Game Writing. Narrative skills for videogames.

The book I reviewed today is “Game Writing: Narrative skills for videogames.” by a lot of different authors with the gaming industry background. As its name suggests it is a book about narrative in videogames. Hopefully I will find there some useful information.

Characters:

-          Game characters should be designed in a way that makes players care about them, so they are motivated to interact with them, (either help or fight with them), whatever they are enemies or allies.

-          The character is vital in creating the framework of the narrative.

-          “The narrative needs to be constructed with the notion that the player will do, not observe; will act, not listen.” 

    Narrative:

-          The author listed few types of game narrative. Implicit narrative, formal narrative, interactive narrative and interactive story. I will focus on the first one.

-          “Implicit narrative involves the interaction of elements within the game system to develop events that may be interpreted by the player as a story.”

-          The narrative and story is built with gameplay.

Scripted Events:

- Players have choice whatever to watch, or interact with presented events. They might miss them, so it is important to place them where players will most likely look.

- Tunnel players towards those sections.

- They should be short, so players don't lose interest. Though from my experience I know that is not always the case. It depends on the content presented. I remember that on more than one occasion while playing a game like The Witcher I stopped to listen to NPCs’ conversation and those are also scripted events, and part of world building.

- Taking control from the player is tricky and can be very frustrating for the player. The author claims it’s sometimes necessary to avoid a situation when the player will try to achieve something he/she is not supposed to do. Though in my opinion game designers and writers should strive to avoid taking control from the player, at least if it's not contextualise in a story.

- Taking control from the players can ensure that players will hear the vital part of narration.

- The author describes like some ways of making sure that information will come through to the player, (like NPC repeating vital part of the dialog) can be immersion breaking, but he claims it might be better to rely on method like that than risk the players won't know what is expected of them.

- The author claims that controlling the experience guarantees that the players get the information at the correct moment. Which is true, and it is something I would like to do for my game project, however, in a way that doesn't destroy the feeling of freedom.

- In the author opinion cut scene can serve as a reward for completing a section of gameplay. Although I don't want to make cut scene I probably do some scripted events that will serve the same purpose.

Danger of Removing Player Control:

- Removing the player’s control and interrupting gameplay with cut scene or non-interracial scripted events can hurt the pacing of the narrative, thus decreasing player’s involvement in the story.

- Removing the player’s control to impose a forced failure, a situation where the player can’t accomplish a certain goal, no matter what, can be very frustrating and have to be handled carefully.

- It can be frustrating for the player if during cut scene the avatar performs actions that it can’t do during gameplay sequences.

Nonlinear Game Narrative:

Although my aim is to create a linear game, it will be beneficial to me to study nonlinear approach.

The author writes about a different approach to creating a story in nonlinear games.

- There is a technique called "gating the story" where the plot unfolds as a series of linear checkpoints player unlock by completing a gameplay sequence in any order. As an advantage of this approach the author points out it is an easy to implement, but at the same time very risky, because the gameplay can contradict the plot sequences.

- Another approach is "the branching story structure". But it requires putting a lot of resources in sequences and assets that some players won't ever see. I don't think it is a problem for good games. Because players might want to replay them to see everything anyway. I understand the reality of the market, but we still should strive to create "good games", good experience.

- The last approach is called "a branching story structure" which presents the same problems that the former technique but offers more control over the players' experience.

- One other approach that the author doesn't write about, but I think has potential to be very powerful, is to focus the story on the NPC's questlines. As it's done in souls’ series.
In the future, I'll make a separate post about good design techniques presented in that series.

Bateman, C. (2006) Game writing: Narrative skills for videogames. Edited by Chris Bateman Chris Editor. Boston, MA: Charles River Media.

In-text citations:

• (Bateman, 2006)