Notes for Game Design as Narrative Architecture
- Ludologists: wanted to study/shift focus onto mechanics of gameplay
- Narratologists: interested in studying games alongside other storytelling media
- Lots of people noting differences between games and stories (interactivity is often good in game, bad in story)
- People may be instead protesting attempts to map traditional narrative structures onto games
- Not all games tell stories. Some games more abstract and expressive/experiential, like dance or music.
- Many games do tell stories or rely on narratives, for example, to help with familiarity or roles or goals, etc.
- Games that tell stories often tell them differently than how other media tells stories.
Environmental storytelling
- Environmental storytelling is essential element in game narratives. “Spatial stories”
- Game designers design worlds and sculpt spaces
- Designing the environment, even for very text-heavy narrative games (like Zork), is what enables the narrative.
- Recreate environments more than recount narratives for game adaptations
- Lots of narratives, like the Odyssey, War and Peace, etc., characters are stripped down greatly and much time and effort is spent describing environments and encounters. Plots and character descriptions sometimes suffer, but it’s popular in science fiction.
- Disney/theme parks use environmental storytelling. Less so recounts story, more provides atmosphere
- It’s all about immersion
Evocative spaces
- Draw upon previously existing narrative competencies
- Star Wars game exists in dialogue with films, conveying new narrative experiences through its manipulation of environmental details. Players get game after knowing original story
Enacting Stories
- Narrative enters games in terms of broadly defined goals or conflicts and on the level of localized incidents.
- Some argue stories need to be tightly constructed. Spatial stories often criticized for this
- Environmental storytelling thus often needs an end to reach – and narratives don’t necessarily have ends reached like that.
- Games can have micronarratives that game designers use to create memorable moments in games
- Movies with action scenes or musicals can be seen as having a moment that doesn’t directly advance plot but is fun to experience, outlined by a greater plot movement
Embedded Narratives
- Spectators test and reformulate mental maps of narrative or story space as detective novel unfolds, etc.
- In games, players create these maps and test them against the world
- Games usually start with exposition to orient players to core premise, sometimes giving space for rehearsal
- Authors thus have high degree of control of information, but game designers can control the narrative process by distributing information across game space.
- Game design comes with artful ways of embedding narrative information in environment without feeling like players are being controlled
Emergent Narratives
- Not pre-structured or programmed. Possibilities take shape through gameplay.
- General framework (like dollhouse of Sims) provides very general structure where players can make own goals
- World ripe with narrative possibilities
- Done so often through giving characters urges and desires
Narrative Response
Funnily enough, I played the game To the Moon for the first time today, despite having owned it for nearly ten years. I am almost afraid to admit that I entirely misinterpreted what the game was, and thus never touched it since that first incorrect impression. For how touching this game proved to be, I am glad I got to it later rather than never 🙂
To the Moon is a 2D, top-down interactive novel/adventure game designed by Kan Gao of Freebird Games, that operates off of world and movement mechanics that are very reminiscent of older RPGs. Designed for and playable on just about every modern platform (Windows, Mac, iOS, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, etc.), this fantastic story game seems particularly well suited to those looking for casual, emotionally-deep, story-driven indie games (with themes that hit deeply anywhere from teen and up!).
Throughout the game, the player follows a two-person team whose job it is to alter the memories of a dying man so to fulfill his longtime dream: going to the moon. The team must travel through their patient’s memories, piecing together his life so to make his final wish come true. During my playthrough, I played roughly three hours of the game, getting (what I hope to be) a decent chunk through Act 2 (and hopefully, all the way through by this weekend!). In an effort to achieve this rich storytelling, Ken Gao employs a myriad of thoughtful and engaging storytelling techniques. All games feature some small bit of each of Henry Jenkin’s four narrative strategies, but To the Moon relies most heavily upon the ideas of “enacting stories” and “embedded narratives”. Most of the story is well set-up through a series of interactive dialogue and scenes presented in front of the player (“enacting stories”), forming the bulk of the progressive lore that gets conveyed to the player. However, to additionally personify the words and actions of the world around them, the player explores and interacts with a myriad of lore-rich artefacts, giving context to the play unfolding (“embedded narratives”). We still see, however, much use of “evocative spaces” in the general sense to take advantage of our preconceived notions and to not only minimize our cognitive load in imagining this new world, but to draw us in and make it feel so familiar.
The seamless blending of these strategies made for a game that immediately felt both tangible and familiar. I felt so easily immersed, and I could so easily empathize. The ups were bigger, and the downs pulled my heartstrings so tautly. Such deep emotion helped to personify a game about fulfilling final dreams. Using this as inspiration towards my own narrative projects (especially ones that may have minimal mechanics other than those of an interactive novel), I can help model my story structure similarly. Despite the game being rather linear (in fact, it seems to be entirely a kinetic novel), I still felt like in the moment I had reasonable control due to the volume of interaction I would have to take for the story to unfold. Dialogue had to be discovered, individuals found and connections made. Even though there would only be one way to do this in the end, the freedom of process made it not feel so cumbersomely on rails. While this exploration would often be rewarding at its end, however, the conversion of RPG mechanics into an interactive novel would make exploration rather cumbersome in the moment. Movement would be slow and interactables somewhat repetitive. With no branching and minimal choices to be made, the freedom – when not used exactly to progress the story – often felt like it only halted it. Overall, it’s an exciting prospect to introduce more flexible integration and movement mechanics into a narrative game, but its flow will need to be greatly streamlined so not to get clunky.
Fantastically, the game so easily drew my empathy towards so many of its characters. Through dialogue and relatable struggles, the game helped me see myself in its voices and story, and I could so concretely feel myself both being capable of making the same mistakes, and feeling the same pains as the characters within it. Simply put, the game made it easy to draw empathy in its characters for simply being human and suffering because of it. The hopes, dreams, aspirations, and faults of each individual seem so familiar at first they are almost mundane. But upon seeing the magnitude of feelings that result, it profoundly brings the player back to evaluating if they are really valuing their own simple hopes and dreams enough, or if time is slipping away. Feeling the breadth of emotion this game has offered, I am inspired to try making a game that might make others feel something, like this game did for me.
