Player story vs. Developer story
Mar 9, 2023 11:48:15 GMT -5
Post by 40oz on Mar 9, 2023 11:48:15 GMT -5
I was reading an interesting discussion on tildes.net about unpopular video game opinions, and a few posts indicated a dislike/bias in the way some role playing games implement a "morality" or "karma" system that rewards you for making decisions or taking actions that are good for the conscience and penalize you for decisions that are 'evil'
Some of the comments chided these systems for punishing the player for accidentally striking an innocent person through a misclick, burglarizing a place that is otherwise apparently abandoned, or having to kill an attacking stranger in self-defense.
The objective of these systems, as understood by the players, is that the system/meter wants to guide you into being the developer's vision of the game world's 'hero' by only doing helpful and heroic things, and potentially denying yourself a favorable outcome in the game's ending if you had to achieve it by stealing, and killing people along the way. The player has their interpretation of the story and assume the position of the protagonist's identity, so such systems tend to put the seemingly open-ended playing experience 'on rails' and at times yield a lukewarm or unsatisfactory ending or even a demise for the player character even if the player can make a moral justification for the things they did. In some cases, comments attributed this to bad/slapdash writing off of events.
The problem, essentially, is that the game developers work towards a development of their own story, while players often take this and develop a story of their own, and these two are in conflict about what the game should or shouldn't be.
I found this pretty summative response by a commentor named fional about the implementation of stories in games that I thought was pretty accurate and I wanted to share.
Some of the comments chided these systems for punishing the player for accidentally striking an innocent person through a misclick, burglarizing a place that is otherwise apparently abandoned, or having to kill an attacking stranger in self-defense.
The objective of these systems, as understood by the players, is that the system/meter wants to guide you into being the developer's vision of the game world's 'hero' by only doing helpful and heroic things, and potentially denying yourself a favorable outcome in the game's ending if you had to achieve it by stealing, and killing people along the way. The player has their interpretation of the story and assume the position of the protagonist's identity, so such systems tend to put the seemingly open-ended playing experience 'on rails' and at times yield a lukewarm or unsatisfactory ending or even a demise for the player character even if the player can make a moral justification for the things they did. In some cases, comments attributed this to bad/slapdash writing off of events.
The problem, essentially, is that the game developers work towards a development of their own story, while players often take this and develop a story of their own, and these two are in conflict about what the game should or shouldn't be.
I found this pretty summative response by a commentor named fional about the implementation of stories in games that I thought was pretty accurate and I wanted to share.
I think the intrinsic problem is deeper and at the core there's always a conflict in prioritizing the game developer's story versus the player's story. Ultimately, a compelling story arises when characters make interesting decisions with consequences, but "consequences" is almost directly equivalent to budget. At the end of the day, you can broadly bucket them into a few categories:
Fully prioritize developer agency: This is probably one of the more common strategies today, and boils down to "watching a movie with periodic gameplay breaks." This is the easiest route, you only have to develop a single timeline of content, but it's often incredibly unsatisfying narratively because you are, by definition, excluding the player from any consequential decisions. It further often drives you to avoid putting the main character into situations where they might actually make consequential decisions. Otherwise if the MC does something without the player's involvment, it can be REALLY frustrating (looking at you, Spec Ops: The Line). Examples: Most of the later Final Fantasy games (post-FFX, excluding MMOs). Uncharted, God of War, etc. style games.
Fully prioritize player agency: If you have a game whose gameplay mechanics intrinsically support consequential decision making, you don't need a story, the players will craft their own stories through the decisions they make. For example, "I was hauling a billion ISK worth of goods through null space when the Goonswarm capital ships started warping in and I was like ohhh fuuuu" (EVE Online), "I almost finished my fortress when a creeper blew a hole into magma and flooded the entire bottom floor!" (Minecraft), etc.
Multiple endings: This is a halfhearted attempt to shoehorn player agency into the first story model. You can't really change anything about the game itself, but some token decision you make towards the end gives you a different epilogue! This can help, but it usually suffers for one of two reasons. If you make the choice early in the game, you have the narrative dissonance of that choice not actually seemingly affecting anything for the rest of the game until the end scenes. This is often the problem with morality systems--you can press the "savior" button or the "be a jerk" button and your character portrait will change colors but it doesn't really do anything narratively because you still have to get to the same place in the end. Alternatively, you end up deferring the choice until the very tail end of the game at which it feels like a capricious decision (Mass Effect, Deus Ex: HR).
The tour guide: This actually can work, and is the route some of my favorite RPGs take. In this model, the main character is still essentially at the top-level a boring player stand-in, but can intercede within modular side-quest content. The decisions taken within those modules are consequential, but because they are bounded within a specific side-quest domain, they limit the amount of consequence-sprawl that can happen. The main arc of the story is still linear, though. Examples: Fallout NV, Chrono Trigger, Deus Ex).
Actually build the game and story together: this is the hardest approach because your story isn't something bolted onto an existing game, but both evolving in conjunction over the span of development. Sometimes, this means exploring a story that doubles down on the intrinsic lack of player agency by echoing it thematically in the setting and plot (Outer Wilds, Majora's Mask). Sometimes you play up the frivolity of the entire idea of agency and consequences (The Stanley Parable). Finally, sometimes you actually do give the player agency and double down on that choice being consequential (Undertale is the biggest example that comes to mind here). This is the rarest route because even with a single choice, you're often essentially forking the universe and developing multiple games in parallel.
That was a lot of words. Ultimately, I don't think game writing is bad because we undervalue narrative or writers--heck, I think most AAA games secretly wish they were movies or novels--but because AAA gameplay expectations and budgetary requirements preclude the necessary sacrifices to compellingly blend narrative and gameplay.
Fully prioritize developer agency: This is probably one of the more common strategies today, and boils down to "watching a movie with periodic gameplay breaks." This is the easiest route, you only have to develop a single timeline of content, but it's often incredibly unsatisfying narratively because you are, by definition, excluding the player from any consequential decisions. It further often drives you to avoid putting the main character into situations where they might actually make consequential decisions. Otherwise if the MC does something without the player's involvment, it can be REALLY frustrating (looking at you, Spec Ops: The Line). Examples: Most of the later Final Fantasy games (post-FFX, excluding MMOs). Uncharted, God of War, etc. style games.
Fully prioritize player agency: If you have a game whose gameplay mechanics intrinsically support consequential decision making, you don't need a story, the players will craft their own stories through the decisions they make. For example, "I was hauling a billion ISK worth of goods through null space when the Goonswarm capital ships started warping in and I was like ohhh fuuuu" (EVE Online), "I almost finished my fortress when a creeper blew a hole into magma and flooded the entire bottom floor!" (Minecraft), etc.
Multiple endings: This is a halfhearted attempt to shoehorn player agency into the first story model. You can't really change anything about the game itself, but some token decision you make towards the end gives you a different epilogue! This can help, but it usually suffers for one of two reasons. If you make the choice early in the game, you have the narrative dissonance of that choice not actually seemingly affecting anything for the rest of the game until the end scenes. This is often the problem with morality systems--you can press the "savior" button or the "be a jerk" button and your character portrait will change colors but it doesn't really do anything narratively because you still have to get to the same place in the end. Alternatively, you end up deferring the choice until the very tail end of the game at which it feels like a capricious decision (Mass Effect, Deus Ex: HR).
The tour guide: This actually can work, and is the route some of my favorite RPGs take. In this model, the main character is still essentially at the top-level a boring player stand-in, but can intercede within modular side-quest content. The decisions taken within those modules are consequential, but because they are bounded within a specific side-quest domain, they limit the amount of consequence-sprawl that can happen. The main arc of the story is still linear, though. Examples: Fallout NV, Chrono Trigger, Deus Ex).
Actually build the game and story together: this is the hardest approach because your story isn't something bolted onto an existing game, but both evolving in conjunction over the span of development. Sometimes, this means exploring a story that doubles down on the intrinsic lack of player agency by echoing it thematically in the setting and plot (Outer Wilds, Majora's Mask). Sometimes you play up the frivolity of the entire idea of agency and consequences (The Stanley Parable). Finally, sometimes you actually do give the player agency and double down on that choice being consequential (Undertale is the biggest example that comes to mind here). This is the rarest route because even with a single choice, you're often essentially forking the universe and developing multiple games in parallel.
That was a lot of words. Ultimately, I don't think game writing is bad because we undervalue narrative or writers--heck, I think most AAA games secretly wish they were movies or novels--but because AAA gameplay expectations and budgetary requirements preclude the necessary sacrifices to compellingly blend narrative and gameplay.
