What Every Games Developer Needs to Know About Story: John Sutherland

 This weeks reading was a Gamasutra article that describes the basics of story to games designers - What does a story consist of?

Throughout the entire article there is one statement that shines through and is drummed into the reader's head: Story IS Conflict. As the capabilities of technology are constantly advanced, the quality of games are also following suit. The 'bar' that people set games is ever rising and increasing the amount of interaction gamers want to recieve from games. A story is one of the features within a game that are being influenced by the designer, story and storytelling are human experiences and are part of our ancestry - Noah Falstein talks about this in my previous post 'Natural Funativity'.

This particular article stresses hugely that GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES!

Movies have had time to refine and experiment with what they do best, storytelling in the medium of picture and sound. However games have their own tools and features that seperate them from movies - player interaction! This conflict in these stories previously had to be planned from the very beginning, many classic stories use a very basic layout which if followed can make your story passible, but not great. The general structure goes as follows:

1. First, a protagonist is introduced - the hero.
2. His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident.
3. A gap opens up between the hero and orginary life.
4. The hero tries the normal conservative action to overcome the gap - it fails.
5. The world pushes back too hard.
6. The hero then has to take a risk of some sort to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.
7. Then there is a reversal - Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn't know before, and the world if out of whack again! A second gap has opened up.
8. The hero has to take an even larger risk to overcome the second gap.
9. After overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal! Opening a third gap!
10. The hero has to take the greatest risk of all in order to overcome this third gap and reach taht object of desire, which is usually an ordinary life.

Characters and Characterisation

 Both of these are very important within a game - Character is not necessarily what the person looks like, but it is how the hero/villain acts towards situations and scenarios (Giving the character emotional depth). This character should be revolved around by the other characters involved in the storyline. This article suggests that the game world should always be antagonistic toward the character to increase the amount of struggle and hardship the player must endure.

Reversals

 Sutherland suggested the use of reversals are integral to creating conflict. Each act within the story are driven by reversals, these reversals can lead to three different types of conflict:

Internal Conflict (Typically novels) - Inside your head.
Interpersonal Conflict (Typically plays) - Between different people.
External Conflict (Typically movies/games) - Society in general/outside world.

Plays are 80% Audio 20% Visual
Movies are 80% Visual 20% Audio

Sutherland goes on to state that within games if you are able to make the player DO something that causes them to be exposed to the story - then that is the greatest priority, however SHOWING the player is second priority, and TELLING them is last.