This started as a counter to Patrick’s article on Monday but I think I really agree with what he’s saying in a broad sense. This is more a mutated arm growing from his piece then, holding in its gnarled fist my thoughts on stories and their place in computer games.
Narratives are hugely important. They engross us, make gaming experiences unique, compelling and memorable. Which is why developers need to stop being so heavy handed with their stories.
I’m going to draw a distinction between the two at this point: narratives are what we generate when we play a game; a round of TF2, for example, buzzes with narratives but there’s no real story other than Red vs Blu. Stories are things the developer has created, stories belong to the developers. A heavily story-driven game can work wonderfully, but even the slightest weakness can spoil the plot and any enjoyment present in the mechanics – a bad story can easily isolate you from the thing you’re playing; Fahrenheit, for example, ‘was a brilliant game until it became the Matrix, but without the awesomeness.’ In short, relying on story is risky.
How many games tell amazing stories; brilliantly constructed plots that actually mean something like the trilateral structure of a Pinter play, the rationalistic experimentation of Crime and Punishment or the novelistic arcs in The Wire? Few, very few – mostly games that end in ‘shock’ or are called Deus Ex. Certainly there are plenty of high concept yarns, but aren’t these simply cheap devices to drip feed morsels of tasty plot, tempting us through (often) dull and repetitive mechanics? Modern Warfare 2 offers little in the way of gaming innovation, but a salty storycore runs through it, and you pretty much have to nibble to the end. I want developers to question why they think their games should include a controlling story. If there’s no valid, dare I say artistic, reason – then don’t include one. If you have an exciting setting, innovative design or mechanics then surely there’s no real need.
Stalker: Call of Pripyat goes some way to getting it right. It includes a delicate story, not a be-all-end-all plot that twists your gaming activities to fit its outcome – it’s more of a background thing. You are in the Zone to investigate the disappearance of military helicopters; pursuing the plot will lead to some things happening and the end of the game, unless you want to stay in the zone and continue playing. GSC include such a beautifully, daringly, hands-off story that its events don’t dismantle the game world as they occur. Some may see it as anti-climactic but that’s basically the point; from beginning to end you’re encouraged to explore and develop your own narrative.
Conversely, there’s Fallout 3. What made Bethesda think its story, as stale as two century old InstaMash, was more important and interesting than the vast open world they had created and the hundreds of possible narratives available to the player. This seems to be a case of misplaced priorities. So something happens to make your character exit the Vault, why not leave it there? Fallout 3′s story was an untidy hanging thread anyway, forgotten as I continued to explore the wasteland for hours after its supposedly significant conclusion should have taken place. It becomes an awkward appendix – an irrelevant, dangling thing that could be sliced off without being missed.
Am I just describing emergent narrative, a characteristic of sand-box gaming? Surely stories have to exist to substantiate more linear gaming structures? Well, yes but there’s no need to ram anything down our throats. Too often, stories in computer games lack any real depth anyway, they are the aforementioned ‘high concept yarns’; where’s the subtlety, the subtext – the substance that’ll keep us thinking about the game when we’ve finished playing it? Sometimes it seems developers believe a complex plot or reams and reams of lore perform this function but they don’t; I’m talking about ambiguity, grey areas, leaving stuff open for interpretation; allow us, the gamer, to bond with the game and create our own narratives in this way. It’s not complex, it doesn’t have to be Deus Ex. Look at Canabalt. You’re a guy running along rooftops while a load of dramatic shit kicks off, it’s not clarified by plot, you fill in the blanks or you simply exist in the gaming moment and enjoy its abstractness.
There’s another reason why story should take a back seat. There are occasions when it’s actually more interesting than the game. I found this with Silent Hill 4, I was intrigued by the plot but didn’t find the game entertaining enough to sustain my attention. It also explains my blast-through of Mass Effect; screw all these planets and inventory distractions, I want to find out what happens. Something’s up when you’d rather watch a game on YouTube than play it, or when the gaming itself is something that gets in the way. Pare down the story and developers can ensure they have something worth playing first, before incorporating plot in a meaningful, useful, way.
Games will become so much more interesting when developers realise their message, their story, is unimportant. It’s our interactions, our narratives that are. Death of the Developer – in every sense the game is incomplete until someone plays it; when they do, interesting and unique narratives begin. I want developers to facilitate this relationship, give us uncertainty, encourage us to explore. Present us with gaps to fill not illusions of choice, masses of lore or inconsequential morality systems. And if you are going to burden us with a story you’d better have a damn good reason.
Stalker was great because it effectively gave you an objective and told you to get one with it. I wish there was more of this sort of thing, like you say. And less of plots spiralling out of control to include aliens or some other batshit insanity.
I promised I wouldn’t heckle.
Although you decided I was right (Hah!), I’m not convinced. From my experience, I enjoy two broad types of games, which can include any genre within them: One with a good plot, and chaos style games.
A good plot game keeps me engaged for hours. When I have a few hours to spare, I’ll load up these epics and play them for as long as I can, marveling at my inability to do turn based combat. These are the types of games I spoke about on Monday. I think I probably enjoy them more than the Chaos ones.
A chaos game is one where I’m loading it up for an hour at most, just to watch cars get destroyed, people die and basically to chill. Burnout is a prime example of a game where I don’t play for more than 90 minutes before I switch it off. Not that I’m bored, but because I’ve had my fill of crashes.
What I want to try is Sleep is Death. I’ve got it, but it’s on that “FFS, why haven’t I played you yet” list I was talking about.
A ‘good’ plot is obviously a subjective thing. As I mention, when is a plot good and when is a plot just a bait trail to lure you through the game? The two aren’t mutually exclusive but I think most are, what can probably be surmised as, cheap melodrama. I’m arguing that developers need to think more about their stories and not simply have a cynically dramatic, unstructured yarn to compel the player on a one-dimensional level. Course, they may be fun and there’ll always be people to play them (as much as there’s always an audience for a summer blockbuster) but games need to strive for something more if we’re ever going to get anywhere, ya know?
And I think you use the word ‘epic’ quite wrongly. Do any epic computer games actually exist? Telling a protracted story with obscene amounts of background detail does not an epic make. When we have a gaming Ulysses or War and Peace (not the shoddy RTS War and Peace, that was a bloody shithead), then we’ll have epics.
I think that depends on how you are defining epic:
1.
noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer’s Iliad is an epic poem.
2.
resembling or suggesting such poetry: an epic novel on the founding of the country.
3.
heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.
4.
of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.
We have long games (morrowind, elite), and we have games on massive scales (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) – so I’m pretty sure we get epicness somewhere.
But that’s arguing semantics. Understanding your point as “are there any games that are long and complicated with narrative twists and intricacies” – what about Eve?
Singleplayers don’t do it – there stories are often too modular – each quest being it’s own mini thing as part of a grander story, rarely actually interacting with each other. Until developers start doing this, a place where people are left to their own devices with opportunities for politics and power is the only place it’s going to happen.
Yes, that’s it – this relates to my point about narrative and story. I can totally accept that there are epic narratives created by games like EVE.
Singleplayers don’t achieve such results with stories, you’re right. But I think they could. In order to do so, developers simply need to try harder; if they want to foist a story upon an otherwise decent enough game setting – if that’s the developer’s agenda, then they should ensure they have something that’s worth saying and an intelligent, original way to say it. Otherwise, we’re just running around in fairy tales all the time.
I agree with Paul here. The potential simply hasn’t been reached. It’s been my goal to eventually find or make one of these.
It really does require a great deal of development in AI, which we aren’t anywhere near close to sophisticated (and good, at the same time) yet.
Gaming Ulysses – an epileptic, unplayable mess ;). If someone tried to make something like this, it’d be shot down as another “shitty art game” and hardly anyone would play it. The same goes for War and Peace, except it’d be called boring.
Now, what I want is gaming’s Pale Fire or Labyrinths. Not necessarily “epic” (as if maximalism has ever been linked to quality) but pieces so well crafted and clever that they give me the same feeling of mental sustenance that I gain from reading. There have been very few occasions that I’ve felt this while playing a game, and most of those were in interactive fiction games which are mostly prose anyway. It could just be something about how my mind works.
Patrick – I’d be up for controlling if you’re having difficulty finding people to play SiD with.
I don’t want to see War and Peace, the game, or anything of the sort – it’s more, as you say, games striving to provide that kind of ‘mental sustenance’.
It took me a while to get what SiD was. I feel ashamed. I might well take you up on that offer, but I’ve got these bastard A Levels. Maybe end of June and I’ll try it out with you.
Something to note: Eve has been mentioned, and Gal Civ is another, where the game in question wasn’t designed with an actual story in mind yet we still get tales of this story. Is this the way forward though? I’m not sure.
I certainly think it’s one of the ways forward. It’s also an advantage over other medium.
I’m going to write a counter counter piece called “Some Need For Story”.
Im going to counter it all with “A need for hats and nothing else”
Really, all I need is a random number generator and a vague pretext of a plot.
So, in a debut post, I’ve essentially crippled GD into writing responses to responses to something fairly innocent?
That beats my record of 4 posts. YAY FOR ME!