My Five Minute Story

Aaron stood in the rain soaking to death, he had long forgotten why he was standing but was compelled to walk forward to the door. As he approached the door his hands began to tremble with anticipation. Slowly he turned the door knob and the door creaked open letting in a blazingly cold wind. He did not try to dry himself or take off his coat, Aaron just walk forward towards the kitchen. A woman was sitting at the table reading a magazine, Aaron slowly snuck behind her. He lifted his hand and touched her on the shoulder and whispered, “Honey I forget the milk.”

Let's play a Game

Using Low Level Stories by Jonathon Schilpp talks about the two different forms of storytelling in today's video games. The first is high level story which includes the major events of the game and those plot devices which are designed to create a powerful experience. The second and arguably more important form of storytelling is the low level story which is created entirely by the player. A Low level story happens when a player goes off the beat and track to discover their own personal story. For example a player attempts to hunt and kill an npc character without the character spotting him. Developers can help immerse the player by having the npc jump at shadows and sounds or have a news report on the radio discussing the npc being killed by an unidentified suspect after the event.

My Monopoly character is Remington R. Racecar, a quick-witted, impulsive drag-racer who made his fortune betting on his own races. When his career was killed by a mysterious engine fire, he thought the world of high finances would be a safer game. He was dead wrong...
- Internet Random

At the moment developers are too tied up in big world changing story-lines but it's the smaller stories that sell a game world, such as listening to a pair of npc's talking about their day or watching a guard becomeincreasingly bored with his guarding duties just before the player pounces down and murders him. Little things like this help create a more cohesive world than branching story-lines or endgame scenarios. One the more interesting games I player recently was Prince of Persia which had a terribly cliched main storyline about a dark god wanting to destroy the known for no reason in particular. Yet the game redeems itself by adding a feature where at a flick of a button the two main characters would turn around and interact with each other. These interactions fleshed out the main characters to such lengths that it came to a point where I was completing objectives just so I could see how they responded to the event and listen to their banter. By the end I didn't care if the dark god won or lost all I was concerned about is what was going to happen to the main characters. And isn't that the point of interactive storytelling, not to be concerned about the fate of the world but invested in the characters and their eventual fate.

The Real Cliffy B

How are characters defined in Web 2.0

One of the main driving forces behind the internet is the Anonymity of the individual. When you open a bank account you are required to give your real name and address or face the consequences, this is in stark contrast to opening an e-mail account where there are no penalties for lying about who you are (I certainly did). The advantage of this anonymity is that you can change anything about yourself including age, race, physical appearance or even gender and replace features you don't like about yourself with more desirable ones. The disadvantage it is becoming increasingly difficult to know who is real on the internet and who is an avatar.

Last year two comedians created a fake twitter account for Gears of War 2 game designer Cliff Bleszinski and presented him as a red bull obsessed guy who beats up the beta testers, uses terrible Gears related pickup lines, and works out profusely in the employee cafeteria. He is constantly getting in trouble with his nemesis Mark Rein, for beating people up; and being an overall nuisance. This outrageous parody of Cliffy B was taken as the real deal by journalists and fans and was taken by his game company after several sites his comments as facts.
http://www.matthewrex.com/lame/cliffy.html

The problem is even when a person creates a legitimate facebook page, the user is still creating faux version of themselves through their profile. When asked about their personality people post about how they are funny or have a great smile no one ever posts about their negative traits such short temper or severe drinking problem. Most people agree the reason people act contrary online to their offline behavior is the anonymity and the lack of real world consequences.

Blank Slate

How are characters in films different to characters in games?

Films are essentially someone's else story, the characters are developed to feel like fully fleshed out human beings. In a film you are watching the characters trials and tribulations as they complete their journey. This is in stark contrast with a video games where the main character is usually a blank slate to allow the player to inhabit his or her shoes more easily. Games work under the logic that since the player is controlling the protagonist, he or she should have no personality as to not contradict the player's beliefs and alienate the player. For example games like Half-Life and Bioshock deliberately don't allow the protagonist to speak or even show his or her on screen.

He's become a visually iconic figure, but the original intention was more idealized, that it would be cool if we didn't show Gordon at any time, we'd just let the player create their own. I mean, we tell you that you're a scientist, but we don't do a lot of work to convince you that you're actually doing science in the game. That's sort of a tease, that we have Gordon involved in another experiment after the last one he did didn't turn out too well.
- Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw speaking about the main protagonist.

The weakness with this approach is that the silent protagonist handicaps the story. In games the main character is just going through the motion as the secondary character govern the story, all decision making is taken away from the protagonist and in turn the player. Until games have the confidence to take risks and create real characters, the storytelling will always be limited.

Cash In - Article 2

Authorship Is Important In Any Creative Industry by Chris Remo talks about the growing importance of authorship in video games. Telltale's Games who are known for their episodic game model (games broken up into smaller downloadable release spread across several months) have recently began attributing and crediting each of its episodes to a single overall writer and designer. With ever increasing development teams, individual recognition is largely being disregarded. Telltale Games designer Sean Vanaman believes this is not the right direction for the industry:

“For a lot of big publishers, at that level it's an ego thing,” Vanaman said. When executives see a developer who is given publicly-acknowledged authorial credit over a game, “they say, 'Oh, that person's a diva. That's why they want it to be there.'”

“But it's not,” he argued. “If that person sits down and creates that story and that world from nothing, that credit is really important. It doesn't mean if it has a 'Written and Directed by' credit, then it's good, but authorship is really important in any creative industry.”

Declaring game authorship can help sell more units as a recognizable name can reassure customers of the titles pedigree if the title is more risque. Company names are less reliable because past success might have attributed to members who have left the company in the intervening years.

“Authorship can beget quality,” he said. “Celebrating that authorship allows it to continue. It is good to see the company value that; it makes you want to keep doing it. Every good industry that's creative at all is about the people

It also makes the author more accountable for the product he releases. Game designers could no longer hide behind game company and would be forced to take responsibility for their own role in releasing a cash-in game.

The Great Divide

On The Casual/Core Game Development Divide article by James Portnow discusses the rift developing between the casual gamer and the hardcore gamer. This rift began in 2006 with the launch of the Nintendo Wii and it’s line up of grandma friendly casual games. Casual games are typically distinguished by their simple rules and lack of commitment required in contrast to more complex hardcore games. These ‘casual games’ are considerably cheaper to produce and sell to a significantly wider audience but lack the graphics and more developed game play elements of AAA or ‘hardcore’ titles.

This has created a strong dislike for casual gaming among traditional hardcore gamers who resent the spotlight and emphasis being taken away from their games. While casual gamers find hardcore games too complex and intimidating. James Portnow talks about how the gaming industry is drifting apart into two separate entities. With one side servicing the hardcore making high-end exclusive titles while the other makes more profitable casual games.

Casual games we’re originally seen as a stepping-stone for non-gamers to more hardcore games but if the industry continue to split casual games continue to be shallow and hardcore titles will continue to exist on the fringe. If games are to become more immersive through storytelling they will need to meld the wider appeal of casual games with the depth of hardcore games.