How to tell a story in game? First you need to learn from Hulk

I got some thoughts on narrative in game design.

Telling a story in game is a rocket science, and it's very difficult. The obstacle is gameplay.

Gameplay creates immersion and flow, while "the story" creates reputaion and positive reviews.

Gameplay and story are two different things. For instace, action g1 action g2 ....gn is actions related with gameplay, while action s1, s2....sn is actions related with story.

Suppose one gamer made below actions: g1, g2 ,g3 ,g4 (into follow), g5, g6, s1( for instance, the flow is interupt by cutscene),g7,g8, s2,....
Then the gamer can't get into flow because of interupts by actions related with story.

Pacing is an important factor to create immersion and flow, while story inerupts it.

No matter linear or onlinear, even we needn't create the whole story. What we need is an epic story background, and many obscure words or descrptions. In this way, enviromental narrative is used. Every weapon, and every item used in game are medium of a tiny piece of story. Every monster or boss are is medium of a piece of story. For instance, the gamer collect 20 weapons and 50 items, and 5 weapons description said the last owner was killed by a man whose right hand has 6 fingers. A suspense is created. Maybe there are thousands pieces in game, and gamer needn't to collect any piece to go throught the game. Collecting pieces is a choice, so motivation is important. In my last post, I talked about emotion provoked when human values are changed. So put many pieces into these events. The player will notice the piece of story one by one, then the gamer will pursue the whole story by himself. This way the story won't interupt gameplay, because the gamer can just collect it, and check the contents when needed.

You even don't need the whole story, that means all pieces together can't form a complete story. Just make the pieces story obscure and ambiguous. That's friendly to game designer, though unfriendly to gamers. So breaking the story into pieces or just create pieces without story.

That's my thought on telling story in game.

 

Prove it.

 

If I can prove it, will you accept it?

 

Yes. Don't forget to prove each of the following:

 

I will do many work after sleep.

There is one thing very intersting.
The secret to tell a story in game is not to create a story, but create pieces, modules, hints, mystery, suspense and other components of the story. Let the gamers experience the story by combining the components themselves.

Don't create story in order to tell a story, it sounds crazy.

 

Are you even making a game? lol You seem to be just starting forum posts to talk to yourself.

If you want to learn about storytelling in games, there are lots of great books on Amazon. I purchased a few and they really helped me to flesh out my story in a game setting, which is quite different from creating a novel where the writer has total control over what happens in the game.

And yes..in a linear game, you can tell a story.If you do not believe that, go look on Steam. Plenty there. There are many mediums for telling a story and many ways to do it.

Your bits above are great for a non-linear story, especially in a multiplayer game/MMO where the player creates the story using the bits of lore and interactions in the game. You could also call this world building, which is common in games and in novels.

There is no single path that leads to a good story in a game. There are many paths depending on how the designer wishes to tell the story. Linear, through lore in game, through lore outside of game, through dialogue, through art, and even through music.

As a writer, I see games as one way of delivering stories, but not the only way.

 

LOL
No drama here..I am off to a game dev meeting. So save some of that popcorn!

 

Where did you find some? Last time I remember, they been thrown over the window.

 

Not even gonna..

I gotta hand it to you though, you're the best troll i've ever seen.

 

Congrautlations!. You are making yourself an honorary member of spectator club.

 

How do you think about the following:
1. Gameplay creates immersion and flow, while "the story" creates reputaion and positive reviews.
2. Gameplay and story are two different things. For instace, action g1 action g2 ....gn is actions related with gameplay, while action s1, s2....sn is actions related with story.
3. Pacing is an important factor to create immersion and flow, while story inerupts it.
4. What we need is an epic story background, and many obscure words or descrptions.

 

Thoughttest like playtest.

Yes. I share some ideas when making the game.

Could you give some recommendations? Thanks.

Movie can tell a linear story way better than game. Why people choose game not movie for linear story?

Games are not interaces to interpret data or story.

 

Story and gameplay are not oil and water. They aren't completely separate systems.

No. This is nonsense. Gameplay and story do not exist independently of one another. It isn't 1990 anymore, the story isn't just the equivalent of a readme.txt file.

Story doesn't interrupt flow at all. When you play a shooter, there are times when you aren't shooting. Even if you're just using cutscenes, there's no reason that story would interrupt the pacing.

You do realize that there are thousands of games with stories that don't rely on epic scale stories and hiding things from the player, right? And that these games were also good? What you are basically proposing, in every thread to this point, is that the only good game is an epic scale game with loads of systems and data, which is nonsense.

 

How do your prove what you said is right?

 

Play some games, to open your eyes. Or stop trolling.

 

-*

Could you give us some thoughts on what you learned after you played many games? What games have good stories?

 

Even Pac Man had an intro.

 

That's fine. Gameplay is king.

 

Magic Magic Magic.

 

Could you explain more what's the relationship between gameplay and story?

 

Speedrun maybe can tell something.

Dark Souls 3 Finished In 35 Minutes - Speedrun

Life is Strange PS4 Speedrun (5:28:53) (Previous WR)

 

Seriously? lol
So a novel tells a story better than movie. Why tell a story in a movie?
Some of the many ways to tell stories: oral as storytelling (there are professional storytellers), poems, plays, movies, games, podcasts....

Stories are as old as human beings have had language and every new medium has used them. Why relegate story telling to one or two mediums?

As for stories in games, I think what folks who love story based games enjoy the most if the feeling of immersion. Personally, I get that more from books that movies or games, but....every person is different.

Stories tell of our history, our lives, our tragedies, our laughter, our shared experiences.

In fact, one of the best things about video or pen and paper games is to later tell the stories of our experiences with each other. I see it all the time. You can never meet a gamer who does not tell you the story of his great raid, something stupid his friend did in game, or some really awesome community experience he has had.

I sincerely feel sorry for people who ignore stories or do not like them or dismiss them as trivial. I cannot imagine a life without stories. In fact, I like to think about life that way..if I have a great unexpected experience that creates a story, I cherish that. Every experience is something I can share with others.

Yeah...you are a troll, but I like to talk about stories and it gets me back into the community. You are not a very good troll, contrary to what someone above said...as you are far too obvious. lol

 

I am seriously not sure he knows what he is talking about. He is trying...but maybe his perspective does not allow him to see beyond the mechanics and data.

Not defending him because he is here to push buttons. But on the other hand, I hear people tell me all the time that a game does not need a story, forget about it, it just takes time.

Reality is that often those are people who just cannot write. While we can buy art off the asset store, we cannot buy stories. Those have to come from somewhere inside us or inspired by something outside of us.

Not everyone is able to do that. Some folks focus only on the technical stuff.

 

People are probably attracted to different things. So there's no universal solution, but many partial solutions which appeal to different people. One approach is to try to combine a few different sorts of rewarding experience so your game appeals to a wider audience.

Some players like a more formal story, and enjoy discovering new bits of lore as they play the game. When they talk to others about the game, that's what they'll focus on.

Others can't click through the walls of text or cutscenes fast enough, because those are the boring parts, and they want to continue with the strategic or kinetic gameplay. Adding to the story is not going to impress them.

It's kind of like the role of visual art in a game. Sometimes players so enjoy the art that they are willing to overlook so-so play. Other times the game has so-so art, and the players overlook it because they enjoy the great action.

Probably, as a developer, it's good to recognize your strengths and play to them. If you're good at story, focus on storytelling games and do that well.

As for playing a game, and experiencing a story, there's also the "meta-story" (?) created by the player as they play the game. In this perspective, I think the elements that make up the story are the obstacles the player encounters and the challenge to get around them or resolve them.

For instance, in a game involving resources, the meta-story is about the challenges faced while attempting to gather resources.

In a level-based skill-tree type game, the meta-story is about coping with the lack of full abilities you have at one level, as you struggle to reach the next one, so you can get the next ability, which helps in some ways, but now you need to get another level to gain a skill to help with some other troublesome aspect.

So yes, for a player engaged in the great action of a game, they want to push through cutscenes and dialogue. These become obstacles. For players absorbed in the game's world, lore, or art, demands for constant action might be an unwelcome distraction or chore. Or something like that.

For each type of reward, whether it is new story, new art, new abilities, you want to present some obstacle to overcome, and keep the scale of the obstacle appropriate to the reward.

That's pretty much how I see it. There's probably more to it, but that's what occurs to me to point out in relation to the OP. Not trying to troll.

 

@Teila, I may be one of person, who say games don't need stories. Well, to be more precise, not all games need story, to have purpose and be fun.

Lets look at starcraft for example. Classic RTS. Sure it has lore. But is only required for single player, to feel sense of progression. When comes to multiplayer, lore is irrelevant. Zero-k was soley multiplayer RTS. Had no lore. Then single player happen to be, nearly decade later, just as training tool, just to get into multiplayer. No particular story, just rather simple goals.

My point is, some games can exist completely fine without story. On other hand, I couldn't imagine play Witcher series, without their superb stories. Like many players discussed, as well as in my experience, in Witcher3 example game story ends with great bang, but leaves players somehow, with felling of story being somehow cut off. This is because, while story ends greatly, you can still play open ends world. But many interactions with NPCs is not there. Further gameplay feels empty with lack of bigger purpose. All technical would be fine, if end game screen would show up, and game would end, full stop, rather let player walk open world. But perhaps that would open other can of worms

Btw., does flappy birds has lore at all? Surely this game dont need any, to give sense of purpose. Just get highest score. Sense of challenge that's it.

 

This is fine and I agree. But...that does not mean that many games could use a story...or that more people might play the game if it had a story.

I am giving a talk on World Building at our local game development group in the near future. One thing we discussed before hand was do games need a background story at all. Most of the folks in the room said yes, a game has more depth if it has a story.

And they were not talking about rpgs and mmos or linear 3d games, but platforms, point and click, even space attack games. I was rather surprised.

Possibly NJ game developers have a different perspective..LOL Not sure.

But yeah..if you want to make a game without a story, go for it. A story though might attract players that want a story without at all impacting those that do not care. Seems win win to me.

 

What I'm gathering is, in order to have an emotional story experience, I have to make a data heavy Dark Souls like.

Gotcha.

Now, please make a game @hongwaixuexi

 

Following is my pure assumption, so you need correct me, if I am wrong. Wasn't that meeting story oriented talk? I mean, if yes, then we will have bias of opinions from the group. However, if it was just general game discussion, then according what we observe on the market, most games have some story. More, or less developed.

Not to saying game without a story can not be successful. See Minecraft as an example. Pure sandbox. Players were creating own stories, rather have been implied on existing one.

Probably nothing new to you, but that put in question for you, if and when story is needed?
Is none/few liners/book size lore sufficient/required?

Without going into details, I would shortly say 'depends'.
And we observe either mix working.

I could tell you of top of my head, number of titles I played in past, in which story didn't matter to me, to make game fun for hours. Some titles I was skipping the story descriptions, just to play. And also titles, when story was critical for me to enjoy. That's from my perspective over gaming years.

On side note, is the talk you are attending to, going to be published anywhere?

 

People don't like reading.

I like stories. But in game, if the story interupts gameplay, that's another thing.

And it's too obvious that Snape was a bad guy.

 

It's a time everyone can be labelled because of posting.

 

Your examples are data heavy type games. Do players create meta-story when they play "life is strange" or "the walking dead"?

 

https://the-digital-reader.com/2017...-report-kindle-unlimited-bigger-ibooks-uk-us/
x2

 

It seems statistics is one type of lie too..

From “The Decline of the American Book Lover”

 

I don't see how you concluded that people don't like to read from that graph.

 

I don't understand why Teila likes your post?

 

I do not know if it is a language barrier or simply you're incapable of grasping a complex idea like people's diverse choice, but you're BSing here big time all the time.

What you're "demonstrating" here is BS. Why? It is simple. You're offering a statement: "People don't like reading"
And then you insert a graphic which says 28% of the people asked said they read at least one book every month. 17% said read at least one book in every two months and 31% said they read a couple of books over the year. And 23% said they didn't read any books over the year.

What does it tell you about "people" like or don't like to read? I will help you with it: not much.
You know why? Because the question is more complex than you try to present. We have many forms of entertainment and we have such limited time. So naturally we will have a diverse selection of entertainment/culture to consume.
As opposed to many years ago there were not much, mostly books. So when you put more kind of entertainment on the table, obviously the limited time will be distributed between liked culture/entertainment.
But this does not mean people don't like to read books anymore. It just means people like many forms of entertainment/culture consumption methods. But I guess it's too complicated and it is more simple to say people don't like to read books anymore.

 

I don't have first hand material.

From CordCutting.com 2016

Also reading textbooks is also reading. 2017, paper book

 

So why do you try to present something you clearly have no idea about as fact?

And? What are you trying to prove here?

 

Two heads are always better than one

 

Compared to watching, people don't like reading.

Compared to reading everything, reading novel is a part of it.

 

I think we should focus on how to tell a story in game and the relationship between gameplay and story.

 

This was not your initial premise. And you don't know that. You only know that people don't read that much. But it does not say anything about whether people like to read or not.

This sentence has no meaning.

And even IF we assume what you're saying is true. It has nothing to do with anything else we're discussing here. Usually in games we do not include entire novels to read. Not even in the visual novels (that's why they are visual novels, the entirety of the game is a novel). So whether or not people like to read a novel it does not say anything about whether or not people like to read short texts on screen inside the games or not.
Again: you ask a general question, and then try to hack some vague, general answer to it without substantial evidence. Repeating general BS from the internet does not count as discussion. It just remains BS.

You have no idea, or you haven't noticed that different games tell stories differently.
- There are textual story telling
---- In-game textual (like books in Skyrim)
---- HUD-textual (like preposition text or narrator text in RPGs)
- There is visual story telling
---- Cutscenes
---- Certain NPCs moving/behaving/talking certain ways but not a cutscene
- Environmental story telling
---- the levels/scenes are built certain way to emphasize story-telling (like in Skyrim most of the villages/cities are half-rebuilt from past wars, somewhat eclectic, the dungeons are full of iron-made things with certain carvings -> emphasizing the Nordic style)

etc... etc... (if you want comprehensive lists about the subject, read some game design and storytelling books) obviously some of these elements could halt the gameplay sometimes but not always and other don't. And still they are tools to tell stories in game. So you simply cannot say that story telling is "breaking the pacing". On the top of that, they aren't breaking the pacing, because what pacing mean in reality is the changing speed of playing and changing things to do in game. What you wanted to say is that it may break the action. And that's true. Some of these tools are breaking the action (like HUD-text and reading in-game text, although it is optional). But the pacing is exactly that: action, low-pace, build-up, action, calming... etc.

No. People think that you're a troll because they don't think (I do) that you really do this. You read half a chapter about story-telling or game design and you come here to make some crude statements on the basis of half-baked ideas. They think you know better you're just "playing".
I don't think that.

 

You keep talking about all the design books you read you absolute clown

 

I don't know why?
I said to them many times, I am still learning.

 

You like to use the word "context", why not use this word in this sentence? Story is the focus.
People watch more movies for story than read novels.

 

People do not read books? When we moved last summer, we had 20 boxes of books or more after culling out lots of them. Many of these books belonged to my daughter, but there are a lot of my books and the other family members as well. My daughter, in fact, spends the vast majority of her money on books, more than video games are movies. Most of my friends are readers...rather than video game players. And remember in many places of the world, there are more people over 60 than under 30 and they read books.

Many novels get turned into TV shows and movies...and rarely into video games but sometimes the books which become movies/tv shows are turned into video games. Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, etc. Do not forget that many video games spawn books. My daughter LOVES Halo books.

Maybe Lurking Ninja is correct and you are honestly trying to learn something here. But the definitive statements that make no sense and are backed up with evidence that actually does not match your conclusions are rather suspect.

There are a lot of really wise people here. I suggest you listen to them and learn from them.

The world is not black and white and not everyone is like you. You may not like to read, but you cannot extrapolate that to all the people.

I like what someone said above..play to your strengths. If you do not like books, then stay focused on your video games. If you do not like stories, focus on the mechanics and make games with interesting mechanics.

This is a place to share, so you are always welcome to share. But..it all goes a lot better if you actually talk to people rather than make statements that close down the discussion. You will learn nothing if you make yourself into the "troll" and people stop taking you seriously. You should think about that.

 

Not true..I have maybe watched a couple of movies over the past year but have read a lot of books. Stop thinking everyone is a carbon copy of you. It is so easy to do, especially when you are young or not out and about in the world. And I surely do not look for a deep story in most of today's movies. lol

 

As Teila said. Stop using definitive sentences. Especially if you don't know anything about the subject.
Like this one:

No. You got it wrong. People watch more movies and tv-shows than books. In general, that's true. What about in your target audience? Do you know that or you just take a statistical data from the internet?
Next. How do you know that people watch more movies FOR STORY than read novels?
I'll help you out: you don't. You're assuming without any evidence.

Next. If you want to be taken seriously, learn the basic vocabulary, because you use basic words wrong and it takes a long time to learn that you're talking about absolutely different things.
Like the word 'pacing' above. If you think that story-telling "breaks" pacing you're wrong or you don't know what 'pacing' means at the first place.

Then, communicate more openly. Ask questions instead of crude closed statements. ("And that's my thoughts about the subject" means you're an expert and you just listed the facts you think is happening around it. If you would have asked others what they think about it rather than open with definitive statements, you would meet more welcoming posts here I think)
Believe me, I know it is hard sometimes, English isn't my first language, I know it is hard to communicate my intention. But if you sit back and try to review what you're posting and make sure you leave enough wiggle room for others to chime in in a constructive manner, they will. Also it helps if you talk about your experience and not to try to talk about it in general. Like

What would happen if you say like this?

Maybe people wouldn't think that you're trolling, they would think you're here to learn from people who actually are doing the thing for real.