#32 Quest Objectives

 Today I'm gonna think and write about quest objectives. Indeed, making them distinct from quest goals will help understanding that matter more clearly, I feel.

Events, Goals and Quest Objectives

In my quest definitions so far one prevailing element is the existence and juxtaposition of events and goals. Since for me at least it never wasn't really clear how their relationships is, I'll try clarifying that in this episode.

Events and goals have in common that they are mental constructions, part of mechanisms in the mind. Events can be defined as abstractions and summations of movements perceived:

An event is thus fundamentally about the change from a previously perceived state. 

Goals on the other hand do not refer to the trueness/falseness of something in the world we perceive. Rather they make a statement about something one wants to be true/false therein:

A goal is about a future state that is wished to become true.

Note that unlike events, goals are bound to an actor of sorts. Events on the other hand are not necessarily originating from an actor only.

We see, that the production of fitting events is the means to fulfill a goal. We also see that the audience always needs to have at least one goal: That of wishing to continue to experience the story. This applies for all media, but mind how this plays out different in e.g. books and computer games: Usually the effort to continue the "book-experience" is trivial: You merely have to turn pages (those are the events needed). In games however the player's ability to participate in event triggering allows for much more complex ways of building the events necessary to reach the goal of "continue game-experience".

But of all this I've talked already lengthily in my post on narrative drive. I'll now turn my eyes towards quest objectives. First, what makes an objective different from a goal? Consider the question of goal-authorship in video games: It is obvious that the player's mind is the last instance of goal-creation. However those goals are oftentimes inspired or even afforded by the game: For example landmarks or those written goal propositions we get whe playing a quest:

Quest objectives in TES V: Skyrim. Source

These I call quest objectives and we see they are designer created and, as quest items, explicitely referenced by a quest system. By quest system I mean that part of the game's code that is responsible for revealing the events of a quest.

Here follows a short list of guidelines I think sensible:

• The KISS principle: Keep it simple, stupid. Players shoudn't have to employ specific postmodern literacies to decipher the objective presented to them.

• Thematic cohesiveness: As with all game elements, the objective too should feel fitting to the theme. One might use e.g. "thy" instead of "your" for a heavily medieval themed game.

• Player expression: As with decisions, goals allow for expressing player thoughts. If a player likes a character, for instance, then you might insert an optional goal of talking to that character before moving on at an important point in the narrative.

Typologies

There have been several attempts to create typologies of (quest) objectives or goals in games. I'll present one here as a pool of inspiration without much further discussion.

Firstly we have Debus, Zagal and Cardona-Rivera (2020):

Choose, Configure, Create, Find, Obtain, Optimize, Reach, Remove, Solve and Synchronize

When reviewing books on quest design or video game storytelling such as Jeff Howard (2008) or Lee Sheldon (2004), then I find that those do not provide exhaustive overviews of such goals. Their value is much rather in the attempt of an overall synthesis of thoughts on their respective topics. What a luck that there are on the hand scholars devoting themselves to specifiv topics such as a listing and destilling of "imperative game goals" (Debus et al.).

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Wictionary Contributors. event, goal. What a time to be alive for linguistically interested people.

• German Wikipedia Contributors. Ereignis (event), Ziel (goal).

• Lee Sheldon (2004) Character Development and Storytelling, p. 224ff.

• Jeff Howard (2008) Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives, p. 101ff.

A Solarpunk Quest: Implementation Part 2

I'm going to continue my quest for quest implementations. Here is the latest progress:

And it is in its finished form, for now. I added some consequences to the choices and reused the part about tanking from the sun, which I introduced in the first version. Also, some CSS magic, as you see.

Ideas for Feedback

• What design principles do you know or have for (quest) objectives?

• Do you catch up with the story progress in "Sustain the Moon"?

Conclusion

Another post is another win. And I am content with finally having thought and talked about the event/goal/objective difference, whose relations were a point of annoyement to me for quite some time now. Also the feeling of having been able to prototype a quest so fast with inkle is great. I'll probably do that again.

Until then, have a good time!

#31 Quest Items

 Shifting to some more - well - profane, or rather: 'classic' quest design topics. The first one in the line is quest items.

Items

So what are items in the first place? The wictionary tells me, it is a "distinct physical object" and, more specifically for video games, "an object that can be picked up for later use". I think I'd agree that in video games items are usually those which can be picked up and stored in an inventory. However it doesn't seem fitting to reality to say that every item may be used. So I'd go with:

items are distinct physical objects that can be picked up

This gives a good intuition for what is possible with them (some thoughts on meaning here are inspired by Jeff Howards book on quests (see below)):

• distinct implies that the player is able to perceive at least some of its boundaries, form and what else might be part of an appearance

  note, that this allows for an assignment of an equally distinct meaning to this item and also for the relative stability of that: nonetheless assigning different meanings is probably one of the more interesting things to do with items

• physicality gives items a very concrete existence, making them part of the spaces the player herself might pass through - it also forces certain aspects of appearance to be: a physical object needs a shape and a weight, for instance

  note, that this allows for literally embedding meaning into the game world: it is probably the basis to applied worldbuilding and environmental storytelling (see for instance this discussion of objects in the starting area of Cyberpunk 2077)
  

• lastly, the player is able to pick up items and possibly also discard them. well, assumed that the player herself is able to move, then she may then carry this item through the game world

  note, that this is a perfect setup of items as a storytelling device: we can assign the item a meaning and tell the player to carry that meaning through a game world - possibly even showing interactions between item and game world or item and avatar. this is an easy way to make a meaning durable
  

Items in TES IV: Oblivion. Source

The whole concept of items is thus a great way to provide an extra level of meaning relations for a game. The meaningful moving around of items is also quite useful in the context of characters or other agents: Being able to move items aswell, they can give them to players e.g. as a gift or reward, but they might also buy or steal them from him.

Quest Items

Now what are quest items? To answer this, I'll cite a classification made by Jeff Howard. It goes as follows:

1. The "lowest tier" contains items that are "largely useless" but give you "a sense of realism", so that which is known as clutter, junk or similar. Examples: garn, ashtrays, rotten tomatoes, ..
2. The second tier includes "functional objects" which may be used e.g. for boosts, fighting or special game world interactions (maybe a magic lamp uncovering past conversations) 
3. The third level is about quest or plot items. These play an essential role in the quest story or have "great magical power".

I'd like to disagree with the last definition and rather say that quest items are those, which are explicitely referenced by a quest system, "explicitely" meaning here that the concrete item is referenced and not "any sword" for example. This seems much more logical and useful to me.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Howard, Jeff. Quests - Design, theory and History in Games and Narratives. Chapter 4 - Objects. Link. Has a big focus on the literary, quests, meaning and symbolisms.
  

• Sasko, Paweł. Lead Quest Designer plays Cyberpunk 2077! #1. Link. A big fundus of knowledge concerning mainly "storytelling, game design, quest design and psychology".
  

A Solarpunk Quest: Implementation Part 1

In order to actually implement a quest for a change, I downloaded inkle and wrote a system with hubs and dynamically addable, showable and deletable objectives. Then, I implemented the first half of the solarpunk quest from last time in it:

So this was nice and relatively easy. I'm thinking this might be a format in which I could also tell future stories here, instead of always leaving them in a non-implemented state.

Ideas for Feedback

• In which ways have you used items in quest contexts?

• Do you think my rather "quick and dirty" concretization of last post's quest design worked so far?

Conclusion

I am very satisfied with this post. It contained a theoretically inspired, but practical section on items and it featured an actual quest implementation (we haven't had those in a while ..). The link between them is missing, but I can live with that. For the future, I hope to continue with more such small-scale but worthy productions.

Until then, have a good time!

#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!