#30 Theme

 This post will be about the concept of theme. In order to properly think about this, a short re-construction of some familiar conceptualizations will happen first.

Meaning, Story

When a designer creates something, a work, then he builds an arrangement of signs. Whether the work is physical (a book, a piece of furniture), digital (a computer game, an image) or of other form (a spoken thought, a dance) - it is always a collection of signs. The pure movement perceivable when viewing a dance has meanings: There might be an entity called hand, another that is cloth and a movement across the floor.

These meanings can be more convoluted - a sign might stand for something that is not itself: A trace in the snow might stand for a rabbit having passed here, a heart stands for the concept of love.

A narration is a forthbringing of signs that is authored, possibly without straightforward meanings and entertaining/artistic. Here, entertaining shall mean "an interesting arrangement of signs" and artistic "an interesting arrangement of meanings" (I'm not yet sure about the definitions in this paragraph). In my view, a lot of works may thus be a narration.

But not all of them have a plot which tells a story: If those exist in a work, then it implicates a recognizable connected series of events - and while this is for instance clearly part of films, a piece of furniture doesn't afford that easily to read a story from it.

Theme

In the mixture of all the signs and meanings incoming through possibly a lot of communication channels and being driven to progress, some guidance, orientation might be helpful.

Here comes the theme and shines:

A theme (Greek; actually "the lawful, the placed" [..]) is a concise musical figure which, as the fundamental idea of a piece of music, is designed for recurrence, variation and processing in the further course and, if necessary, can be confronted or combined with further themes.

- German Wikipedia on musical themes Link

The fact that a theme is indeed "designed for recurrence, variation and processing in the further course" makes it automatically a kind of golden thread to the work. A narrative theme might be a certain constellation of meanings. A visual theme might be a color palette and a collection of textures. And if such things repeatedly show up, then they give a certain structure to the player's experience, grounding them in the game.

This citation moreover gives the designer a neat perspective on what to do with themes: They are the perfect source of inspiration for content and all the given freedom of designing in the game engine, in the time spans given by schedule etc. can be further concretized with the edge given by a theme. In the concretization, the theme can be e.g. positioned in certain places (a character speaking about sth., a place, a mechanic, ..), transformed (variation, modulation, twisting, ..) or set up in opposition(s) to something else.

Lastly a theme is - by its very nature of permeating thhe whole experience - that, which the audience is most likely to take away, remember from the work. Thus, being able to choose a theme gives the designer a certain power. And as it goes with such in tendencies unidirectional powers, one needs to be very conscious about them. A good theme, as Jesse Schell puts it, is meaningful and has a strong resonance with people.

Quotes

"These minor tales ultimately reinforce the theme of the major narrative" - Pinault, David.

"In music, a subject is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based." - Wikipedia, Subject(Music), Link

"A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel"
- Wikipedia, Theme(narrative)

"The theme of a work of literature is its central or dominant idea. This idea is seldom stated explicitly; rather, it is conveyed through the selection and arrangement of details, through the emphasis of certain events or images, and through the action and reactions of the characters."
- Fiction: Reading, Reacting, Writing, Link

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Wikipedia, Theme(narrative) Link. Among other concepts: "thematic patterning is the insertion of a recurring motif in a narrativ"

• Wikipedia, Rhetorical modes Link. What distinguishes a narration from other modes of discourse?
  

• Wikipedia, Thematic transformation Link. Thematic transformation as a technique.
  

• Pinault, David. Story-telling techniques in the Arabian nights. I'd like to read this book some time.
  

A Solarpunk Quest: Sustain the Moon

Solarpunk is an artistic genre that is concerned with showing a successful human future and how to get there:

“what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”

- A Solarpunk Manifesto Link

It is contrasted with rather dark settings like Steam- or Cyberpunk and is by its very nature quite optimistic, close to nature and close to sustainable technology.

Here I'll draft a game and a quest in it. The game:

Humans have transcended: They left their bodies behind and transferred their minds to space-walkers: Cyborgs that are able to beam through space and change their own size. Space-walkers are of white-black-yellow color and get their energy via solor panels. An important part of the gameplay is to not loose so much energy such that the next sun for recharging can't be reached. The second important part is the 3D-movement and resizing, needed to avoid planets, land on planets. The third part is the hatch on the walker's front, which can be opened and closed and may be used to transport everything imagineable.

The player plays a space-walker who is sent back to the humans home, Earth, and investigate some issue there.

Phase 1 

The player reaches the local governmental mission-dispatching node (a level with tech-heavy, metallic architecture, but mixed with natural elements / several NPCs are around). It is unusual, normally a mission is dispatched via radio, to save the energy of moving a walker through the universe.

In a cutscene, a apparently high ranking authority gives the player the task of "sustaining the earth's moon" without much further ado. When the player asks what the problem is, he gets the answer: "The Earthers have gone capitalistic on their planet again".

New goal: Reach Earth and talk to the local authorities.

Phase 2

The player travels to Earth, shrinks and takes a visit in the glassy parliament of the UNO. With horror she perceives that the inhabiants of earth have apparently forgotten/mystified their spatial expansion via various catastrophes.

The player is forced to a

Decision: 1) Try convince the Earthers with ethical logic. 2) Search for a different solution.

Trying 1) will fail, for the Earthers are too deep in the capitalistic system. The player is then thrown back to the decision and will eventually choose 2). In a monologue, the avatar decides to visit the moon and see how things are there.

New goal: Visit the moon.

Phase 3

The moon is inhabited by a mostly scientific colony which apparently is much more rational and open-minded than their earthly counterparts. Upon learning of the state of humans in space and the concerns regarding earthen overexploitation of the moon, they propose to have the moon transferred to another planets orbit. After some questions, the avatar agrees.

There is a discussion concerning the future of the soon to be condemned moon colony. Being able to promise support by the galactical government, the player can influence the outcome of the discussion, resulting in one of the folowing goals:

New goal: Transfer the moon's inhabitants back to earth.
New goal: Transfer the home-bound part of the moon's population back to earth.
(No new goal - step skipped: All of them want to stay on the moon)

And after that is done:

New goal: Transfer the moon to another planet. 

Phase 4

The moon is gone and the contract fulfilled. The player sends a message to the galactical authority and gets a reward.

The player may optionally visit Earth again where she'll find some very upset NPCs and different happenings depending on the previous choice. She'll similarly be able to visit the moon.

~ + ~

I have to admit, it was very funny to come up with this quest. And I could easily imagine a follow-up quest, or even a quest line - maybe its even part of the game's main story.

Ideas for Feedback

• Do you share my understanding of theme as a golden thread?

• Is this quest actually solarpunky in its message?
  

Conclusion

Seeing how the term 'theme' could be approached from a musical side made me happy, for I am for quite some time already convinced that quests and music have a lot in common. Pacing is another great example supporting my suspicion.

My Solarpunk quest wasn't that much Solarpunk in its hopefulness, I think - but I'm not sure. However the quick game and quest design I produced here revealed itself to be astonishingly effective. This will be tried again.

Until then, have a good time!

#29 The Drive of Narration

 This post is concerned with the potential of narrations to be captivating, such that you can't wait to see what's next.

Narration Drive

What do I mean by narration drive? Well, the drive (or drives) of a narration is that which makes the audience want to follow that particular telling of a narrative. This might be rooted in they way of telling (so this part is about storytelling) or in the content that is told (what the narrative is about). Below you find a previously seen graphic illustrating some of the terminological differences:

But now, what makes a telling or a narrative driving?

In my understanding, much of this has to do with what I call the experience cycle of human being. What you find below is a simplified synthesis of several game studies papers, twitch/youtube videos of story creators, blog posts and own thoughts.

Input / Trigger

As a narrative is told, steadily, bits of input (signs, movements) are given to the audience (the player). Upon perceiving them, they are interpreted on possibly several layers (see post #9) and now serve as a trigger to go on in the experience cycle.

Guidelines:

• make the incoming flow interesting: pacing, contrasting meaningful things
  
• every time a situation/conflict/arc is solved, open up another
• funnel the audience from unit to unit
  

Addenda:

• characters/agents are important because they can function as causes - film art  
• build "characters with spines", give them a highest drive - andrew stanton
  

Learning, Knowledge

The informations is classified and integrated - learned - into existent mental models. It may well be the basis for a new complex of knowledge, such that e.g. the story "The Lord of the Rings" is demarked separately and can be recalled as one unit. Humans are able to imagine alternatives to what they already know - that way Tolkien was able to think of a fictional world in the first place. The in my view biggest propellers of curiosity and involvement are related to knowledge and summarized in the following

Guidelines:

• obvious gaps of knowledge, things the audience wishes to know
• informations that are meaningful to the storyworld, e.g. challenging a character's beliefs
• carefully think about where the audience directs its attention: here the story should be told
  

 Quotes:

• "A spectator comes prepared to make sense of a narrative film." - film art 
  
• "it's this well-organized absence of information that draws us in" - andrew stanton
• construct holes, missing spots, that are implicitly promised to be resolved
• exploration is a rather un-guided form of resolving gaps

Motivations and Goals

This is the part that is at the heart of this post. Conceptually, here the drive, the acceleration of the wheel, the aquisition of energy for action is happening.
From the perspective of this section the others provide material for being driven and created special kinds of drives: flow continuation, meaningfulness, curiosity/wanting to understand. But abstracting those motivations, we can see that all of them are grounded by a common principle: Identifying a (imaginary or past) state of affairs, valueing it high - desiring it.
The last ingredient is uncertainty. If we'd know for sure and in which way a desire will be fulfilled, the it becomes pretty boring. But having an unknown variable, some gap to fill, makes it much more interesting, motivating.

Guidelines:

• engage the audience, provide material to stimulate the audience's imagination
• make the audience care about/value the story contents and/or the story progression
  

 Quotes:

• "the audience wants to work on understanding the story but it doesn't want to know that" - andrew stanton
• desires can be "seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of affairs" - Wikipedia
  
• create "doubt in the outcome" - andrew stanton
• "we feel driven to know how the action develops, how the characters react and how it all comes out at the end" - film art
• "Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertaity" -- william archer, via andrew stanton

-- ~ * ~ --

So, this shall be it for now. I know, I know, the part on agency is missing. It is missing because it is worth an article on its own, especially in the context of video games. For now we'll have to content ourselves with this overview, which by the way fits to many media, I think. In general - a lot of my thoughts actually stem from philosophical, psychological (among others) ways of thought, simply applied to video games.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Andrew Stenton: The clues to a great story Link. I'd advise everyone interested in storytelling to watch this TEDtalk

• Bordwell, Thompson, Smith: Film Art, Chapter 3: Narrative Form. Even though concerned with the film medium, Film Art continues to deliver excellent material for my posts on narration.
  

• Wikipedia: Desire. Link. I should probably write an article of praise about Wikipedia some time. Even though it has its problems.
  

• Alexandra To et al. Modeling and Designing for Key Elements of Curiosity: Risking Failure, Valuing Questions. Link. Inspired the first version of the wheel of experience.
  

• Katarina Gyllenbäck. Narrative Construction. Link. Another major inspiration for terms and ideas used in the wheel of experience.
  

• Daniel Hessler. Game Design. Introductory course at the University of Bayreuth. Probably the main source of concepts and synthesizations for the wheel.
  

And many more... (this multitude of sources is the case for many posts, but I wanted to highlight it here specifically, since developing these thoughts really was a convoluted process).

A Skyrim Quest - Of Sheep and Flowers

I'll practically explore the concept of narrative drive in today's quest. Which is about magic sheep in a cave's glade, or at least that is the initial idea I've had.

Phase 1. Upon asking an innkeep about news, they tell the player of a monk in the tavern, who apparently has some problem with his tenple.

New sidequest: "Of Sheep and Flowers"
New objective: "Talk to the monk"

Phase 2. The monk sits in the tavern, devastated and muttering to himself. Upon talking to him, he first seems to have little hope, when he starts telling you: He is no monk but a keeper. There is a religious cave (not temple!) nearby which has been corrupted by a force he couldn't identify.

Decision: 1) "Speak on." 2) "I've heard enough of this religious nonsense"

When option 2) is chosen the keeper is offended and ends the dialogue. The player can retry infinitely often.

When option 1) is chosen, the keeper's spirits rise (he apparently hadn't someone encouraging him that often). He tells the player he himself would defeat the corruption but he isn't allowed to fight in religious places. However he will accompany the player through the cave. He asks whether the player accepts the quest.

Decision: 1) "Well, let's do this." 2) "This is too strange a job even for me"

When option 2) is chosen the dialogue ends. The player can retry infinitely often.

Otherwise, the keeper says he'll wait at the cave entrance and the dialogue ends.

Replace objective: "Meet the keeper at the cave entrance"

Phase 3. At the cave entrance a wall painting of flowers can be seen, next to it the keeper is standing. The location's name is "Cave of Flowers". Upon speaking to the keeper, he uneasily tells the player to not wonder about certain "oddities" they might see inside. The keeper becomes follower of the player.

Replace objective: "Investigate how to cleanse the cave"

Phase 4. Entering the cave, a lot of flowers and beautiful lightings coming from shafts in the stone can be seen. There are several shrines and places with benches arranged in circles. Closer investigation reveals draugr graves in the walls.

In one of those locations, a sheep is standing amidst a lot of flowers. It doesn't walk, doesn't eat and doesn't look around. The keeper tries to explain that this is one manifestation of the corruption: Flowers having been turned into sheep. Sounding devastated again, he speaks that the flowers don't know how to sustain themselves in a sheepish body and'll therefore die soon if the corruption is not eliminated.

Phase 5. Draugr actively start emerging from their graves and the lighing becomes darker, the number of sheep rises. The keeper says the draugr are part of the corruption aswell.

Phase 6. The pair reaches the innermost glade, being a new section called "Glade of Flowers", with the highest number of sheep. In it, a group of Talos-priests and common fighters is practicing some ritual. The group calls the keeper heretic, betrayer and start attacking. The keeper won't fight.

Replace objective: "Kill the Talos worshippers"

Phase 7. The group has been defeated. The sheep haven't turned back to flowers though. Discussing the events, the player-avatar is confronted with a

Decision: 1) "Kill the ship, before they die of hunger" 2) "Let's search the attackers"

If the player searches the leader, he'll find a notice detailing the groups hideout. Talking with the notice in his inventory to the keeper, will lead to him deciding to attack that hideout.

Replace objective: "Purge the Talos-hideout"

Phase 8. Keeper and player walk to the nearby hideout and fight through it. The end boss is a higher Talos priest, who carries a spell book with him. The spell transforms flowers into sheep and back. The keeper takes the book. He thanks the player for helping him and tells him to come back to the cave in a few days.

Replace objective: "Visit the keeper in a few days"

Phase 9. The player meets the keeper in the now sheep-free cave. He receives thankful words, gold and the spellbook from the keeper.

Quest end.

Ideas for Feedback

• What thoughts/tips come to your mind concerning the topic and design of "narrative drive"?
  

• Do you think the amount of to-be-crafted assets (locations, characters, models, mechanics, ..) for this quest is appropriate?
  

Conclusion

I don't think I have written a longer post yet - considering both text length and writing time. Also, I feel that there is still some polish and improvement of theory possible. But oh well, it is in the nature of such things to be quite difficult to grasp as worded concepts. Maybe future me will have a clearer view on this.

Until then, have a good time!

#28 Storytelling and its Reflective Potentials

 Blog post #28 has arrived. It is in general about storytelling and specifically about how storytelling manifests in quests in the video game medium. I'll try applying a very central idea in my very own practical design.

Storytelling

The introduction to a definition for "storytelling" by the National Storytelling Network (NSN) emphasizes that storytelling is "an ancient art form and a valuable form of human expression".

This highlights that storytelling is indeed a cultural practice, and onw can easily imagine hunters / gatherer - communities sitting around a fire some thousand years ago with a hunter group telling of how they managed to slay that one bear but lost one man in the process. The same applies to several other kinds of stories of course.

However, the central definition of the NSN is somewhat more formal:

Storytelling is the interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the listener’s imagination.

Now, the NSN clearly didn't think of movies, books, video games etc. because they are focused on oral storytelling. But I think it remarkable that nonetheless the terms interactive and action pop up. And ever more interesting: If we exchange some oral-specific words by more general ones, then we get a pretty nice and more general definition for storytelling:

Storytelling is the interactive art of using signs to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the audience’s mind.

So storytelling is in its core about arranging, presenting, mise-en-scène of story-material. Storytelling means encoding a story and transmitting that to the audience, which decodes and processes it bit by bit.

Designer and Player tell Player a Story

Storytelling can happen in video games: Designer and player can encode story-bits into a game, and the audience (usually the player, but sometimes also e.g. viewers on Twitch) decode and process them.

This can happen in the form of quests: The quest designer might prepare connected, serialized events, goals, means of achieving and choices for the player who, by e.g. enacting events and deciding on things and solving problems, finally determines the story told.

The great potential and difficulty in this is of course the player's agency. The player is able to participate in the storytelling, to tell herself a story. What, by giving a player space to notice and look upon her - consciously and unconsciously - performed decisions, we as designers might even elicit reflective thoughts in the player.

CP77 issued such a reflective feeling in me after killing someone supposedly bad by setting up a moment of rest and a character who mirrored my thoughts. Source

This, of course, works in other media too. Only, in video games it works very well, because the origin of action can be the audience itself by means of the avatar and and mechanics - which won't ever be the case in a book or movie.

Here some intuitive guidelines to set up storytellings that issue reflection in the player's mind:

• Keep the player in flow while performing. We want to hit the player with Brechtian reflection afterwards, to elevate the effect. For now she shall execute her standard (possibly morally rationalized) behaviour.
  

• Create a transitionary moment. The player needs to catch a breath and slow down, gather his thoughts process what happened.

• Build a setting suited for reflection. This should be a safe space in the game world with appropriate level/audio/.. design, preferably with some other to converse with.
  

• Steer player attention to reflection. Maybe a NPC or the avatar gives a comment, maybe there is a poster or a spatial constellation which refers metaphorically to the performed deed.
  

Designers and artists can play heavily with the story's archetypes, atmospheres, themes, symbols here to elicit the player's associations with them such that she may look and reflect upon them.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• National Storytelling Network: What is Storytelling? Link

• Post #22 Non-linear Stories Link

  A lot of inspiration and base work for this post is in here.

• Wikipedia: Epic theatre Link

  Driven by - amongst others - Berthold Brecht, epic theatre "emphasizes the audience's perspective and reaction to the piece"

A Cyberpunk Storyquest - Setting up Reflections

Well, let's do something concrete:

A menace of matte gray, postmodernly deconstructed and rebuilt
A queen of power, a human, animal, an intersection of meaning
Silver flashes, lightnings on glassy dark
Untouchable and high
Evil eyes staring down

Eating you, the poor, the people, those who are

But you don't fear no more
1.) Throw the atomic warhead
2.) Don't throw it

1) You are shot down in masses
1) Auto DNA-ID ON-line Defensive Sys. ® Militech Corp.
1) There's a saviour amongst you
1) And he burns it down
1) Burns it all down
1) The whole damn city
1) People cry, the new gods die.

1) A new chapter of Anthroprocene begins
1) Warlords rise in the Ashes
1) Society collapsed
1) Much that once was is gone

1) And as you gather in your cave
1) The inner critic asks your soul
1) Was it me who's right?

You can see here how I set up the to-be-reflected action (throwing that atomic bomb) to be done in a flow state. After that, the action is loosing intensity and closeness until finally a very quiet image is provided with a concluding question functioning as reflection trigger.

Ideas for Feedback

• Did you ever experience reflection on your own action in a game? Why?

• Do you think you'd be left with such a feeling after playing that Cyberpunk quest? Why (not)?

Conclusion

This post has expressed on of my favourite thoughts about games. I guess it has appeared already in some other posts. It is, by the way, wuite an interesting feeling to slowly loose track of what I've written down and what not. Maybe this blog won't be a knowledge dump but rather a documentation of my conceptualization processes.

I hope you have a good time. Until the next post!

#27 Suspense

While we dived into enduring things last time, today I'm going to write about how to use those things which aren't there yet. It is about the feeling called suspense. Afterwards, I'll apply my learnings in an unexpected manner.

Suspense

That, of course, was a lie. But it showcases what I mean: The feelings that arise in an audience when there is an unresolved conclusion, a missing tone in a harmony, a foreshadowing, an interesting mystery.

On the designer side we're talking again about expectation management, about which I previously wrote a blog post. There I differentiated an expectational arc into promise, progress and payoff. The promises were divided into meta-promises (setting up the style of the work), world-knowledge (setting up the storyworld) and hypothesises, which are all expectational arcs related to how the story unfolds. One could say they are concerned with questions and statements such as:

• "What happens next?"
• "Probably X will happen"
  

This is what storytelling, to my knowledge, is interested in: The dynamics in the audiences heads while the story is told to them and of course - how to create which ones.

In my previous post I also wrote that "expectation management fundamentally breaks down to the gaps between":

1. how it really is - story
   
2. what informations are presented/revealed - plot
   
3. what is understood - player's mental model

Furthermore: "Storytellers [..] may use the gap between points 1. and 2./3. to make a story more compelling through interesting reveals at the right time (pacing) and subversions".

Now, one way of creating interesting reveals is to make a prominent and meaningful promise, dragging the progress slowly but steadily while keeping on promising prominently, and creating a final reveal.

I'd label the feeling felt while progress is building suspense. It is on the same page as moments of intensity, of "holding ones breath" or not being able to see what'll come next.

What will happen to the man? What is the kid's role?

There surely are other such patterns: I'm thinking of surprises, plot twists, the calm before the storm, a moment of rest and such things.

But for today, let suspense be me guide.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• #20 Expectation Management, link. The basis for this post, containing the sources to concepts like promise, progressm payoff and hypothesis

• The Building Of Stories, page 55 and following, link. A very nice explanation of what suspense is and how to create it
  

• Bordwell, Thompson, Smith: Film Art, Chapter 3: Narrative Form. Great book that consciously differentiates between story and plot, and builds its advices based upon that.
  

A Cyberpunk Storyquest - Writing Suspense

Searching to get something finished, I'll continue on the cyberpunky storyquest I began last time, hoping that such a smaller project will be finished more likely.

What will I do? I'll write. The moments I present here are those where I wanted to create suspension:

The sun is setting in my back
Orange lights - no, red lights chasing me
Black and red, devils forms
Accelerating, catching up, surrounding me
Their hatred is approaching me

My senses on alert
What is it?
1.) That smell..
2.) Them sounds..
3.) Those vibration..

 ...

The constant beat
Again, again and again
My body a flash of violet and silver
A fiery violet heart, oceans of anger
Waiting to be unleashed
We need to press on

You and me, my military friends
You'll drive me into my abyss, your abyss with your whips of steel

In the first case it's about withholding what it is, that's following the avatar (which is revealed when choosing any decision line), in the second case the player might wonder more intensively what his avatar is acually up to.

Ideas for Feedback

• What other patterns of expectation management (like suspense, twist, etc.) come to your mind?

• Are my writing samples not clear enough in their promise to be suspenseful?

Conclusion

This post had a very nice topic and leads into a direction that I'd like to pursue further. There are already several possible related topics on my mind.

There is a certain suspense to life itself too, I'm realizing. What will happen with me and those dear to me? Although I of course know of the parallel between plot/story and life, this thought never came to my mind before.

Granted, for me, a certain suspense does surround my next post.

Until then, have a good time!

#26 Durability and Impact

"Half a Century of Poetry"

Of late, I've been repeatedly thinking about why I actually write all these posts. Why did the bard Dandelion write all his ballads? Why do people write down all their thoughts into countless diaries, sheets of paper, books?

One answer to these questions lies in the concept of durability, I believe.

Durability

That, which stays with us, even though the world and we ourselves might change - that is durable, persistent, it endures. The divide between duration and change is at the foundation of time, as can be seen in a previous post of mine on this topic where I found two ways to define time:

• subjective: shows itself in the continous existence of observation and reality
• objective: shows itself in the changes/durations that are happening in reality
  

Note that actually both definitions formulate time based upon the dualism of change and duration. The second one does this in an obvious way, the first implicitly refers to that with the term of continuation - in opposition to non-continuation which essentially is change.

Impact

Those things that are not or slowly changing have a more unconscious, contextual, surrounding impact. They are a room of many lower perceptions, background chatters that accompany us. If something is there only for a short time, then it grabs our attention, stands out due to its movement - it is more punctual, more embedded in the main thread of our stream of consciousness.

** A valuable lesson for quest design is thus: Use the players budget of unconscious and conscious perception capabilities such that she and you can author her the desired experience. **

The division between unconsciously/contextually and attentively/consciously
perceived information can be found in this Inception poster: Compare the
trees/cars with the main characters and street.

For quest design this is actually one of the central things to mind, if I think about it. Let's look at a formulation of the nature of quests again:

a series of connected goals and events, where subsequent elements are only revealed, when a previous event has happened (which includes reaching a goal)

The important components of quests are goals and events, where an event describes a change and a goal describes a striven for change not having happened. But there is an extra layer to this that we may perceive: Recurring changes, so the same or similar changes happening. In such a rythm of recurring changes in a timeline durability is present.

One of the main tasks of the quest designer seems thus to build changes and durations. I think that merely showing something often and preferably to the players conscious senses makes the thing more outstanding to him.

** So a second advice I'd give my future self is: Across all the changes happening in a quest, keep showing those things which should be the driving components of the quest enacted by the player. **

Let's see, if I can use those thoughts in practice.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Henri Bergson: Matter and Memory, see e.g. the corresponding wiki-article

• Totten, Christopher W. (2019) An Architectural Approach to Level Design. Especially the chapter on rythm, pacing and structure.
  

A Cyberpunk Storyquest

For a course at my university I've been developing a quest/progression system, which I presented earlier here on this blog. Because it seemed fun and to showcase the system in a more focused context, I transferred it to some kind of a interactive novel that has serious Cyberpunk 2077 vibes.

I enjoy those colors.

A feature added are sub quests: There are now certain nodes in which you can enter a sub sequence of nodes. Planned features are a sight radius of visible nodes, a visualization of different node types and possibly a fmod integration (that would be cool). Here I want to write a story-quest for that project.

In the story, the avatar is on the run through a city, experiencing several moments of thought, emotions and external events on the way. While the story progresses and branches, immersion in the character is more easy due to staying with him/her so long. Slowly, the characters motivations and intentions are unraveled, drawing the player into roleplaying (like, actually playing the role).

The story shall be composed of several parts, maybe short-stories, the initial one defined by two questions: What are we up to? Will we achieve it?

Unconsciously, the constant, goal-oriented running through the city shall be the main topic, that endures most of the time. Consciously meeting the city and the avatar's inner shall be of concern.

I'll write down the story in section summaries. A section looks somewhat like this:

You're running
Faster and faster
The neon city lights shining
oh so bright

Each of these lines will probably have a separate blend-in. But now to the structure:

• You're running in a cyberpunky city
• Something is on your mind
• There's violence nearby
• Keep going
• 1) Disturbed run
• 1) Wasted opportunity of showing your fighting-power
• Stop it
• 2) You efficiently and powerfully disturb the violence
• 2) An extra sprint is necessary
• The avatar believes in his/her rising
• Is being worth it?
• Is life worth being?
• Is love worth being?
  
• Numbness, no answer
• A moment of being tired
• Trotting on, but wait...
  
• That smell...
• 1) The smell of totalitarism
  
• Them sounds...
• 2) The sound of oppression
  
• Those vibrations...
• 3) The movement waves of militech
  
• Something's off - the pursuers?
• Turning up the speed
• Images of capitalistic force - an abyss:
• Let the streamlined winds of speed guide you
• 1) Muscles of steel accelerate, you sprint over the abysses air
  
• Touch the earth and ascend
• 2) Metal touches asphalt, hydralics press you into air
• A bridge is shattering, the first prophecy of machine fulfilled
• You take in all that is around you, rise up a hill
• There is the king, a tower of matte gray and silver-white pillars
• Determined reaching of the goal
  
• You throw the atomic warhead
• You run into hell's gate
• The explosion
• The aftermath
• The ending line
  

Implementing this in the system would be rather tiresome, since every separately blended in line would need an event that has to be set up and wired manually - without visual scripting. That's why I won't do this now. Another reason is that I've written only the outline here, but actually lines are only there until (including) "A moment of being tired".

Ideas for Feedback

• What other design principle might be formulated on the basis of the duration/change dualism?

•  The short story is intended to be rather fast-paced. Do you think the concept might work?
  

Half a Century of Poetry

Granted, I didn't write about durability right now out of interest alone (even though I (guess one perceives that) do am intrinsically interested). This post carries the number 26 in its name, which is the half of 52, which is the number of weeks in a year.

Meaning, my "one quest design a week" is halfway through. What remains of the first half? What will remain at all? / What durability will this blog's content have?

To answer the first question: Well, a small encyclopedia of preserved thoughts for one. As I stated in the conclusion of post #24, a motivation for this is probably in the somewhat self-expressive need for putting thoughts down, develop and synthethizing them. Communicating those things to others is rather a nice side-effect.
Secondly, a feeling of achievement is there. I've written 26 posts with theory and practical share and I'm proud of each of them (even though some are more dear to my heart). Many of the theoretical things have brought advancements in my own thinking about the topics. I know from those blog statistics that I'm not the only one reading my ramblings. I've received feedback one or two times, and it was positive. I've been able to use the posts to advance my other projects. And, most importantly, I feel more confident doing quest design.
On the other hand: I'm missing bringing a quest from idea to implementation here. I tried doing this with that Witcher quest, but I didn't even finish the design phase yet. Maybe this just isn't the right environment to do this.

What will remain at all? I strongly believe that the positive effects noted above won't fade away. Whether my practical goals will be achieved better, I don't know yet. I'm unsure if the blogging will continue when the project is completed - a casual post here and there might be something. I'm hoping to improve, solidify my quest design skills and reach a certain level of competence. Like, being able to quick and dirty design and implement a quest in a selected range of engines, given any idea.

Freedom of Thought         

I'm sure this won't be a work like Julian Alfred Pankratz viscount de Lettenhove's "Half a Century of Poetry", especially not in importance for the history of word in its world. But I do feel - for myself, I don't expect others to feel this - a certain beauty in this. A beauty of allowing myself to progress and express in my very own way - chosen based on freedom.

Conclusion

The tempo isn't fast and decreases in small steps only, but I think the rate of posts on time is drawing close to zero. I'm missing a post on pacing and rythms yet, might be that there's something coming from that angle. We might also meet endurance again if I say something about cycles in (between) game/gamer or if I would take a look at memory.

Writing about this is very fascinating to me, because it is so closely tied to matters of life and death - when I'm dead, my self no longer endures, or at least I think so. And what endures in my self while I live, that is, what is relevant to me. And if it shows in my consciousness, then I can inspect that.

Well okay. There was also that Cyberpunk 2077 inspired short-story-side-quest-thingy, where I wanted to inject some design principles. But I realized, that the injection doesn't work when planning the high-level sections, but only when doing the concretest work, e.g. writing lines and decisions in this case. I'd like to finish this, but I fear that I'm kinda not doing quest design then any more: That is rather operating on that higher level. Ah, to have a writer who'd do that for me.

Enough talk for this already (again) long and thought/text-heavy post. I'm thankful for you, unknown reader, who might have discovered/seen and read this. I hope you found something of value.

Have a good time!