Whats the difference between a series of events (ie. in game obstacles to progress / random encounters), and a story? Some thoughts, 1. a story isn't just a series of random events, they are interconnected, and have a reason for happening. 2. Whether you take something as part of a story depends on your goals / objective. Ie. What you notice, because a.) it affects what you are trying to do. Ie. If you are climbing a mountain, a rockfall is an important event. But seeing a bird in the distance is probably less important to you (although it might help set the atmosphere/emotional tone). So if the game has some -obvious- goals that you are trying to do, then anything that gets in the way will be noticed. Ie. If you are trying to get the golden statue, you will notice the Ninja monk guarding it. But is this enough to make a story? Does there need to be a reason why there is a Ninja Monk guarding it? (I think so).

It depends on your standard of a story. Instead of asking whether a series of event is enough to make a story, you might want to ask how a series of events satisfies (or ignores) different aspects of a story.

Common aspects of a story:

1) Semantic Engagement (Is the audience following the logic of the story, is the story making sense, is that audience willing to discover about the story?)
2) Emotional Engagement (Is the audience emotionally attached to the story or the characters?)
3) Thematic Engagement (Is the story world engaging and coherent? Does the presentation of the events and ideas make sense?)

It is possible to create a series of interchangeable events that will satisfy all three. The analogy is an album of pictures or songs. Related questions:

- How do you arrange a set of songs to better present a meaning?
- How do you design an ordered sets of songs that presents different meanings when different samples are taken from the sets?
- How do you design a set of songs than can presents different meanings when they are played in any arbitrary orders?
- How do you design a presentation device, that dynamically adjusts the presentation of randomly picked songs to create a meaning?

Quote: Original post by Estok

1) Semantic Engagement (Is the audience following the logic of the story, is the story making sense, is that audience willing to discover about the story?)
2) Emotional Engagement (Is the audience emotionally attached to the story or the characters?)
3) Thematic Engagement (Is the story world engaging and coherent? Does the presentation of the events and ideas make sense?)

Concentrating on these three elements I have some thoughts.

1. the player has an end goal in mind from the beginning. Ie. Something he needs to do (defeat the plague), or a state of affairs he needs to protect (stop the king being killed). This way the player can connect what he does between the beginning and the end

1. Events shouldn't be too random and they , it is probably good if they have some relationship to the end goal (or the sub-goals). Ie. The player is climbing the mountain because he knows he has to get to the fort and warn them of the approaching army before it is too late.


2. Do we care about the characters? Are they sympathetic? Do we dislike the enemy? Does the player really -feel- this or is it just a badly handled token story idea (ie. because "every game must have a bad guy!"). How do the characters relate to the player's goals and subgoals?


Also read this article as it has some interesting things to say.
particularly in relation to making player goals known.
http://grumpygamer.com/2152210


any comments?

Quote: Original post by Ketchaval
Concentrating on these three elements I have some thoughts.

1. the player has an end goal in mind from the beginning. Ie. Something he needs to do (defeat the plague), or a state of affairs he needs to protect (stop the king being killed). This way the player can connect what he does between the beginning and the end

This is correct. It is the same as writing a story or writing an essay. You either need a thesis, an objective, or a question for the player to explore. And the overall piece should be coherent about something. Most of the times the first question in a story is often answered at the very end to achieve closure.

Quote: 1. Events shouldn't be too random and they , it is probably good if they have some relationship to the end goal (or the sub-goals). Ie. The player is climbing the mountain because he knows he has to get to the fort and warn them of the approaching army before it is too late.

This is correct. And from this you can deduce that there is a correlation between events. For instance, the event of ClimbingMountain is a solution to the event SpottingIncomingEnemey, which is also related to the event KnowingThereIsAFortOnTheMountain. Therefore for some events you can deduce their order.

This answers the question of "How do you arrange a set of [events] to better present a meaning"

A second look at the situation: The meaning of the player's decision (to climb the mountain) is made meaningful by this sequent of events:

S1) Knowledge of the Fort
S2) Knowledge of the incoming enemy
S3) Solution: Alerting the Fort

With respect to reduced version of the question, "How do you design an ordered sets of [events] that presents [same meaning] when different samples are taken from the sets", it is possible to design a set of events that will serve the same function for each entry. For example, the designer could have designed the following interchangeable events to satisfy each requirement:

S1) Knowledge of the Fort
- E1) The Fort is on the alliance's map
- E2) The player is previously given a quest to deliver supplies to the Fort (spotting the incoming enemy intensifies the situation)
- E3) The player has previously been to the Fort

S2) Knowledge of the incoming enemy
- E1) The player has just escaped from the army
- E2) The player saw the camps of the approaching army

S3) Solution: Alerting the Fort
- E1) Climb the mountain
- E2) Send a flare
- E3) Send a bird

For these events, no matter which one you pick from the sets, the meaning of the sequence is retained. Example:

S1-E3, S2-E1, S3-E3

The player was among some other POWs captured by the enemy. The enemy has been marching to somewhere, but you don't know where. Then one of your comrades realized that the the enemies had discover the secret Fort on the mountain, and decided that the player must escape and alert the fort. So the story goes that you escaped and sent a bird to alert the Fort of the incoming enemies. (Of course the enemy didn't know where the hell the Fort is, the comrade was a traitor tricked the player into showing its location.)

Quote: 2. Do we care about the characters? Are they sympathetic? Do we dislike the enemy? Does the player really -feel- this or is it just a badly handled token story idea (ie. because "every game must have a bad guy!"). How do the characters relate to the player's goals and subgoals?

If you add back some emotional engagement to the above sequence, you can say something like your comrade loves you so much that she would rather risk seemingly betraying the alliance to let you escape. She believes that the player was strong enough to fight back the enemies (and hopefully smart enough to know that she was tricking you on purpose and you know that you were pretending to be tricked, since the enemy didn't know something about you (i.e. the enemy didn't know you were the secret weapon, they thought you were just a low rank footman))

In order to achieve this, it requires:

S1) Development of the relationship (Or knowledge that a relationship between the player and the comrade exists)
S2) Development of the player (Or the knowledge that you are the special weapon)

You can further design the corresponding events that would achieve these. Keep doing this and you will have a plot that satisfies the semantic and emotional engagements with interchangeable events.



*Actually, the Reasoning to climb the mountain is not classified as semantic engagement but thematic engagement. Thematic engagement is the actual events, the causality, and the logics. Semantic engagement is the meaning of the story and the meaning of the events, but not the meaning among the events themselves. For example in the story:

There is an old lion in the zoo that had become ill, the zoo decided to hospitalize it because it is a really rare species. When you look at the lion you find that it is sad from both being ill and being isolated. You wonder what you can do about it.

The semantic engagement arises from the topics about happiness, companion, reason of existence.
The emotion engagement arises from sickness and isolation.
The thematic engagement arises from the actual events, that there is a zoo, a lion, the lion is ill, what you do about it.





[Edited by - Estok on April 16, 2005 1:22:19 PM]

This topic is discussed in my developer journal, mostly in terms of causality and teleology. Teleology includes like foreshadowing and not having extraneous events, only events which lead through an exploration of the theme to the climax/expression of the premise.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
This topic is discussed in my developer journal, mostly in terms of causality and teleology. Teleology includes like foreshadowing and not having extraneous events, only events which lead through an exploration of the theme to the climax/expression of the premise.

Is it sacriligeous to suggest on these forums that games may not need lots of story?

Most gameplay is about repetition and variation, you see the same basic elements repeated with slight differences, or new elements. And the different obstacles / challenges that they provide when added together. (Except games like adventure games which usually have unique puzzle solutions).

Ie. First level has collapsing walkways, and guards.

the second level has *spike traps*, collapsing walkways, and guards
The third adds berzerker guards too!

I'm not sure how well this fits in with the idea that a story shouldn't have extraneous events. I suppose it depends on how these levels explore a theme and contribute to the basic structure of the plot/character development. etc.

Personally I'm all in favour of a well implemented interesting (as long as it isn't shoved down my throat) story and characters as it adds more soul to the experience of the game.

Quote: Original post by Ketchaval
Is it sacriligeous to suggest on these forums that games may not need lots of story?

It is not sacriligeous, but inaccurate. The 'entraneous events' serve for the Thematic and Emotional engagement. If you look at the overall presentation of the story, the events still follow a curve of increasing intensity building up to a cilmax.

In your example, the increasing intensity of the situation is a form of thematic engagement, where the player will expect more exciting and intense events as the game continues. Notice that intensity is often linked to excitement, and excitement is an emotional engagement. Emotional engagement is not necessarily empathy (in your other thread). Suspense is another emotional engagement.

It is pretty hard to find true extraneous events that have no impact on the semantic, emotional, or thematic engagements. Most of the times they will have a negative impact instead of none. So you might define extraneous events as events that break the flow of the presentation.


After reading your posts, I realized that you weren't really talking about the situation of 'creating a story from events' that most open-ended designs run into, because in those designs the engine is able to generate the events, and the design objective involves either making the engine generate events that will preserve the engagements, or to link or present them in a way that preserves the engagements. The post I had before about the sets of events was aimmed for the creation of such story engine.

In your case you are talking about the relationship that should exist among the events that give rise to a story. My answer is still to ensure the semantic, emotional, and thematic presentations. The principle is pretty intuitive. There is only one thing you need to know: 'to keep the reader reading.' The 'engagement' is just a simple extension of 'for what reasons the reader is hooked to the story?'

Thematic Engagement: The reader is hooked because the events, story setting, etc is interesting and the reader wants to know how the story progress. (This why you would watch two strangers play chess)

Emotional Engagement: The reader is hooked because the story inlicits a desirable emotion in the reader (This is why you would watch your son play chess in his championship)

Semantic Engagement: The reader is hooked because the story has an interesting message, or a debate going on in the story (This is why you would play chess against your son, after a bitter argument)

Quote: Original post by Ketchaval

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
This topic is discussed in my developer journal, mostly in terms of causality and teleology. Teleology includes like foreshadowing and not having extraneous events, only events which lead through an exploration of the theme to the climax/expression of the premise.

Is it sacriligeous to suggest on these forums that games may not need lots of story?

No, I'd be the first to say that several of my favorite puzzle, platformer, and shooter, and sim games have little to no story. But note the word story in the title of your original post, and the word writing in the name of this forum. Storyless games seem off-topic to this thread and forum, don't you think?

You suggested that a story is a sequence of meaningfully connected events, which I agree with. You asked about how a series of events is interconnected to make a story, my answer is that they are interconnected according to the principles of causality and teleology. Estok's thematic, emotional, and semantic categories are a useful way of classifying the types of connections between events. Personally, I believe that extraneous or arbitrary events such as random combat do not belong in story-based games. The quote you reference in your new thread - did it occur to you that perhaps he is criticising the arbitrariness of the combat, that it is poorly integrated into the story? Puzzles and combat do not have to be random, as can be seen from well designed adventure games - puzzles can be a great tool for conveying worldbuilding, and combat can be excellent for conveying character development.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
No, I'd be the first to say that several of my favorite puzzle, platformer, and shooter, and sim games have little to no story.
...
You suggested that a story is a sequence of meaningfully connected events, which I agree with. You asked about how a series of events is interconnected to make a story, my answer is that they are interconnected according to the principles of causality and teleology. Estok's thematic, emotional, and semantic categories are a useful way of classifying the types of connections between events. Personally, I believe that extraneous or arbitrary events such as random combat do not belong in story-based games.

...
Puzzles and combat do not have to be random, as can be seen from well designed adventure games - puzzles can be a great tool for conveying worldbuilding, and combat can be excellent for conveying character development.

Sunandshadow, where can I find your journal? It would be interesting to look at some of these discussions. The basic principle behind this thread is to look at how we can build a greater sense of story "drivenness" into games such as platform games, if this is desirable. I suppose one underlying question that needs to be answered is how / whether a platform game or FPS benefit from having a well integrated backstory / causal link between levels and events etc.
However, I believe that this forum is more about the technical challenges of writing dialogue and convincing story for games.

I can imagine a (3d?) platform game which is structured like an adventure game / rpg where the player's avatar has a pre-defined character.. and has a character and belief / value system that is affected by the events he / she encounters in the game . Ie. As a result of their selfishness or curiosity at the start they learn to be more prudent, or learn the value of ......

Ie. like those japanese RPGs where the player unleashes a great evil that destroys their village, and sets out to defeat the bad guy.

As an example of a platform / adventure / action game with some story Beyond Good & Evil has you investigate locations that are important to the plot and discover secrets there.
One question is what motivates the characters to go where he is going?
Thoughts?

For any forum member who has a developer journal, there is a link to the journal on their profile page. But here's the specific link to mine. (Don't forget to start reading at the bottom with the oldest entries; it won't make as much sense if you read it out of order.)

I think that whether and how any particular game would benefit from having a story must be a personal choice by that game's designer. There is a saying - "You can't argue with taste." That's one of the reasons I work mainly with RPG stories. People are generally in agreement that RPGs ought to have a big, complex story which organizes all of the gameplay in the game, so I can focus on how to do it well rather than wasting time in arguing what exactly ought to be done, which is the sort of question people will never come to an agreement on. So, you should decide for yourself how much story would make your game the most fun to play.