T.S Interactive media and games design: unit 70 game story development

How story is used to enhance gameplay in computer games.

Storytelling has been around since the dawn of human intelligence, it is one of the single most important tools we have at our disposal to understand other members of our species and one of the oldest forms of entertainment. We use it to create beautiful universes… or destroy them.

The art of story telling through a vast number of mediums has helped grow our socially reliant species for countless generations and this newest generation is about to take storytelling to the next level in human society.

But before we revolutionise storytelling beyond recognition we should take a look at the evolution of storytelling.

The first storytellers of our species were crude barbaric apelike humans, but despite the sense of any intelligence they actually paved the way for generations to build upon and refine the fundamental rules of story telling. The way these first humans would have communicated would have been through the use of heavy-handed body gestures and perhaps even some speech, although it would have been a very basic language if any.

Later this moved onto cave paintings, basic shapes representing great hunts and other topics of social importance to the tribes of old.

Once we had a grasp on verbal communication and artistic representation written text and an even greater ability to exaggerate and spin fantastic tales to one another, such as myth and legend, would follow.

As we advanced with our communities and technologies a deeper understanding of social complexity and interaction would be needed. Humans never lived in such prosperity, a sure dominance over nature and vast numbers of people living in confined cities and villages- a form of entertainment would be devised for the masses, a way to entertain hundreds of people though story based narrative, plays and theatre.

These stories would call upon the human quality to imagine, imagine and show the world what you were thinking or creating through speech and choreographed movement

Theatre is one of the first methods to truly encapsulate the finer points of story telling, it was refined, well written and prepared rather then blurted out of the mouth with no though for execution. It was digestible entertainment brought to the masses.

From this sprouted many forms of genre. Comedy, drama, action, horror and more but with all of this ability there would be one fatal flaw- interest. Humans cannot be interested for large amounts of time with out reason, a sense of personal gain in some form. Without being able to justify a reason to stay and watch these plays, people would loose interest and go back to their normal everyday lives so the way in which stories were written would have to evolve to match human need, they needed to be written to evoke more emotion then laughter or fear, they had to start writing with more complexity and the ability to connect with the audience.

So story telling made another grand leap by involving the listeners, writing it so that you your self would feel for these made up people, feel emotions deeper then anything you were expecting to feel, in fact more emotion than you would spend on a stranger, but it wasn’t just a connection you were being made to feel but instead a complex and deeper understanding of this created world and all of its inhabitants, characters became 3 dimensional, they became fiction and non-fiction, they became plausible, they became our friends and family.

For hundred of years this would be the accepted from of story telling, until the further advancement of technology in our culture. We became able to harness electricity and bend everything in nature to our will. Invention was on the rampage and with this came television. Television was a gateway for easy access entertainment. It brought theatre and a whole host of other informative programmes to the masses. it revolutionised our ability to send information, knowledge and entertainment to people but again story had to evolve. It became paramount to make story telling even more appealable to vast numbers of people. Everybody has different taste in comedy, horror and other themes so story telling had to become universally digestible to the masses. With books and art the story it would invoke would be based on the person and the message it would convey would be personal, based on personal preference, you would choose to see it or not but with television story writing and telling would have to be more general and this dulled some of the beautiful content entertainers would often be able to express in more independent settings. TV became a mainstream affair that could offer varied information and stories but it wasn’t being used to its full potential.

Next begins the era of computers, the Internet and video gaming.

With the invention of smaller home computers and the Internet came a revolution in information sharing, opening our minds to vast stores of culture, art and technology.

With the arrival of video games into this mix came a variety of developers trying to find their feet and understand what they could do this this new form of entertainment. At first it was crude 8 bit sprites moving up and down or shooting, albeit basic it gave the public its first look into what it would be like to control a character, make it do what you wanted and allow you to dive into a new world. Story telling has done this for centuries but the introduction of video games allowed for total immersion in these new settings.

It would be years before technology could compliment the story intertwined with gameplay. The arrival of cinematic cut scene would add more depth to character and story progression, giving you a view into the world of your protagonist, allowing you to take control of him or her and help them along the levels to open up more of the story line eventually culminating in a grand battle with a final boss, usually fought by you the player allowing for even more immersion and then ending in one more climactic cinematic cut scene. This made gaming truly story driven, giving you a reason to play these tales of otherworldly brilliance. It allowed for not only human interaction between you and the character you were controlling but it also allowed the imagination to truly shine, the visual creation of things that were not real or bound to our physical reality. We became gods in a world created for our pleasure.

But we were still limited to the technology of the time, so the next logical step would be to upgrade out arsenal in home entertainment. Newer generations of video consoles gave birth to more dynamic systems of gameplay, further allowing for game titles to advance and incorporate new storytelling techniques such as dramatic set pieces like the call of duty franchise would use.

One of the newest modes of immersive storytelling would be the ability to create your own story in these games, everything you killed or saved would effect the outcome of the ending truly giving you a physical and emotional tie to the world your given run of, for example, the world of mass effect would put you at the hands of commander Sheppard, a man trying to save the universe from destruction but it’s the way you were given free roam to explore, the ability to recruit people to your cause to make the final battle easier as an optional thing, being able to speak to almost anyone with an almost endless tree line of different speech prompts with a ever changing response to your character and his intentions. All of this made story telling through gaming finally truly interactive story telling with multiple stories waiting to be played and replayed.

With the newest generation of consoles released we have yet to see the full potential of what they can do but one things certain, the evolution and maintenance of a well written story will be paramount in the production of visually and playable games of the future.

narrative practice

in this unit i had to first create a short story to help me form an understanding of how to correctly write narrative, this would form a basis for future story development. the short story was comprised of 5 different images and with those images i had to write sentences filled with adverbs, adjectives,nouns and verbs. once the task was completed we had to evaluate our outcomes

is your story believable? well yes because the story was based on the OJ Simpson trial

is your story rhythmic? it has a beginning, middle and end the only part that is not rhythmic is the very last picture that shows ron burgundy with the quote " well that escalated quickly "

do your sentences sound meaningful of emotional? well to the feed back from my work partner, it created emotion with the "family man" and the basis of the story was meaningful because it related to a real world event

is your story enjoyable? my work partner laughed quite hard when he saw it

do you want to find out more? i have read more on the subject of oj simpson

part 2

for this task we had to write for a solid 15 minutes, describing a meaningful event or dream in my life using large amounts of verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives.

ill let you decide if its a dream or and actual event.....

i was running so fast, so intensely, trying to escape the burning hatred and humiliation of what they had done, what they had done so carelessly, knowing how much i had felt for that poisonous bitch. somehow i knew the secret they tried to keep hidden even before i had found out the truth. i could see it etched on their faces, screaming to be told but still they insisted on binding them selves to the lie they constantly reassured me to. were they repeatedly reassuring me or them selves?

notes on a headline

In this task we have to make notes about potential story development based on the news headline I found.

News headline “ human remains fall from the sky in Saudi Arabia; incident could be related to emergency landing of flight with landing gear malfunction”

Notes on the headline…

Human remains fall from sky, could be a premise for an end of days type story sort of like the knowing

The story is narrated, as the game progresses? Read like the entries of a diary as you advance so it seems like this story has already played out but is being retold.

The playable character is the person narrating so it’s a recount of your life

Human remains fall from the skies; rivers turn red like blood, plague and droughts.

This all relates to a prophecy that had been uncovered from the ancient times e.g. a cave painting by stone age man or from a lost time of a great civilisation? This causes wide panic as the events seemingly coincide as the “prophecy “plays out, this sets in a chain of events that breaks down all civilised life, killing, rape and cannibalism set in as the world becomes shadowed in darkness, they wait years for the final cataclysmic prediction to come to fruition as anarchy still reigns,

He learns that all of these events were natural phenomenon and not of religious telling’s.

Humanity just took it to far and believed too much into the prophecy, actively finding out natural disaster and assuming they were apart of the prophecy. Unfortunately the world turned into a state of decay and all of its resources had been plundered or fell into disrepair and forgotten

He learns that there is real chances of the world ending as the fail safes preventing nukes to be launched have all been by passed by the main villain who believes that he is a messenger from god and he has been sent to wipe clean the earth of human existence.

Your objective is to stop the nukes from being launched worldwide and destroying life, hoping to one day re-establish humanity as they once were

Story could end 2 ways

1. You don’t stop him, life is destroyed- narrative from the player explains that your efforts weren’t enough to stop him, and reflects stating”the prophecy was true and it was all in gods plan, he tested you and as he expected humanity’s will to survive simply wasn’t strong enough

2. You do stop him, narrative and cut scene shows you stopping him and years later the beginning of rebuilding humanity, narrative explains that you were right, they were all natural phenomenon and we just put to much faith into prophecy’s and god, and we must strive to unite as a race focusing on higher goals of a sustainable future but does mention that maybe there was a god and maybe all of the explainable coincidence were interpreted those thousands of years ago as horrific things but they didn’t have the scientific knowledge to understand it and if it was a test of humanity’s will to survive, we passed it but will never know if god exists truly

This is a lucid chart showing how some of the dialogue could be generated, using the format from games like Fallout or Skyrim. you enter into a conversation with an NPC and you are give two or three different responses which will change how the NPC will react to you, for example in my dialogue the choices you can make are based on charisma or aggression, depending on the stats you have in the game relating to those attributes the NPC will react in different ways, its your choice and ability to read the situation that will determine weather you will be successful in your endeavour or not.

this is a CSI type mind map detailing some information about the story development and character backgrounds. the images shown are of the antagonist (right) and the protagonist (left), they were created using a program that allows you to use hundreds of different facial features to create a unique face, a little like the police use to get a picture of who has committed the crime.