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Original post by Wavinator I do grant you that it becomes mechanical, but unless there's a gameplay purpose to them, it's not going to stick. I can't tell you the number of people, myself included, that find themselves saying "yeah yeah story blah blah whatever-- what does it do for me in game?" That's not to disrespect the people who really care about the intricacies of how someone or something came to be-- far from it, this is a vital framework. But without some kind of gameplay tie, they're no more than an optionally readable history book.

It sounds a lot like you're saying "How can I get people who don't care about the story to react emotionally to the story?" And, really, the answer is you can't.

To be clear, the game should get you to interact with these people in a way that's meaningful to gameplay. It is a game, after all. However, for the emotional reaction there has to be something outside the gameplay. You need something there so that the emotional loss isn't completely overshadowed by the gameplay loss.

And that's another problem. If you lose something that big, and it's not a fixed part of the game, most people are just going to reload. This will kill any emotional response aside from frustration, which isn't what you're going for.

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I still find myself thinking that this must be focused on gameplay, on things that happen to you, your goals in the game, and things you care about. Since not all who'd play an RPG care about story, it's got to be practical. If I've got a son and that son is a trouble maker, I might care about that because it's lowering my reputation around town. I won't care about it if the game tells me, "your son stole the false teeth of old widow Isadora." Why? Because no matter how many times it happens, it's meaningless. My son doesn't change. Old widow Isadora doesn't change. I don't change. So what?

Sure, if he's lowering my reputation (which is probably linked to quests, prices, etc.) then I'll care. But I won't care in the right way. I'll care that he's limiting my opportunities in the game and will do whatever sidequest is available to fix the problem. To get the emotional response, you need to get me to care that he's doing it because I'm not home enough to be a good parent and he's crying out for attention (or whatever sappy reason you cook up).

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I think the severe weakness of just backstory alone is as you describe: Replay or gameplay focused characters say, "yeah yeah, so what?" That's just too much like business as usual for my tastes.

I guess the way I see it is that business as usual is business as usual for a reason. It's not that fiction has free reign where game designers dare not travel. Game designers have travelled there. Both fiction writers and game designers have created fixed stories with emotional impact. A fixed story solves many problems:

1) If you're playing the game, you care about the story because the story is the reward for playing.

2) You can't just reload to make it so the tragedy never took place.

3) The game play loss of the tragedy is less annoying because it's part of the story. For example, Aeris was really the only healer in FF7. In my opinion, this is a great gameplay loss, but this gets swept under the rug because you are forced to deal with the emotional loss. (For the record, I was not traumatized by the loss of Aeris, but I use the example because many were. I had a greater emotional reaction to Terra wondering if she'd ever find love and Kain's betrayal of Cecil.)

It seems the examples given here (Wing Command, Knight of the Old Republic) don't make it a practical issue. They give you back story to characters who are important gameplay-wise, and let it come out through your interactions. Now, how do you get someone who doesn't care about backstory to care about backstory? Best bet is to make it relevant to the game. But, if they don't care about backstory for backstory's sake, they're probably just going to regard it as part of the gameplay.

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Original post by Evil Bachus I think the more game-like you make the family the less of an attachment you'll have. If the family just exists to make healing potions and arrows, then the player will see it as a necessary sidequest and just be using their family members.

There must be a balance here. I agree with you if the family is just a factory then, yes, you'll think of this as very utilitarian, and that can inspire emotionlessness. But the same is true if family is "just" backstory if the primary gameplay is hack & slash.

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I was thinking more along the lines of this: You return to your home after a quest, or during a quest, or whatever. You can engage in some idle chitchat with your family now in the same way you may talk with your partners in KOTOR2. The dialogues would be completely optional. You could boast to your wife about the dragon you slayed, and she would congratulate you. Or maybe you're having a hard time with the quest and your wife would just offer a few encouraging words, at which point you could graciously accept them or blow her off ("I don't need *your* help.").

We would agree that optional dialog would be excellent for character development, I think. However, we can do better. If the advice is actually practical but not necessary, you'll be more inspired to listen to it. What would really be cool is a range of responses from uselessness to usefulness. Marrying the inane king's daughter, for example, gets you a lot of empty platitudes like, "I'm sure you'll do better," whereas marrying the fishmonger's daughter gets you secret routes behind enemy territory.

What I'm saying about this level of practicality in terms of gameplay is that it makes the world MUCH more concrete. Story and gameplay weave together to an extent that when the NPCs say something's happening in the world, IT IS. Nothing is worse than NPCs blathering on about things in the game world you can't affect, can't change, can't touch. (That's one of the biggest complaints I've seen in this forum wrt cRPGs.)

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The more dialogue options, the better the attachment a player could make.

I notice that dialog options in a lot of RPGs get you different outcomes. In many, for instance, it's the difference between having to fight your way out or talk you way out. I've heard from players who are so excited that they could snooker a guard, bluff their way past a goon, or trade some valuable object with a potential foe as an alternative to combat. Wouldn't that apply here?

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Maybe your kid asks if you could train him a bit. You could either blow him off (and have your kid start hating you), or train him a little bit. You wouldn't gain any stats or gold or whatever from this, but it would strengthen that attachment for when some NPC did attack and kill your little Billy ("That was *my* kid that I named and raised and taught to swing a sword and play baseball and you come into my home and kill him!? I'll get you Dark Lord of the Swamp if it's the last thing I do!").

If I've blown off little Billy and he says "I hate you!" and by extension, appears less on the map, then I'm going to be moved a bit. But if he says "I hate you" and much later grows up to be a real in game enemy I face off against, I'm going to be plain astounded. I'm going to say to myself, first, "wow, my choices ages ago affected this and changed the whole story?" If the characterization is strong enough I'll really be psyched.

Isn't this the stuff of raw drama, btw?

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You can't force the whole family feature on ever player as that restricts your audience and annoys the players that don't want to raise a family.

Agreed. I think it should be a different kind of experience that gets you different results. This would really add to replay value (which I think all games should strive for).

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It couldn't just be a bullet point on the back of the box (Raise a family and teach your kids how to play baseball!) as that would cheapen the whole thing.

Now hold on a sec. I think you'd get a big boost by drawing in the simulationists and those who want the story to be more concretely linked to gameplay. I agree that you couldn't put this on the back of Diablo XXLIV, but being able to be vitally integrated into the game's story and community would be a big draw, I think.

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Oh, and I keep using a family as an example, but the same techniques could be used in a number of different ways. Maybe you make a best friend at the tavern. Maybe you hire optional adventurers to join you. Of course, the more options you give the player the bigger a challenge it becomes to write all the dialogue options necessary.

Yes, definitely no small challenge, but it's so interesting to imagine RPGs getting out of the hack & slash ghetto and into more of what tabletop is capable of accomplishing.

I think it depends entirely on the genre of game you are working on. I don't think the majority of action RPG's care much about a story line. Same with most FPS. In those cases the story is only a crutch to give some basic world rules so the features are believable in the context of the game. A game built upon a story where the player is an active participant would work. I can't think of any good examples lately but the old Zork text adventures would, in my mind, be a good example. Personally, I would love to play an RPG that actually had the RP in it.

1. I don't like bad things happening to my characters if I feel it was because I didn't click the mouse fast enough.
2. I don't want my character to be harmed by something when it feels like random chance.
3. If something happens to my character which is obviously a predetermined story element (they didn't do that cut scene for nothing), I don't relly care.
4. I don't want all my hard work to be for nothing.
5. If I can undo a bad thing by going back to a previous save, I will.
6. If I just lost something and it feels like it'd be too dificult to make further progress in the game without it, I'll restart from a previous save.
7. I've gone into games with the expectation of having to accept certain kinds of losses. It helps, but it isn't enough.

If I can be convinced that it's worth contniuing on despite the tragedy, that I can continue, and that it's easier to continue with it than other alternatives, then I will. It's tough to do that IRL with someone you know quite well. No wonder it seems impossible to do in a game.

Isn't the stereotype, "If something goes wrong, men want to fix it." And aren't most games made by men for men? I don't think it's likely such elements of tragedy will be widely accepted by the traditional audience RPGs attract. But it'd be interesting to see more attempts at it.

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Original post by Way Walker It sounds a lot like you're saying "How can I get people who don't care about the story to react emotionally to the story?" And, really, the answer is you can't.

Would it be right to say that you think there are those who enjoy story and those who enjoy gameplay as two different (opposed) camps? Because I suspect that those who are in it for more than just hack & slash would care immensely about the story if it actually meant something to the game. I don't think they're so easy to separate.

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However, for the emotional reaction there has to be something outside the gameplay. You need something there so that the emotional loss isn't completely overshadowed by the gameplay loss.

I have this weird idea that the two can be one in the same if the story IS the gameplay, which is what I guess I'm trying to round on here. I think it's safe to say most games with story are "kill-kill-kill, cutscene explaining why you're killing so much, rinse, repeat." I think an interesting possibility to think about is when the two are nearly inseperable.

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And that's another problem. If you lose something that big, and it's not a fixed part of the game, most people are just going to reload. This will kill any emotional response aside from frustration, which isn't what you're going for.

I completely agree, provided you're talking about a traditional binary game where loss and death provide nothing of value. What this requires, then, is to take a clear look at what assumptions you give player by sheer din of the rules you make and the situations you put before them. What is winning? What is loss?

First of all, people are likely to reload because games have conditioned them to think that loss is failure. You'll have to sidestep that by training them.

Now, assuming you can break a player of "failure == reload," consider the mentality, "hardship makes you stronger-- provided you survive it," as applied to both story and gameplay. Now if you reload, you cheat yourself of some dramatic development later on in the game which is an unknown quantity. Such a game would have to clearly tell the player this is happening (in load screens, perhaps) and make it a point of pride to "play loss through."

I take the more extreme position: "Death is not interesting, abject failure is not interesting." That means while I think a game should have some hard losses (ie, you jump in the dragon's mouth like an idiot, you die), I would love to see loss dealt with our action heroes deal with it in our favorite movies. (Pardon the rant here, but can you imagine how insipid and stupidly predictable our favorite movies would be if the hero never had a setback?!?!?!! Plot structures like the popular W shape used in many TV series--that is, setup, complication, success, major reversal, triumph-- would be IMPOSSIBLE!)

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Sure, if he's lowering my reputation (which is probably linked to quests, prices, etc.) then I'll care. But I won't care in the right way. I'll care that he's limiting my opportunities in the game and will do whatever sidequest is available to fix the problem. To get the emotional response, you need to get me to care that he's doing it because I'm not home enough to be a good parent and he's crying out for attention (or whatever sappy reason you cook up).

I think if you provide one without the other it's going to be hollow, either way. If you just give me "he's crying out for attention" then I'm going to say, "sorry kid, but I'm trying to kill the dragon and that #*$*$#! is kicking my backside right now." And if it just happens without meaningful context, then I'm going to be annoyed because it's now just a frustration, I agree.

How about this scenario: You're doing stuff around town, and every once in awhile, should you ask people about what's going on, they'll tactifully comment about your son getting into trouble. This gives you a conversation option to strike different stances, ranging from "I'll deal with it" to "This is none of your business." As you go on, your interaction choices with NPCs control both their response to you and the kids behavior (in how they respond to him).

Now let's say you take the ignore path. Your son produces a sidestory / backstory based on things he's doing in the background. Maybe he grows up to be anything from a brigand to some dark necromatic soul. This reflects on you to a degree dependent on the culture, which is set up by the game story (ie., in a highly honor-based paternalistic society, your child is part of your honor; vs. in an individualistic culture, people take an opposite view).

Okay, so let's say you take the "leave my kid alone" path. Maybe he grows up to be a hard drinking, hellion beserker who will fight with you, but is hard to control or lowers the rep of your family, which affects alliances and affiliations (slightly or strongly, depending on how much this should mean).

Now let's say you take the "I'll deal with it path:" How you deal with it (again, interaction gameplay) is central to determining if he turns out to be disciplined, rebellious or fearful.

With all of that involvement in the unfolding events, I can't see how someone who enjoys story is going to have a hard time with this. It IS story, isn't it?

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I guess the way I see it is that business as usual is business as usual for a reason. It's not that fiction has free reign where game designers dare not travel. Game designers have travelled there. Both fiction writers and game designers have created fixed stories with emotional impact.

For some, sure, I can't deny that you may have felt a certain way about a character in a game. But the OP stated "games that include life elements can't handle elements of personal tragedy unless said elements are part of a fixed story."

Now let me say that the feedback so far has caused me to modify this. I still think we have a bias against loss, and I still think any game attempting this MUST get out of the binary victory condition concept.

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3) The game play loss of the tragedy is less annoying because it's part of the story. For example, Aeris was really the only healer in FF7. In my opinion, this is a great gameplay loss, but this gets swept under the rug because you are forced to deal with the emotional loss.

Funny enough, I was talking to a friend last night who had the same reaction as the AP above. Couldn't stand her, said good riddence when she died, less to manage. (Actually, he cared more about that character you mentioned)

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But, if they don't care about backstory for backstory's sake, they're probably just going to regard it as part of the gameplay.

I'll give you a short example from Morrowind: The friend I mentioned above was playing through and was wondering why there were all these tombs and what was up with the ghost fence, but didn't care to read the books. When he learned that he could get skill bonuses from the books, he suddenly became more interested in them. Along the way, he satisfied his curiosity about backstory elements of the game.

I don't think the draw for both types of players is mutually exclusive. I think the two communities are closer than many people think. I'd LOVE a great story in a game (I love stories), but I'm always going to rebel against a story as soon as it presents me with stupid events that, through gameplay, I should have been able to change.

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Original post by Grellin I think it depends entirely on the genre of game you are working on.

True, I should have been more clear about that from the start but these games that are increasingly blurring the line between life sim and RPG is more of what I was talking about.

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A game built upon a story where the player is an active participant would work. I can't think of any good examples lately but the old Zork text adventures would, in my mind, be a good example.

Zork is a great example! Thanks!

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Personally, I would love to play an RPG that actually had the RP in it.

What elements would make the RP come alive for you? Would it work to say things to people and then have those words mean enough to sometimes change the NPC's behavior?

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Original post by kseh 2. I don't want my character to be harmed by something when it feels like random chance.

I'm intrigued by this one: If, because of events outside of your control, you find yourself under threat, would you regard this as a random event? For instance, you talk to some villagers and they all say that they're terrified of the king because he's insane. You're too weak to do something like assassinate the king at the beginning, so you can do nothing. Then the king at some point in the game (different each time) starts a disasterous war with a neighboring country. As a result, a swarm of enemy soldiers, several of which you take out, succeeds in burning down your house.

Maybe (because you've ignored the hypothetical tip in this game that some losses lead to better things) you reload and reload and reload, but find that although you can get out with your skin, you can't save your house.

Do you take the mentality, "I'm ALWAYS SUPPOSED TO WIN, THIS ISN'T FAIR!!" and uninstall the game? (Personally, I WOULD if such an invent never lead to something better.)

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3. If something happens to my character which is obviously a predetermined story element (they didn't do that cut scene for nothing), I don't relly care.

Care as in "don't care about the story" or as in "it's okay with me?"

If the later, maybe all that's needed is to present events like the above partially as in-game cutscenes?

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4. I don't want all my hard work to be for nothing.

Yeah, this you DEFINITELY have to be careful of. Again, here's what I talk about in the OP: Something like "rags to riches to rags" doesn't cut it culturally. If, OTOH, it's framed as "story of your virtual life," the premise is different than "level up to kill Foozle." The latter means that any de-leveling puts you farther away from Foozle.

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5. If I can undo a bad thing by going back to a previous save, I will.

Even if it means that you'd miss out on things you could't achieve without playing through?

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7. I've gone into games with the expectation of having to accept certain kinds of losses. It helps, but it isn't enough.

Did you ever gain anything positive by accepting the loss? Personally, never.

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It's tough to do that IRL with someone you know quite well. No wonder it seems impossible to do in a game.

FWIW, when I used to do martial arts there was a mentality my sensei had that being beaten by an opponent was a good thing because now you know his moves.

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Isn't the stereotype, "If something goes wrong, men want to fix it."

I'm not opposed to this at all. Men also like strategic tradeoffs, and if you think about it, that's embodied in a lot of what I've been talking about in the last few posts.

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And aren't most games made by men for men?

What a second, now. One, I think you do vast injustice by stereotyping men and women, even in the broad (I know SEVERAL female Halo and fighting game fans who would disagree, as well as a number of Phantasy Star players). Second, time and again RPG players have said they want a more living, breathing world. Third, I think you're looking at the past and projecting it into the future, which is suicide in a world of increasingly expensive game budgets and a crossover audience that's just loaded with cash.

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I don't think it's likely such elements of tragedy will be widely accepted by the traditional audience RPGs attract. But it'd be interesting to see more attempts at it.

You might be right, and if something's not done about how winning and losing are defined, I'd bet money on the fact that you're right.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by kseh I don't think it's likely such elements of tragedy will be widely accepted by the traditional audience RPGs attract. But it'd be interesting to see more attempts at it. You might be right, and if something's not done about how winning and losing are defined, I'd bet money on the fact that you're right.

All right. Instead of just saying that, let's cut to the chase. How are winning and losing defined? In a specific game sense, the game creator chooses what defines winning or losing. But over all society has some expectations on what winning and losing really is. (I am having Deja Vu. Was this already a thread?) I have seen some flash games that try to challenge these notions of winning and losing, such as dying in the goriest way, but the object of all of these games is still to go for the best whatever. You aren't the best? reload redo. and again. You are asking how to stop the reload redo cycle and have a player be satisfied with not being the best.

I have no idea how you will accomplish this. Let me think about that for a bit.

/enough of my rambling
//too much time on FARK leads to comments like this

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Way Walker I guess the way I see it is that business as usual is business as usual for a reason. It's not that fiction has free reign where game designers dare not travel. Game designers have travelled there. Both fiction writers and game designers have created fixed stories with emotional impact. For some, sure, I can't deny that you may have felt a certain way about a character in a game. But the OP stated "games that include life elements can't handle elements of personal tragedy unless said elements are part of a fixed story." Now let me say that the feedback so far has caused me to modify this. I still think we have a bias against loss, and I still think any game attempting this MUST get out of the binary victory condition concept.

For the record, I did say "fixed stories". I guess I was going back to the beginning and saying that games have done what fiction has done. Granted, I think games have done a poor job of it, overall (not entirely fair, because games have added some thing that books and movies cannot). The best game stories would probably make mediocre novels. So the real problem is how to get a game to tell a good story rather than just being poor imitations of novels. I think you highlighted the problem I'm having. We've been trained that the game portion is "win or lose" and the story portion is very nearly completely predetermined.

I haven't meant to argue that it's impossible, just highly improbable given the current audience. I'd be interested in how you'd get players to "unlearn what they have learned". Or, rather, how you'd structure the game such that it wouldn't be such a problem. Would you give them something "as good" whenever they lost something? (Your village shuns you but you've earned some street cred in the Big City) Would the outcome of the situation always be "as bad"? (Son either becomes a powerful enemy or a hindering drunk, but no "happy" outcome possible) Would you be able to undo what's been done? (Your wife left you, but you can win her back) Would losses not really affect the game? (Like Wing Commander) Not that these are mutually exclusive, but none seems ideal for the task at hand. Without making all paths equal, how would you get a player to just suck it up and take the loss?

Or maybe all paths not being equal is exactly the point? Instead of "easy - medium - hard" you have different paths.

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Original post by Thermodynamics How are winning and losing defined? In a specific game sense, the game creator chooses what defines winning or losing. But over all society has some expectations on what winning and losing really is.

Winning and losing is inseperable from the goal and the means and resources to achieve it. One way to open this up is to open up the goals and bias rewards toward that gameplay which supports drama. More rewards for playing through losses, more in-depth means of motivating NPCs in the wake of tragedy, etc.

Personally, I'm interested in "simulated future life" elements and what it's like to live in a fantastical future, so I'd give players multiple victory condtions. One very strong one could be of fulfilling a prophecy in which certain events MUST happen, with the reasoning being "Some must be sacrificed so that all can be saved." (G'Kar's prophecy in Babylon 5). The setup and pacing would be vital for something like this: Get the player into hating an enemy, give them all sorts of rewards and incentives, have the enemy abuse them and smack them around a bit as well as commit atrocities; then create the goals such that, eventually, the player must end the fighting and make peace with those enemies.

I think part of the keys here are giving players freedom to protest the goals through their actions and interactions with NPCs; keep events happening whether the player acts or not, particularly toward (in this case) genocide and mutual self-destruction; and build the conditions such that they can be ignored in favor of some other goal.

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You aren't the best? reload redo. and again. You are asking how to stop the reload redo cycle and have a player be satisfied with not being the best.

It's vital then for the game story and NPCs to redefine what "best" is. In the above example, let's say that you're the best bar none in space combat. If you can just get your people's support, you can finish off the enemy. But because of the shift in goals and prophecy, the more you win, the harder the loses your people take.

Create it so that along intervals, you're reminded of the prophecy through some story mechanism or another.

Most important: The player needs an outlet to complain about this, to take rebellious actions, even have allies commiserate, rail and join; but the arc of events need to be toward greater and greater wastage until (for this game goal, peace after enmity) there's only one real logical choice.

I think the game needs to be seen as on the player's side for this to work.