Story telling in games and player attention span

Here is something I think developers of games that are fueled by storylines need to consider:

You introduce the player to some story. You give some characters, some event, maybe you do this so well that the player really wants to unravel the mystery/ find out what happens next.

Then you send player on an errand, like player has to travel somewhere, find some clues, fight somebody, whatever. You need to take into account how long these various parts of the quest are going to take the average player. If it takes me 20 minutes to travel to the next part of the quest, then I am given a two part side quest in order to advance the main quest line, which takes another half hour, well by then I don't even remember what I was doing in the first place, and then each time you tack on more and more subplots I start becoming annoyed.

So, when you are writing a book or making a movie, you know precisely how long it is going to be before you pick things up, slow things down, make the big reveal, etc. This is hard in a game, and especially an "open world" player freedom type of game. I think if you are making this type of game, and having story driven quest, you need to nix the total player freedom deal and get some control over things so you can deliver an experience that isn't 1. boring, 2. annoying, or 3. frustrating.

 

I agree. I've tried story rpg's where they give you task after task and I can't remember the story or care if I do. That's not to say it can't be done well. Everyone will tell you of the few that got done well, but most of them leave you feeling kind of not caring what happened.
Part of the problem is games cater to hard core gamers that want task after meaningless task and loot that comes out of everything killed. I would much rather play a shorter game where the loot found was meaningful to the story in some way, and there was less of it so I had to manage it more carefully.
The same thing with dialog. There's so much that is just filler, that the story becomes hidden.
The reality is that those things make money so they go in there whether they detract from the game or not. A longer game will generally make more money, especially if it's multiplayer.

 

more than 5 "dialogue continue" clicks is too much...

but then it depends on what kind of game it is..

but I've been told that if people want to read a book, they will read a book... I guess the Arena games does it best, Morrowind, Skyrim, etc... including books the player can choose to read when they want.

here's an example, an EA game on Steam I'm really enjoying, Star Traders Frontiers... but... 21 dialogue clicks everytime you start a new game... too much, and I think it gets skipped always after the first read

 

You don't need to nix total play freedom at all. You just need to design around that aspect.

One way to do this is to make each mission self-contained. You can have a plotline that grows over several missions, but you should tie things up completely in each mission so you don't risk the player getting sidetracked halfway through and losing where they were.

Another thing to do is to make sure the story allows for the player's freedom in a realistic way. Geralt being gung-ho about finding Ciri does not jive with Geralt spending 30 hours on sidequests. Ways to do this may involve having a story event that is described as taking place "in several months" so the player feels they can step away from that for a bit (Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts in DA Inquisition). You might even have an actual timer for the story missions, just make it a very generous number so the player has some freedom to avoid it for a while.

 

Been Playing Borderlands 2 with wife finally. Lol i know im late.

holy crap the amount of side jobs that are needed to actually level up high enough to advance the main story is ridiculous. And alot of times you have to actually go explore to find the mission giver. Done lost interest in main mission and why we are doing it. Even the main story lost us interest. Now, I kinda don't want to kill Handsome Jack, as we started noticing nearly everyone he's "screwed over", was already crazy to begin with. The whole place is just a bunch of nutjobs killing one another.

We started being invested in the main mission and hero's cause. Story took a dive with the sub-missions and now who cares what happens. That sounds totally like bad story writing.

 

Most good games overcome this by providing the player with a diary or task list. Several provide sub-tasks broken down to guide the player along the 'route' when the plot is more involved. And good games give 'why' to the tasks/quests - so if broken up over many play throughs the player can remember why they are doing certain things.

Some games allow the player to hot swap tasks if/when the player would rather go collect 3 rat turds for Esmeralda rather than progress on the main quest path to go solve the puzzle in the Forest of Madness to gain the blue fire stone needed to slay the Swamp Troll near the cave behind the waterfall, to secure the magic potion needed to coat the wooden sword to be traded to the hermit to acquire the map to the location of the purple opal necklace rumored to be embedded in the statue of tears along the creek of misery. Use the necklace to place around the bar maids neck so her true identity is revealed. Defeat the shape changing lycanthrope to gain the shield of reflection to be used to battle the Medusa in the Ruins of Lost Time.

 

Oh god, that drove me insane just reading it.

 

I think there is a rule in game development that story should always be preferably communicated via distributed events in the game that echo the story that you want to tell. The entire world should communicate to the player what they need to do, and if that world is simply full of animals and NPCs wandering around like nothing's going on, with a gentle wind blowing through the trees, maybe one should consider what is the use of having all of this junk in the game if it is not really part of what the player is doing.

One of the best things to do for example would be that anytime you open a dialogue with an NPC, the topmost question is relevant to the main quest, e.g. "where can I find X?" or whatever. Or NPCs just start talking about something vaguely related to the main quest line in the player's hearing. Or you create some environmental catastrophe in the direction of where the player needs to go, whatever.

The worst thing is when you as the player are trying to get all excited about a quest line and it feels like the entire world around you couldn't give a ****. The world around you in a game is there to reflect your reality as the main character, it's not just there incidentally.

 

This is only thinly related to the OP regarding story - but I think some of the most compelling story arcs are the ones where the player is guided towards the unknown. I know there are probably much better examples - but upon reading the first post - even though ya'll are talking about larger more 'open' type games - the game that I was thinking about was Another World.
If you haven't played it - stop development right now and go get it on steam. It's roughly 2-3 hours from memory.
Anyway - what was so interesting about that game - was the fact I didn't know what the overall goal was, every 'new' screens after passing the previous one was like - what the heck is going on here and what do I have to do. The farther along the player starts to put a couple clues together, and starts formulating the mysterious 'why' to the entire narrative arc. But to me - it is the feeling of mystery, drip fed while the player progresses, seemed to me to be very interesting.

I think that could be extrapolated into an open world design, as long as design controls were in place to 'guide' player onto the next 'wtf' moment which leads to other moments - which leads to 'whys'. Just an interesting thought - I thought.

 

The only rule in writing is that there are no rules.

I don't really agree with your first sentence, and I strongly disagree with your final sentence (edit: well let me take that back about the second sentence, depending on what you meant by it--if you meant the environment the PC is a part of then sure, but if you meant the plot then I still disagree).

I think this primarily comes down to what the goal of the experience is. If the experience is meant to be a heavily story-driven thing, with themes and such being integrated into it, then yeah, an open-world experience might not be the best approach for it.

However, if the world is part of the story, then an open-world, or even semi-open world, is an invaluable tool in enhancing the player's experience.

Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided are not really about Adam Jenson. And the original is not about JC Denton. These characters are little more than blank slates (less so in Adam's case, but still sufficiently so). The purpose of these games is to explore various themes like human augmentation (and the resulting "power" gap between haves and have-nots), authority, corruption, corporate power. A few relevant links:

https://press-start.com.au/features/2016/08/18/radical-revolution-reality-themes-deus-ex/
https://kotaku.com/how-deus-ex-predicted-the-future-1616252703
http://trentphilosophers.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-philosophical-gamer-deus-ex-human.html

Mass Effect also does some of this as well (though given how far off it is it feels more far-fetched), along with many other games.

The point is, these stories revolve around the world, not the character. As such, an open world allows the game to showcase these themes. An open world where I can walk out of my lavish apartment, out onto the street, and past people huddling near fires in those large metal cylinders (not sure what they call em) is going to give me an appreciation for these themes in a more organic way than shoving the character into a dozen circumstances and forcing them to comment on them.

Your character may be running around chasing down the Illuminati, but that's really not important at all. What's important is the stuff that gets briefly mentioned in the main plot, and fleshed out in the world. It's basically a milieu thing, and this is one of the great strengths of video games--by allowing the player to move outside of the confines of a generic plot at their own behest, they can explore these other topics without having to devote the entire experience to that.

Edit: http://www.writersdigest.com/writin...arted/4-story-structures-that-dominate-novels

 

I think you might have misunderstood my point a bit.

There are no rote ways to write, but there are a lot of ways to clearly fail, and so it is with games.

I meant the physical world, not the story. The story is inseparable from the experience of the main character, it is what gives the main character purpose and meaning. It's not possible for the main character to really exist without a meaningful story to take part in.

The point I'm making is not that open-world is bad, on the contrary, I'm saying that it's not enough to create an open world that does not care about the player and what the player is doing. It might be open-ended, but if one is to create a story within it, the story must be able to dynamically take control of the physical world and imbue it with symbols that subtly direct the player. I feel this is one of the pitfalls of open-world games - if falling off one side of the horse is to create a completely linear, closed-world experience with no options for the player, then falling off the other side is to create some formulaic world that doesn't meaningfully direct the player toward any particular action, and this is something I think happens too often in indie games.

I think this is where I didn't get my point across very well. I don't consider the story and the reality of the main character to be two different things, one cannot really exist apart from the other. I guess where I would try to make my point in a more narrow sense is that I think that it's essential in any game that the physical world funnels the player in a particular direction, at least to some extent, through events and symbols.

In the end, a game is primarily art (at least something like an RPG), and art has a very limited space for things that don't aid the specific message that one is trying to convey.

 

A similar thing to me, is games you pick up again after a while. I recently returned to Dishonored: Death of the Outsider after not having played it for 6 months. Honest, I was clueless about most of what had happened in the two hours I had played when I got it. A short recap feature in story heavy games is a great thing, together with a short runthrough of the controls you might have been introduced to in the beginning, but later forgot all about.
Atari introduced a mechanic in their reboot of Alone in the Dark, where you could skip chapters you found hard, and instead get a short recap (Like "previously on Alone in the Dark"). The skipping thing didn't matter to me, but the recap is kinda brilliant in some cases.

 

Alright, I think I understand a bit better.

If one considers the "environmental storytelling" (I really don't like that term) of a game part of its "story," then that makes sense. Deus Ex is filled with scenes that don't have any direct relation to the main plot of the game, but tell small stories in the "open world" that emphasize the game's themes.

 

I think, especially with indie devs, there is a lot of confusion about "open worlds" and "player freedom". People just throw these terms around, but all they are usually saying is "open world/player freedom = good", and nothing more.

Here's some recent games in my mind I think highlight my opinions on good use of open worlds and how it relates to story driven gameplay:

Good open world - reinforces the narrative:

theHunter: Call of the Wild -- Player has to make all of the decisions about where to go, what to do. There is narrated missions, but these are anecdotal, standalone instances that just give the player episode-like task to give them some focus for 30 mins to an hour at a time. Player has complete freedom to make whatever decisions they want, but all elements of gameplay are finely tuned to make realistic hunting behavior the most efficient means of being successful in the game. So, end result, a simulation game meant to be realistic consistently meets player expectation.

Bad open world - at odd's with narrative:

Kingdom Come: Deliverance -- Big open world, player can go and do as they please, but this is all at conflict with the narrative being presented because, in most cases, it is more beneficial to the player to break from the narrative, and play in a very unrealistic and exploitative manner. Players will always look for the path of least resistance, that's just normal animal behavior, so if you try to tell a story grounded in realism, but have poor controls to guide the player along in a way that makes sense with the narrative, you have a disconnect. The story is lost, and player is simply just finding ways to cheat the game. Furthermore, in a game that touts realism above everything else, and also tries to put you into the shoes of a general do-gooder, it only hurts player experience that the most efficient way to be successful in the game is to be a total psycho. I don't believe half-measured punishments or rewards are a skillfull way to mitigate this type of behavior. A total overhaul of the design theory is necessary.

Good open world - reinforces the narrative:

I can't think of one of the top of my head right now, but a story driven game needs to be very carefully designed, and I think most of the times complete player freedom work against a story driven game. The typical "hero has to save the world" narrative rarely, if ever, impresses if the player spends most of their time casually dinking around a large map filled with lots of side distractions. Complete freedom and open worlds are better suited to player driven stories, like Dark Souls, or theHunter, or Mount and Blade, in which the focus is on gameplay first, with narratives added in only to give a sense of context and help guide player to make certain decisions, but not break immersion in the game world should the player choose and entirely different path.

 

All you really need is a gripping story, want to tell it, want to share it, i've found projects that i really enjoy making turn out alot better then forced work..

 

It's all just so simple.

 

Timely thread as I am writing the narrative for a single player story driven game. Talking to other developers, they keep encouraging me to have open world, at least some in parts. Players like that. I agree that the players need to be able to have some control over what they do and when they do it. In our story, the protagonist is sent on a mission to stop someone from doing something. While not truly a ticking clock, there is some urgency to figure out where this person is and what they are doing. If they are wandering around the world, it seems not at all immersive.

I can see side quests that tie to the story, figuring out various aspects and finding people who might help them, or hinder them along the way. I can see how one could place in scenarios that are difficult for the "good guy" to walk away from, such as village being slaughtered or a child lost, etc.

But I do want the player to realize that he has to stop this guy, no matter what.

I really like this discussion, by the way. It really makes sense and has me rethinking some of the things I have read in the game writing books I have been pouring over. Thanks so much!

 

BTW, this is one discussion that should be in the Design Forum!

 

I must have chosen the wrong forum by accident, this is definitely design talk.

The more story driven open world games I play, the more I think it was just a really bad idea to begin with -- trying to have both a story driven experience and complete player freedom of movement in an open world-- and maybe developers just keep doing what others are doing because consumers will consume whatever crap you put in front of them, so if you're making money why change things?

I'd go so far to say that the two designs should be considered almost mutually exclusive. I'm sure we can find some exception, but my theory is that the amount of time and testing to make an open world really work with a story driven game would be... significant to the point of not being worth it in most cases.

I think a lot of developers get sucked into the idea of large, open world = good. But so what? 90% of the time large open world games don't benefit at all from the large open world, it's just a meaningless feature to tout for marketing. You still get told where to go and what to do via quest, so whats the difference?

And do gamers even want the responsibility of freedom anyway? I don't think so. Games that require the player to actually make the decisions are usually touted as hardcore.

The only open world games I have played that actually use the open world to benefit the gameplay is strategy/real time combat mashes like Mount and Blade, simulation games like theHunter or Arma, and gear-grinder games like Borderlands.

 

Maybe @hippocoder can move it?

I don't think the success of Oblivion and Fallout 3 and both its successors can be brushed off as a fluke. But to be fair in the games that I have played out of these, I was always reluctant at best to follow the main quest. I always enjoyed the gameplay-loop of roaming the world, killing bad guys I encounter, taking simple sidequests, killing specific badguys at a specific place, and then getting back to roaming, more than following the more linear and usually less enjoyable (to me) main quests. There is some clash between the open world and having "one main story", but I don't see a problem with combining open world with "many stories to be found".

There are arguments to be made for scaling down from hundreds of square kilometers of open "world" to "a city block", with higher density of accessible places and fleshed out characters, like the latest Deus Ex did very well. I very much enjoyed that game too, some of the best immersion I've had in years.

But going down to "linear progression through levels on one designed path" will usually take some immersion out for me. When I look at my steam library of recent years I see some correlation between games being linear and me abandoning my playthrough, whereas I seem to have no problem finishing 50 to 100 hour playthroughs of open-world games. Can't even tell you why exactly, I'm not opposed to games being linear and some of my all time favs certainly are like that.

 

The reason is you have the time and enjoy open world games. That is fine.

But, there are many that also enjoy linear games. I watched a recent Let's Play for a new game that just came out that has a strong narrative. At least the part I watched did everything they could to keep you sticking to the story, to the point where they made an invisible wall appear if you tried to run away and avoid the story. I did not like that at all even though I understood why they did it.

On the other hand, I have also watched videos on how the game's elements, such as the layout of the streets, large towers or castled in the distance, etc, all encouraged the player forward. Depending on the game, some use small UI elements to tell the player to tell the player the direction to go. That does not mean they can't get off the path, but they will be gently encouraged back when they are ready.

Maybe the reason you did not finish those games had to do with too much control or maybe the story did not compel you or you were just not in the mood for that particular game at that time. Honestly, it is has been a long time since I saw a game come out that made me really want to play it.

There is a place for shorter linear games based on a narrative. We have many more casual gamers these days who do not want to spend 200 hours playing a game, but prefer something they can play for an hour or two and then come back to it later.

This demand for open world all the time in my opinion is not always a good thing, and this is coming from someone who loves MMOs. I agree with the OP, the main story does get lost if there is too much open world. Side quests are fine but there is a pretty solid line between a true story driven narrative game and an open world where the story is in the background, and just there to give your character a reason to leave home.

Both are fine, they are just distinctly different. Not all players will like both types of games.

 

Yeah, I recently finished a complete playthrough of Assassin's Creed Origins and have come to the same conclusion. Way too many linked side quests that you forget about by the time you get back to them. It did hurt the side quest storytelling *and* the main quest storytelling, since I found myself spending 90% of my time on the side quests and forgetting what was happening in the main quest also.

I think open world games are a lot of fun when it's fun to navigate and there's enough meaningful exploration. Often Assassin's Creed Origins isn't that engaging to navigate or explore. There are opportunities for emergent gameplay, that often was pretty fun though. The main storyline is pretty linear and interesting; I can't help thinking they should have just stuck with that for the most part.

I think Rise of the Tomb Raider did a really nice job merging freedom of movement and exploration with a linear storyline. It wasn't quite like a traditional open world, but there was a ton of freedom in each zone and you could go back to any zone you already visited.

 

I would love some recommendations on games out that that have a linear story line but give a bit of freedom to explore. I do not want to make our single player game an open world but do not want the player to feel too railroaded. In my opinion, side quests should be tasks that give the player information or items that will direct them in the main quest.

I am a fan of the old Adventure games where you searched for clues, solved puzzles, and while are game may have some of those features, I want it to be more modern and more toward an rpg type game...but not quite. Hard to explain. lol

 

BTW, there is middle category: the "linear open world".
For example Firewatch.

Which tries to somewhat preserve the openness of the open world games but inherently linear in nature. And that's okay, most open worlds are just series of linear stories to discover in no particular order.
Like Skyrim is a good example of that. You can go anywhere and sometimes you find things which relies on other action you made or not, but overall it's a series of linear dungeons (where dungeons are cities or castles or houses or caves).

About the main story-lines: I think it's matter of execution. If you choose you can create a system where all of your quests and side-quests are part of one story. The only thing you have to think about is how you can glue these pieces together.

But honestly, indies, especially with very limited budget, creating a vast open world is just unreachable.
Creating the systems and the base of a large open world is fairly easy and fairly cheap. To put meaningful content in it is the real issue. It's expensive and time-consuming.
Nevertheless, I'm thinking to make a fairly small open world game as well (~1km2) with a lot of content reuse (you have to revisit places multiple times with subtle differences).

 

Have watched that video a thousand times and have sent the link to many people.

It is exactly how I want to do our single player game world.

 

The Long Dark has a short story mode with a semi-open environment that I think was done pretty well. And that's a small studio Unity game as well. But then the main game is a totally open world survival game without a story. So they did a good job in funneling that open world gameplay into a narrative experience.

 

The Uncharted games are about as linear as they get, but both Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy have chapters where you can drive a Jeep around (and use its winch for physics-based puzzles) in large, freeform environments.

In The Lost Legacy, that zone is filled with optional puzzles and tasks, which can take up probably 40-50% of the entire play time if you choose to do them. You get a nice item as a reward if you do everything, and it's all fun (doesn't feel like filler), but the entire thing is easily skippable. The storyline is still 100% linear though. It ends up feeling more like a break from the linear gameplay rather than a list of chores to do.

In terms of more RPG-like games, I'd have to go all the way back to the original Deus Ex. It had a series of linear locations with a mostly linear story, but each location had complete freedom of movement with tons of ways to approach each challenge. There were secondary objectives in many of the maps, but it never felt like accumulating a huge TO DO task list. Basically it treated each map as a self-contained open world, and the story advanced when you completed its objectives. Then it was onto the next. Simple, but pretty effective.

 

General jaded-ness might play a part for me, but I have a hunch that it might primarily have something to do with me having an easier time of setting my own meta-goals and achieving them in open-world games. I like a higher degree of agency than most linear games can offer. And I don't like being told what to do or how to approach things. That's why I'd be willing to classify games like Dark Souls, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Prey as "open world" for the sake of this discussion.

Playing "Untold Stories" actually made me kind of interested in what would go into making such a very short linear narrative experience myself. If the whole game is only 1-2 hours long, it becomes much more realistic to reach the level of audio-visual polish that I want to reach.

But I feel rather lost with the whole "narrative" thing, because I'm neither having tons of ideas for stories I wanna tell, nor a strong vision for something that I could "engineer a narrative around". Where does one start a story, if you don't really have anything you want to say?

 

As someone who enjoys both very linear and very open single players games (and everything in between), I do think that allowing the strengths of the game to come out can be a key to a good game. Some games can bridge that gap, but it seems tricky.

The open gameplay parts of Far Cry 3 were a blast. Much of the game boiled down to, "OK, there's a bad guy camp. I need to do some recon and come up with a plan of attack." You could approach each one in a bunch of different ways, which often required adapting to changing conditions and blending sneaky and direct approaches. But they also tacked on a linear storyline with linear gameplay. Every time that kicked in, it locked you into a constrained path and I felt like it was taking me away from the fun parts. I have to think that an even more minimal story, maybe just with "bookends" at the beginning and end would have provided enough context for the player. Then just let the player loose.

On the flip side, some games I think do well to stick with a very linear approach. The Last of Us is a great linear game in my mind.

 

If only more developers had this humility.

I think this is a major flaw in so many stories -- video game or otherwise. You have a very fortunate first world person who has never faced any significant difficulties in their entire life; the most pressing concerns they face is their own insecurities and finding a way to make enough money that they don't have to do something they don't absolutely love everyday, and yet always the stories they want to spin have to be great violent tales of good versus evil, life and death, betrayal and immortal love, yada yada yada. The drama is always so overdone that it's just mind-blowing stupid.

This is why I love simple stories, or funny stories. You don't have to have brilliant plot twist, stunning betrayals -- it's all been done to death anyway. Just focus on some basic event anybody can relate to, keep it deliberately simplified so people can fill in the blanks how they like, and make the gameplay fun.

Maybe it's just an american thing though. Everybody here is so dramatic, it drives me insane. Just settle down! Seems like lots of quality games coming from Scandinavia recently.

 

Are you a writer? I started my game development "career" as a writer. So I guess we have different views on what is fun.

Yeah, you guys love to explore and find stuff and say "leave me alone!". But I love a good story. The Longest Journey is a game that will always make me smile. It had a very strong story, with a bit of wandering and exploring, even getting a job to make some money. But overall, it was the story that made the game.

I felt like I was a character in a movie. It was so much fun! I was so sad when it was over.

I am sure there are others like me. I do not want to tell you guys to just forget about the exploring and make a story/narrative game. Nope! Because I know you love your games and honestly I kind of like those games too, sometimes...if they are interesting enough and not just about killing the first thing you see over and over again....if there are multiple ways of doing things so you can do more than slash your sword. If so, then I like those games!

So...I would really appreciate it if you would consider a game where there is a strong story. Where you can explore around a bit but the goal is to make you WANT to finish the story, rescue the princes, save the kingdom from the villain. A game where the side quests were all part of the main story, finding information that would lead you to someone who could help you find the villain or the princess. Solving a puzzle that unlocks secrets that help you to understand why the villain kidnapped the princes, etc. etc.

If it is not your style that is okay, but when we discuss games here, we really need to be open minded and think about what others might like, not just about what we like. My favorite games are MMOs but in building this single player game, I am trying to figure out how to structure it for a likely audience.

So..what would you like in a story driven game, outside of the open world? What would make you hate a story driven game, and I do not mean lack of open world. lol What, if anything, would make you feel compelled to actually finish the main quest?

Is it only "girls" who care that the kingdom is saved and the princess is rexcued??

 

I used to write a little, but it's not really my thing. Only brings out my negativity, whereas 3d brings out my child.

Anyway, I am certainly not against stories in games. I love stories. But most people's stories suck because they are trying to tell stories they don't have any business telling.

I think in video games, you don't even need to know any special secrets of storytelling. The gameplay is the story. All you have to do is get it started and wrap it up at the ending. No need for anything fancy. Make a character, and make them likable. That's probably the rub right there -- who even knows how to be likeable? Everybody's too caught up in their opinions and personal crusades, to uptight to relax and let things happen without getting upset....

Anyway, besides my disappointment with the species, what gets me to want to finish a story is wanting to know how it ends up. That's probably harder than it seems, because I've been watching movies and playing games and reading books for awhile. I can usually tell you the ending after the intro, but that not because I'm smart, it's just because everybody follows the same tired old formulas. For all the "artistic types" out there expressing themselves, you sure don't see ingenuity very often.

So then, what stories to tell that can fly below my spoiled consumer radar? Simple stories. Stories so basic that anybody anywhere at anytime can watch, play, whatever, and understand the same universal human truth. Don't try to write dialogue. Just make people speak. Don't fantasize heroics in impossible situations. Just make something that has probably happened a trillion times in history happen.

Saving the universe from annihilation doesn't interest me, because I'm not 11 years old. Seedy underworlds, glorification of soldiers in war, fantasy worlds without imagination but just a different flavor of our own world... none of this interest me.

Here's a couple vague notions of stories I've played around with in the past:

A twelve year old girl (village girl in a remote place) on a an arduous journey to help get medicine for her sick grandmother? I'm on the edge of my seat. (Just don't give her an ice axe and have her throw up after blasting three dudes, then killing 500 more while the earth shatters and crumbles beneath her feet.) It's a game along the lines of journey, filled with puzzles and interesting side characters/stories. No need for any dramatics or even to characterize grandma at all -- she's grandma, and her granddaughter loves her. That's all that's necessary. Universal truth? Family is everything, and even a weak, naive little girl can accomplish difficult things with persistence.

An African American vietnam war vet, homeless and forgotten by the same society he sacrificed everything for. Doesn't even consider himself sane anymore -- just wandering the streets waiting to die. But when red dawn comes, he finds himself the leader of a group of kids, and their best chance to get out of the warzone alive. Stealth action game without any shooting, story and dialogue consist of hero teaching the kids how to adapt so that they can survive no matter what. This is a bit dramatic, but the story only consist of trying to flee, and interpersonal struggles during trying times. When characters die, we don't have long Mel Gibson-esque "tell my wife...." scenes. Everybody just keeps moving. Hard times aren't about the drama of loss, it's about adapting so you can make it to good times again. Universal truth? Treat everybody with respect and dignity. We're all a team, and unfortunately it usually takes hard times to remind people of that.

 

For a second I thought you were describing 85% of hollywood directors/writers. Compared to the hollywood - game industry story tellers (and indies) are Tolken-esque.

This is why we have lots of 'different' unbelievable sci-fi and fantasy tales.
I'd think the best place to start is with a topic/subject you have great interest in. We all have non-game related in-depth knowledge in subjects. Consider the subjects you know about and expand on whatever those are to see if there is a story to be told.

Certain games I complete ONLY to finish the story. I can't tell you the number of games I was 'done' playing 3/4 the way through and the only reason I played the last 10-15 hours was to see where the story led. Half the time I was disappointed in choosing to spend the extra time to finish the game because the ending didn't live up to expectations. IMO - games drag on longer than they need to be to tell stories that meander. I'm not interested in side plots that don't have any meaning about the main story line. I do like side quests - but if they are story driven side quests and don't add to the main story arc - they tend to feel like filler, which adds to the feeling of a game taking longer than it has to be.

See my previous post - the sense of the unknown is a good driver to progress story plots. I like not knowing what is going on - and realizing 'oh wow' that's cool - I get it now. Was it the Evil Within? I can't remember if that was good or not. I played several horror games around that time. Whatever that feeling is that a story delivers - revelation - but not stupid plot twists - Yes he is really alive even though a building fell on him - that is terrible.

Stupid plot twists. Also dead characters returning from death - kinda yawn inducing. How many times to I have to kill the same enemies in the Metal Gear games?

LOL - you wrote rexcued = rescued - but I read executed! That would compel me to consider finishing the main quest - princess is gonna be executed!

 

Thanks a lot, that's giving me something to work with.

I think in a game that is not gameplay driven, the story needs to be short for me to finish it. I don't really care what it's about, but I don't have the attention span (finally back on topic?) for games like The Witcher (maybe proper RPGs in general). I tried to get into the first Witcher game 2 or 3 times and always got bored quickly. In the second one I managed 6 or so hours before I gave up, but still found it mostly boring the whole time. Neither story nor gameplay are doing it for me there. Didn't try the third one because I have no reason to expect a sudden change in my lack of enjoyment of the series.
I did have enjoyable playthroughs of Gone Home, Stanley Parable, Beginners Guide, and Stories Untold, because they all are really short, like 1 or 2 sessions per game to finish the whole thing. Event[0] was ok too, but that was already starting to test my patience, mostly with puzzles I was stuck at, and long lists of log entries to read through.

And maybe I should note that with the exception of Stanley Parable I wouldn't have bought any of those if I hadn't gotten them through Humble Monthly. I think at full price the value-proposition of most of these narrative games is way below market average, at least for what I'm getting out of them.

 

Hmm, well, I think I will go look on Steam and find out if story driven games are doing well. Seems my audience is not here on the Unity forums.

Makes sense I guess since for developers, it is the awesome game mechanics you may have never seen before that excite them. I actually like to watch for that as well, even though I often do not enjoy the games that I watch. lol

Thanks for the info.

 

Is this a typo? Reverse-Disney sounds interesting

Definitely not. I'd say it has more to do with where each person is individually. I personally love stories. I enjoy dramatic stories, but I do have a line where they become overwrought (some Japanese stuff can get there). I'm pretty sure it's much looser that BIGTIMEMASTER's, though.

I cut my teeth on story-based games. Basically a game has to have story or at the very least a narrative context for me to play it at all. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have.

Sadly, however, you're right for the most part. Most people here don't care about story at all. It's a shame because I think there's a lot of valuable discussion to be had on story in games (beyond a "don't do anything dramatic" which seems to be espoused here), such as the unique ways games can affect stories (in various ways like a Yoko Taro-esque replaying events from a new perspective, or the "environmental storytelling" thing that Bethesda's famous for, or in RPG / immersive sim-like story and character choices informing the narrative, and many more). It disappoints me a bit because I'd love to discuss this stuff.

 

I rather wonder if it is the lack of immersion that keeps one from finishing a game more than than anything. I remember many immersive experience with games, but these days, I do not seem to find as many that actually ring that bell for me. They are okay, but not the same.

 

Typo, of course. lol

Drama for the sake of drama does not interest me. Mushy emo stories are more my daughter's style. I like deep stories with more complexity, mysteries or the growth of the character. I like to be immersed.

I would love to discuss this with you. My start in game development was years ago as a writer so any discussion that involves stories in games, especially storytelling, would be wonderful. I have found over the years that there are some folks here who like to get into those sorts of conversations but not many. I like to learn so go ahead, discuss. We could start a new thread I guess.

 

Related - I plan to pick up Thimbleweed Park based on the trailer and the well written story it is purported to have.

 

The point was not "stories don't belong in games", or "don't tell dramatic stories about things you don't know about". It was more "if you base a game on a story, don't half-ass the writing and make it suck."

People spend years learning programming, or years learning art, but when it comes to writing, it seems like most everybody, even the big studios, think they can just wing it. My original post was meant to be a small, anecdotal thing I've noticed as a gamer, and wanted to pass on to any people making story games that may not have considered that.

 

Something I wanted to address before but felt unable to: "suckage" is subjective. Whether drama is "overdone" or not is completely relative.

I'm going to have a totally different idea of how much drama is overdone than my passed-on great-uncle who once met Chuck Yaeger and whose later life revolved around old westerns or military films. I'd imagine his limit is practically none at all. And both of our limits would be still different from a teenage girl. But none of those limits is objective.

On what criteria could one argue that it's (referring to drama specifically here) objective? The only one I can think of is the claim that "people don't act that way," and it's definitely not true at all. I won't spend a paragraph treating that like a strawman, but the long and short of it is that there's no objective line of "this much drama is good, this much is bad."

There are situations where drama or other techniques can harm a story, but these have to be looked at specifically, and the problems described specifically

Spoiler

i.e. Character X acts like a well-composed adult 95% of the time, but acts like a drama queen at random times. There's nothing wrong or bad with a character acting like a drama queen, but there's dissonance in his portrayal.

, rather than throwing out the entire technique as bad. These broad brush-strokes don't really achieve anything.

The above is more a reply to later comments in the thread, not the original premise. I already commented on that.


@Teila I wasn't necessarily planning to start up a discussion, just know that if story development is relevant to a thread here at least one person will probably speak up

 

Whatever I say, is my opinion. I value my opinion as much as I value anyone else's, no more or less. But I'm not going to preface everything I say with a preamble of humility.

I don't think there can be an objective discussion of good writing versus bad writing. This is the realm of opinions. But I think my opinion, in a general sense, probably is representative of my specific demographic, which isn't the largest consumer of games but has to be significant. It looks like, in general, many indie games recognize some of the same issues I see, and try to find new ways to do things.

 

I love drama, and if it suits the store, then great.

Drama:
an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or set of circumstances.
"a hostage drama"
synonyms: incident, scene, spectacle, crisis;
excitement, thrill, sensation;
disturbance, commotion, turmoil;
dramatics, theatrics
"she liked to create a drama"

Drama as an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or circumstances. How can one have a story without these? This is what makes every movie and every TV show worth watching.

Problem is that manly men often think of drama as "she liked to create drama" or "dramatics". So they do not like that. I get it. Having two teenage girls, I deal with "dramatics" all the time and trust me, it is not very enjoyable.

Who are you? The Drama Police? LOL

Some stories are good, some are not good. What you think is good, I might think "suck". What I think it is good, you might hate big time.

But..that does not mean that the story sucks at all. It could still be epic and you would hate it because it is not your kind of story.

I feel like I say this a lot in the Unity forum threads, but way too many people here only consider what they personally like rather than think about the people who they are creating games for. It always amuses me.

If I were to a make a game with everything I love, everything that makes me happy, and everything that is what I enjoy, then I would have a game that only I would play. While that is fabulous, it is also no fun to be the only one playing my game, especially since it would be an MMO, because that is the type of game I like to play.

Instead, I have to add things that other people like too. Not willy nilly, without purpose either, but I have to make the stuff they want to play fit into the game, make sense, and work well with the stuff that I want to play.

Maybe it is the curse of being a game developer. We are sort of like gods. We create things, worlds, stories, etc., and so we get a little bit godlike in our attitude. What? You like that? That sucks. I hate it.

Now I want to make a game that everyone will hate just to see if anyone likes it. lol

 

I apologize if I'm coming off as pretentious. I get called that sometimes. I'm probably just used to my particular field where semantics are a very important part of what one says and how it's perceived.

 

I think that the things 12 year olds typically like suck. I hate super heroes, for instance.

But I don't want 12 year old kids to not have games they like to play. The stuff I liked as a kid seems idiotic now, but I enjoyed the hell out of many stupid games back in the day.

I just want to see more games that excite me, and I think designing games with stories geared towards a more mature crowd not interested in fantasies (not in the game genre connotation) but more interested in refinement of existing things will elevate the business into a loftier plane of artisticness (not an actual word).

 

Can you give an example of the type of game you think is geared toward a mature crowd interested in the refinement of existing things? I am curious.

Mature crowd can mean anything from rated X adult stuff to realistic bloody combat scenes...and lots of other things as well. An artistic game for mature adults would be great, but how does one even go about that unless you happen to be a very artistic, deep, esoteric sort of person?

As one who finds few of the games out there worth my time, I can understand how you feel. What I do not understand is the solution for such feelings. The Mature thing is way to broad. Can you get more detailed?

Good direction for the subject...glad you took what I said the way I meant it.

 

Mature, as in, the point, message, or moral of the story is not an immature emotional fantasy, or a ham-fisted allegory told by an idiot, or full of gross archetypes and simplifications.

Not having anything to do with subjects typically withdrawn from children's eyes and ears, unless that is part of the story but not for the sake of being branded "mature".

If a moral lesson is to be imparted, it is a timeless moral lesson, that can apply to anybody, anywhere, at anytime. This way, you can safely avoid your story appearing stupid to anybody who has a broader perspective than you. For instance, a story about heroic soldiers killing and dying on the battlefield. Pretty popular right? Well, not to somebody who understands the stupidity of war.

Instead, how about regular people, uninterested in politics and war and more interested in whats for dinner and who's going to marry who, and the ways different personalities interact during times of danger, uncertainty, and need. Can be positive, negative, or mixed.

I'll think of more stuff later, but I need to keep focused on my work.

 

Jim Bob is an aging carpenter. He can't quite get up the ladders like he used to. For the weekend, he heads to his adult sons cabin for a fishing trip, but what he's really after is trying to convince his son to take over the family business for the umpteenth time, but his son has his own ambitions of being a businessman (whatever, some kind of in-it-for-da-munneez thing).

Insert some kind of hilarious catastrophe, like aliens, or mutated feral hogs, or zombies, whatever.

Now Jim Bob and his son have to gather supplies to fortify the cabin (physics based base building game) to withstand the onslaught, and while doing so they bond. By the end, son realizes that being close to family is more rewarding than money, and dad realizes life is short and he shouldn't try to control his son, only encourage him and always be there for him.

Short, simple, uplifting. You don't need to write fancy dialogue or guess at any human interaction here. Anybody with a parent could write this one.

And story drives the gameplay. Jim Bob is hampered by stamina meter somewhat, but he can order son around who is a tireless worker. Adjust accordingly, and you have a strategic base builder with plenty of opportunity for fun dialogue. Could be a great co-op game too.

So much opportunity for great character interaction:

" I know what to do with this board dad, lets put it on the front side, supporting the xyz beams, and then if the monsters get through we can pull it out and bring the roof down on their heads."

"No son! God bless it, you're always on with these big idea's. Keep it simple and sturdy. If I said it once I said it a thousand times!"

*Give's player impetus to choose how conservatively they want to build their base.

 

Karen is a loving pet owner.

Dog is a dog.

Sarah is Karen's friend and hiking partner, but doesn't exactly love dog.

While hiking in a very remote area, mountain lion/bear/sasquatch attacks. Luckily, nobody is seriously wounded, but dog has fled for his life and doesn't return even after sunset.

Player (Karen), gets to make one of three big decisions: find dog as soon as possible, head back to civilization to get help to find dog (something like a three day hike out to make this a risky decision regarding dogs likelihood of survival), or send Sarah back to get help while Karen searches alone for dog.

In any case, gameplay is searching for clues, possibly stealth to avoid hungry forest beast, survival, etc. Story consist of dialogue between Karen and Sarah, or between Karen and herself. In either case, the point is made that Karen took the responsibility of caring for dog, and she'd be awful to abandon a helpless thing after making a commitment to it. We can test Karen's endurance, push her to her limit for the alone storyline, or we can stress Karen and Sarah's friendship with the together storyline.

For the go back to civilization storyline, we can redirect to one of the other storylines after some event, but the initial choice can carry end game consequence. Like dog dies. Or one of the humans dies. Or maybe finding dog requires an extra challenging puzzle. Point is, indecision has it's consequence.

We can make the gameplay casual or brutal, but we don't need unrealistic encounters with bear slapping Karen around with his paws and sending her flying, or any nonsense like that. In fact, if bear is realistic -- in that if he gets you, you done been got and that's that -- that makes for tenser gameplay.

So you have two warring ideas. A dichotomy between Sarah who thinks a dogs life isn't worth as much as a humans, and Karen who will go to the ends of the earth to protect her fur baby. But it goes way beyond how expensive of dog food to buy -- it's about how much actual deadly risk Karen is willing to accept, and if we want we can also explore the effects of extreme exhaustion. But that's not something somebody uninitiated should guess at.

In the end, be as positive or grim as you like. Maybe dog is running with the wolves now. Maybe dog is bears dinner. You gonna kill bear for revenge? Come on, he's a bear!

These are so easy to come up with. Very simple stories, we don't have to save the universe, and the characters can be as real as your best friend.

 

Here is a very mature one that would require a lot of research.

Mohammed is a the youngest son of a farmer in Afghanistan. His father saved for years, and praise god, he finally accrued enough money to send his eldest son to college in Kabul. Unfortunately, Mohammed isn't blessed with such an opportunity, but even though he feels jealous he is proud and loves his brother. He believes that his brother can teach him the things he learns at school, and then Mohammed will be able to be a doctor/architect/whatever.

Mohammed goes to visit his brother in Kabul, but while he is there the Taliban attacks the university. Eldest brother is killed. Mohammed has to escape with his life, bring the sad news to his father, and then he finds out the village secret -- his father was once a notorious mujahideen fighter who fought the soviets. Now, Mohammed wants revenge against the Talilban, but his father obviously doesn't want to lose another son.

Confusion. Rage. Hopelessness. Powerful stuff, and this is all very real drama.

Do what you want from there. Could go many ways. We can tug Mohammed between wanting to be like his brother and escape the bloodshed for a better life, or we can fill him with anger and make him strive to be a fearsome fighter like his father once was. Behind this all is a devotion to family, and perhaps Mohammed can ultimately make his life-changing decision in a way that considers only himself and his young-man's ideals or his family/village's considerations.

Could be a shooting game, a stealth game. Could be cinematic heavy and short. In the end, I think the inevitable conclusion would be the futility of violence, the endless struggle for revenge, justice, etc.

If you want to avoid the obligation for accuracy here, just set it in fictional universe. But if you do that, don't make it an obvious transplant. Do more than just change names and color palettes. The point of the story has nothing to do with Afghanistan, Islam, the Taliban, or the setting at all. So if you change the setting, but still make it obvious that the story is based on Afghanistan, you give people the impression that the setting has something to do with the overall moral of the story.