Like a dog wandering amidst the plains and trenches of sleep, there has been something kicking away in the coils of my mind for a very long time. Well, at least since last year. Last year I began embarking on a project that asked myself to find the very root of fear, and recreate it within a game. The game never happened. Incidentally I wandered off on what was a surprisingly contentious emotional catharsis relating to the ideas that this game had sprouted. At the time I may have been pursuing the game because I felt aggravated with the way that a lot of independent developers were being deliberately obtuse for their own hypothetical indie-cred. Then I realised I was probably being a dick. Developers don’t develop games because they want to enforce their own brand of obscurity across the denizens of the internet, they do it because they believe in something personal. I feel that a better way of examining the situation is through a healthy, caustic dose of introspection, and what better way of doing that than pulling on the roots of the idea, hoping they’re attached to something interesting.
The idea struck me that I really needed to recreate this game. Next year I’m suiting up for university -a bachelor of game design and interactive entertainment – and I’ve realised that despite my commitment to the industry, and my delusions of grandeur, I hardly have a game to my name. Perhaps my decision to integrate into the scene was blatantly selfish, but once I submerged myself within the ideologies of the game once more, it all felt right again.
I needed to create a game that probed the depths of the player’s emotional response, but I was unsure of what would bind it all together. The 2D sidescroller may have had the scope to allow no explicit story, and instead a distorted exposition of a metanarrative, but I guess the idea of the original was to allow the player the freedom to craft their own interpretation; their own personal narrative. Now that I have stepped into the broad expanses of the 3D source engine, I feel as if old dilemmas are reopening with the need to deal with a less focussed, and less linear experience.
The lack of a solid narrative worked within the original, because it was a short, linear and stylish experience for the player to lose themselves in. I’d be making a mistake if I didn’t cite Passage here (and despite my prior hang-ups) as it managed to deliver emotion in a way that could never accurately translate into the third dimension. In looking at the game from this perspective, Passage, and therefore the original version of my game, were self-contained experiences that didn’t rely on the extended attention of the player to impart their mood. Conversely, the translation into 3D, places the player into a much more realistic environment in which they attempt to associate with.
The issue at hand is that there is a permanent physical barrier between player and game, and no matter how immersive the game may be, the player can forcibly detach themself at will. This means that the attachment of the experience itself is not necessarily enough to keep the player engaged for the duration of the game. Dear Esther embraced the balance of the experience and the plot by delivering narrative through a voiceover, that in turn, allowed them to make their own interpretation of both the narrative and the island that they were exploring. Had the original narrative been left solely to visual prompts, it would have likely faced either loss of meaning or overcomplication seeing as it embodied quite an ambiguous tale. However, it could be said that in its current form, the story itself was not ideal as it provided a considerable amount of confusion, that was only visually clarified in moderation. Ultimately, Dear Esther provided a short, thoughtful experience that was meant to be felt, not necessarily understood, and perhaps this is the greatest triumph of storytelling that can be beheld.
As I’ve been working my way through the creative process of re-designing my mod, I’ve encountered the same issue of the narrative versus the experience as I want to capture the nature of the implicit experience that the player can create for themselves, yet I feel as if it is not enough substance to keep the player engaged. Perhaps it is a technical limitation, hinged upon my own knowledge of the engine, that prevents me from visually conveying the element that I wanted to impart. Fear.
Perhaps the narrative cannot exist without the experience, and vice versa, for one usually attempts to complement the other within this particular environment. Since the player is being engaged more intimately with the environment, it would only make sense for it to be as important as the underlying narrative in propelling the player through the experience. I feel as if there is no definitive answer to whether the players engagement with the world is more important than a narrative, for it will always fluctuate depending on the level of engagement expected from the player, but that’s the territory of a different beast. I’m beginning to think this stream of consciousness has no logical conclusion.
Narrative and investment is always a tough one. How do you invest people, without forcing anything on the end player.
Look at how Assassin’s Creed has moved through its titles, if that is not a good example of narrative flow. Of course… everyone who wants in needs a title to their name these days. Best piece of advice I could give, get a kick arse idea together and presented formally, or just get plain lucky and hope a studio will offer a position at the entry level.
The thing is that it’s never ideal to force something upon the player, because it’s likely that they are going to circumvent the authority of the game – that or blindly proceed. The issue here is how you should go about delivering a particular story. Some stories within games must, at some basic level, be dictated to the player. But ultimately, you want the player to feel as if they are exploring the story, rather than sitting down and having it read to them after the prescribed gameplay segments.
The issue that I’ve faced is wondering whether I need a story, and seeing my idea transformed into something I never really expected, or really wanted, for the needs of player engagement. Simply a game in a 3D environment, in which the player is walking may bore the player, distracting them from the visual cues that leak parts of an overarching narrative. I shudder to say that this gameplay experiment may have led me to reveal design impossibilities.
Miles! Hello.
“there is a permanent physical barrier between player and game, and no matter how immersive the game may be, the player can forcibly detach themself at will” — to some extent the same in any media, really. I can put a book down, put the DVD on pause. Games have a problem when they tell tricky stories and then you walk away for 2 weeks and forget everything. Just some crap off the top of my head – books and films are often constantly reinforcing their narrative because that’s what they’re all about while games try to be “light touch” in that department, get out the way for a player to interact.
It’s a funny old thing, that we want players to engage with our story, but lament when they try breaking the immersion by trying to blow up the sidekick who is supposed to be with you for the story to work. A player, at the end of the day, is your partner. Why they would *deliberately* try to thwart your narrative is anyone’s guess. I understand the issue where a player tries out things that would seem clever and are disappointed when the game does not respect that; but scattered across the web are so many bad examples of immersion-breaking behaviour that I find it difficult to take them all so seriously.
We agree with the developer to produce an immersive experience but within the economic and technological constraints. This inevitably leads to locked rooms that we can never get into, streets that can only be seen from windows and not explored.
You might want to browse through the write-up I just did for a panel on environmental narrative. But I think really you have to take the plunge and make some stuff and dissect what people get out of it. Iterate and iterate and iterate your ideas.
The fact that you are starting a mod before uni is a decent leg up.
And you have this fantastic site, so there’s that.
@HM First of all, thank you for your lengthy, exploratory response. It is true that while me may like to think that the player may share our vision of design, ultimately they are pretty damn unpredictable and will often develop their own views and expectations of the game. The answer often comes with its own, sometimes frustrating, drawbacks as a means of safeguarding the player against their own wild ambitions and these often come at a price. In Half-Life 2, and its following episodes, developers playtested the shit out of every conceivable detail in order to create a very game-oriented experience. This means that the player, at best, in only cast under the illusion of control, and that they are really being funelled through a series of largely linear. very well developed set pieces. In something as such as STALKER Call of Pripyat, the game needs to establish the rules from the get go as wide open worlds don’t offer the hand-holding experience. It may deviate slightly from its known patters to surprise the player, but it can’t exact a major rule change mid game. Few games could. Then there is the kind of game I am working on. This is the empiric’s game because I am empirical. Is it still the intervention of the author if they attempt to create an experience so that they player may create their own?… sorry, trailed off there. Anyway, in this kind of game there is only the metanarrative. In this particular mod, there is only a faint glimpse of what this narrative means and the rest is left up to the player. Because of this, the systems are inherently simple, however the player introduces their own complexities. The original idea relied exclusively on the final concept to see it through, but its translation onto the PC sought otherwise. The levels were larger, and the ideas were flowing to find a way to make its scale suit the investment of the audience. Ultimately, I made the decision to scrap my assets and bring it back down to earth. But more on this in the next installment. Oh, and I did have a read of your transcript of the environmental narrative, I only wish I could have been there.
@BeamSplashX
Thanks for your kind words, my good man.
Very nice article and straight to the point. I am not sure if this is really the best place to ask but do you guys have any ideea where to hire some professional writers? Thx
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