people I will say: I'm glad.

"The point of the article is to challenge the assumptions made by many in this industry about the point of writers, the role they fill and what they bring to the table. To be more effective and, honestly, more useful to this industry the world's writers need to focus more on how games work and learn to adapt their writing to accommodate that."

He goes on to make some important points about writing for games, which are really the points that a lot of us have been trying to make for some time; that there is a big difference between static writing and game writing, and that a truly successful interactive experience requires a frameshift in the approach to game writing. Still, I can't help but be frustrated that so many of us seem to grasp the notion of what we want, without having any real idea about how to get there.

It's no secret that Vespers follows a fairly linear path, as far as games go, but I think the fact that it is based on a game written by a writer of interactive fiction gives it a stronger literary base than most games out there, and because of that I think it works really well. Nevertheless, it's uncertain if or how it will contribute to this frameshift.

My first thought on reading Adam's piece was the impending maelstrom of responses, particularly from the game writers out there. My thoughts immediately turned to the Writer's Cabal blog from Sande Chen and Anne Toole, two writers with a great deal of experience with writing for games, and they did not disappoint. They came back with a point-for-point rebuttal, with some great insights such as:

"Adam seems to misunderstand the writer’s role. The best writers don’t just throw some story and dialog over the wall and go home. Games create emotion — you can’t escape that. The developer’s job is to identify what emotion the game should elicit, then use every tool at his/her disposal to get there. If you want the player to feel heroic, you can design it in, draw it in, write it in, sing it in, or all of the above. This is what great writer/narrative designers can do: help you create this emotion across all disciplines. After all, are you in this industry to make okay games, or to make great games?"

I expect we'll be hearing about and reading a lot more responses to Adam's piece, so in that respect I think he will have succeeded in his likely goal of getting the attention he desired -- but also, to be fair, of casting a brighter light on the topic of writing for games and the ultimate goal of figuring out just how exactly to maximize its impact in this new medium.

The Quest for Story in Games, Redux

Over on Tales of The Rampant Coyote, Jay Barnson decided it was time to revisit the problem of stories in games, taking a decidedly pessimistic stance. It generated a great deal of lively, insightful discussion. I'd say he made some reasonable points, summarized nicely in (and by) the section subtly titled, "You'll Never Find a Game With a Great Story":

"...the quest for "better story" in video games is doomed for failure. The very criteria and tools we use to judge story is based on linear storytelling which is at odds with nature of our medium. But this dead-end warning sign seems to be lost on most designers and publishers."

I agree for the most part. It's a topic that I've enjoyed thinking about and discussing since beginning the Vespers project some time ago. Stories in games is a hot topic these days, it seems, with panel discussions at GDC and opinion pieces in the mainstream media, like the op-ed last fall by Daniel Radosh in the NY Times, in which he makes a point similar to the one above:

"Many games now aspire to be 'cinematic' above all else. In Halo 3, as in most games, the plot is conveyed largely through short expositional movies that are interspersed throughout the action. These cut scenes undermine the sense of involvement — of play — that is games’ authentic métier...Because game designers rely on the language of cinema, they have not sufficiently developed a new form of storytelling based on the language of video games."

People love stories -- we love experiencing them, and we love telling them. We love books and movies and theater, because they draw us in, entertain, make us feel and care and think. They connect people in these ways. Game developers have always felt that we can do that in games, as well, in a way that better engages the audience, draws them in more closely to the story -- presumably because now they participate in its creation, development, and telling.

Sounds nice, but the medium is fundamentally different.

Michael Matteas, of Façade fame, summarized it well in his 2002 dissertation entitled "Interactive Drama, Art and Artificial Intelligence", in Chapter 2, "Interaction and Narrative":

"The ephemeral quality of gameplay, the experience of manipulating elements within a responsive, rule-driven world, is still the raison d’être of games, perhaps the primary phenomenological feature that uniquely identifies the computer game as a medium. Where gameplay is all about interactivity, narrative is all about predestination."

Predestination. Traditional narrative is linear, tightly controlled, deterministic. Interactivity is non-linear, unpredictable, stochastic. By adding interactivity to narrative, we introduce unpredictability to something that is, by design, predetermined. As Jay said in his blog, "In some ways, I think game developers are trying too hard. They are over-applying the rules of linear storytelling to a degree that it distracts from the point of a game - to be interactive. The stories need to be interactive, too." That's the fundamental difference, I think. The stories we are typically trying to shoehorn into games are the traditional, linear, deterministic kind.

Some of the things that work so well with traditional narrative don't lend themselves well to the unpredictable. Many of the strongest moments in literature, movies, and theater are those that are subject to the direction and vision of the artist, and which rely on tightly controlled elements like timing and framing. For instance, timing is critical to so many things in traditional narrative; the pace of the words as they roll off the page, the sequence of camera shots during a movie scene, the timing of comedic and dramatic dialogue. Interactivity can disrupt much of these effects and reduce the impact of the traditional narrative.

As we know, the results of this are games where the player's role is to gradually reveal portions of a predetermined narrative. The narrative may have multiple, exclusive branches and different endings, but these are all still preprogrammed and predetermined; the actions or choices of the audience merely link together different sections of coded narrative to create a particular path. The result, too often, is still an overall sense of linearity. And while linearity itself is not necessarily undesirable, the interactivity of games gives players the impression that their actions can and should have more of an impact on the resulting narrative. In the end, players often see through this simple mechanic, and sense that the narrative experienced, despite all of their choices and actions, was still predestined.

What I think a lot of people are seeking is the concept, as described by Matteas and others, of emergent or player-constructed narrative, where players fabricate their own narratives, or groups of players engage in the shared social construction of narratives. I think this is what Jay refers to when he speaks of how "the stories need to be interactive, too." The drawback -- and benefit -- of this type of design is that it sacrifices predetermination for unpredictability. The former is easier; it's what writers and designers are used to. The latter is considerably more difficult. Games need to be designed to respond to the input of the player; that's the nature of interactivity. The more this input is constrained, the less satisfying the interaction is for the player. The more freedom we give to players, the more difficult it is to design the game such that it responds in ways that are coherent and desirable for the resulting narrative. That's a tough task, and obviously one that we haven't figured out yet.

Still, I'm not quite as pessimistic as Jay. I think players can have a satisfying and enjoyable experience with games that provide some interaction within the framework of a (mostly) predetermined narrative. I think a number of IF games do this well, as well as some graphical adventure games. I think at least part of the problem we're seeing is the lack of prioritization of writing in game development; once writing begins to be taken more seriously, I think the quality of the narrative experience in games will improve, even if they remain largely linear experiences.

It remains to be seen what that "new form of storytelling based on the language of video games" will be, and what developers will do to make stories (as opposed to games) more interactive. Is truly emergent narrative an attainable goal? Or better yet, is it really a desirable goal? Is it the answer to better stories in games? I'm not so sure about that.

Perhaps part of the problem is that we only have a vague notion of what it is that we want as gamers.