Week 10 - Reading;
In the first article I read (Sutherland, 2005), the author discusses what makes a story in a game work and what it took to get to a place where they can be done well. He made a really interesting point about story being conflict. Conflict is just as important as the rest of it. It gives us drive to want to play the game, progress to the next level, get the job done - whatever it is, it makes us want to do something.
I also liked that he pointed out that to have a good story, it has to be simple and it has to work. While you're gaming, you're often learning new mechanics and adjusting to the new world you're in. If your story is really complicated, it can overload someone's brain. Although a story often determines chapters, levels, etc (which is why it's done at the beginning, according to the author), nobody wants to watch a movie when they buy a game.
The next reading was a paper (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum, 2012) about what makes Mass Effect 2 a highly regarded game amongst gamers and those that study the game instead. They found that one of the most important, well developed features was the characters, both playable and non-playable. They drive the game ahead. Their emotions are valid and used wisely, and the backstory is useful but not overwhelming and doesn't overstep the current timeline.
From this, I feel like it's safe to say that building a believable and relatable story is really what makes a game good. Games are often things we'd only dream of rather than something we can do (let's disregard farming simulator for now and, honestly, forever) but the core of it, the reason characters do what they do is very relatable to a player. Uncharted 4 - Nathan wants to save his brother; okay, maybe I wouldn't hunt down a large corporation to find treasure, but I would absolutely do what I could to help my brother, I just can't swing from cliffs and fight bad guys.
Lastly, the video discusses the way games make us feel like we have control over the game's outcome when we really don't. This is definitely something I could talk about for a long time. Games have developed further even since this video was released in 2015. He mentions how although we're often given 'choices', they're not really choices at all. Looking at games that do that - Until Dawn. This game really is an interactive story as all you do is choose the storyline and react when asked to. Every choice you make in Until Dawn has an outcome which leads to another outcome and so on until you finish the game. There are 256 alternative endings to Until Dawn. Although the story tends to be pretty much the same as you play it through (either someone dies or someone doesn't, the location and characters tend to be the same), that's still 256 ways you can play the game.
He also mentions Far Cry 4 which I've played through several times. He mentions that game designers are allowing different systems to interact with each other (like when the birds attack someone nearby) and aren't set in stone to happen. Far Cry 4 also has another pick and choose system where, although the mission is the same in the location and usually having to kill people, you choose if you follow Amita's quest or Sabal's, which does give us alternate endings and missions before we get to the end. Ubisoft also do a cool little feature in Far Cry games 4 and 5 where you can actually end the game in the first few minutes when you're given your first decision to make. In 4, you can wait for Pagan Min to return and in 5, you can refuse to arrest Joseph Seed. I always think that's a cool feature.
I think more is being doing to add variety and a 'one of a kind'-ness to game. Take Watchdogs: Legion, where every NPC can be recruited and playable. There is a limit to having 45 recruits but there are 9 million NPCs that can be recruited, all with different gadgets and skills. Each recruit also leads to side stories - to fully recruit them, you have to complete a relevant mission to them. There's still a main story, with the occasional decision to be made. Side quests are another thing that's far more popular nowadays and definitely adds uniqueness to each play of the game.
I think a great point is made towards the end of the video too. If we make all of these things interactive and the story really easy to change - do we just end up with a really bad story or ending? How often would you replay a game if your ending was disappointing, even if you knew it could be changed?
References:
Sutherland, J., 2005. What Every Game Developer Needs To Know About Story. [online] Gamasutra.com. Available at: <https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130770/what_every_game_developer_needs_to_.php> [Accessed 30 November 2020].
Bizzocchi, J. and Tanenbaum, J., 2012. Mass Effect 2: A Case Study in the Design of Game Narrative. [Accessed 30 November 2020].
Telling Stories With Systems. 2020. [video] Directed by M. Brown. YouTube: Game Maker's Toolkit. [Accessed 30 November 2020].
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