I stumbled across a nice introductory webpage about plot today. Not what I was looking for, but I thought someone here might be interested. (What I was looking for was something analyzing complex plot structure in long novels, so if anyone knows of something like that, please let me know. :) )

Quote: Stories are plot-driven or character-driven. A plot-driven story captivates readers or audiences through the excitement of events. The characters are important, but the action takes precedence. Character-driven stories rely on interesting characters and their responses to situations. While the situations arise from the plot, readers or audiences remember the characters.

Many games are plot-driven, but far fewer are character-driven.

Part of this is that few games have well developed characters or player controlled characters that react emotionally etc. to the plot points. And many don't ask the player as a person to react and choose, neither do they show how they FEEL about different events ie. "plot points".

Indeed, what I think this highlights is a) few games give the characters/players meaningful choices that ask them to take a stand.b) few games have emotional reactions beyond fear and anger c) very few games investigate INNER CONFLICT.

Quote: Original post by Ketchaval

Quote: Stories are plot-driven or character-driven. A plot-driven story captivates readers or audiences through the excitement of events. The characters are important, but the action takes precedence. Character-driven stories rely on interesting characters and their responses to situations. While the situations arise from the plot, readers or audiences remember the characters.

Many games are plot-driven, but far fewer are character-driven.

Part of this is that few games have well developed characters or player controlled characters that react emotionally etc. to the plot points. And many don't ask the player as a person to react and choose, neither do they show how they FEEL about different events ie. "plot points".

Indeed, what I think this highlights is a) few games give the characters/players meaningful choices that ask them to take a stand.b) few games have emotional reactions beyond fear and anger c) very few games investigate INNER CONFLICT.

The problem is that, in most games, the character is merely an avatar -- a container into which the player projects his own personality. That avatar is necessary because of the user interfaces needed to make our games work at all.

Another issue is that the limited technology games have to rely on makes it very, very hard to create good character-led games, (although the Japanese tend to be better at these than most). For all the brouhaha about so-called "3D graphics", we don't actually have anything that can display a 3D image to the average gamer. Last time I looked, even the PSP only had a 2D display.

Until we can create a better sense of immersion and remove the glass wall that separates us from the game's world, the 'twitch' title shall be King, because there's a necessary layer of abstraction required by games that will inevitably put many people off.

Emotional subtlety is very hard to express when your only means of expression within the game world is a plastic stick and some buttons.

I've heard many people make the absurd claim that videogames are at the "silent movie" stage of development.

Bullshit. We're still making Zoetropes.

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

Quote: Original post by stimarco
I've heard many people make the absurd claim that videogames are at the "silent movie" stage of development.

Bullshit. We're still making Zoetropes.

This is correct.

The webpage link is missing the part where the story is meaning-driven. If you watch movies and read book right, most of them are not really about the characters nor the events. Characters and events are only used to present an underlying meaning, a specific perspective about the world. For example, Finding Neverland is about giving hope and fighting against losses, through the story (events) of how the playwright uses Peter Pan to heal the heart of a child with lost parents (characters). It is not a story about the components (events and characters) but the meaning behind them.

Another technigue for starting to plot a story - The Snowflake Method. (Ignore the spam on the page and just read the intro and 10 steps of the method.) I'm going to experiment with this one myself this week. :)

The snowflake method is an instance of TDM, without the vigorous focus on semantics hierarchy. It is not a coincidence that the author is a PhD in physics. There is structure behind any coherent design, and structures can be described using hierarchy. So it is very logical that a story is designed from a top-down approach. In his description he already used the words 'high-level' views and logics to describe the design. If it is not obvious that it is TDM, you can view the snow flake as a chrismas tree, where in step 1 (in his article), you draw the triangle, and in the lower level (step 2), you draw the star, and so on until step 10 you have the snowflake at the bottom.

Again that article is not as vigorous because, while it gives you the steps, it does not tell you the derivation of the steps. In other words, it did not mention the existence of a decision hierarchy, and how each step is partitioned based on the hierarchy. The derivation is important because it tells you how to adapt the same method for different objectives. Note that the hierarchy does not necessarily put semantics on top. Another weakness of that article is its lack of discussion about the usage of symbols and presentations, or the realization of abstractions.

It is also not a coincidence that his latest novel is a romantic suspense novel. This is because suspense novel is the type of the design that requires the most complexity of design effort. The difficulty drives the development of systematic approaches.