The Story Vehicle

The most common format for a story is the three-act structure. This is by no means the only structure, but it seems to be the most common structure. For example, some of Shakespeare's plays use different structures, such as five- and seven-act ones. However, most modern stories conform to the more common three-act structure, and that's what we'll concentrate on here.

The hero's journey is often used in a circular story form split into three acts. This does not mean that all stories return exactly to their starting point and circumstances. Often the manifestation of the circular form means that the hero's special world becomes his new ordinary world. How the hero's journey is related to the circular form is shown in Figure 4.9.

Figure 4.9. The circular story form.

Classically, this story form is used in literature and movies. It also applies directly to story-focused games and can be used as a guideline for games in which stories are present but are not the primary focus. Let's discuss the figure in some more detail.

The first act deals with the introduction of the hero and the ordinary world. The end of the first act is the point at which the hero prepares to cross the first threshold and enter the special world.

Act 2 is the longest act and takes place entirely in the special world. This act is often split into two parts , with the end of the first part coinciding with the ordeal. The second part begins with a change of pace; the story now begins to wind down, and the farthest point in the journey has been reached.

Act 2 ends with the road back, and the beginning of the third act heralds the return of the hero to the ordinary world, ending back where the story started in the ordinary world (although not necessarily the same one that the hero left).

The converse of the circular story form is the open-ended form. Here, the story is not tied up nicely as in the circular case. Plot strands are deliberately left open so that there is a sense of unresolved ambiguities and unanswered questions. This form is not often used in stories in Western culture and is often reserved for serials. Two classic movie examples of this form are Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future, Part II and George Lucas's The Empire Strikes Back. In both of these films , we are left with many unanswered questions, leaving the way wide open for the sequels. Of course, the worst sin of the storyteller is to artificially include a fake plot element simply to force the circle to a close.

Plot Pacing

We previously mentioned that the plot can be paced in one of two main ways. The position of the crisis in the story makes the difference in the feel of the story: Whether the third act is a quick resolution or a slow wind-down of the story depends on it.

Given a conventional three-act structure in which the long second act is usually split into two parts, there are two main points at which the crisis occurs. How these are used is related to the pacing of the plot. The standard approach (shown in Figure 4.10) is to slowly build up to the ordeal at the end of Act 2 and move on fairly swiftly to the final climax. This approach is the more common one, both in games and in the movies. It allows the story to concentrate on the pre-ordeal story line, and after the reward is claimed, it tidies things up quickly.

Figure 4.10. Delayed crisis in a three-act story.

That's one approach to plot pacing. The other common one is the central crisis. Here, Act 3 is lengthened so that the ordeal occurs roughly in the middle of the story, giving a symmetrical appearance. This approach allows for the consequences of the ordeal and the claiming of the reward to be expounded upon in more detail. Both halves of the story have equal importance, both pre- and post-ordeal. Often this can be used to give the villain a fighting chance to reclaim the reward and kill the hero, a sort of "just when you thought it was over" approach to the story. This form (shown in Figure 4.11) has not been used much in the games industry so far. This is a shame because it seems a bit na ve to assume that everything turns up rosy after the hero has claimed the reward. As we all know, sometimes that is not the case. For example, E.E. "Doc" Smith used an interesting variant of this in writing his Lensman and Skylark novels .

Figure 4.11. Central crisis in a three-act story.

Gameplay and Narrative

In this book, we've defined narrative to mean the noninteractive part of a computer game's story, the part in which you as the designer and author tell the player things without letting him do anything. This definition ignores literary theory and all the academic debate that surrounds modern creative writing, but it serves our purpose: to discuss the nature of storytelling in games and the relationship between interactive and noninteractive elements.

From this definition, you can see that a game's story content can be divided into interactive and noninteractive parts: the gameplay and the narrative. These exist in inverse proportion to one another: The more you have of one, the less you have of the other. A novel or a movie has no gameplay; it is entirely narrative. A simple arcade game such as Space Invaders has no narrative; it is entirely gameplay. The majority of home computer and console games lie somewhere in between; they seek to strike a balance between gameplay and narrative. You, as the designer, must decide where that balance lies.

The Role of Narrative

To make that determination, you have to ask what function narrative will have in your game. At first glance, it might seem to be pointless. A game is a form of participatory entertainment, and purists would say that any nonparticipatory elements are extraneous. A number of players feel that way, too: As soon as they are given some text to read or see a movie come up, they hit whatever button will skip past it and take them on to the gameplay. These kinds of players tend to be core gamers, motivated primarily by the challenges in the game and the desire to defeat them. To them, beating the game is its own reward, and they need nothing else.

Not all players are this eager to dive headfirst into the action, however. Casual gamers, who play for the enjoyment of being in the game's fantasy world, need to have the stage set for them. They need to feel part of something larger, a story that will excite their imaginations. Casual gamers also need rewards for overcoming the game's challenges. For them, it's not sufficient to know that they've defeated a dragon; there must be a reason to do it and a positive consequence for having done it. Both the reason and the consequence are given to them through narrative, expository material that tells them, "The dragon is eating all our herds and soon the peasants will starve" and "The King is greatly pleased with you."

The sights and sounds in your game, the graphics and audio, create the immediate physical embodiment of your game's setting, but that's not enough to establish a credible game world. Those sights and sounds should be informed by an underlying culture and a history that dictates not only how the world looks, but why it looks that way. If you don't design that culture and history, the game world will feel like a theme park: all false fronts and a thin, gaudy veneer over the game's mechanics. To establish the feeling of richness and depth, you must create a backstory, and some of that backstory must be revealed through narration.

Action games, sports games, and vehicle simulations seldom include much narrative. They emphasize the activity, or interactivity, of the moment; for the core gamer, that activity is its own reward. Even so, you can attract a larger audience if you offer a story line to maintain the casual player's interest. The casual player wants that story because the action alone doesn't do it for her. Consider two first-person shooter games: In one, you offer 25 different, unrelated levels of varying degrees of difficulty. All the player knows is that she has to kill all the enemies to win. In the other, each level is an episode in a larger story, tied together with narrative material that explains why the player is there and what her exertions are in aid of. The second will undoubtedly cost more to make, but it will also appeal to more people. Those who care nothing for narrative will ignore it, but those who need narrative to motivate them will be rewarded.

Too Much Narrative

If you offer too much narrative and too little gameplay, however, your game will feel as if it is a bad value for the money. A number of games have made this mistake. Players are paying for the opportunity to act out a fantasy. If most of your game's content is noninteractive, they'll feel cheated ”they won't get the experience that they paid for.

The other problem with too much narrative is that it tends to make the game feel as if it's on rails. It's very linear, as if the only purpose the player's actions serve is to move the game toward a predestined conclusion. Of course, unless you've written a game with multiple endings, the conclusion is predestined, but the goal is to make the player feel as if he is in a story of his own telling. When you as the designer take over too much of the telling, the player feels as if he's being led by the nose. He doesn't have the freedom to play the game in his own way, to create his own experience for himself.

Balancing Narrative and Gameplay

The raison d' tre of all computer gaming is interactivity : giving the player something to do that he cannot do in the real world. The trick, then, is to provide enough narrative to create the game world and motivate the player, but not so much as to inhibit his freedom to meet the game's challenges in his own way. Consider this paraphrase of the words of the wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings : "We cannot choose the times in which we live. All we can decide is what to do with the time that is given us." The player cannot decide the world in which he plays; that is for you, the designer, to determine. But he must be allowed to decide for himself what to do within that world, or there is no point in playing. When you create your game's narrative segments, try to avoid seizing control of the player's avatar. In too many games, the player reaches a certain point and then the narrative takes over and makes the avatar do something that the player might not choose to do. It is fair to change the world around the avatar in response to the player's actions; it is less fair to suddenly take control of the avatar away from the player.

Multi-Part Stories

Not all stories are told in one session. The games industry has expressed much interest in the possibilities provided by episodic delivery. This can mean anything from a simple sequel to a hit game (as in the Final Fantasy series) or a properly episodic game such as the ill-fated Majestic from Electronic Arts.

There are three main forms for episodic delivery; these are indicated in Figures 4.12, 4.13, and 4.14 and are discussed in the following sections.

Figure 4.12. An example of series structure.

Figure 4.13. An example of serial structure.

Figure 4.14. An example of episodic delivery structure.

Series

A series is a limited sequence of episodes . Each episode is a self-contained story in which one major plot strand is resolved per episode. Usually, an overriding theme runs from the beginning of the series through to the end, as shown in Figure 4.12.

This is the format used in the majority of game series. Each game in the series contains a complete story set against the consistent world. The games in the series are often linked by a grand overarching plot. To get a handle on the concept, imagine a series of films such as Die Hard or The Godfather trilogy. Each film has a self-contained plot, and each can be viewed individually with little disadvantage , even though there is a consistent world and an overarching theme that ties the series together.

Serials

A serial is a (theoretically) infinite sequence of episodes. Serials are similar in nature to a series, except that the plot threads are not usually neatly resolved by each episode and there is generally no overarching story line ”and, hence, no closure. To maintain interest, each episode generally ends halfway through the major plot strand, creating a cliffhanger situation that hopefully creates the "can't wait" feeling for the next episode.

Serials are designed to run and run. They rely on a large cast of characters , of whom a subset are involved in three or four different (and often quite independent) subplots at any one time. As one subplot ends, another one begins, using a new group of (formerly dormant ) characters. Serials lack the grand sense of resolution that the hero's journey provides. Instead, they offer opportunities to observe different characters interacting under a variety of stresses. The cliffhanger at the end of each episode usually involves some shocking revelation that leaves us wondering how a key character will react to the news. One might say that serials are character-driven rather than plot-driven and involve a large number of archetypal characters: the bully, the good-hearted loser, the shrew, the plain but loving girl, the beautiful scheming woman , the ne'er-do-well, and so on. Occasionally, one of these characters will undergo a trauma so extreme that it produces a character transformation ”for example, turning the noble young man into an evil schemer, which is, in effect, another plot twist.

If the serial comes to an end, it's usually because of the failure of the story, either because of falling ratings or sales or because the story writers ran out of ideas (although judging by some of the soap operas on television, some serials seem to have survived even beyond that particular death blow). The specific grisly fate that a serial comes to can be determined by how it ends. If it ends abruptly, with no attempt at plot resolution, it's a pretty good bet that sales or ratings fell. If some attempt at closure is made, the serial probably came to a natural end. Comparisons for serials are soap operas such as Dallas , or the old Saturday morning serials that most of you are probably too young to remember, such as Rocket Man , Flash Gordon , and The Incredible Hulk .

You might be wondering why we're going to such lengths describing something that seems to apply only to television. With the advent of games such as Majestic and the continued rumbling of the industry on the subject of episodic (or Webisodic) games, it's a fair bet that we're going to be seeing attempts at providing some sort of interactive serials over the next few years . How successful these will be is open to argument, but being able to charge a monthly fee for new material is a very appealing honey pot. (Witness the success of EverQuest , with roughly 400,000 subscribers each shelling out $10 a month for access.) Figure 4.13 is a depiction of the structure of a serial.

Episodic Delivery

An episodic delivery is a cross between the serial and the series. Like the series, the episodic delivery contains a limited number of episodes, with an overall story line that is followed across the entirety. Unlike the series, however, there is often fairly tight integration between episodes and significant overlap of plot threads. This is similar to the serial, in which the plots thread across episodes.

Unlike the serial, this format doesn't rely so heavily on cliffhangers to end episodes and create interest in the subsequent episodes. Instead, the overall story line provides the driving interest, and the cliffhanger is used only as a secondary means of support (see Figure 4.14).

Bearing in mind that we already have series-based games, we believe that episodic delivery is the form that most attempts at interactive episode-based entertainment will take, at least initially. If the medium takes off and is financially viable , we gradually might begin to see interactive serials, with no fixed episode count and a constantly evolving story. The only fly in the soup as far as this is concerned is the difficulty of sustained content creation. There will have to be some evolution in the methods used to create the content for such endeavors.

Storytelling and Narrative Worksheet

1. Does the game require a story, or is it entirely abstract? If it is abstract, would a story add to or detract from its appeal?

2. Can the story begin at the beginning of the game, or would the game benefit from a backstory as well?

3. Will the story make use of the monomyth? Which elements? If not, what form will it have?

4. Will the story have a three-act structure or something else, and if so, what? Will it be open-ended, leaving some plot threads unresolved?

5. How will the plot be paced? Graph out the major points of crisis, climax, rest, and resolution.

6. Will the game include narrative (that is, non-interactive) material? What role will it play ”an introduction, mission briefing, transitional material, a conclusion, character definition? Is the narrative essential for the player to understand and play the game?

7. Will the narrative material be integrated seamlessly into the gameplay, or will it be a separate screen or interface element? Will the player be able to interrupt or ignore it?

8. What form will the narrative material take? Pages in the manual? Introductory text in the program? Movies? Cut-scenes?

9. Will the story be multi-part? How will the plotlines be handled: as a series, a serial, or episodically?