Re: dr Jack

Your comment on Story Content vs Player Experience showed me that you do not understand the importance of that distinction to the thread. I am not sure what you want me to explain. From my perspective, these are some concepts that you need to understand:

1) Classification as a mean to organize known occurrences
2) Classification as a mean to explore the unknown
3) Defining scope as a mean to focus a discussion

Before I explain these, let me first show you what I was expecting:

Story Content vs Player Experience

Story Content is all information in the story that is directly visible to the player. Player experience is the emotional, intellectual response that results when the player interacts with Story Content. A more complete description would have three layers. They are the Truth, Story, and Experience layers.

The Truth Layer holds all facts about all entities and actions. Consider a crime scene. A burglar broke into a house and stole a gold watch. The burglar did so without being seen, but the truth is that he did break in and did steal the watch. The truth is there, but not everyone knows it.

The Story Layer holds all information that is told to the player. This is similar to what goes into a police report when the owner of the house tells the police when he left home, when he returned, and how the room looked when he returned. The information in the Story Layer is not always truthful.

The Experience Layer holds all effects that the player gets by interacting with information of the Story Layer. Follow this example, a detective reads the police report and thinks to himself, "rudimentary!" This emotion resides in the Experience Layer.

When we talk about story design, the designer designs the Truth Layer and the Story Layer in order to satisfy the Experience Layer. In a player experience oriented Top-Down design, the designer begins by concretely defining the Experience of the Target Audience, then design the Story and the Truth to meet that objective. Common objects that the designer designs can be classified:

Truth Layer:
o Event Timeline (Events in chronological order)
o World building:
o .. Races, Cultures, Religions, Technology
o .. Location, Items, Animals, Plants
o Dialogs, Actions, Thoughts, Relations as how they actually happen

Story Layer:
o Plot, Plot outline (Scenes/Events in the order shown to the player)
o Scenes
o Backstory (The object that informs the player of past events)
o Dialogs, Actions, Thoughts, Relations as they are told to the player.

Story Content is information that resides in the Story Layer. Most of the time, information in the Story Layer reflects the truth, such as when the story recites the words of a dialog faithfully. In those cases, the content also a member of the Truth Layer. Story Content that is not a member of the Truth Layer could be false, abbreviated, substituted or completely rhetorical, such as commentary of the narrator when the narrator is not an entity in the story world.

As mentioned above, the design goal of a story could be to create a specific experience for the Target Audience. In this particular thread, the Target Audience is sick of conflict* in story. In order to meet the design goal, the story is designed so that conflict* does not exist in the Story Layer.

To see whether you understand this part, see if you could place each of the following statements in its respective layer:

a1) "The audience is tricked to believe that the main character is evil."
a2) "The story withholds the intention of the main character from the player till the end."
a3) "The main character doesn't know his true intention until the very end."

b1) "The story is wrong because there is no way that the character sees a full moon the same night after seeing a solar eclipse during the day."
b2) "The story is wrong because it skipped two weeks without telling the player."
b3) "The change from solar eclipse to full moon is memorable."

c1) "This story alternates between the hero and the heroine. The odd chapters are all about the hero, the even chapters the heroine."
c2) "The switching between the hero and heroine makes me believe that somehow the two characters are related even though the story doesn't say it."
c3) "The hero and heroine can't coexist at the same time."

I have not explained the motivation of this division, but in short it is done as a preparation of explorative classification, which is item #2 in:

1) Classification as a mean to organize known occurrences
2) Classification as a mean to explore the unknown
3) Defining scope as a mean to focus a discussion

I don't know whether I need to explain these. Do you see the difference between #1 and #2 and their historical order?

Re: sunandshadow

You have expressed your belief, are you interested in taking
the next step to show or discuss whether that belief is correct?

Quote: Your comment on Story Content vs Player Experience showed me that you do not understand the importance of that distinction to the thread. I am not sure what you want me to explain.

I wasn't asking explaination (by the way, yours is interesting :)).
I was trying to say that if we start to talk about player experience vs story contents (vs trurth), we could go out of topic.

Player experience is wide to analyze. And this analysis could easily become open to interpretations.
And story contents is an useful element only if he give the right player experience.

So, to be simple, we can assume that conflict we want to deliver with story content is the same experieced by the player.
Sometimes is not so, but that's an error (at least for me it seems an error).

I don't think we need to analyze this to answer your starting question: How do you make a playable story without a conflict?

No problem with that, only, maybe it's better to open another topic.

Re: dr Jack

I wasn't asking explanationYou weren't asking because you didn't realize that you have misunderstandings. I am providing explanation not because you are asking for it, but you need it. It is like trying to discuss map-making when you don't realize that you could talk in terms of coordinates. You already know that topics related to story design can be categorized. You just didn't realize that it is important to apply those categories for this discussion. When I read your post, I can see sentences that show misunderstanding. For me, the options are:

a) Ignore them and keep trying to discuss
b) Correct your misunderstanding first, than discuss

I already know that (a) has not been working, so I am stuck with option (b). If you understand that you have misunderstadings, then you should understand that I have to explain. I just don't know what I should start explaining. If I just start explaining from the dawn of time it might be a waste of effort, because I don't want to tell you something that you already know.

In my perspective, to understand this thread thus far, you need to understand the following. These concepts aren't off-topic. They are concepts that must be understood to be on-topic, regardless whether you belief a story could be conflict-free.

1) Classification as a mean to organize known occurrences
2) Classification as a mean to explore the unknown
3) Defining scope as a mean to focus a discussion
4) Objective definitions vs subjective definitions
5) The origin of stories
6) How to prove and how to disprove something
7) Test vs persuasion
8) The objective definition of story, essay, and record
9) The objective definition of conflict
10) Story as a component of a game
11) Variations in how a story exists in a game

And in terms of the beliefs that sunandshadow posted:

12) The relation between plot and structure of a story
13) Variations in structure of a story (how to have structure without using plot to create the structure)
14) Plot without conflict
15) Quantifying structure vs Quantifying the size of a story (re: "the larger the story the more structure it needs")
16) Fractal structure of a story

This list expands dynamically as people offer a point of view to the thread. Unlike other threads where the intention is just to express opinions, for this thread the actual meaning of the beliefs need to be precise and defined. For example, in response to the belief that "so a minimal conflict-free story might exist" the logical progression is to find or create a minimal conflict-free story, so that a definite ground is established that: "Conflict-free story exists." To do so, one would need definite, objective definitions of Conflict and Story, otherwise, even if an example of Conflict-free story is provided, an advocate of "Conflict-free story do not exist" can still reject the evidence in poor discussion ethics. Therefore, unless everyone in the discussion is capable of discussing in an ethical way, objective definitions are required.

So, to be simple, we can assume that conflict we want to deliver with story content is the same experieced by the player.
Sometimes is not so, but that's an error (at least for me it seems an error). This shows me that you don't realize that conflict can be defined in an objective way that is invariant to player experience. There is no need to simplify or make assumptions when the definitions are objective. It looks like an error to you because you don't know that concept (3) is applied in this thread.

To you, it might seem that I got my mind cornered into thinking about conflict in a very specific way, that I might have forgotten the big picture. But that is not the case, the actual case is that I had already discussed the big pictures in previous years so all there is left that is worth discussing (for me) are the specific details. For example, a few years ago I had a thread on "Evoking emotion through gameplay". At the point, I was already pass the discussion on evoking emotion (a player experience) through a story, because that would be too obvious (even back then), as there were so many samples to analyze.

In terms of the question, "How do you make a playable story without a conflict?"

The prerequisite of the discussion is the understanding, first and foremost, that story without conflict do exist. That topic is concluded. But to understand that you need to understand the list of concepts above. Between you and me, we could continue if you accept that as a fact. If not I don't mind explaining and discussing, because it seems that I have walked so far out that there is no one nearby.

Re: sunandshadow

You have expressed your belief, are you interested in taking
the next step to show or discuss whether that belief is correct?

No, not particularly interested to argue the topic in more detail. I think would come down to personal subjective opinions of "what counts as a story" and "what is a substantial amount of story".

Extracting objectivity from subjective statements
(The following is not directed to sunandshadow in particular because sunandshadow was open to the concept that a story could be conflict-free.)

No, not particularly interested to argue the topic in more detail. I think would come down to personal subjective opinions of "what counts as a story" and "what is a substantial amount of story".

I don't know how you view this response, but that actually shows you why opinions are comparatively useless in this type of discussion. The point was that the thread will not 'go down' to personal subjective opinions. They shouldn't even be there in the first place. To make it clear that I am not ranting, here is how your comment would be phrased in a more objective way:

Original Sentence:
"What is a substantial amount of story?"

Objective Comment:

The word 'substantial' is meaningless. Instead of thinking 'substantial-ness', think of 'substance as a measurable quantity'. It is subjective and relative to say that an elephant is large. It is objective and absolute to say that any elephant is 6 tons. Large-ness is a relative adjective. 'Tons' is a measurement unit. There lies the difference. If you could measure the level of substance of a story, that is an objective measurement. It is up to the designer to use the measurement. An analogy is nutrition labels. It is objective to tell you what ingredient and nutrition value a food product has. That alone will not determine how much nutrients you would absorb by eating the product. To know that you need an additional model to model the you absorption. The situation is the same here. There is one model for the content of the story, and another model for the interest of a player.

Therefore, when you look at a story and ask, "Does this story has a conflict?" It can be analyzed without knowing what the audience is, when conflict is defined as a property of a story, as it has always been defined for ages. The word 'conflict' is a classifier pertaining to the condition of a situation. Think about the antonym of 'Conflict' for a moment, perhaps it is 'harmony' isn't it? If a person believes that a story requires a conflict to be a story, then a story about purely harmony can't exist wouldn't it? So when your son tells you what went wrong at school, it is a story, but when your grandma tells you about the good old day it isn't? What if Grandma is very funny in her telling? How would you define the 'conflict' in a purely funny, warm, harmonious story? If 'conflict' is a classifier of situation and a harmonious situation is the opposite of a conflicting situation, isn't it obviously a case of 'generalize-itis'?

What are stories anyway?

Definition of Story

Def3: Stories are narrated events to capture an experience.

Variations in the purpose of stories:
o To warn - by telling events that lead to bad outcomes
o To teach - by telling events that shows the situation, the remedy or the experience
o To amuse - by telling events interesting to the audience
o ...

The common property of Stories, is that it uses of events as building block of its composition. As mentioned before, a definition is meaningless unless it has both the power to include and to exclude. A meaningful definition should have the power to include compositions that are commonly considered as stories, and the power to exclude compositions that are commonly consider as non-stories (such as essays and data records).

Think about this post. Is it a story? It is not, because I am using arguments, questions, expositions to express a perspective. The more events I use, the more it would read like a story.


* * *
Not long ago, I started a thread about stories without conflict. I was surprised by people would oppose the concept. I thought to myself, what could they possibly get by opposing that concept? Was it the reassurance that the meaning they knew was correct? Was that feeling that important, that they would rather keep it than to see what may lie beyond?

I thought, Perhaps they were trying to save me from venturing into a fruitless journey. But that couldn't be it, for even when I bring back something edible and valuable, they would dismiss anything I get as fruit. They would not taste it. They would not see it. They would dismiss it, and warn everyone else not to look.

But when I found something something again, I brought it back.

I thought, Why did I do so?

Then it came to me that that was not the right question. The right question was, Why would that need an explanation? Wasn't it the natural thing to do when a person discover something?

I thought to myself, Perhaps they should ask instead, why wouldn't a person share what they have discovered? Perhaps people had come to expect the discoverer to keep it or to hide it.
What is human nature? Is it to hide it, or to share it?
* * *

Can it be objectively determined whether the elements of a composition are events?
Can it be objectively determined whether the composition contains an experience?

If these two can be objectively determined, then given a composition, it can be determined whether it is a story without any subjectivity. Then the question of "what counts as a story" is no longer a matter of opinion.

The belief that it is a matter of subjective opinion is false, as long as you know how to discuss objectively. In the above I showed you how it can be done to transform subjective comments to material suitable for objective discussion.

I think this is a skill commonly trained for engineers, scientists, statisticians, etc. : From subjective desires to objective description, from objective descriptions to quantifiable metrics.

Without being presumptuous, I think the issue here is what users other than Wai regard as a story simply because of a different definition; that is, using the term "story" in a less than precise, but commonly accepted way.

You can have a story - a recounting of events, or what have you - without conflict. Though I'd argue it could prove difficult, because it's easy to stretch something in order to consider it conflict. Something as simple as the weather outside could be construed as conflict (it was raining, therefore human versus nature). Heck, even a door. What is the purpose of a door? To open, to close, as we see it. But an object at rest stays at rest until acted upon by an external force. Therefore, the intent of a closed door is to remain closed. Then, we act on that door, overpowering it to suit our needs, fighting friction and physics.

I think the unanimous opinion is that a "good" story requires conflict. A story that aims to be a piece of "literary merit", or what have you, certainly requires conflict. This is why a person's blog post about how they walked to the mailbox to a mail a letter, while a story, is not taught in universities.

I think things actually get more dicey when returning back to your initial question of video game stories sans conflict. Even without getting overly analytical and semantical, it's hard to find a video game not predicated on conflict, namely because conflict seems to be the sole gameplay mechanic available (unless you're excluding the gameplay component, in which case it would not make sense to even qualify the story in question as one from a video game). Not sure how you could handle a video game without conflict even in a less precise sense (ie games where you don't merely go around and kill or otherwise best things). Puzzle games?

Though, I'm admittedly a bit thrown by this whole argument, as it's not what I typically deal in when considering writing/story, so if I'm as off-base as everyone else seems to be, consider this a preemptive apology.

I pretty much agree with Don't BotherNone, but I thought I'd state it in my own words.

So when your son tells you what went wrong at school, it is a story, but when your grandma tells you about the good old day it isn't? What if Grandma is very funny in her telling?

I mentioned the term anecdote earlier. Anecdote is the word for a brief piece of narrative which has no point (climax). If you assume that a climax is caused by the resolution of conflict, then a piece of narration without conflict would be an anecdote because the lack of conflict implies the lack of a climax. Is an anecdote a story? Well, no, if you want to define things firmly and precisely I think an anecdote is not a proper story. It doesn't matter if it's funny or sad or dramatic. If it doesn't make a point about how an obstacle was overcome or failed to be overcome, it's not technically a story.

I do think it might be worth mentioning, though, that humor often comes from and requires conflict. Humor is based on surprise - the fact that something happens which defies expectations. Humorous events often involve a character experiencing an unpleasant emotion such as embarrassment, frustration, anger, or fear. All of these emotions cause internal conflict because the character does not want to feel them (in most cases). They can easily result in external conflict if the character takes any action to counter the cause of this unwanted emotion, or if the situation was caused by another character.

Are you familiar with Pink Panther cartoons? They are completely wordless except for the occasional sign. Yet, they are full of conflict. Perhaps the pink panther wants to sleep - a rather innocuous goal. He puts his nightcap on and gets in bed. Then the phone rings. It's a telemarketer. The pink panther unplugs the phone and gets back in bed. Then there is the noise of jackhammering outside. The pink panther opens the window and yes or throws something, and the jackhammering temporarily stops, but then resumes. The pink panther goes out of his house, steals the jackhammer, then tries once more to go to bed. Despite having no words at all, a pink panther cartoon is a proper story because it shows a character attempting to accomplish a goal, encountering obstacles (conflict), then finally succeeding or decisively failing at that goal. The story creates suspense because the audience wants to see whether the goal gets accomplished, and the story resolves that suspense by answering that question. That's the core, the heart, of a story.

Re: DontBotherNone

Your post captured the situation as seen from the outside but not the intentions. In the following I would emphasize the intentions.

Emphasis 1: Definition you know can be Defective

Without being presumptuous, I think the issue here is what users other than Wai regard as a story simply because of a different definition; that is, using the term "story" in a less than precise, but commonly accepted way.

Emphasis: The difference in definition is not just a 'simple' difference. It is a defect in the definition. If you ask lay people who have never asked to define stories and conflicts, and you ask them, "could there be a story with no conflict?" The popular answer would be 'Yes'. It is only to the ones that have somewhat studied stories that are crippled by the defective definition into calling something that isn't conflict a 'conflict', and reject compositions that are considered stories otherwise in order to satisfy a defective definition.

You can have a story - a recounting of events, or what have you - without conflict. Though I'd argue it could prove difficult, because it's easy to stretch something in order to consider it conflict. Something as simple as the weather outside could be construed as conflict (it was raining, therefore human versus nature). Heck, even a door. What is the purpose of a door? To open, to close, as we see it. But an object at rest stays at rest until acted upon by an external force. Therefore, the intent of a closed door is to remain closed. Then, we act on that door, overpowering it to suit our needs, fighting friction and physics.

Emphasis: It is not difficult when you see consider the implication of your definition. According to which, a conflict exists only if there is an actor that acts toward a need. However you have the assumption that a need must exist for a story. That is another defect in the reasoning. What you see here is that the word 'conflict' as you are using it, is not used as a classification word but a placeholder.

Analogy:

x + 3 = 5

In the above, x is a placeholder for a number. 'x' represents a number but it itself is not a type of number (i.e. real, complex, integer, irrational, etc...). 'Conflict' is a classifier word that is being wrongfully used as a placeholder word. It is a definition defect, just as if you call 'x' 'an integer' instead of a 'variable'. I think the cause of this defect is that the people who analyzed stories had no foresight. Just as what would happen if 'x' was named when the world only knew about integers.

I think the unanimous opinion is that a "good" story requires conflict. A story that aims to be a piece of "literary merit", or what have you, certainly requires conflict. This is why a person's blog post about how they walked to the mailbox to a mail a letter, while a story, is not taught in universities.

Emphasis: Sadly according to the same analogy, what you call 'literary merit' only amounts to the level of integer algebra; and people would say there is no other valid or interesting mathematical compositions, because "if math has no x, it would just be 3 = 5, and that is nonsense."

That is, until someone shows up and say, "what about infinite sums?" "That is preposterous, you can't write an infinitely long equation." "That's right, you can't--but you can still sum it."

Emphasis 2: Game story without conflict is not a cutback--it is a change of design requirement.

I think things actually get more dicey when returning back to your initial question of video game stories sans conflict. Even without getting overly analytical and semantical, it's hard to find a video game not predicated on conflict, namely because conflict seems to be the sole gameplay mechanic available (unless you're excluding the gameplay component, in which case it would not make sense to even qualify the story in question as one from a video game). Not sure how you could handle a video game without conflict even in a less precise sense (ie games where you don't merely go around and kill or otherwise best things). Puzzle games?

Emphasis: If I ask whether shoes can have no shoelaces your answer would be that it is impossible because the shoe will fall off. When you think properly about this type of discussion, you cannot just think about what happens if you take an existing story and erase one of its component. You have to think about it from the ground up, how to construct it so that it can stand up without that component. The mindset you need to have is not to see 'without conflict' as a subtraction of feature (a cutback), but as a design requirement. You need to stop starting your thoughts with shoes with shoelaces.

Though, I'm admittedly a bit thrown by this whole argument, as it's not what I typically deal in when considering writing/story, so if I'm as off-base as everyone else seems to be, consider this a preemptive apology.

Emphasis: I don't know how you feel about it, but as I post I just keep discovering the gap between the concept I equipped on myself for the discussion and what other posters had equipped on themselves. I use the word 'equip' because I don't believe that you don't know the concepts that I mentioned or listed. You already know them, you just didn't think of using it in this context. It is like going to a work party without bring hammers and tools but brought beer only. I can tell you that you need a hammer, and if you accept that it is the type of work party that needs hammer, you could get it and I would not need to explain what a hammer is (this was why I listed the concepts and asked whether an explanation is needed).

I hope that it sheds a little more light on what type of work party this is. This is not the type where you come with beer and hang out. You are here to design and make something. Can you identify the object that this work party is supposed to develop? If you think about it and realizes that you need a pencil and drafting paper, then you are on the right track.

Re: sunandshadow

I think the surprise to you would anchor on this statement of yours:

If you assume that a climax is caused by the resolution of conflict, then a piece of narration without conflict would be an anecdote because the lack of conflict implies the lack of a climax.I am not assuming such. Are you assuming that? If that is just an assumption, what other assumptions do you have? Why not just talk about all of the possible assumptions at once instead of one at a time?

If an assumption is like a point on a function (i.e. <x,y> such that f(x) = y), I think we are equipped to talk about the actual function (i.e. f(x)) all at once instead of pointwise.