I watched many thrilled TV for story, but hard to transform it into gameplay

They are a good source for story, useful for cutscene design. But very hard to make it a gameplay.

 

Story and gameplay share the same structures,
- there is a protagonist with certain quality
- in a world of things and people
- who want something because of stakes
- and face obstacle toward that want
- which it resolve according to the primary interaction of the genre

Lay down the structure you will have the first step to gameplay:
- who is the main protagonist
- what's the main interaction
- what's the stakes
- what's the goal
- how do we fails
- what's the measure of progress toward the goal
- what's the measure of progress toward failure
- what are thing that help going toward the goal
- what are the obstacle that bring closer to failure

It doesn't matter if it's a story about a waiting room, or a action revenge story, or even a casual discussion among friend, as long as you fills all these elements, you have the basis for a game.

 

Thanks for your detailed reply. I know there is a structure, and your reply is also similar.

"What makes a hero". While it's hard for indie dev. It's more theory, not practical and no example. With much limited resouces, even making a small prototype is not easy. Maybe collecting different modular component is a way to support such a big job.

 

That's because they're completely different things.

A TV show or movie is static and passive. Its story doesn't change based on the viewer's actions.

A game's story, on the other hand, is the player's story. This doesn't mean that everything happens exactly the way the player tells it to happen. But it does mean that the player's actions affect the story in meaningful ways.

To quote David Kuelz's Narrative Design Tips I Wish I'd Known:

Don't make that mistake. Don't try to port a static story such as a TV story into an interactive medium. Give the player agency.

 

I respectfully disagree with @TonyLi after years of believing the same myth as him.

I'll come with example later, doing dinner now

 

Good tips. A good start point to think an interactive story. It will be better if there is an example on how to use these tips to make a gameplay.

 

For a starter filles out the list I gave you, it's not theory it's practical, you just replace the bolded part by your choosing. Then tells me a story you want gamify and I'll try.

 

Thanks a lot. Your list is very useful to write a story. I wrote several stories (in my native language). I found out I can't trasfer the story into gameplay.

I wrote a story before I create a new project in Unity. After finishing the story, I chose and downloaded an abandoned house asset, then I modify the lcoation of my story. If my story happened in this house, what will happen. Then I downloaded several charactors, and if these people are in this house..... Finally I realized to I need to rewrite the story. The process is time consuming.

 

Fair enough. I'd love to share ideas about this topic with you. There are cases like Dear Esther, which I enjoyed playing, that offer much less player agency. But player agency is something that no other narrative form has to the same degree, so it's worth considering to play to the medium's strengths.

 

But what agency do you have in any game? choosing which grenade you will kill the last boss? the sequence of obstacles are always the same most of the time, even with branching there is a definite order of progression, even multiplayer game has phases. People like to call these small stories, the fact you jump well or jump not so well over a death pit. That's kind of stretching it a bit far. In truth the aesthetics of games is about permission, not freedom, we can only do what the author allowed. People experience the game differently, but goes through the same sequence of events.

On the other hand, story can stretch interactivity by playing on the mental model, ie the way the audience reconstruct a story is basically a puzzle, by selectively presenting the facts you can impact the theory the users form, and he can comes to many conclusion which he will shares and discuss, aka take many path. In the end, his understanding of the stories can be impacted in way that he chooses to believe and is different from others, like game, the series of events are the same, but the experience is different. The game aesthetics of story is puzzle.

That's why I told you to put the list filled here so I can walk you through the process.

 

It depends on the kind of game, and the quality of the narrative design. Some games are designed with a linear presentation, like Dear Esther. Other games are designed with a more open presentation, like Rust. But it sounds like you're focusing on games with authored stories. Even in these games, as the field matures the trend is to recognize and acknowledge that the player can choose grenades over pistols, or choose to romance a specific NPC, or choose to kill the prince instead of rescuing him.

 

Yeah but even in rust what you do is greatly limited, at a design level gameplay is organize as loops, and if you look at a type of longform stories, the same loop appears. Consider a procedural or a wudunnit, they are literally gameplay loop, and gameplay loop are motivated structures. I argue that the experience is minimally different, and the STRUCTURE (emphasis on structure) is the same. You may argue that the DYNAMIC is different though.

Another way to put it is that both game and stories describe "motivated action" with game having a bit more dynamic by EXTENDING linear media (ie not story, but the medium they are told through).

Another incomplete way to see it is that story are unfolded game. Which allow storytelling to be looser on the "rules".

 

Okay, I'll agree that the dynamic is what's different. That's important, because that's what the player directly experiences. I'll leave it at that to leave space in case anyone else wants to share their their thoughts on narrative design.

 

I have an opinion as a beginner: gameplay doesn't come from stroy, while story comes from gameplay. I mean first gameplay, then make the story.

 

A TV show or movie will generally have the story evolve as a part of conversation. Games can do that too, but often do so through events rather than conversation. Take Doom for example, in the game you play a lone space marine who never talks. In the (bad) movie adaptation, the lone space marine is replaced with a team. Much of the movie is spent on conversations within the team.

Pretty much any movie adaptation of a video game follows this exactly. Mortal Kombat movie, Street Fighter movie, Tomb Raider movies, all have a lot of conversation that wasn't present in the game because the stories in the game didn't use much conversation for pushing the story forward.

Half Life is remembered for ground breaking story telling for its time in an FPS game, yet the player's character never says a word the entire game. That won't work in a TV show or movie.

Hardcore Henry is probably the closest a movie has gotten to a video game style of story telling. It is basically a non-interactive FPS game rather than a traditional movie. The story unfolds very differently than a traditional movie, more like an FPS campaign's cutscenes.

 

That's a lot of hot takes that doesn't follow a formal deconstruction, what do you call "gameplay", can conversation be gameplay? I mean if a conversation is directed there is strategy, obstacles and goal, there is a system in place you must follow and rules (such as politeness) I would say it map perfectly to gameplay once you understand what's gameplay is.

But maybe what you all want is "gameplay" but "ACTION gameplay" where you blow S***s up

I'll take an extrem example, let say you attend a meeting, it's a boring meeting and you want out, it's like the most passive situation you can ever been, yet I can still map it to gameplay super easily.

There is a goal: get through the meeting as fast as possible
there is a progression toward the goal: the time meeting takes
there is a failure, the meeting takes longer than it should
there is obstacle: the social protocol in place in a meeting
there is stakes: you can lose your job, your standing in the company vs the love of your wife and children
The primary interaction: Using the protocols of meeting to intervene in a way that curb the meeting progression toward your goal.

I choose this example because there is a tricky aspect: progression is fixed and seemingly passive, you just have to wait. But then you can look at the activity and start DESIGNING. Upon analysis there is 2 ways you can move progression in the meeting:
- time dilatation: aka sleeping, but this is against protocol, it allow you to skip part of the meeting.
- find flaws in the meeting: there is a problematic procedure that render a point obsolete, which prompt the canceling of the point for the next, cancel too many point and the meeting will be entirely cancel.

Which mean we have two progression mechanics, attention and sleep.
- sleep allow to skip ahead in time
- Attention shorten the time to the end of the meeting

We can then look at opportunity for failure:
- being caught sleeping
- making a bad point
- being caught distracted

Now we have the two progression that are mean of creating gameplay tension, we can start looking for resources to manage. We can use the boss patience, the social standing.
- Boss patience, control hard failure, will decrease when caught distracting, or sleeping.
- Social standing decrease when making a bad point or sleeping.

But you need a way to act on the environment and manage it.
- scan the environment: allow you to find opportunity to sleep by observing behavior pattern
- look at the presentation: allow you find point that contradict themselves to present (like phoenix wright)
- sleep: skip some time ahead for a certain amount, trying to not get caught
- intervene: attack a point of the presentation to make it obsolete

Now we have some fundation, we can realize it's a stealth game, aka do thing without being seen by manipulating the environment, we know how to do that!
- We will use gaze pattern and behavior to create the level design, ie each type of character have a set of gaze pattern, for example, the zealous employee, gaze away whenever a point is made to ponder what's being said, the presenter alternate between his presentation and the audience, slow down when you aren't following enough and stop if you are distracted too long while gazing at you intensely, the boss alternate between people he likes and people he put on a hot sit, bored people, have a random gaze but if they see you sleeping they follow your example, but if they are reprimanded by the boss, they alternate gazing at you furiously to shame you when you sleep. You could also have people like the good friends who wakes you up before you get into hot sit just in time, a certain number of time before being fed up. You can figure out many other. I'll stop here

But then you will say, it wasn't a story, no, but that's a typical scene you would find in a story, it help you not only to write the scene, but also create a game around it. I can pick example of scene like typical hacker scene, you have the hacking bar that show progression, and you have the security closing on the place of the hacker as the failure progression. But sometimes story are about passive events, let say the queen dies and the king dies after from grief, you cannot win, the outcomes is inevitable, well it's been done in game (unbeatable boss in jrpg, the intro of sient hill, tetris), but you can still make it enjoyable to play, the same way every linear game do it, have a secondary goal (making the most line, getting to advance the story, discretizing progression by event gates), and have thematic action that show both side, the king get better and find relief in his daughter by playing with her, the king get worse by a bigger amount by sad events related to the queen or absence of bonus given to the queen, when the sanity bar is empty, the king dies.

Once you understand the interplay of obstacle, progressions, and stakes, you understand how to build tension in games but also story, better it gives you clues to control pace any sort of gameplay.For example in desperate Housewives, the writing is really concise and clear cut and stick to these principle. There was a scene where the spoiled latino women tries to convince her rich husband, which is in prison (because of her), to agree on something she need. As the scene progress you can see her make argument and him responding to them, the scene alternate good arguments and bad arguments, with bad argument ultimately winning, and the husband lean more or less toward her as he get convince, giving clear feedback of where the progression is, at the end he does a sign to the gaur to take him off, she makes a last argument when he is leaving, close to the door, and you see him turn back, until she destroy any chance with another bad argument.

It's not just storytelling, it teach you what kind of feedback mechanics you can use to convey progression (leaning posture) of the gameplay (argumentative conversation) similar things are used in the game phoenix wright (nervousness of the person). By understanding that story and game share similar structures, you get empowered to learn gameplay from many different media, as the principles are simply the same. I can go on and on and on to break down everything, from the mental model, to feedback to pacing mechanics and show all the connection, but I'n ot writing a book yet.

My job is game designer, I take immense pride in applying sound game design principle to make any idea possible.

 

Your points are clear:
You break down the meeting situation, clarify progressions. From progression mechanics and failure criteria, you concluded to make a stealth game. Then you find a pattern for level design.

You wil get different results by different scenarios. Different hero stories share one structure, then different gameplays derive from the same story structure.

Is there a gameplay pattern for below structure?

 

Gameplays have so many different patterns, while hero stories share one pattern.

If you make up the hero story first, you still need to breakdown the story to find what type of gameplay.

if you get the gameplay first, then you don't need much time to make a hero story because it is already there.

 

No it's just the same, you still has a stake, obstacle and progression.
I think you don't understand the thing you are reading and can't put them in proper context.

What do you call gameplay, the hero story would just be the overall progression, it's been used even in puzzle game, it give you the tone not the gameplay. It's not aboiut action but the emotional response. Basically the call to adventure is conveying the stakes, then the threshold is the beginning of the game with the goal established, death and rebirth is simply the ramping of difficulty, and then after that it's the winning screen (or losing screen). I have simplified a lot. You can use it for the whole game or for each sequence. For example, the hero enter a town, there is zombie (call to adventure), a npc tells you the weak point (mentor/helper), the zombie are tough, there are more coming up, new kinds (death and rebirth), but the player end up winning using skills and strategy and the habitant offer him a better sword (reward). There is zero mystery.