Ten Years of Game Screenwriting: Look at narrative-driven design from Heaven Burns Red

This article is published exclusively for a limited time at The Game Teahouse with the permission of The Narrative Doctor.

01

sequence

Gollum has repeatedly officially launched the "braised paradise" "heaven burns red" in early 2022, because of the name of Mazhi Quasi-Master, which has attracted quite a lot of attention from the beginning of exposure. The second gamers are all looking forward to Ma Po's repeated "fall off the altar" in the past decade, especially after the "Day of becoming a God" completely silenced everyone at the end of 2020, and this time returning to the game field to stage a Jedi counterattack.

As a non-senior keyman and game practitioner, I am even more curious about what kind of ship new experience Ma Po's years of gal script skills will bring to the carrier of mobile games.

After squeezing almost all the fragments of time for ten days, I think its exploration of the narrative-driven direction is worth learning and thinking about.

02

A process experience that kills people

The most notable feature of Braised Paradise, in addition to the extremely rich plot expression, should be counted in the overall framework of the narrative part to the core position similar to the single-player RPG.

The structure of the main story is not the usual chapter-level, but divided by chapter-date-time periods. The process progresses linearly along the timeline, and most of the time the player can only follow the plot development to see the protagonist talk to various people or insert a small number of plot battles, only once a day free time, you can choose to run the character single-player plot or improve the social attributes.

Although there is also a home function similar to the main interface, players are not always available. Once the main storyline is opened, it follows the course of history throughout the process, and can only return to the scene in the gap between forced actions. The entrance to the common content of mobile games such as brushing materials and climbing towers is all in the home, and must be pinched into the schedule.

Very strictly, the brush content of this game does not even contain dog food, and players need to partially rely on the retro means of playing bosses to level up their characters during the wilderness. Although the follow-up maze copy will give dog food, it will be found that the admission ticket required to enter the book is also difficult to obtain, and the physical strength that cannot be improved by the upper limit of 5 points is really unable to play a few games, not to mention that this physical strength is even 4 hours to recover 1 point, and it is not possible to charge money. Not to mention that stamina is also the hard currency needed to go back and unlock the single-player story that was missed in the main process.

Therefore, the batch of admission tickets issued for the first time after the commemoration of the launch is simply a huge amount of money.

There is much more to this type of human confusion. For example, in the early plot battle, the protagonist group is forced to fight, and you swipe a team of SS (equivalent to SSR) God of War is useless, you must use the A card (equivalent to R) to hard bump. For example, the opening game has to watch the prologue plot of more than an hour. Wait a minute.

Together, these designs create a very different experience from popular mobile games. Instead of making combat-nurturing the main axis of player behavior, it is trying to limit the player's enthusiasm for battle, and even semi-compulsively let the player participate in the plot.

It can be said that if the player skips the plot like other games, they will find that they have almost nothing to do. Even people like me who have brushed all over the light jade really can't stand some of the too poor mouth plots to open fast forward, and ordinary players may only think: "Ma Zhi Zhun this kind of guy ..."

03

The narrative sets the boundaries for gameplay

However, when we are caught off guard by the first knife (sitting down, not the bento) without any anesthesia, and then calm down and re-examine these somewhat outrageous designs, it is not difficult to find out what their intentions are, and then find the trade-offs that the Glider Club makes in balancing narrative innovation and traditional gameplay.

For example, although the length of the prologue plot breaks through the sky, the first ten consecutive episodes that the people like to hear are very advanced, and the plot is about 10 minutes when the plot is fully watched, even faster than many similar products in China. Moreover, before starting the game, clearly tell the deletion of account information to reopen, you can directly airborne card guidance, welcome to the boss to swipe the initial. This design similar to the beginning of the funeral love (Death Alice) ten consecutive games can not be said to be rare and intimate.

In the battle design, the health bar + shield that looks very conventional at first glance is also very mysterious.

First of all, everyone's shield is significantly higher than life, the shield value (DP) is generally four digits, and the health value (HP) is only a few hundred, because the shield is the energy shield generated by the Blazing Angel Weapon (セラフ, the weapon in the game setting), and the health value is really the girl herself to carry the body.

Secondly, the shield itself is much more defensive than the flesh, and the enemy's attack looks like the damage on the shield, but after losing the shield, most of the characters can't even stand for one turn. Only the protagonist who has his own defense enhancement talent without a shield can barely rely on the field, which is also very much in line with the thick armored face of the sex turn Okazaki Tomoyuki.

Finally, shields can be reverted when not broken, and once hammered, only a few big moves or special items can regenerate. If a character is unfortunate enough to be broken, it must be replaced immediately, because any character's health return to zero not only means that she sent it herself, but also directly leads to gameplay.

This series looks a bit cumbersome and even snake-like design, but in fact, it reminds the player all the time that the battle girls you control are actually very fragile. They are not two-legged gundams, but small human beings who will die on the battlefield at any time.

On the card system, the glider club also does not hesitate to use the curved pen and use more design to serve the display of the character itself.

A character itself can correspond to multiple actionable cards, which are called forms (スタイル) in the game. The biggest difference from similar designs is that all cards share a level, while skills and talents grow independently, which partially reduces the sunk cost of the aforementioned mandatory cultivation of A cards, and also increases the probability of appearance for some characters who do not have high-level cards for the time being but draw well.

Black Ponytail Ji hairless sword Saint Sister, dare to ss card will be kryptonite.

The scarcity of hard currency diamonds and the perks of door-cutting are also the places that have upset many players since the launch of the service. The price of a ten-in-a-row is 3,000 diamonds, while the opening ten-day commemorative check-in is 300 for 100 diamonds per day on the last day, and the regular check-in is 20 diamonds per day for 100 on the seventh day, and the opening service players have played for more than a week, and the pure operation welfare drill is still less than a 10-company.

Although the conventional operation of mining (Tutuna drill) is retained, it is subject to the harsh acquisition of grow-out materials and may not be completed quickly.

These things, coupled with the occasional ten consecutive coupons and some bits and pieces of benefits, the overall white prostitution harvest in front of players who are accustomed to Cy operations can only be said to be the existence of mosquito legs.

As for the common 6-headed punch and upgrade fund in China, it is even more non-existent. The cheapest beginner's gift package is a ten-in-a-row bag with an SS guarantee also sells for 2940 yen, equivalent to 160 yuan, almost can be financially managed to meet please buy a 168-stall gift bag.

In this extremely deflationary framework, there is one design that stands out, that is, each character single story will send 200 diamonds.

As mentioned earlier, if the single-player plot is not triggered in the first process, going back to the scene again will require valuable physical energy and meet the numerical requirements of social attributes.

Unsurprisingly, the cultivation of social attributes is also to occupy the main line schedule or consume physical strength to go back to take, requiring players to accurately plan, evenly distribute, and develop comprehensively for the poor 5 points of physical strength. Playing it is like a "Heartbeat Memories" Renaissance.

Harsh conditions and generous rewards work together to push the single-player plot to the heart of short-term goals.

At first glance, putting the plot priority so high is bound to affect the operation and commercialization of the operation can not be engaged in the scattering operation to retain, otherwise it will greatly overdraft and dilute the content. But from another point of view, why not be the same as the famous sweet flower stuffed chicken, the great confidence in its own quality or brand premium, so that the producer chose a high pricing strategy?

04

Now is the time for change

Talking about this, some small partners may think of a product in the domestic mobile game industry that has tried a similar form: "Forever Seven Days Capital".

The same narrative dominance, the same restricted operations everywhere, and the same gameplay design that is not particularly fun, but the results can be said to be very different. In addition to the strength gap of the producers themselves, timing is also a factor.

When the Seven Days City debuted, the concept of the second dimension had just broken the circle, and the same factory "Yin and Yang Division" was like a day in the sky, everyone's attention was still on today You drew the SSR, and the next door "Crash 3" directly pulled the art quality of the category to a new realm.

Nowadays, all dimensions of the two-dimensional game product have been fully tapped, and they have quickly passed through the development stages from numerical drive, social drive, art drive, etc., and individual aspects such as the original picture of the character are heinous. Coupled with some well-known external pressures, the majority of manufacturers have full motivation to seek a new strategic highland, and whether narrative can become the next breakthrough direction has become a hot topic at present.

But to take this step, things may be more complicated than many people think.

In the face of the achievements of the braised paradise, no one can deny the central role of Ma ZhiJun. The existence of this gal world elder is enough to make criticisms such as "Human beings are going to perish and still live a campus life, what a broken world view", "the protagonist tells awkward jokes on any occasion, can't stand it", "why did you suddenly start playing baseball" and "This knife plot is too old-fashioned" in front of a sentence of "This is the smell of hemp".

For fans, plot procrastination can be understood as a foreshadowing, the characters are stereotyped for emotional reversal, and the seemingly heartless teenage girl group in the end of the world (this time only girls, good yeah) is a consistent fantasy world - the binary structure of the real world. Any player who comes to the three words of Ma Zhi Zhun has expected him to write what he looks like, the original taste is the duty, and it is a surprise to have some innovation, as long as it does not repeat the tragic situation of the day of the gods, everything is easy to say. This is the strong brand recognition accumulated in 20 years.

This kind of drama of being sprayed with autism and then resurrected, the old key black is definitely not strange.

05

Back to MDA

Ma Zhijun's big coffee sitting in the town is naturally an insurance for narrative-driven exploration, so can you only give up without this condition? I personally don't think so, but the answer is certainly not to simply package one level so shallowly.

Let's talk a little bit about theory.

MDA theory believes that if a game's mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics can have internal unity, the final game experience will be more qualitative.

Generally speaking, the designer starts from the internal mechanism, passes through the content or system, and implements it to the aesthetic level to let the player actually experience. The player's perspective is completely opposite, first of all, through a series of aesthetic elements to produce a perceptual understanding of the game, gradually understand and deepen the content, and finally accumulate an understanding of the inherent rules of the game. This path of players gradually deepening from experience to rules can be called "game understanding" in the vernacular.

It is not difficult to see that the player always puts the sensibility first, and the cognition and thinking of the rules are placed last. And we have also observed that there are not a few players who give up thinking about how to become the strongest and only hold the paper people. "Good looking" becomes the head of the experience, so much so that you can hypnotize yourself to reverse rationalize the gameplay that is not great.

In this regard, the explanation of MDA theory is that 8 aesthetic elements, senses, fantasy, narrative, challenge, companionship, exploration, expression and leisure, in different combinations, different proportions constitute the overall experience of the game. The experience goals and ingredients of each game will not be exactly the same. In terms of production, if a game chooses to emphasize the experience of narrative and fantasy, it is completely understandable to focus on polishing its own advantageous projects and choosing conservative strategies in other aspects before the development strength is not strong enough to fully blossom.

For example, I'm afraid few people think that detroit: Becoming Human has much to do with its operational part, focusing only on how the narrative makes good branch selection and creating a visual experience that is enough to match.

However, this idea is completely different from putting a layer of expression on the existing gameplay type, but it requires internal unity of form. If the dynamic layer can be more adapted to the requirements of the narrative, there is a good chance of creating a new product form that is very impressive.

A typical example is "Hades", which has won many awards by beating the name of an independent game but beating a large number of large-scale games.

In terms of theme, performance, and the way the plot is advanced, it is deeply integrated with the challenging characteristics of the routing genre, which is random and varied, repetitive back to the starting point, and has many aspects.

The process of the prince repeatedly experiencing "death", learning from it, overcoming obstacles, and finally achieving self-growth and reaching a positive reconciliation with his father is not only narrated by a concise and clear text, but also a portrayal and metaphor for the actual experience of each player in the game.

End

So the question is, one of the cores of the producer supergiant, producer Greg Kasavin, how many people have heard of it?

In the end, we can finally mention the model FGO of "heavy drama mobile game" that many friends are very familiar with. Its great success cannot fail to make the majority of peer manufacturers think of "learning from it", but we have hardly heard of anyone who has achieved good results in imitating its products. Those who want to use a large text script + money-throwing art + mature gameplay model to execute the following strategy will encounter the same problem: Why should the player look at your text? We all know that mushrooms and old voids are a signboard, Fate is a good IP, where does the signboard come from, and where does the IP come from?

What the domestic industry really answered was the four-word game that did not deliberately declare how its plot was.

For this scene, how many players willingly nibbled through the main line of the chapter that was more than 100,000 words long?

As Tencent Ma Xiaoyi said, "Narrative ability, or the ability to build a world view, becomes more and more important in the successful process of a product." "This ability, or work, is far from being able to improve the cutscenes of the plot and enrich the form of performance. As mentioned earlier, the composition of the experience goal needs to be further changed to drive changes in content, performance, mechanics, and even team composition and process pipelines in the new direction of attack. This is a comprehensive project.

This is likely to be another new opportunity for manufacturers and teams that fail to grab the top spot at a time when the arms race triggered by the art-driven experience is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Braised Paradise is indeed the latest case of such a new hope for everyone. But I would like to remind that if you cling to the old methodology of peeling and packaging, you can't understand where its core competitiveness lies.

Imitation is the imitation of a product like Braised Paradise, just as it is never possible to reproduce an FGO.