Places for Storytelling

There are a number of ways in which a game can tell a story. Customarily, games use a number of different storytelling devices to communicate their story, with different games relying on some devices more than others. The type of story you hope to tell, what technology you will be using, and the gameplay of your game will determine what storytelling devices will work best for your project.

The simplest distinction one can make is in what context the storytelling takes place:

• Out-of-Game: This is any storytelling that is done on the computer while the game is running, but when the players are not actually playing the game. This includes any cut-scenes during which players lose control of their character, such as the cut-scenes or mission briefings that occur between levels in Command & Conquer or brief non-interactive sections in Super Mario 64 .

• In-Game: Logically, this is the opposite of the above, and covers any storytelling that occurs while players are actually playing the game. This includes the setting of the game-world, the behavior of the players opponents, any dynamic conversations players may have, and any interactive pre-mission planning players may do.

• External Materials: This includes any storytelling done completely outside of the computer, such as in an introduction written in the manual or any paraphernalia that may come with the game, such as a map or a collection of gems.

  
  Though Max Payne used in-game storytelling through its settings and mission design, much of the story line was effectively communicated through the out-of-game, non-interactive cutscenes and comic book interludes.

A given game may use only one or all three of the above types of storytelling. Half-Life is an example of a game that included only in-game storytelling; players never lost control of their character from the beginning to the end of the game. The Infocom games are good examples of games that used both in-game and external materials to tell their stories. In addition to the conversations and descriptions of the game-world players had in the game itself, the Infocom games always came with extra documents and knickknacks, which served to enhance the players understanding of the game-world, in addition to sometimes being required to complete the game s puzzles. Max Payne used in-game storytelling through its settings and combat design, while much of the story line was communicated through the out-of-game, non-interactive cut-scenes and comic book pages. Tekken is an example of a game that tells its story, as insubstantial as it may be, almost entirely through out-of-game cut-scenes: one precedes the gameplay and one plays after players have defeated the single-player game using a specific character. The settings of the various arenas have nothing whatsoever to do with the story line, and the characters themselves exhibit nothing of the personalities described in the scenes either, though their fighting styles usually relate to their nationalities. Indeed, it is unclear why the designers of Tekken felt compelled to include a story line at all. Perhaps they wanted to give players something to reward them for defeating the game, and a cut-scene was the only suitable prize they could imagine.

Out-of-Game

Out-of-game storytelling is perhaps the most prevalent form currently in games, and it comes in a variety of forms. One can attribute the popularity of out-of-game storytelling to its similarity to storytelling in other media. For example, a cut-scene is very often like a film and uses established cinematic techniques, while a text briefing for a level is not unlike what one might read in a novel . These are both types of media that have been around for much longer than computer games, and both have an established syntax that allows them to tell stories very effectively. In a way, it is much easier to tell a story through these methods than it is through gameplay. But as a designer you must ask yourself, are non-interactive cut-scenes what games are supposed to be about? If your gameplay is any good at all, players will want to get back to playing instead of sitting through long cinematics. Players play games in order to interact. If they wanted a more passive experience, they would have gone to a movie theater or gotten a book from the library. Non-interactive storytelling may have its place in games, but designers need to be aware that it must supplement and not detract from an exciting gaming experience.

As I have discussed, there are a number of different methods that can be used to tell a story outside of the gameplay. The major methods are:

• Cut-Scenes: What are commonly referred to as cut-scenes use cinematic techniques to communicate a narrative to players. These may take place in 2D or 3D, and often involve cuts, pans, the 180 degree rule, and other devices that anyone who has watched movies or television will be familiar with. They are in essence short films interspersed with the gameplay itself.

• Text: Many games use text to describe the story or to give players goals for the upcoming mission. The text may fill the entire screen and then flip to another screen as necessary, or text may scroll by at a slow enough speed that players have time to read it.

• Images: Sometimes players are presented with simple images that communicate some part of the story line. These do not qualify as standard cut-scenes precisely, since they do not include camera cuts or other cinematic techniques, though a simple camera pan may be used to sweep across an image that does not fit on the screen. The image may be a map of an area, an establishing image of the challenges to come, or a recap of those the players have just accomplished. Images are often mixed with text, sometimes using comic book techniques but usually without word balloons (with the notable exception of Max Payne ).

• Audio: Sometimes players are given directives that are spoken dialog or other audio. This is usually when the budget did not exist to create FMV to go along with the dialog or when the dialog is presented over other information players are supposed to be looking at, such as maps, dossiers, or a list of objectives.

One of the most important goals to have when working with cut-scenes is to establish-a consistent visual appearance between the cut-scenes and the gameplay. If at all possible, the same engine should be used for the cut-scenes as for the rest of the game. In the mid- 90s, as games switched to CD-ROM as the distribution medium of choice, for the first time games were able to include actual video playback, even if these movies often could not fill the entire screen. Thus came into being the dreaded FMV game, such as The 7th Guest . Typically, these games presented long FMV clips with mini-games between them, resulting in products that were more movies than games. In these games the vast majority of the players time was spent not actually playing the game but instead watching totally non-interactive cut-scenes, with these cinematic sections usually amateurish and somewhat worse than what one would find on even the cheapest TV show. This serves to explain why the genre quickly fell out of favor with players. Other games, such as the aforementioned Command & Conquer and Dark Forces , used FMV sections between the levels that made up the actual game. These games were fortunate enough to actually include viable and compelling gameplay and thereby stood up as games regardless of the inclusion of FMV. However, the FMV sections of these games were created using live actors in worlds that looked nothing like the worlds in which the gameplay took place. Other games, such as MechWarrior 2 and my own Centipede 3D , used super high polygon, pre-rendered 3D environments to handle these cut-scenes, creating an environment that looked nothing like the ones generated by the real-time 3D engines used for the gameplay. The result is a disjointed visual experience for players, something that breaks whatever suspension of disbelief players may have established. The use of cut-scenes is in itself already a very jarring experience for players; one minute players have an active role in the proceedings , the next they have to be passive, content to sit back and watch instead. Using cut-scenes that look nothing like the game-world only exacerbates matters.

Many games have successfully incorporated cut-scenes that use the same graphics as the in-game visuals, going back to 2D games such as Pac-Man, Karateka , and Maniac Mansion , up to such modern RT3D titles as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the Drakan games. In these games, though players may lose control of the game briefly , at least they have a completely seamless visual experience. The artists may complain that the cut-scenes do not look as good; after all, they can only play with the number of polygons that can be rendered in real time. But what may be lost in terms of visual quality is more than made up for by the overall consistency of the game.

Cut-scenes in Karateka are all handled using the game engine, resulting in a seamless visual experience for the player.

Another strange aspect of cut-scenes in many computer games is their non-interactive nature, which is indicative of the inability of the designer to understand the capabilities of the computer as an interactive device. Consider spectators at a movie or a play, or the nationwide audience watching a television show. The audiences for those productions are unable to interact with the proceedings in any way: the performance occurs and then it is over. On the other hand, someone reading a book, watching a video, or being told a story is able to experience the medium at whatever speed they want. Pages can be reread in a book, videotapes can be rewound or fast-forwarded, and a child can ask her parent to further explain or reread part of the story she did not understand. The key difference here is that the audience of the first set of non-interactive media is a large group of people, while the audience for the latter set is a single person.

Consider the audience for a computer game. Is it a group or a sole individual? Obviously, for multi-player games the audience may be more than one, but multi-player games almost never bother with cut-scenes of any sort . No, the storytelling games that require cut-scenes are almost all designed as single-player experiences. Why, then, when the text scrolls by in the mission briefing for a game, is the user unable to rewind it? Indeed, why is it scrolling at all? Computers are excellent tools for giving users control over their experience, and since players are usually playing the game by themselves, who would mind if they read the text at their own speed, as controlled by a scroll bar or arrows on the keyboard? Similarly for cut-scenes: why can users almost never rewind to watch the cut-scene again? What if they missed a part of the story they want to hear, or just want to enjoy the presentation again? Even worse, many cut-scenes cannot even be paused , only skipped . Perish the thought that someone might actually want to take a break at some point during a long cut-scene. The prevalence of only-skippable scenes leads to a distressing confusion among users from game to game, as they wonder , If I hit the Start button, will it pause the scene or skip it? It seems that the out-of-game sections of computer games are less user-friendly than almost any other solo experience medium. It seems likely that game designers may be thinking that they are movie directors and therefore want to create a movie theater-like experience, despite the extremely different nature of the medium with which they are working.

The Last Express clever save game system allows the player to turn back game-time in order to rewatch cut-scenes or play parts of the game again.

Some games are smart enough to allow the users to control the playback of cut-scenes. The Last Express in particular springs to mind, with its unique egg save-game feature that allows the users to go back to any point in their game and re-experience it. The game prided itself on transpiring in real-time or close to real-time, and hence players were able to turn back the hands on a clock to any particular time they were interested in and the game would return them to that point, a feature that was essential for understanding the game s complex story. Numerous games have started letting players view all their pre-rendered videos via an option on the main menu, once they have seen the movies during the course of normal gameplay. This allows players to easily replay parts of the videos that they may have missed the first time around. My own game Damage Incorporated used extremely interactive mission briefings in order to make sure the players understood what they had to do on a level. Players could use the arrow keys to flip back and forth between text and image documents. During these mission briefings there was also spoken dialog that supplemented the material printed on the screen. Players could pause, rewind, and fast-forward this spoken dialog as they desired using tape deck controls displayed on the bottom of the screen. In this way players were able to read the text at whatever speed they wished and re-listen to portions of the dialog that they may have missed.

Unfortunately, the only interaction with the cut-scenes that many games include is the ability for players to skip them entirely. This is essential, since many players will want to skip over the non-interactive sections of the game, as any playtesting session will reveal. Forcing players to watch cut-scenes is a totally unnecessary limitation no game should attempt to enforce. As I explained above, better than complete skipping is to allow players to skip forward and back through cut-scenes as they desire .

If one stops for a moment to consider the nature of out-of-game devices for storytelling in games, one will be struck by what a strange concept it is to disrupt the interactive experience with a non-interactive one. For instance, when you go to a movie, do the theater workers ever stop the film, bring up the lights, and direct the audience to read a book that they handed out? Sometimes text is shown on the screen, but never in a way that requires the audience to read more than a few words at a time. Instead, films present a consistent media experience for the audience. Games, on the other hand, still mix media in seemingly unnatural ways, forcing users who may just want to play a game to have to read a bit of a book or watch a movie, and only then actually get to play. Surely there is a better way to tell a story, convey a plot, and introduce characters from within the game itself that is far superior to out-of-game storytelling, at least in terms of maintaining a fluid experience for players.

On the other hand, the use of cut-scenes in games has been so prevalent that they are now an accepted gaming convention, and players have come to expect them. They have also evolved in how they are integrated into the gameplay to be much better than simply tacked on, and have been used in games without completely ruining the experience for players. Indeed, we originally attempted to avoid cut-scenes entirely in my game The Suffering , but found that, since it was primarily a third-person perspective game, the player was often too far away to see all the elements of a complex story scene clearly. This was in part because we did not appropriately plan our scenes to play well from such a distant view, which is not an easy task for a team accustomed to using cut-scenes and close-up camera views on such events. When we decided to use cut-scenes, we specifically chose to keep them to an absolute minimum and to use them only for fairly frightening and intense moments or key storytelling events. In the end, I feel that the use of cut-scenes in the game was reasonable and did not overly hurt the game, and certainly no press or fans have complained about it. But to this day I am not certain it was the right choice. What we gained in having cooler scenes we lost in player immersion.

Though The Suffering did use a lot of in-game storytelling techniques, it also included cut-scenes when necessary.

But including cut-scenes will not completely destroy your game, and certainly plenty of games that I love have used them. Indeed, lots of media have employed equally bizarre suspension of disbelief-shattering conventions, such as the total lack of normal conversation in operas, the ability to learn what a character is thinking in a novel, or a movie camera seemingly floating in midair above a given scene in a film. When trying to add storytelling to a game in order to increase its emotional impact, it is extremely difficult to weave all of that story into the game itself without ever falling back on out-of-game techniques, and trying to do so will almost certainly alter the type of story you are able to tell. For example, in The Suffering we wanted to have the human characters you meet throughout the game impart important information to the player. However, in the end this information could not be too important since all the scenes happen in-game when the player has the option to kill the characters at any time. This makes sense, since the player is heavily armed, and though many games do not allow you to use your weapons on friendly NPCs, we thought this was an even worse decision than using more cut-scenes. Of course there were some ways to have human characters that were believably invulnerable until after they had conveyed their crucial information, such as having them talk over a PA system, putting them behind bullet-proof glass, or having them be far away from the player (where it could be reasonable that the player would miss if he shot at them). These, of course, had their own downsides, which could make the story seem quite convoluted. Indeed, once we decided to use cut-scenes, in a few cases they solved a number of difficulties we had with story elements that the player could interrupt, problems we had not yet found an answer to. But we still tried to keep the number of cut-scenes to an absolute minimum. For storytelling outside of cut-scenes, we used a number of undead and thereby invincible characters to convey key plot points. This worked for us because it was a horror game and it fit. If we had been doing a crime game such as Grand Theft Auto III or Vice City , we would have probably needed to resort to cut-scenes to convey key story components , which is exactly what those games did. They too kept their scenes as short and limited as possible (more successfully in Grand Theft Auto III than in Vice City ) and implemented them such that they minimized the disruption to the player s immersion in the game. Though not ideal, cut-scenes can be a useful storytelling tool when they are not abused.

In-Game

There are numerous powerful techniques for telling a story during gameplay. Half-Life was universally praised in the gaming press for the strength of its story. However, if one looks at the game s story, it is not actually all that compelling, perhaps even hackneyed . Many other games, even many other first-person shooters, have contained stories just as compelling. What Half-Life did well, however, was to tell its story entirely from within the gameplay. Players never lose control of their character, Gordon Freeman, even if he is locked in an observation room, stuck on a tram car, or thrown in a garbage compactor. The story is communicated through a combination of level settings, chatty scientists, announcements over the PA system, and NPC scripted behaviors. By the game s end, players are under the impression that the story was excellent because of the compelling way in which it was told.

Some of the different techniques one can use to tell a story through gameplay are as follows :

• Text: A lot can be communicated to players through text placed around the game-world. These can be signs explaining directions to locations, pinned-up notes left by previous inhabitants of a given area, graffiti on the wall, or books left lying around for players to read.

• Level Settings: Almost all games use this technique, regardless of whether they attempt to tell a story or not. Consider the garden setting of Centipede , the hell-like setting of Doom , or even the art deco real estate setting of the board game Monopoly . What little story these games have is told entirely through setting, but setting can also be key to telling more complex game stories. The players exploration of the game-world can lead to discoveries about the type of people that inhabit a given area, or inhabited it in years past. Instead of reading in a cut-scene that the land is run-down and decayed, players can simply see that truth by navigating the game-world. When the dam breaks because the evil overlord has broken his promise, the players can see this by the water flooding the ground around them. Setting is a perfect example of showing a story instead of telling it.

• Dialog: Dialog with NPCs during gameplay is another massively powerful tool that designers can use to great storytelling effect. This dialog can be spoken during gameplay through conversations players have with NPCs, where players get to choose their character s response to the NPC s dialog, either through a multiple choice of responses or by typing in their own response. Dialog can also happen non-interactively during gameplay with NPCs, either friendly or unfriendly, speaking to players during the game and thereby communicating more of the game s story. Dialog can also come from computer terminals, PA systems, or tape decks, to name just a few plausible devices.

• NPC Behaviors: Of course, the NPCs should not just talk to the player; they should perform actions that back up the story line. For instance, say that players fight two different races of aliens in the game, and according to the story line the two races bitterly despise each other. If players ever battle both at once, they should be able to trick them into fighting each other. In a peaceful village, if the player character approaches the NPCs with her weapons drawn, perhaps the NPCs will flee from the player. In a more hostile town, the NPCs might draw their own weapons and threaten to attack the player character if she fails to stand down. NPCs can also be engaged in scripted behaviors that communicate to players the nature of the game-world. For instance, say the people of a town live in fear of the Gestapo-like police force. As the player character enters, she may observe a townsperson receiving a harsh and unjust beating from a member of the police.

The Marathon games used text expertly to communicate their story line while never taking players out of the game. The game featured computer terminals scattered throughout the levels the players navigated. Players could walk up to one of these terminals and hit the action key to activate them. Then the players view of the game-world would be replaced by a close-up view of the terminal. Players could then use the arrow keys to flip back and forth between different text screens, which revealed more details about the plot and told the players what their objective was for the current level. The great thing about these terminals was that while players were reading them, though they could no longer see the game-world, the game-world was still very much active and players could be attacked by aliens or drowned by rising water. This sometimes gave the reading of the terminals a certain urgency, keeping the players game-world tension active. Of course, players were able to control the text by flipping forward and backward through the screens, rereading the text at whatever speed they wanted. Bungie s subsequent game, Halo , drew a lot of its strengths from ideas first introduced in Marathon . Halo also featured excellent in-game storytelling through the teammates that accompany players on various missions, the computer AI that speaks to players through their body armor , and events that happen in the game-world. Unfortunately Halo did not include anything as novel as Marathon s computer terminals, an in-game technique, but instead featured cut-scenes, an out-of-game technique.

The Marathon games allow players to log onto computer terminals scattered throughout the levels, where they can read more about the game s complex story. Pictured here: Marathon 2 .

Damage Incorporated used a combination of NPC behaviors and dialog to give players-some sense of character about the teammates who accompany them through the game s various missions. Players were able to pick from among thirteen different marines the four they wanted to accompany them on a given mission. Each of these marines had a distinct personality and would communicate this through the dialog he spoke during the missions themselves. This dialog might include the response to a directive from players, a comment about the nature of the mission itself, or a response to the players particularly effective killing of an enemy. Furthermore, different teammates could react differently to being taken on different missions. Some of the marines were less mentally sound than others and if taken on too many missions they would become shell shocked and run around the level at random, muttering gibberish all the while. Other marines would have moral objections to some of the missions on which the team was sent. As a result, these rogue teammates would rebel against players and their other teammates in certain circumstances, shouting their disapproval for the task at hand as they went on a murderous rampage. Thus, a combination of dialog and NPC behaviors created a group of teammates with real personalities, almost all of which was communicated during the gameplay itself.

One of the big concerns some people have with in-game storytelling is that players may miss some of the story. What if players fail to see the story being told? Since players never lose control of the game with in-game storytelling, this makes it possible for players to avoid talking to characters, witnessing scripted NPC behaviors, or reading signs. It is true that locking players in front of a non-interactive cut-scene or scrolling text is one way to guarantee that they see exactly what the designer wants them to see. But, as I have stated previously, one needs to remember that games are an interactive form, and the fact that players do not experience every last element of the story is part of the nature of interactivity. If players are interested in getting the entire story, it is their responsibility to seek it out. If players would prefer to just charge through the game focusing solely on the gameplay, that is their choice to make. Indeed, having different layers of the story that can be discovered on playing the game a second time can be a significant incentive for replaying the game.

In The Suffering we used a number of in-game storytelling techniques. These included simple methods, such as voices coming over the PA system, haunted telephone calls the player would receive, notes you could pick up and read at will, scripted scenes involving supernatural creatures , and the human companions players would meet as they explored the game-world. All of these techniques stood on their own without triggering a cut-scene or doing anything else to break the player s immersion. One of our more innovative storytelling devices was what we called in-game environmental flashes. These were basically visions of events from the game s back-story, typically played in slow motion with various screen effects overlaid on top of them, but with the player maintaining control of the main character and still having the freedom to look around the environment. Indeed, sometimes an environmental flash would be set up to trigger when the player was literally standing in the middle of the apparitions, and thus would want to rotate the camera around himself to see everything before the vision suddenly came to an end. We found that, both for the environmental flashes and other in-game scripted scenes, though players might miss them if they happened to look away once the scene had started, the majority of players would see the scenes to completion if they were oriented in the correct direction when the scenes started. Thus, getting the scenes to have a good chance of being seen was a level design challenge where we had to place them where players naturally tended to be looking as they ran through a level. Furthermore, we used special triggers that were not just based on the player s position, but also on where he was looking. These triggers would only activate once the player had a certain portion of the environment in a certain place on the screen, further ensuring that the scripted event would be seen as we intended, all without actually breaking the player out of the game. Finally, we were careful to include far more story content in the game than you would need to get the gist of what was happening with the plot. Thus, if players only saw 75 or even 50 percent of it, they would still understand the story and enjoy their experience.

Though The Suffering did use some cut-scenes, a lot of storytelling was done using in-game storytelling techniques.

Almost everyone has had an English teacher who emphasized the importance of showing instead of telling in creative writing. Instead of being told that the people are wealthy, readers should be able to read the author s description of an area and from that deduce that the region is populated by a prosperous people. For games, in-game storytelling is the equivalent of showing, while out-of-game cut-scenes and other methods are telling. Taking the idea one step further, Noah Falstein is fond of saying that the gaming equivalent of the show, don t tell rule is do, don t show. In games, you want to keep players actively involved in the story, doing actions instead of being shown them. In-game storytelling is a key part of that. In addition to maintaining the players immersion in the game-world, in-game storytelling makes the players active participants in the game s story instead of just flashing it in front of their eyes.

External Materials

Many games have used external materials to tell their stories. This was particularly true in the 1980s when disk space was severely limited and designers could not fit all of the story they wanted to include onto a single 400K or smaller floppy disk. Some designers used manuals to communicate the game s back-story, writing a narrative that would lead players up to the point where they would start playing the game. Some games, such as the classic Wasteland , even used paragraph books, where the game would play for a while, and then when players got to a storytelling juncture they would be instructed Now read paragraph 47. Sometimes this referencing of the manual was used as a formof copy protection, in that players would be unable to play the game without having a copy of the manual.

Arcade games also used external materials. Often the names of the game s characters-were written on the side of the cabinet instead of in the game. Some cabinets even included a few sentences further explaining the game s setting and the mission at hand. The artwork featured on the sides of arcade game cabinets used superior graphics to add a small amount of depth to what meager story lines the games may have had.

These days storytelling in manuals and other materials is generally frowned upon, and rightly so. We are certainly no longer presented with the technological limitations that necessitated storytelling through external materials. Furthermore, often the stories told in the manuals were not written by the game s designers or even with their consultation. Therefore these stories can hardly be considered a part of the game itself, but rather the marketing department s attempt to create a game-world they could hype on the back of the box. Sometimes a few text pieces that set up the game s action are included in the game s manual, but these are almost never fundamental to the player s understanding of the game s plot. I would certainly never use a manual to be the sole place to convey the story in one of my own games since I believe it detracts from the continuous experience of playing the game on the computer or console. The Suffering did include some back-story pieces in the manual, but these were purely supplemental and enhanced the game s story for players who sought them out, without detracting anything from players who did not.

That said, some games have used external materials extremely effectively. In particular, the Infocom games always included materials in the boxes that added to the players gameplay experience in meaningful ways. Often the games referred to these materials, saying something to the effect of, The magazine you find is the same one as came in your game package. These materials were customarily prepared by or in conjunction with the game s author, thereby making them valid parts of the game itself. For more information on how Infocom used its packaged materials to add depth to the story and their motivations for doing so, consult the interview with Infocom author Steve Meretzky found in Chapter 10.