Narrative Does More Than Entertain

Game designers use story for a lot more than entertainment, however. It has three other purposes, which we’ll look at now. Narrative Provides a Backdrop Most RPGs have a back story, or an explanation for what came about before the player starts playing as their character in the game world. The depth of the back story varies from game to game, and often it serves only to give the player some grounding. Back stories can be much deeper and more involved, though. Players can discover reams and reams of lore and valuable information of “what happened before”—either in the game, in the form of journals, or outside the game, often in game manuals or on websites. Back stories make the game, and its component world, seem more realistic. Narrative Makes Sense of Game Mechanics Some games use their narrative to explain game elements that may seem nonsensical or inconvenient. For instance, the first Might and Magic game explained that the ever-shifting game worlds were giant terrariums hurtling through the void for some unknown purpose; this explained why the game world was roughly grid-based and had boundaries on all four sides. In the first Fable game, the writers explained that the reason the player could get in-game hints and tricks was through a communication device their character carried, called the Guild Seal. The Guild Seal actually became a multifaceted invention and ended up an icon for the game itself later on. So if something becomes ponderously ostentatious as an obscure game play element, you can always attach a story that explains why it’s there. Narrative Builds Emotional Bids Narrative, especially in the form of NPC dialogue, can become a very strong emotional asset, too. It takes a little while for gamers to form poignant attachments to made-up characters, even their own avatar, but as the characters in the game world start talking and relating to one another, their reactions take on much larger meaning for the player. Think of the Little Sisters in the BioShock games or the player’s allies in the Call of Duty games. These characters and companions add personality and warmth to the gaming experience, give emotional cues as to how the gamer should feel, and once the gamer does start feeling something—give the designer something in the narrative the gamer has an emotional investment in.

Storytelling versus Game Play

Games, at their heart, always supply something called game play, which comprises challenges and interactive choices that entertain. IGDA’s founder, Ernest Adams, states that one major design rule is that game play must always come first. “Game play is the primary source of entertainment in all video games. When designing a game, it is the first thing to consider.” Anybody can tell a story. You can tell a story through pictures, such as a comic book or animated movie, or through words, like a bestselling novel. But to combine story and game play is the true genius of RPGs. If you get the balance wrong, players will complain they’re being “guided by the nose” and not capable of doing much—or that the game is one treacherous ordeal of “rinse and repeat” game moves and boring. Blurb It Out! You can generally sum up a video game in a fast blurb, called a high concept. This is similar to the high concepts or product pitches they use for novels and motion pictures. Stephen King wrote a creepy book, later turned into a movie, called The Shining, and you could sum it up as, “Jack Torrance and his family go to be caretakers at a haunted resort lodge, and Jack goes crazy and tries to kill his family.” That is the high concept of his story. Similarly, you could sum up Raven Software’s game Singularity as follows: “You play as a U.S. agent investigating weird goings-on on the remote Russian island Katorga-12, where you discover the fabric of time and space has been altered by Cold War scientific experimentations involving an unstable element, E99. You must use the powers of temporal displacement to stop the twisted native inhabitants and rewrite history, before it’s too late.” See how the high concept uses both a story impression and description of game play? Try it yourself. Think of an RPG you’d like to make. If you can’t think of one, use the idea of a movie you really like and think of how it could be turned into a video game. Make up a high concept for your game idea. Use both story and game play to do so. Break It Down Into Episodes Writers will tell you story is all about plot, or the sequence of events that take place over time, from beginning to conclusion. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood, our protagonist (which is a fancy word for the main character or hero) Little Red Riding Hood starts out to Grandma’s house before meeting a wolf. The wolf finds out where she is going and gets there before her, in an attempt to eat her. Depending on the version of story you read, Little Red Riding Hood outsmarts the wolf or gets a friendly woodsman to save her. She learns, at the end of the story, not to talk to strangers. All these events make up the plot behind Little Red Riding Hood’s story. Games usually break this down into short episodes with significant turning points in the game that come from player choices or actions. In a lot of video games, these turning points are shown in the form of cut-scenes. A cut-scene is a cinematic that progresses the narrative while removing the player from game play. During an episode’s transition, there’s usually a lot of dialogue in the form of exposition. After the cusp of the episode is through, game play is restored and the player can go back to the game. Modern game designers are trying to make the exchange from game play to narrative episode more seamless. Instead of stopping the game to focus on a cutscene, they let the gamer play through the episode’s transition, so that—while the gamer is still getting the story information—he still feels like he’s playing a game and not pausing to watch a movie. Let’s examine the story of Little Red Riding Hood. How could it be turned into an RPG? First, the player character is the main character of the story, so we’ll make the player character Little Red Riding Hood. The player starts out at home, about to embark to Grandma’s house. We need one episode where Little Red Riding Hood’s mom tells her to take a basket to Grandma’s house and not to stop or talk to strangers along the way. Then the player can enter the Big Scary Woods. In the Big Scary Woods, the player character can pick flowers, chase bunnies, find little keepsake treasures, and defeat snakes and spiders. She finally comes upon the Big Bad Wolf, which starts another episode, where the player can attempt to avoid succumbing to Wolf’s wiles. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. When the episode’s transition is through, the race is on! The player must try to get to Grandma’s house before the Wolf does. If the player has boosted Little Red Riding Hood’s speed by finding the keepsake treasure Boots of Flight, then in all likelihood, the player can beat the Wolf there and fight him as he tries to get in the door. If the player doesn’t make it in time, then the Wolf eats Grandma and waits to pounce on Little Red Riding Hood when she makes it there. Either way, the game probably ends with a showdown between the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. The horror game Alan Wake features short episodes called just that, and they are handled pretty much like TV show episodes. At the start of each episode, there’s a re-cap of “what happened last time.” Then the episode starts, pitting the player against a new obstacle. After the gamer comes out victorious at the end of the episode, there’s a short pause between episodes with some mood music like you’d find during the end credits of a TV show. Most games have somewhere between nine and twenty episodes in them, depending on the length of the game and complexity of the narrative. No matter how many episodes an RPG has, it’s the player’s actions that determine the outcome of the game. This is significant, because a game is all about interactivity and the conclusion of it cannot seem predetermined. Otherwise, the player would find something more worthwhile to do, because what’s the point in playing a game if there’s only one outcome? Study the high concept of the game you came up with in the last section. How would you arrange the sequence of events into shorter episodes, and what would be the optimal decisions the player could make in it?

Narrative: Twists and Turns in RPGs

Rather than the straightforward storylines of action games, RPGs feature robust, often twisting narratives that are just as important as the game play itself. The story unfolds as players complete challenges, explore new areas of the game world, and talk to NPCs. Story, therefore, provides the framework for the missions of the game and an explanation for why the player is doing what she’s doing, why she’s visiting the locales she’s visiting, and why things get progressively harder and more urgent. Story entertains and enlightens.

Roguelike Games

Some RPGs, such as the open-source NetHack and Blizzard’s original Diablo, feature a game world that is constantly changing, so that no matter how many times it is played, the dungeons are never the same. These games are called roguelike, because they borrow from the mechanics of the 1980 computer game Rogue. NetHack is a very small game, in fact, so it contains almost no story. But the character upgrades, quests, combat tactics, and mazelike exploration elements of the game are remarkable for its size and keep gamers amused. When Diablo’s creators decided to have their dungeon maps randomly generate each time the player enters them, the game’s entertainment value and overall achievement owed a lot to that choice.

A Non-Linear Game World

RPG worlds are rarely linear, as opposed to the typical linear game worlds of first-person shooters and side-scrolling platform games. A linear game world is one where the player starts at point A and struggles to get to point B, where a new area is opened up and the player must now attempt to get from point B to point C, and so on. In a non-linear game world, such as RPGs boast, the player can and often will return to previously explored areas multiple times, discovering something new each time. In the game Planescape: Torment, from the now-defunct company Black Isle Studios, the town of Curst is destroyed while the player is away.

Designing a Fun Game Setting

What kind of world the player characters explore depends on the nature of the game. Most fantasy RPGs are quasi-medieval, meaning that they use the more interesting bits and pieces from Europe’s Middle Ages, Baroque, and Renaissance ages for reference but are not entirely accurate depictions of Earth’s past. These games are resplendent with castles, princesses, and soldiers. Some RPGs are steampunk in nature, meaning that—although the game appears faintly historic, it contains fancy technology that is purely imaginary; think of the biomechanical spider tank seen in the movie Wild Wild West, starring Will Smith. Technology in a steampunk universe does not have to have any real scientific basis and can even be said to be powered by magic crystal energy. A few RPGs are modern but steeped in fantasy, like the urban zombie panic games that have become popular recently. And still others take place in a galaxy far, far away, which is almost as fantastic as the medieval ones, except the elves are replaced with aliens, and the steampunk technology is replaced with futuristic technology, like spaceships and laser swords. Regardless of what time period or place RPGs occur in, the writers and artists almost always take artistic license with them, making the locales appear more bizarre or alien than the humdrum Earth we occupy. One reason they do this is for entertainment value. People like to be swept away. Role-playing games, after all, are a form of escape. And what better way to escape than to escape the ordinary world we all live in? In this fashion, games are comparable to theme park rides or exotic tourist destinations—and game designers are closely akin to tour guides.

Game World: A Trip to Never-land

Exploring the game world is an important aspect of an RPG. Players will travel quite extensively throughout the game world, finding objects they need, talking to non-player characters (NPCs), facing terrifying monsters, and avoiding traps. This world, therefore, has to be interesting, complex, and multifaceted. It also must be big enough to encourage exploration but small enough so the player doesn’t get lost in it.