In most games, the plot is very important. A good game story can enhance the player's sense of substitution and is also a key factor in driving long-term participation.
However, most developers are probably not good at storytelling. At the previous GDC conference, indie developer and NHTV University game professor Meta Haggis spoke about the narrative tools that fit all games.
Here's the full content of GameLook transcription:
Meta Haggis：
I'm Meta, a professor of creative and entertaining games at NHTV University, and it's a great school if you want to study game development in Europe. I'm also an indie game developer, and my studio Metazone has been running for 7 years, and I make games for myself, for my friends, and for some studios, and sometimes I join big companies like EA to help them with game story and other things.
The game I recently made is called Fragment of Him, which was released last year (2016) on Xbox One, PC and other platforms. I'm also a full-time member of the British Writers Guild and work as a story and game design consultant at Copper Stone Sea, and there's a lot more to it than that.
Basically, I'm mainly doing game-related stuff, and what I want to explain today is why understanding the story structure is very important for game developers, usually a lot of things are more intuitive. So a lot of the content in this article, there may be developers who say: We are already doing this.
We'll look at a solid story structure that developers can use and ask some debug questions to help you solve story or gameplay puzzles. Finally, two summary charts will be put in which some of the more important content will be summarized.
Flow in Games
Let's talk about the "flow" in the game first, I use this chart to show the relationship between the challenge in the game and the player's skill, if you have higher requirements for the player's skills, but provide a relatively low challenge, the game will be boring; if the player's skill requirements are low but the challenge is high, then the game experience will be very difficult, the player will feel uneasy.
Therefore, the area between the two is inversely proportional to what we call the flow channel, and the challenges and skill requirements in the game should be a perfect match, and if you want to understand the deeper content of this concept, you can read articles, works or interviews by Chen Xinghan, Jesse Scwell and others.
When we think of story contradictions or conflicts, we can also use diagrams to show that in most game stories, the conflict is less obvious at the beginning, we find some problems and then start looking for clues, in the subsequent experience, we find a greater danger, and at the end of the story we solve the problem.
If the conflict is serious at the beginning but there is not enough time to unfold, it will make the player feel that the game experience is too tense, and if the story rhythm is always smooth, it will make the player feel bored.
But what exactly does that line represent in the middle of these two graphs?
Before that, the first thing we have to think about is, what is your game story? Your game is made up of a variety of "content", such as activities, story, game mechanics, and game worlds, which are all components of the game's storytelling.
On the other hand, there are players, who are diverse and numerous, and they also generate their own versions of the game story, which is their interaction with the game world, their understanding of the game world, because the world we design may not be the world they see. Because, they will understand based on their own experience of playing the game and the world around them.
Because of these two reasons, we may get something different. Imagine holding a car in a city, which actually has a setting, such as the city and the car, you and the opponent are driving on the track, and at the end of the race, you may surpass everyone to win the race because of the better driving skills. The story, while short, can also give the player a sense of joy and excitement, which is actually a small story if we look at it from a conflict and flow perspective.
As developers, we've implemented the story through a lot of things, like THE AI started out very fast, but at the end of the day some parts of the car malfunctioned, and we designed an interesting track with straight lines and corners that align with the game story that players experience. At the player level, they have produced their own stories through their own skills, choices, and the way they control the car.
So, the content that we design and the user-generated content, these are the player experiences. So, how do we do it? Flow theory holds that it is very good to keep the player inside the heart circulation channel. But how can we do that?
Storytellers have very solid structured systems that create great player experiences. We can learn a lot from these people and understand how they guide users forward without having to rebuild the wheel every time.
There are three elements of the game's story: motivation, scenario, and flow
We've laid out the basic elements of a game's story, including motivations, scenarios, and a flow from 0 to 100 percent.
Let's start with motivation, for game characters, their motivations are divided into external and internal reasons. External causes are the need to adapt something in the outside world, such as wanting to get richer in the game, wanting to get somewhere in the game world, or establishing a friendship or love relationship.
Internal motivation is the need to change something in the individual's heart, usually to overcome a (emotional) problem, such as overcoming fear, sadness, such as the internal cause of revenge in the external world is sadness, which is also the usual design method of many game stories, and it is effective.
Other internal motivations include learning something new, usually something they already know. You tend to succeed on one motive and fail on another, which leads to tragedy. For example, Romeo and Juliet, the dispute between two aristocratic families lasted for many years, they understood the past grievances of the two families, and they were unwilling to reconcile, and eventually hurt their respective children, which is also the cause of the tragedy.
Whether it is internal or external motivation, the core of a story is always change, and if nothing changes from the beginning to the end, then the story must be very boring.
In a story, there has to be change, so how does this apply to the game?
We probably don't think of Tetris as a good storyline, but it makes for a very engaging gaming experience.
Imagine that the process of playing this game has been constantly eliminating layers of blocks, and there are internal and external reasons. The internal reason is the desire to put these different shapes together in an orderly manner. I think the quest for order has always been with us, which is one of the reasons tetris has continued to be popular for years.
Speaking of the plot structure, it includes the characters and the player's goals, a series of activity structures that can be changed, that is, the plot, the plot can control the rhythm of conflict in the player's experience, so when you start your story before the major event starts, I find that many games do not do well.
The implication of this is that you don't start by saying "You're Harry the Wizard", which makes the player very sudden, because before you said wizarding, his daily life had nothing to do with wizards. Because the wizarding world is nothing, you have to set the characters, the scenarios, and the basic rules.
Usually, this part of the content is also referred to as "beginner teaching".
It's important to build empathy, and we have to make the character want to overcome the difficulties that lie ahead. In this regard, Burning Man did a very good job, and before we reached the lake, we already knew many aspects of Henry's life (establishing internal and external goals).
Then we're going to add surprises, and once the players understand where they're in the game, we can start setting challenges and adding tension to the story or player mechanics. Then we add enemies, dangers, or break the usual situation. Overcoming this problem is usually the external motivation of the plot, getting everything back to normal, usually the main motivation.
Players usually don't solve this problem directly, they either explore the abilities, the game world, avoid the biggest problems, or try some smaller battles first. In VVVVVV, the player/character has to rescue their co-workers, which is a very good game, but in the beginning, the player's character is basically wandering aimlessly.
After that, they chose to do some activities for this goal, and after a period of exploration, the players themselves have enough knowledge of the game world to make specific choices and actions, they think "I better use this map", they participate in the external events and challenges in the game.
The basic abilities seem to be less efficient, with new enemies and new story elements that make them feel that the game world is not so simple, and in this respect, Tetris is the best done. I think it's important to add complexity to make the experience more engaging, and it's best to add complexity both in terms of story and gameplay mechanics if you can.
In Virginia, we see divisions between patriots, and dreams make reality a problem. Burning Man adds more conspiracy-level stories.
In Fragments of Him, Will doubts that it can sustain a relationship without hurting each other, and these moments are the emotional lows in the story.
Therefore, the primary strategy and weapons are no longer enough, in the shooter game, new rhythms and enemy combinations will continue to increase, enemies aim more accurately, bullets and even missile weapons, as new abilities are added, enemies become more dangerous.
Players want to overcome their fears by finding new weapons or strategies to defeat enemies, which is an external change, and sometimes they can unlock abilities they never knew, and then an internal change occurs.
Then we ushered in the "dark hour", all hopes of overcoming the problem were in danger, and eventually the boss was killed, but this was not even its final form, and all the players' understanding, relationships, and strategies formed through experience encountered the ultimate challenge.
Then, you end the challenge as soon as possible. Players may be wondering: How long will it take me to complete the level? So hopefully the ending will be clean and concise.
Diagram of the basic structure of the game story
Next, let's add all of this to the chart:
You might find a lot of this stuff familiar, yes, because that's the model for the vast majority of stories, and as players and characters move forward in Greentown, it can fit into most of the stronger experiences, which is very intuitive and rewarding.
However, if you're going to make a thriller, action, or horror story, you might want to add something extra, such as in a horror story where the "eye-catching point" is a sudden act or creates a sense of dread without letting the player see the game's future development. So, this can be a way to let the player know that there is a more exciting experience ahead.
In horror game stories, there is usually a final moment of fear at the end, further deepening the player's sense of fear. Sometimes, though, this is also done in thrillers, such as the fact that the defeated organization is actually alive or the fear of a bigger war than before.
We've covered this table throughout this article, which explains the process of the player's game journey, which can be used to help with in-game storytelling, or as a core structure to shape the rhythm of the story in an engaging experience.
In simple terms, this model can be used as a story meta structure for a game, and it can also be used as a macro structure for a game story.
For example, it can be repeated at every level, and each level can contribute to the completion of internal or external motivations, but for each encounter or scene, there are too many details, so we need a short and concise model.
We do this through the way of a scene model. In your game, all scenes or levels must have a goal (player objective or experience), conflict (making the goal difficult to achieve), and ending (change by requiring the player to change or do something).
These elements either resolve or adapt to conflict, preparing for the next step in the gaming experience and driving the game's story forward.
In Aliens Versus Predator, for example, one goal is to reset the power so that the colony is operational again; the conflict is that the player successfully restores the power but causes the colony's wires to be short-circuited; so the result is that the colony is more dangerous than before, and the character's life is more complicated.
The players did the right thing, they managed to complete the mission, but then life got worse. This narrative is possible because if you make the player's journey too good, the whole story will be boring, and this way is completely feasible.
Another example is God of War, where your goal is to continue killing all enemies, and the conflict is that enemies have shields to block regular attacks, and as a result, the player needs to use new attack methods to advance the story, making the game more challenging and increasing the complexity of the player's game.
Games are the players' stories, and if your game feels too bland, then use the player experience as a story to find a way to solve the problem. Here are 4 questions to help your peers determine if a game, activity, or level is unsatisfactory:
Is the player's goal clear? Is there an escalation mechanism or a story conflict, or is there a constant repetition? Does the result meaningfully add to the gameplay, the story, or both? Throughout the game, does the beginning and end change for the player or character?
summary
So, good designers have been able to intuitively create engaging games with story structures, and consciously learning that approach is a great way to understand how we shape a great gaming experience.
Whether your game is a story game or a gameplay-based game, learning to use the storyteller's thinking can help you make more player-focused design decisions, hoping that these can help your peers, and finally, I wish your peers can make excellent games and tell excellent game stories.
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