GAME WRITING
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING
marcin.sarnek@us.edu.pl
http://prac.us.edu.pl/~marcin.sarnek
Defining ‘game writing’
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Story / Game story / Game
Story / Plot
Story / Plot ≠ Gameplay!
Story / Plot ≠ Storytelling ≠ Narrative
Game Narrative ≠ Gameplay ≠ Game story
Interactive Narrative ≠ Interactive storytelling
Purposes of Game Writing
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Purposes of game writing should be – at the end of the
day – the same as the purposes of game development?
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Immersion
Reward
Identification
Flow
Fiero moment
In other words – the purposes of game writing are to
deliver / create / facilitate the above through writing.
Game Writing Tasks
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Game story
Game world design
Character design
Backstory
Supporting texts
Cutscenes / scripted events
Dialogue writing (in cut scenes, in scripted events and
in-game dialogues)
Game artifacts
Asset design
Plot
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Aristotle’s Poetics
Plot – a sequence of meaningful events
Plot unfolds as a result of a conlfict
 Internal
or external conflict experienced by the main
character
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Freytag’s Triangle
Peripetia / climax
Aristotle’s STORY ARC on the Freytag’s Triangle
Morphology of the Folktale
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Vladimir Propp, „Morphology of the Folktale”, 1928 (English
translation 1958).
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a founding text of structuralism
31 functions within folktales
8 character types
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The hero or victim
False hero
The villain
The dispatcher
The (magical) helper
The donor
The princess or prize
Her father
Morphology of the Folktale – structural
analysis
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Syntactic analysis – analysing a sequence of events.
Paradigmatic analysis – seeking structure of the work
which does not need to be the same as the syntactic
structure.
Synchronic analysis – anylizing (and intepreting) the
work / the plot as a sequence of events.
Diachronic analysis – analyzing (and intepreting) the
work as a whole.
The Hero’s Journey
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Joseph Cambell, Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949.
Influenced by C. G. Jung
 collective
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unconsciousness / archetypes
common patterns found in numerous stories from
around the world
The Hero’s Journey
Supreme
Ordeal
Inmost Cave
Initiation
Threshold Demon
Departure
/ Guardian
The Threshold
Mentor appears
Refusal of the Call
Call to Adventure
Cambell’s model of the Hero’s Journey on the Freytag’s Triangle
Return
Resurection
Returns with
Elixir
Three Act Screenplay model
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One page = one minute
Act One
 Set
up (exposition) – mood, tone, main character
 First Plot Point
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Act Two
 Mid
Point – Main reversal / change/ intensification
 Plot Point Two (Climax)
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Act Three
 denoument
Plot Point Two
Mid Point
Plot Point One
Three Act Screenplay Model
Supreme
Ordeal
Inmost Cave
Initiation
Threshold Demon
Departure
/ Guardian
The Threshold
Mentor appears
Refusal of the Call
Call to Adventure
Return
Resurection
Returns with
Cambell’s model of the Hero’s Journey on the Freytag’s Triangle
Elixir
Campbell’s character models
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(supposedly) based on Jungian archetypes
The Mentor
The Threshold Guardian
The Trickster
The Herald
The Shapeshifter
The Shadow
etc.
The significance of the Hero’s Journey
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A scholarly (although heavily critisized) text is read
as a manual for storytelling
Consequence – a storytelling trap.
Think Star Wars again.
Campbell’s model simplified:
 Hero
gets in trouble. Hero gets out of trouble. (Kurt
Vonnegut)
Aristotle’s Poetics: the remaining
elements of the story
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Theme / Thought
Motivations, cogitations of the main character
 Internal monologue, soliloquis
 THE WHY?
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Medium (Diction / Pattern)
Language used
 THE HOW?
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Spectacle
Setting
 Set
 Special Effects
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Story vs. Narrative
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Story: plot – sequence of events, set to motion and driven by
characters in a fictional space
Narrative: all methods used to communicate the story to the
audience
In other words:
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Changes in narrative do not change the story
YET
 The same story (the same plot) + different spectacle =
different narrative
 The same narrative methods (similar spectacles) do not
create the same stories
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Think game genres…
Videogame storytelling: basic
(theoretical) delivery methods
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Not TYPES (genres) of games but delivery methods.
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Story develops in direct RESPONSE to player action
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B happens BECAUSE player did A
OR
 Story
develops partiallly in response to player action
(for example in striclty linear games)
B
happens AFTER player did A
OR
 Story
B
develops irrespective of player action.
happens anyway, it’s just a matter of time…
Videogame storytelling – a nice
optimistic theory
Implicit Narrative
 Formal Narrative
 Interactive Narrative
 Interactive Story
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Implicit Narrative
Emergent Narrative
 A powerful device (if you can master
it)
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 On
a certain, level narrative (and hence
storytelling) happens due to cause and effect
connections created by the audience (reader,
moviegoer, player). Thus, stories are developed
by inventing connections between actions / events.
 Reader’s response theory (post-structuralism)
explains it SO MUCH BETTER.
Implicit Narrative
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Interaction of elements within game system to develop
events which may be interpreted as story – results
that are IMPLICIT to the game system.
In game-space narrative elements are NOT SCRIPTED
formally, but happen nonetheless.
How to control prescripted events – well, it’s
realtively easy
How to control non-prescripted events???
Implicit narrative makes the player experience
unique (high-level narrative vs. low level
narrative)
Formal Narrative
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Prescripted methods
Diegetic:
NPC dialogue
 Scripted events
 Artifacts (text files)
 Splash screens, etc.
 Cut scenes / cinematics
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Nondiegetic elements of the narrative
‘Prescripted’ does not mean non-interactive’ – all of
these can be triggered in response to player action –
that’s how Interactive Narrative is created
Interactive Narrative
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Implicit narrative combined with Formal narrative
methods
 Player’s
actions are ‘echoed’ in the narrative as often
as possible
 Creates an illusion (?) of Player Agency
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E.g. :
 responses
to player success or failure
 responses to other in-game actions
Interactive Story
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Player actions have consequences upon the STORY, not
only upon the NARRATIVE
So – not only HOW the story gets ‘told’ (communicated)
is interactive (responsive to player actions) but also
WHAT is communicated, on the PARADIGMATIC LEVEL,
is responsive to player actions
Player Agency no longer an illusion? (well, not quite)
IS IT AT ALL POSSIBLE? IF NOT – WHY?
Budgets (multiple storylines need to be developed – more
on this in the future lectures)
 OTHER REASONS?
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So how is game story delivered?
Narrative delivery
 Game structure
 Progress structure
 Stucture of the story itself (plot)
 Player Agency
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Narrative delivery
Text
 Dialogue
 Static images
 Camera cases
 Cut Scenes (in-engine/ scripted or
FMV)
 Scripted events
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Game structure
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Well, things are (or should be) getting interesting
here
How to structure the game to actualy deliver a
story?
 Well,
it seems to be relatively simple with strictly linear
games
 Well – it isn’t!
 Just one example: how to control the pacing of the
game to deliver the story?
Progress structure
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How and in what conditions major developments in
the game story are ‘allowed’
Four major models:
 Linear
 Continous
 Domain
 Contigous
Linear progress structure
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Linear series of game levels
Story is parallel to gameplay
Narrative delivery of choice:
 Cutscenes
between the levels (reward)
 Mission briefings,
 In game texts, etc.
Continous Progress Structure
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Game progress is linear
Yet no conceptual breaks between game areas
‘A single journey’
Reverse movement allowed!
Usually no cut scenes (why?)
Narartive material presented ‘live’ – possibly in
prescripted form (scripted events)
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Players often do not need to ‘participate’ in the narrative
(think Half-Life)
Or in triggered events
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Players need to participate in the narrative, and can only
select to skip its parts
Domain Progress Structure
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A central hub, from which the player ‘operates’
Upon completion of a task new domains are open
Players may chose to revisit domains
This means that narrative material must be
presented selectively, but certainly (no need to
present redundant narrative material to the player
who has previously completed the level).
Also – if revisits are expected – alteranative
versions of dialogue are also expected from the
writer
Contiguous Progress Structure
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The illusion of a complete, explorable world
Movement allowed in all directions
Contigous structures can use domain structure
elements (think TES IV:Oblivion, TES V: Skyrim)