"I throw cocktails called crazy to try to prevent an end", this article starts from the analysis of world view design, analyzes and sorts out the design of the camp and player position in film and television games, and hopes to have a little inspiration for interested students in the game narrative -
I. Introduction
As an Assassin, as a member of the Anti-Shinra Order, as a Rhode Islander, as Geralt of Livia, as a Norse god of war, as a Demacia, as a prince ready to kill the Underworld, as a toy villain with flowers on his head, as a customs officer with a seal, as a member of the East Side Society, as a butcher, as an idol agent—what does camp mean to players and game narrative designers?
The content described and analyzed in this article is the camp design from the perspective of the narrative of the world view, and will give some examples to introduce a variety of construction ideas to show the design effect; introduce the design and construction performance of the camp, analyze how to enhance the player's sense of substitution in the game's multiple narrative methods, and how to design conflicts to allow players to participate in the narrative.
The impact of the worldview settings mentioned in this article on the game is related to the narrative, and the formation of a complete and effective player motivation requires both mechanics and performance. The works mentioned may have a large number of spoilers.
2. Camp Concept
01. What is the faction in the context of the game
In terms of definition, a faction refers to a group that unites to fight for common interests and goals, and the camp in the game carries the function of following certain rules to divide all the settings that appear in the game and create conflicts, which is reflected in the player's aspect, which is the identification of various identities, values, and group positions.
The camps in the game, the most typical, throughout the generations of people to remember the alliances and tribes in the world of Warcraft, red and blue flags flying on the map and cinema in the game, the two parts of the player are naturally hostile, competing for game resources and the victory and defeat of the battle, the main story also tirelessly tells the contradictions between the camps, players always have to choose to join one of them to experience the wonderful Azeroth adventure.
The 2016 Warcraft movie released the huge Alliance tribe "Cinema pk"
The factions in DND (Dungeons & Dragons) are closer to their own concept, and the nine factions table is organized through morality and attitudes towards social order, and players generally need to refer to the factions to which their character cards belong to when playing, otherwise they will be reminded by the city lord or need to convince the city lord of the rationality of his actions.
The faction in DND describes the typical behavior of a creature with that faction
The above examples all have the characteristics of a large world view, frequent battles in the story, and the player's game purpose is mainly based on combat.
But because one of the basic roles of faction design in games is to solve the problem of "who the player is going to fight", there are also factions in some more relaxed and casual games. Without even the most superficial faction design, the "challenge" behavior in the game cannot be established. The process of challenge is to establish goals, identify obstacles and find ways to resolve them, and from a narrative perspective, one of the functions of the worldview is to rationalize the appearance of obstacles and guide players to identify with the goals offered by the game or to establish their own goals.
In the most classic "Mario", the end of the level can also have only one line "pass here", but Nintendo tells you at the beginning of the game that the princess (friendly army) has been captured by the demon king (the enemy faction), and when the level is reached, it will remind you to save the princess again, and the subtext is "the princess will continue to suffer around the demon king without your salvation", which is naturally more able to arouse the player's motivation to challenge the game and establish the game goal identity than only one pass hint.
The setting in "Two-Man Journey" is more obvious, with men and women mainly working together to complete the level problems provided by the Magic Book to achieve the purpose of becoming human, at this time they are separated because they have a goal conflict with the Magic Book; the players in the early stages of "Animal Forest" are tired of dealing with the loans provided by Mr. Tanuki; and in "Breakup Kitchen", players A and B cooperate to deal with the needs of tricky customers.
Next, we will mention some games, movies, animations, and introduce the camp design in each game with the author's understanding.
02. Typical games and film and television animations
Because the concept of camp is rarely mentioned in the analysis of other worldviews, or rarely concentrated in analysis, this section will list some game films and television, and briefly analyze the basis for dividing camps and their embodiment in the content.
In addition to the works with a large and complex world view, some works that condense conflicts and changes in the relationship between a few characters or the inner world of the characters, or works that focus on describing the changes in the camp under a set of systems such as management and sports competitions, are also selected.
This section is for cross-comparison, and more works are selected for explanation, if you have a certain understanding of the current object of explanation [camp], you can skip to the next section, or you can return to this section to find a reference example when you encounter an unsure interpretation later in the text.
A Song of Ice and Fire
The basis of division: countless military forces, city-states, love, money, missions, curses and other relationships.
Embodiment: Seven Kingdoms; Nine Families; Night Watchman and Alien Ghosts; Ice and Fire, etc.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wilderness
Divided according to: race, territory, disaster and protection, etc.
Embodiment: Kingdom of Hellaru and Ganon; Link and Pokeblin; Gulong, Lit, Zora, Grud, and Hayea.
"Like a Dragon 0"
The basis of division: actual organizational relationship; interest territory, organization affiliation, geographical region, relationship with key assets, etc.
Manifestations: Underworld, police and government, ordinary people; Tojo-kai, Omi Alliance, and Rikuwa Real Estate; Dojima Group, Shimano Group, and Nichiren United; Tokyo's Kamurocho and Osaka Cangtianbori; owner, suitor, and guardian of "Blank Ichipyeong".
God of War 4
The basis of division: bloodline, belief, goal of narrative meaning, character relationship, etc.
Embodiment: The Father and Son of Kratos and the Norse Gods; The Quintos and Badr; the Race System of Norse Mythology itself; The Twilight Of the Gods Related Characters and Events.
Double Point Hospital
Division based on: monetary income, word of mouth, quantity, influence, etc.
Embodiment: Players enter the game as the dean, and at the same time, they must unlock more disease treatments and regions by treating patients to make money and continuously optimize facilities to enhance word-of-mouth and evaluation, the camp is quite realistic hospitals and patients, leaders and staff, hospitals and supervisors, etc.
The Witcher 3
Classification based on: race, ancestry, region, philosophy, emotional relationship, etc.
Manifested: Monsters, Demon Hunters, Warlocks and Humans; Regnia, Nefergaard, Skelig, etc.; Yennepha and Tris (Emotional Destination); Ciri, Geralt, The King and the Wild Hunt (the main line of contention for contradictions); White Orchard, Vegemar Royal Castle, Willen No Man's Land, Norwigr, Skellig Islands, Kelmorhan (Region); Northern Realm, Skellig, Monsters, Squirrel Party, Nefergaard Empire (Quint Card).
The Palm of Captivity
The basis of division: lineage, secret profit and loss, control and resistance, etc.
Embodiment: female protagonist, such as Yueqingren, custody management, island residents (regional life relationship); such as Yueqingren, such as Yueqingren's parents, and the boss Masaki (emotional relationship) who has a crush on Ryoko Ruyueliangzi; Qingren, boss Masaki, boss Masaki, Xihep Pharmaceutical Company, and government funds (illegal project interest relationship) who wrote "Golden Bee".
"Hades"
Divided by: bloodline, goal, divine faction, etc.
Embodiment: Underworld, Earth, and Olympus; The Prince, The Three Goddesses of Vengeance, Thanatos, and Hades; The Prince, Father, mother; Hades Defector, Administrator, and Obstructionist.
Bliss Disco
The basis of division: geopolitics and ideology, parties, classes, parties involved in the case, survival needs, art, rebellion, rational criticism, ontology and political ideas, politics and the individual, systems and individuals, philosophical ideas, etc.
Manifestations: Detectives, Victims, Murderers; Continents, Grey Domains and Existence; Seven Continents; More Than a Hundred Countries; Races from A to F; Tribes, Nobility, Revolution, Capitalism, Grey Domain; Conmeism, Moralism, Fascism, Extreme Liberalism; Capital and Workers Inside and Outside Revashaw, Protagonists and Chaos; Monarchies, Royalists and Democrats, etc.
Far Cry 5
The basis of division: religious belief, law and cult, region, interests, etc.
Manifests: Police, Eden Gate, Hope County residents; Eden Gate and the Resistance; Whitetail Mountains, Dutch Valley, Hempen River.
Detroit: Becoming Human
The basis of division: species, survival stance, family relations, justice, class, etc.
Embodiment: humans and bionic people; autonomous consciousness bionic people, abnormal bionic people and normal bionic people; painters, Marcus and painter sons; Carla, little girls and violent fathers; state ruling classes, big business and ordinary people.
The Union of Isaac
The basis of division: religious beliefs, family relations, self-desire and abandonment, etc.
Embodiment: The protagonist Isaac and various bosses; Isaac and mother; Isaac, mother and father; Isaac's family and social and religious propaganda.
"Only Wolves: Shadow Passed Away twice"
The basis of division: the power of immortality; stakeholders; the ruling class and the subordinate class; the state; the pursuit of power, etc.
Embodiment: Dragon, Son of Dragon Yin, Son of Transformation; Reed Kingdom, Neighboring Countries and Inner Province Army; Wolf, Guro, Lady Butterfly, General Reed and Father.
Resident Evil 2
Division based on: real position, family relationships, capital and government, viral characteristics, etc.
Manifests: Police and Spies; Umbrella Corporation and Employees; Virus Researchers, Propagators, Blockers and Victims; Survivors and Zombies, Raccoon City Residents, Raccoon City Leaders and Government.
Death Stranding
Division based on: company structure, beliefs, philosophy, biology, purpose, geography, dimensions, time and space, etc.
Embodiment: Stick and Rope; Life and Death; Reality and The Underworld; Bridges Express and The Flagiers Express; Sam, Emily, The President of the United States and the Terrorists; Sam, Time Rain, BT, BB and Sam's Hades; The Courier and the Miller; Hel & Ka; East, West and Central.
The Last of Us 1 is divided into humans and infected people according to whether they are infected with the virus or not, and hunters and fireflies according to their ideas and attitudes.
Persona 5 is divided into monsters and criminals according to ideas and goals; high school students, personality masks, velvet rooms, and collaborators according to the bondage with power; and human, subconscious crimes, and rebellious minds according to Jungian psychology.
Catherine is divided into the protagonist, the real girlfriend Catherine and the demon Catherine according to the attitude of marriage and love; the nightmare manager, the demon, and the man who cannot take responsibility for marriage according to the myth of Mesopotamian.
The Master (game) distinguishes between me, the master, and the rebellious disciple according to hatred; and the martial arts faction and venue according to the five elements.
"Qing Yu Nian" is divided into the imperial family, the supervision court and the inner treasury according to its functions; it is divided into Fan Xian, the prince and the second prince according to the imperial throne struggle; according to the country, it is divided into southern Qing and northern Qi, and according to the attitude to secrets, it is divided into crossers, protection crossers and use crossers.
"Chainsaw Man" is divided into humans, demon hunters, demon people, and demons according to the race; according to the concept, it is divided into public security special class, chainsaw man, demon, and macchima.
According to the system of eight million gods, "Wild Gods" is divided into gods, artifacts, demons, humans, and undead; according to ideas and interests, it is divided into the Night Dou System, the Tenjin System, the Xiaofu System, the Bishamon Heavenly System, the Ebishou System, the Amaterasu Great God System, and the Seven Blessings God System.
Twelve Minutes is divided into me, my wife, the killer disguised as a policeman, and my wife's father according to the secret interests.
"Death Cycle" is divided into Colt, Juliana, and The Black Cay Island Prophet according to the guardian and breaking sides of the time loop.
Under legend is divided into humans and monsters according to race; friendly and killer according to ideas.
The Idol Dream Festival is divided into four major offices according to the structure; according to the school, it is divided into Yumenoku, Reiaki and Hidetsuki; and according to the combination, it is divided into fifteen groups.
"The Silent Truth" is divided into investigators, perpetrators, perpetrators and victims according to the dual cases.
"The Hidden Corner" takes the family as a unit and tells about interweaving and conflict.
"The Beginning" distinguishes the explosion as a blocker, a jammer who can be co-opted as a helper, an organizer, and the instigator behind it.
Hamlet uses the social reality of England at that time to use the struggle between Hamlet and his uncle as a metaphor for the struggle between the humanists and the feudal monarchy.
"The Piano of Steel" contains the class and family relations promoted by the environment of the times, and Chen Guilin, a laid-off worker in the steel mill, and his wife Xiaoju use who can buy a piano for their daughter Chen Xiaoyuan as the key to fighting for custody.
"The Night the Comet Comes" contains emotions, dimensions, and identities, initially divided into worlds, and after many world exchanges, the heroine's position changes to kill herself in search of the best world for herself.
The emotional relationship of "Night and Day" and Asako's choice to face life. The lyrical realism that the author wants to express is reflected by showing Asako facing two people with different personalities and identities who look exactly the same.
Ready Player One virtual world and real world, poor majority and elite asset owners, dreams and reality, companies and laborers, etc.
"The Unma's House" is the idol ecology of Japan. Agents, idols, fans, investors, avid admirers, journalists.
As murder gradually appears, the intricate interpersonal relationships, family, love, hatred, repressive society and deformed love are shaped by the conflict of ideas and cruel reality of the show.
03. The purpose of the camp design
Let's first introduce the concept of "player story". Compared with "plot" and "narrative", "player story" has a much wider application scenario.
A player story is when a player performs an activity in a Scenario through medium.
This may be the role of the manager in the FIFA to play a round of ball, may play the snake chasing other snakes on the pixelated grass, may be the role of the designer in the game phone and the setting of the ambiguous object to chat about the weather, may pull out a gun to stop the enemy.
In the context of the chemical use of imagination, stories are more contagious to humanity than dry regulations, and the meaning of the worldview here is:
Provide a medium that can be played: a manager, a puzzle boy, a ball of unknown yarn;
Provide the context: a piece of paper, a castle, a chaotic outer space, a corner of the smoke-filled Battlefield of World War II;
Provides activities that can be performed: run, walk, jump, kick, eject yourself, hang on to a dog and follow it through space.
A brief story is defined as telling an event with allegory through storytelling.
What happens above is the event, and the narrator can work on the way it is narrated. A series of crisp and neat tactical decisions, a gorgeous romantic journey full of dreams, a CG performance with a real whistle, a series of chaotic choices that will terminate the game without clicking.
The gameplay meaning of factions is mentioned in the previous section to provide justification for the player's game obstacles. In a narrative sense, factions can give meaning to the "player story".
When a player participates in the game, the player's choice is the player's position, and the camp is the value of the position.
Camps can be constructed in such a way that the most common binary perception of good and evil can be a struggle for survival, a level playing field, or an emotional choice.
Players also usually cross over to other camps by choosing to make actions and choices in the virtual world that they would never make in reality, in order to experience the pleasure of betrayal that reality does not allow.
From a specific and perceptible level, the faction can facilitate the player to distinguish between friends and enemies, in order to use real-world experience to formulate their own game goals; can create conflicts and branch story lines within the plot, and can make a big fuss about the faction transformation of the player himself and other characters, to greatly enrich the level of the story.
Third, the camp design process
01. The design idea behind the camp
In a variety of work carriers, there are "intentions", "archetypes", "motifs" and "concepts", which are used to express the meaning of the works or the context of the works.
This section introduces several directions in which you can usually look for inspiration when designing a camp from a narrative perspective.
philosophy
Between the design purposes of the camp, in order to avoid the preconceived criticism of good and evil, the origin of the design philosophy is to generally adopt the idea of the opposite of the two laws, that is, the contradiction in the law, the phenomenon of mutual exclusion that exists between the laws of motion of the two interrelated forces, and the opposite effect between the two movement forces that exist in nature.
As Kant proposed, there are four groups of reason on the cosmological problem: time and space, elementary particles, free will, and the origin of the universe.
It can also be designed with dualistic ideas, such as the good-evil dualism of ancient Persian Zoroastrianism, Plato's idea-dualism of things, Kant's ontological-phenomenal dualism, and some ethics believe that there is a dualism that cannot narrow the difference between fact statements and value judgments.
Manifested in the construction of the game's world view, many game choices have meanings of life and death, good and evil, material-spirit, etc., such as life and death expounded in "Death Stranding", "Westworld" expounded on whether there is free will, "Inception" expounded on the thought and existence, "faith" presented the human faith (light) and the fall of the devil (darkness) presented.
The reversal of the second law does not mean that each individual must have a clear position of affiliation, or that there is only one camp for an individual, nor does it mean that there can only be two camps and there can be no multiple. In the next section, the more realistic and specific ways of dividing races, city-states, and the like are good enough for some games with simple story structure or low worldview, good and evil or existential crises.
Philosophical schools originate from philosophers who understand and explain the world from their own perspectives, and have a relatively complete theoretical system, which is itself the structural basis of the worldview.
It can be designed to construct the basic structure of the world, such as whether there is a universe, gods, hell, or abyss.
It can be used to shape the fundamental conflicts of life in the world, such as similarities and differences in religious ideas, attitudes toward material things, and coping behaviors.
It is used to form a stage for the protagonist's thinking, such as "Persona 5", which refers to Freudianism and builds a spiritual labyrinth and a personality mask.
Shaping the struggle of idealism and materialism, the Assassin's Creed was designed between the Assassins and the Templars.
It shows Confucian and Taoist philosophy, such as many Chinese martial arts games xianxia games that embody "the avenue is invisible, giving birth to the heavens and the earth; the avenue is ruthless, running the sun and the moon; the avenue is nameless, nurturing all things; I don't know its name, the strong name is known as the Tao".
There is also the commonly used ultimate proposition – who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? You can build a lot of game worlds with this as the core.
List some philosophical motifs that can be referred to.
The School of Miletus
Thales boils down the world to a specific phenomenon or substance of nature, such as water and gas.
Heraclitus
The universe is the fire of change, governed by the Logos (the law).
Aristotle
The distinction between matter and form, the universe consists of five elements of earth, water, air, fire, and ether, and proposes the existence of the first promoter "God", etc., the most comprehensive early philosophy.
Neoplatonism
【Plotinus】 "Taiyi" is the foundation of the world, and the laws of reason, the soul, and specific things are all overflowing with taiyi.
Epicurean school
Epithurus: All things and souls are atoms, and happiness is the purpose of life.
Cynicism
Diogenes despised external utilitarianism and advocated a life of poverty.
Occamism
Knowledge that cannot be externally verified should be deleted – "Occam's Razor" and so on.
Rationalism (rationalism)
[Descartes] I think, therefore I am, the ultimate source of knowledge is God, and matter and soul correspond to each other.
Empiricism (empiricism)
[Locke] Experience is the only source of knowledge, and matter has a first and second nature, the former being in the thing itself, the latter being the product of perception.
Early Marxism
[Marx] Pragmatism materialism emphasizes the decisive role of practical labor, so that nature on the one hand presents objective laws before human beings, and on the other hand, it continues to develop with the deepening of human understanding - that is, "the nature of history, the history of nature".
Voluntarism
Schopenhauer The essence of the world is the natural will without cause and effect, time and space, cause and effect are the results of the rational understanding of the will, and life suffers because of the endless and hindered desires.
[Nietzsche] Fate is controlled by oneself, not by God's norm, so he advocates the "will to power" of the weak and the strong.
utilitarianism
[Bentham, Mill] The behavior of people in society is actually pursuing the maximization of personal happiness.
Freudianism
[Freud] emphasizes the decisive role of the subconscious mind and sexual desire in individual behavior, and dreams, civilized activities, etc. are the results of the subconscious mind being repressed by external morality and disguised at the conscious level.
existentialism
[Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, etc.] emphasizes that the existence of the individual in the world before reflective consciousness is the source of all knowledge, that man's existence is different from the existence of things, and that man's existence is free and not completely prescribed--existence precedes essence.
Structuralism
[Saussure, Artussy, Strauss, Lacan] advocates that the study of the overall structure of various knowledge systems should be prioritized, and emphasize the transcendental and eternal nature of this structure, which is the premise for the correct study of the elements of the system.
Deconstructivism
[Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze] Denies the existence of a unified knowledge structure, criticizes reason for losing the richness of the world while one-sidedly pursuing essence, and believes that the relationship between man and the world, the author and the reader, is not a subject-object cognitive relationship, but a dialogue relationship between subjects, affirming the pluralism of thought.
Political relations
Start with a question from a reporter who answered a reporter's question.
Q: So did you add some of your own life experiences to the world (A Song of Ice and Fire)? Personal experience?
George · Martin: Most of the settings are based on history, and many of the settings are based on medieval Europe, adding some fantasy elements. I was born in New Jersey as the son of a docker, born in the United States during the post-war baby boomer of the last century. I haven't dealt with castles, swords, or knights, but I've done a lot of research, so it should be taken for granted.
The term "political relationship" discussed in this section can be regarded as the relationship that exists in most societies such as geography, class, history, social organization, and military, which is used to distinguish it from emotional relations and event stakeholders, and it is also the part of the general cognitive worldview structure responsible for building and the camp that will be most intuitively reflected in front of the player.
For example: the Seven Kingdoms of Game of Thrones, the government, the police, journalists, and the poor in Joker; the refugees and alien factories in Inside; the government, ombudsmen, and residents of Spectator. In Watch Dogs, players play as hackers fighting tech giants and gang bosses for the privacy of citizens and their own lives, while in Tomb Raider: Shadows, Lara inherits the Crawford family's legacy while dealing with the villagers of the Hidden Village, the treacherous Tomb, and members of the Armed Group of Holy Trinity.
Political relations cannot be separated from the core of philosophy, such as hacker themes that discuss the boundaries of freedom, science fiction themes that discuss the meaning of human beings and life, and political relations exist as a stage that can truly convey these ideas. The next section analyzes the specific steps from the fullness of the mind to the flesh and bones.
The Game of Thrones worldview builds a reference to reality
Emotional relationships
In works that focus on depicting the inner and emotional relationships of characters, camps are mostly used to express the psychological sense of content and the social relationship between humans.
Interpersonal relationship refers to the relationship between people, in a process, through the mutual attraction, exclusion, cooperation, competition, leadership, obedience and other interactive relationships through thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and in a broad sense, it also includes cultural institutional models and social relations. It is mainly manifested in people's psychological distance, personal psychological tendencies towards others and corresponding behaviors.
The influence of interpersonal attitudes mentioned in The Art of Game Design on the formation of interpersonal relationships
Compared with social relationships that focus on objective descriptions, emotional relationships focus on the subjective perception of characters.
Love, family, hatred, disgust, fear... It can be used as a basis for the construction of worldview and the division of camps.
Typical such as galgame, you can not talk about the philosophy of life and death, but you must struggle with whom to brush the favorability. The storyline of "God of War 4" is based on the self-identity and blood relationship of "fatherly kindness and filial piety"; the family relationship and fear that are messed up by the cult in "Silent Hill"; the pathological symbiotic relationship and madness and despair in "Anchor Girl Heavy Dependence"; the process of making friends and companionship in "Light Encounter"...
Emotion is a unique experience of creatures with minds, and from the perspective of game experience, when the content of the narrative can evoke a certain emotion or resonance of the player, it can be supplemented and expanded on this basis.
Under the anchor ecology, the game "Anchor Girl Heavy Dependence" focuses on emotions and emotions to describe and control content.
45 Classic Character Archetypes: Mythical Models for Creating Unique Characters
As an example in the above figure, when using emotional relationships to build a worldview and camp, the reference object can be flexibly corresponded to the symbol, and "the entire dimension is the player's lost soul" and "the whole village is the player's best friend", and the meaning to the player and the social scale do not need to be combined.
Taking the world system in Japanese works as an example, a complete process of the character's perception of the world is to contact the concrete society, realize the world (concept) constituted by the society, and then perceive the self through reflection. The world system skips the social makeup, abstracts into a simplified or completely serviced contour of emotions and relationships, and I connect with others directly through the world to achieve the intensity of emotional impact and bondage that is difficult to achieve in specific social settings ("Your Name", "The Melancholy of Haruhi in Ryogu").
Use the stage where meteors fall to destroy villages and towns to show the encounters and feelings of young boys and girls
Event Stakeholders
Let's talk about the connection between "relationship" and "event" in the camp-related discussion.
The basic process of the birth of the story is:
【Core Concept】
[Story stage] created to embody this concept + [Characters] created to embody this concept to express the story
【Character】Various [relationships] around the [events] that occur in the [Story Stage]
The relationship between the characters in Evangelion
Evangelion characters revolve around the stage's connection through events
The political and emotional relationships mentioned above are themselves composed of various events, but the overall structure is more inclined to the stage, and the parties involved in the event emphasize the [event] itself.
Stage and events are indispensable, so talking about events is not about talking about concepts in isolation in a vacuum, the main reason they will differentiate is [narrative mode], that is, when the story is already staged, how to record it and be observed.
Therefore, the parties involved in the event are independent of one, precisely because in this type of story, the narrator consciously focuses the lens on the event itself, which can achieve the purpose of weakening the character attributes to save the energy of the producer, or making the connection performance of the "event - core idea" more intuitive and impactful.
An illustration of Shoji Shimada's Crime in the Leaning House
Additionally, classification is to facilitate the provision of an insightful perspective, not to set standards or rules. Cross-cutting is required when thinking about individual objects and the projects you are applying.
Here are some works.
Typical examples such as "The Witcher", "Double Trip", "Rusty Lake", "Destiny of Heaven", etc., are all about the process of narrating events rather than creating an ecology (ecology such as "Stardew Grain Language"), so in the camp design of this type of work, it will revolve around specific events.
In "The Death of Judgment: Memories of Annihilation", the screenwriter set the intention as a confrontation between procedural justice and substantive justice, so around the murder of school violence, a variety of character camps such as motivation, executor, victim, top offender, case solver, coverer, helper, and judge are formed, each with its own background and purpose.
In character building, it is often said that "what you want" + "what to fear" constitutes a person, and the camp formed by these people constitutes an event, and the event triggers the viewer to think about the ultimate intention through the performance.
The "justice" of their respective "justices" in "The Death of Judgment" revolves around a twenty-year-long case.
In the case of similar core elements of school violence + suspense, the Japanese film "Confession" set a moral issue to discuss violence with violence when it was intended, so the perpetrators, investigators, victims, etc. formed around the murder case of campus violence also have a layer of victims, avengers and hate objects; conspirators and traitors and other related parties to the event exist.
The opening chapter leads to the "Confessions" of juvenile delinquency
In "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", Li Mubai's plot line is to return the sword to track down the traces of the sword thief who found the traces of the murderer of the master and die in the enemy to protect the Jade Jiaolong, in the whole story, the political relationship stage (jianghu, temple, capital and Xinjiang) and the emotional relationship (red face confidant, enemy, master and apprentice) and so on have not changed much, love as the main object of description has changed greatly, the camp relationship of the crowd is mainly around the theft of the Qing hao sword and the subsequent confrontation and drama.
The characterization of several of the film's main characters is also influenced by Freud's personality structure.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a metaphor for emotional flow in bamboo fights
02. From concept to performance
Camp Position:
Clash of ideas
In many stories, the signs shown in the plot are more like effects, and the idea is the cause of all this. In The Shawshank Redemption, Shawshank fights for freedom from beginning to end, and the warden has his own faith, he believes in the supremacy of worldly interests and a perfect system, so their positions, relationships, status, and endings have been subverted several times.
The Shawshank Redemption uses the biblical pickaxe as a symbol of conceptual confrontation
In "Farewell to the Overlord", it also depicts the various words and deeds and choices of Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou in the background of the big era, forming a stark contrast between idealists and realists.
In "Farewell to the Overlord", the two people go against each other under the existential crisis and torture
Idealism and materialism, procedural justice and substantive justice, humanism and feudalism, absurdism and existentialism, society and nature, timely pleasure and hard work, the moon and sixpence...
People, things, the environment and everything can be intertwined through the conflict of ideas chosen by the narrator to weave a variety of camps and wonderful stories.
conflict of interest
The idea of disagreement itself requires conflicts of interest and outcomes to manifest, and this part refers to the fact that even having the same idea will result in conflicts due to some more perceptible existence.
The two families in "Parasite" seem to be very different, but in order to express the theme of class, the author uses the method of a control group to form two families, that is, a thought experiment proposition: "What kind of people the same family and individual will become if they have different conditions."
The two families' ideas are similar, economic conditions and social class are the way to shape them, and thoughts and external words and deeds become the fruit of being shaped, and eventually evolve into fraudulent entry into the mansion as a tutor - use the room - discover the murderer - picnic will be a series of bloody incidents.
In several versions of the poster, the similarity and opposition of the family structure are reflected in the "Parasite"
Real-world conflicts of interest are also the most common design methods for many games when designing camps.
Examples of ways to divide camps: state; cultural identity; race; religion; geographical location; distribution of political city-states; economic and trade relations; social division of labor functions; spheres of power; classes; organizational systems; energy sources; ways of resource circulation; conditions of profit and loss; time; space; dimensions...
A symbol of the various forces in Ark of Tomorrow
Racial restraint in Sword and Expedition
Rune Continent Map in the League of Legends worldview
Realistic conflict of interest design is also the main content of many articles on worldview that will be dismantled, and it will not be expressed too much here.
Talk about a few pits that are easy to step on.
The first is to copy the ideological framework. The structure of the table itself carries the way of thinking and the content of expression, and it is easy to make similar flavors when referring to the structure of other people's worldviews, but there are also limitations.
For example, Jin Yong's style of martial arts and temple structure is to express the red dust and suffering and sentient beings of his own perspective, if you design several doors, several factions, unique cheats, weapons, moves, etc. according to his work system when doing the original martial arts world view, no matter how you do it, you will never leave your ancestors, and you will bury the highlights of your own works.
Therefore, if it is not adapted or deliberately close to a certain style, it is best to start from the core concept to be expressed, and the reference of the structure is also controlled to a certain extent.
This step is very similar to the creation of a haute couture fashion brand. BOTH GUCCI AND CHANEL WILL HAVE SUITS, DRESSES, PANTS AND OTHER CLOTHING STYLES, BUT THEY ALL DESIGN EACH SEASON FROM THEIR RESPECTIVE BRAND IDEAS, AND WILL NEVER HAVE THE SAME COMBINATION OF FIT AND CUT.
Yohji Yamamoto (Yohji Yamamoto), who has established a simple, sleek, long-line, black-based fashion style over a long period of exploration
The structure of the worldview should also serve its core ideas, just as biological bones serve the way organisms move and the living environment.
Second, in the design process, it is easy to confuse the elements with the concept, elements such as the end of the world + functional style + furry + girl, how to make a package different from "Ark of Tomorrow"? Or can these elements be deleted, added, and combined?
The idea is the philosophical aspect mentioned above, and as long as the parts created afterwards are indeed faithfully born around it, there is no fear of crashing.
For example, the Lord of the Rings series and the Game of Thrones series both focus on the weaknesses, power and desires of human nature, and tell its embodiment in modern Chinese society, perhaps "The Name of the People"; in the 1920s, among the american paper drunk fans, it was "The Great Gatsby".
The great Gatsby's depiction of tragic characters in the "Age of Hustle."
Third, there is only structure, no core concept.
Starting directly from a worldview structure may be to tear down other works for reference, or to get usable forms, but it is easy to fall into barrenness or confusion as the game continues to add content.
One of the various worldview templates on the Internet, it is easy to shoot your head and fill in, and it is difficult to logically expand and form a story
Especially after the change of production staff, if there is no consensus on choosing the core concept of this worldview architecture, it is difficult to continue to create the content that the game itself wants to express, and you can only take some stories from the same genre and theme or find something to cut in from other works, which will naturally have a great sense of violation and extremely easy to fall into homogenization.
The farther you go, the more you need to go back to the source, and you can still lay the foundation as early as possible.
Survival
This article is listed separately because the former two belong more to the category of civilization, focusing on thinking and social interests, and any creature in the face of death may make a move that cannot be understood by common sense.
As small as an individual, as large as a species, as large as a planet. Death here can be understood as the end, the end of the game, the end of the story, so it makes sense for the subject to make any choice that is no longer pursuing profit and value for money and inhumanity.
In recent years, many stories have been written on this point, such as the end of the world, battle royale (not the genre of gameplay but the narrative theme), horror, infinite streams, creating perverse logical spectacles.
Player Position:
So far, the previous article is about how to set up a stage and character relationship, and this paragraph mainly mentions the player's position, that is, the main design purpose of the camp in the game.
The faction is the embodiment of the main body's position, and there are many ways to narrate the player's position.
One is that the story presets the player's position, such as Link in Zelda who defaults to take on the mission of the brave, Killer 47 in Hitman to achieve his mission goals, and ori in the small ball of light ori to go through many obstacles to resurrect the elven tree in order to save the forest.
Advantages: Designers can focus on a kind of story development experience and performance, players do not need to think too hard about their goals, can follow the game guidance.
Disadvantages: When the lack of position choice, the sense of substitution is extremely demanding.
It is very easy to see players complain that the character of a game is the Lady of Morality, or that the mouth is benevolent and moral, and the actual game behavior is violent, precisely because of the lack of the process of letting the player choose by himself, and the sense of drama generated after the player's recognition in the narrative shaping.
There is only one way to survive, but the "Ice Age" that has caused widespread controversy in the ending when the player asks the player "Is it all worth it?"
For single-player games, it can be explained by role-playing, that is, the player plays a character that has been set up in the script, is experiencing the experience of others, similar to the replay of memories, and can also be accepted.
However, most of the current online games will set a blank medium as the embodiment of the player, and if the behavior is inconsistent, difficult to understand and the player lacks resonance, it will obviously lead to a very poor evaluation.
The safer way is to say less mistakes, but back to the root of the problem, can we give the player a [choice]?
The second is a completely blank avatar, as well as offering plenty of options.
For example, in martial arts games, you choose the genre you join ("Sword Man Romance Online Edition III"), in the love game, you choose your own offensive objects and important plot actions (Japanese Otome Love Game), and in the strategy game, you choose your own playing style and strategy goals ("Awakening of All Nations").
The players of Taiwu Painted Scrolls also took over the inheritance of Taiwu, some concentrated on farming and practicing, some took a few villagers to kill other sects, and some worked npc interpersonal relations every day.
Played by Sheng Sheng as a "resounding legend" of the "Taigo Painted Scroll"
This effect of both control and sufficient feedback will make the player think that the narrative experience they have obtained is achieved by their own actions and choices, and they can solve the problem of play from the part close to the essence.
The disadvantages of this way of shaping the player's position are also obvious, a large number of choices, how much is enough? How strong is the feedback?
Making two or three game plots with the same amount of content requires production costs, and "Taiwu Scroll", "Stardew Grain Language", and "Rimworld" will choose to provide modular content, allowing players to form a narrative experience after connecting themselves.
But this genre will encounter the problem of the quality of the narrative that cannot be escaped, and the narrative that cannot predict the player's behavior can only be modular and fragmented, and it is difficult to form a large and reasonable dramatic plot with reasonable transitions.
On the basis of solving the fragmented, modular narrative difficult to carefully orchestrate, it is divided into two branches.
One is fragmented narratives. Except for the ending part, the player still experiences a linear story, but the narrative is here as a reward for the player's game behavior, rather than a precondition description of the game behavior.
Due to the discontinuity of narrative organization and the selectivity of the collection behavior itself, the functionality of the plot changes, and the player's sense of substitution becomes an experience that mixes the viewer and the performer. The narrative style of "Hades" also falls into this category.
It is also mentioned that this narrative style is extremely demanding on the cooperation of the entire production team and the skill of the playwright, and the fragmented narrative has the environmental narrative and player behavior as the base of the puzzle in the soul system game, and the performance and dialogue shown in fragments are more like the mystery; if you do not work the overall narrative, only in some places only plug the words of the words, which does not belong to this type.
It's not just an icon and description that can be called a fragmented narrative...
The other is to do a certain number of story branches, giving the player freedom of choice at key story points.
Full sets of performances such as "The Witcher 3" and "Detroit: Becoming Human", such as "Bliss Disco" and "Five Dates", which save some, all belong to the category of drama games, and only this narrative method can carry well-planned plot development and complete, reasonable and unique characters, without losing the meaning of the player's own inner choices because of the limitation of the substitution perspective.
The less expensive (compared to 3A) Bliss Disco also reached a text volume of 1 million words in order to build branches
Compared with other art forms, game narratives, films, dramas, etc., are still in their infancy. From The Elder Scrolls V and Original Sin 2 to Eddie Finch's Memories, Please Show Me to Elysium Disco in the past two years, the game's storytelling techniques and performances are constantly changing, and the game's narrative designers are also working to provide players with a more recognized and exciting world. It may not be able to reach the cinematic level of narrative self-consistency and appeal, but the unique interactive attributes will certainly bring a unique experience that is more in line with the carrier of the game.
The player's position can be specifically displayed from the following three parts:
Player identity
Brave, Headmaster, Worker, Demon King, Astronaut, Demon Hunter, Magician, Last Knight...
After setting up the identity, you must provide supporting role-playing experience services, you can hire and dismiss faculty members, you can take over the commission to collect monster scales, you can assemble battleships or use magic... How to provide content that meets the player's identity positioning cognition at all times in the game also needs systematic design, involving visual performance, element selection, dynamics, gameplay, interactive narrative and other aspects, which will have the opportunity to be elaborated in the future.
Player social connections
It contains both nominal social relationships with the characters provided by the game, virtual social relationship experiences, and real social relationships with other players in the online game.
In nominal social relationships, players understand the motivations of the game's characters through real-world experience. After learning that this character is the little master he has vowed to protect, crossing thousands of mountains and rivers to save a character who has only seen a few faces does not sound so outrageous.
This method is more difficult to achieve the player's approval, so there will also be a scene where the player of the Breath of the Wild spits that "after playing for hundreds of hours, I can't think of saving the princess".
"Don't save the princess" is similar to "Come and take the Quint card."
A more advanced way is to create a virtual social relationship experience. "The Last of Us 1" is to create a character Ellie who needs to be protected but is also growing, and through companionship, need and help the player, it has become an important presence that affects the player's choice and position.
Most players, knowing that killing will affect Ellie's ending, choose their own gameplay behavior in terms of emotion rather than gameplay.
In Last of Us 1, the player's effort to achieve the full collection of rewards is Ellie's approval
Through the plot and performance, it is also like this, such as Alice, who makes the FF7 player tear his heart and lungs, and what impresses people is not her relationship with Claude in the literal sense, but her relationship with the player - with you.
She accompanies you around, heals you, leaves you, and through your pains carves in your mind an experience that can never be experienced in the real world.
The more beautiful Iris Gainesborough's Final Fantasy VII is, the more painful it is when withered
There are many games in which players have experiences with [others who also use avatars], and the difference is in the quality of interaction and the direction of game creation.
Most Mmorpgs belong to this category, the plot and world view provide the stage, the player is more like a specific person in disguise on the stage, and even forms a real ecology, experience, interests, and group relationships in it. MMO attracts players so much because it is already a projection of reality, a social circle that only lacks offline contact.
Typical examples of social direction, such as "Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" and "Light Encounter", also rely on social to build ecology to maintain player stickiness, which can use power, desire, hatred and loss aversion, but also guide companionship, friendliness and mutual help.
The popular "fixed-play" concept in "Light Encounter"
Moba games also divide the camps through mechanisms, creating friendly and enemy sides, in this type of game, the player's position on the narrative setting is only used as a lead-in, and the real deduction of the player's position is figurative and constantly changing with my relationship with others.
Player objectives
Player goals are the core element of the player's sense of substitution.
For the player's own unit, "identity" and "social relationship" are more like the stage mentioned in the previous section, and the goal is the fundamental driving force that promotes the [event].
Whether it is the phased goal set by the game's plot: enter the police station, kill the Skeleton King, and return the sword in the lake;
Or the player's customized game objective: collect all the rooms, swipe to +8 weapons, and complete a level with three stars;
There is also the ultimate goal of the whole game: to attack the favorite character, get the first place in the global country ranking, and become the last surviving squad;
Its essence is the result and embodiment of the player's position.
Therefore, many games have problems with the design of the position when the player cannot find the target, the target is interrupted, or the player cannot understand the current game goal.
Players can't even figure out or accept which side they are on and what they're going to do, and naturally have a greater chance of losing interest in the game and no longer caring about what the next cutscene cg is.
In the general game of orange light evaluation, it is common to choose white selection, and the player has a random selection phenomenon
03. Faction hierarchy and position shift flow factors
In film and television works, the position of the characters changes very frequently, and each dramatic conflict must also carry the transformation of the character's camp, relationship, state, etc. But in the game, with the exception of modular narrative sandbox games and a large number of branched story games, it is difficult to make a very natural change of player position.
In this regard, the game can work the environment or characters other than the player. Such as the success or failure of key battles, the disintegration and re-unification of interest alliances, the flow of strategic resources, the death of important players and the transformation of existential values.
In the suspense genre, you can also complete the position change by playing the information difference and revealing the secrets owned by the character played by the player.
For example, in "Evil Underworld", players will initially be pushed to death by the hunters who play cards again and again, but after entering the subsequent chapters and learning that they only love to play cards and want to protect the NPCs of this world, the common enemy is the small computer and the company that made the game and tried to cover up the secret of the death of employees, it will naturally resonate and sympathize with it, and it will complete the player's position change.
Evil Underworld to play the final game
Sam's feelings for Emily, played by the player in "Death Stranding", are also reversed several times with the truth of this world; in "Projectile Theory 3", they are coerced into the killing game and the thinking of the meaning of life; in the confrontation with the mother of the sheep in "Under the Legend", in the face of The crazy and tragic life of Xiaohua, the player truly deepens and immerses himself in the world through the transformation of factions and positions.
Under the Legend begins by asking for a name for "Fallen Human", which is not revealed until the end
The use of information difference and subjective fallacies in film and television is more mature, such as "Memory Fragments", "Fight Club", "Disappearing Lovers", "Mulholland Road", "The Night the Comet Came", "The Tuner" and so on are all masterpieces of heavy reversals.
In gaming applications, the biggest difficulty in switching camps is the high cost and consumptivity of content production, so now there is a faction conversion design that is synchronous evolution, the "Civilization" series is a typical work, at any time will be artificial by him to create a spectacle, will unite to attack your other countries, may also send you to attack other countries of the alliance request; "This is Police" series will also provide options that can make you respond multiple times to show your position; "This is My War", "Dark Dungeon" "Homecoming" is also full of similar designs.
Spectator 3 is full of subtle choices that add up enough to destroy the protagonist's life
More major choices, more left-right jumps, always lead to a more immersive and unique experience, after all, humans are contradictory creatures who want to find unusual paths in the rules they choose to follow.
epilogue
There is a saying in social research that the current generation of human beings like to tear labels and labels for themselves, horoscopes, personalities, preferences, beliefs, and two-dimensional elements, find labels to paste and tear off, the essence of which is to find a sense of identity and establish a unique self of the psychological needs.
Whether it is game design or worldview construction, it is providing a grand virtual experience, and the camp design is like a label for people to be claimed, the meaning of discourse, the reflection of reality, and the embodiment of the value of players' choices.
The most wonderful part of the game's narrative design is that it's not just that you're inside the frame and outside the frame; it's that you can invite him into the world you've built and watch his every move, to see him walk to one side and pick up the sword or the other to pick up the axe; the grass and trees, the stars intersect, he will put on the Hidden Blade in reality and put on a white hood to rub shoulders with another Bridges officer with a courier bag hanging BB at the show; or just with a casually written "Everything is virtual, everything is allowed" With the colleague in the suit and leather shoes on the code, look at each other and smile -
You know that the world you have built blossoms in reality, in the minds and histories of humanity, and in the darkness it burns with burning stars.
How romantic.