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.
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| 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!
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