Captain McGrandpa

It started when GameTap announced an upcomming GameTap Original: Captain McGrandpa -- Memory of the Forgotten. Touted as a multiplayer adventure game, and allowing an unlimited number of players to shape the world, it looked too good to be true. Slated for release on April 1, it was an obvious April Fool's gag. Go check the game listing, especially the instructions section, if you have any doubts. But it was what GameTap did, that makes it worth checking out.

I missed the actual game, and I'm kind of sorry I did. It looks like it was fun to play.

Organized and run by GameTap staff member TheRedEye, Captain McGrandpa really was a multiplayer adventure game. Hearkening back to the text adventures of old, TheRedEye narrated a real-time story. Over the period of 8 hours the forum members posted commands and he would use those commands to write the next part of the game/story.

You can read through the game log here (at least for now).
And you can read the Postmortem here.

I encourage you to take a little time, if you have it, to read through how the game went. It was rather interesting. He started the game with only a rough outline of starting areas and characters. The rest of the game, including the ending, was improvised as users provided commands. This did make advancing the game a little difficult, but fortunately he was able to see his way through.

Now, I'm not suggesting that improvisation was bad. In fact, just the opposite, I think it was the key to the game's success. But early on, I did feel the pressures of the game not having a definitive end. Fortunately, about halfway through, I saw a clear path toward the game's solution, which was inspired by items and situations created on-the-fly by our users. I promised that the users would shape the world around them in real-time, and that was accurate.

What I find most interesting is the community's initial reactions, and how they were able to get somewhat organized over time. Being put forward as an April Fool's joke I think had some initial detrimental effects, as people probably dismissed it as a gag and didn't realize that there was actually a heartfelt attempt to create a story going on. This raised a little bit of disdain from some people hoping to replace their dying Uru. However, some people ran with the gag and began to explore the story offered to them.

This led to more people realizing that they really were exploring something, and affecting how the story was turning out. Once that happened, you can see that more people start jumping in with commands and a little bit of confusion and argument crops up about what should be happening. However, with a little nudging from TheRedEye, the community started to work together. Some people started tracking inventory, some were keeping track of conversations, and overall, the game started going in a single direction.

Occasionally griefers got the better of the game and, in true forum fashion, would post ridiculous or counter productive commands. Well, perhaps they weren't really griefers. I can remember playing text adventures and trying ridiculous things to see what the parser would say. The advantage to having a human narrator is that even these out of the box commands resulted in interesting things happening. Even the few times that the game ended because of them.

Over all, I am sorry that I missed the chance to participate in this game and story experiment. I whole heartedly hope that they try something like this again. In fact, I'd love to do something like this myself. It has sparked a couple of neat ideas at least. If you know anyone who knows how to write Facebook apps, I'd like to speak with them.

Getting Inside Your Head

Two years ago, before I began Ghosts in the Game, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell you the difference between Story and Gameplay in a videogame. This is not because I was a half-wit (despite popular opinion). It was because I didn't know the difference, and I didn't care. I was a consumer of games, books, movies, and music. I loved (and still love) story with a passion and went looking for it everywhere. I couldn't see the gameplay, I was blinded by my passion. I genuinely didn't know what parts were story and what parts were game. Most people don't. Most people don't care.

I have the fondest memories of playing Circle of Blood (The Broken Sword, for you Europeans), and The Dig, and Grim Fandango. These games enthralled me with their stories as much as any book had ever done. I was amazed by the power of a videogame to draw me in, make me care about the characters, and keep me interested by making me a part of the solution. It was these, and others like them, that inspired me to pursue game design specifically as a medium of telling stories. Which has led me here.

In all media there is a curtain that separates the creators and the audience. Most people are blissfully unaware of what goes on behind the curtain, in the realm of creation. Some are even unaware the curtain exists. It allows them to enjoy the magic that is created and presented to them. Sometimes the curtain slips, and they glimpse the gears and pulleys that are driving the show, but soon enough they forget. Those behind the curtain, however, can always see the machine if they want to. Once you know something is there, and how it works, it is a small step to see it everywhere. I've started to move the curtain of game design aside, and now I can see the gameplay.

Which in some ways makes playing games for their narrative, and their story, harder. Too often I see the gears of gameplay I never noticed before obscuring the potential of the game. Going back to play many of my beloved adventure games leaves me more frustrated at the clunky and obtuse mechanics employed to block my progress than elated by the discovery of character, setting, and plot. I see the puzzles for what they are to the gameplay, and can't get past my broken immersion to truly enjoy the story I'm exploring. This happens most when the story and the mechanics don't match.

Psychonauts: An Exploration of Mismatched Mechanics
I have experienced Psychonauts from the opening sequence to the final Boss in the final mind, and the sequel expectant epilogue. The impression it left on me was a good one, and I would recommend it to a great many people. However, I am forced to describe it as a game with a split personality. On one hand (or mind) it is one of the best story games I've played in a long time. It has rich world, unique and developed characters (for most of the minds you encounter), a subtle sense of humour, excellent dialog and voice acting, and surprising hidden depths. While the story itself is linear (more so as you progress), the game provides you with ample ability to explore at your leisure, allowing you to discover the characters and world as you progress.

However, your leisurely dip into the psyche of the game is often halted and battered by the action-platform mechanics used to make it a game. You encounter frustrating jumping and dodging puzzles, often made more complex by the same landscapes that add personality to the usually dull and repetitive platform genre. You have many Boss fights that serve no purpose greater than to pit you against a strong enemy at the end of an area. And, most heinous of all, in a game that normally gives you free reign on pacing you encounter areas and challenges that force you to run and react instead of observe and explore; killing you time and again when you fail to jump or dodge at just the right moment.

The game tries to alleviate these short-comings by providing copious amount of help to the novice (or untalented) player. The physics are as forgiving as possible. Death is never absolute, health is plentiful, and lives are easily restored. There is even an in-game hint guide given to you as soon as is feasible by the story: encounter a new enemy, difficult enemy, or unstoppable Boss and simply call on Ford Cruller for a quick but of advice. If you get stuck (especially in Boss fights) the game is apt to just give you the hints you need anyway.

But why is there all this emphasis on making the action-platform gameplay easier? I think that a lot of it was added in an attempt to make the mechanics invisible, or at least ignorable. The game really isn't about jumping and shooting and running and dodging. The game is about delving into the (sometimes warped) minds of those you encounter on your path to save the world, and your girlfriend. Half the psychic talents have no use during the action sequences. Most are best applied to creative puzzles born of environment deep seated emotional trauma. A couple are only used a handful of times because as the game progresses it increasingly relies on action to draw you along instead of the mystery and discovery that hooked you in the first place.

The game becomes a mismatch of story and mechanics. The story is lost to the adrenaline rush needed to progress. The gameplay is hampered by the detail and design used to support the storyworld. In the end you get a game that has brilliant moments, and terrible ones. It contains aspects of drama, humour, action, suspense, and thrill but lacks a sustaining feeling. You get a game that despite its flaws is brilliant. And I can, sadly, understand why it never sold well to the mass market. The split personality is something that would ultimately grate on an audience that doesn't care to sift the story from the gameplay. An audience that shouldn't have to.

Mind Meld
I believe that there can be a balance between the story told by a game, the story created in the experience of play, and the gameplay itself. I don't think it is necessary to remove or replace what we know as gameplay mechanics to be able to tell a creative and deep story -- to build a world the player can explore. I do however think that choosing your gameplay to suit your story is an often overlooked, and sometimes ignored, part of development. When pitching a game, its easier to sell the fun than the depth.

I used Psychonauts as my example for two reasons: I had just finished the game when I started writing this post, and I believe that it could have been a better game. In fact, it probably could have been two better games. One would have had an incredible story about a kid discovering the power of his mind. The other would have been a kick-ass game with psychic powers used to create incredible action. By mismatching the story they wanted to tell with the gameplay they wanted to sell Double Fine wound up with an amazing game that I enjoyed immensely and fought with constantly.

Unique Snowflakes

It isn't a coincidence that all engaging stories are about someone. Sure, they often stray into the realm of being about something, but while metaphor and meaning are interesting they are not the meat of great tales. It all comes back to character, because character is where conflict and resolution lie. The draw of character is so powerful that many non-fiction writers use it too. The most compelling biographies, true crime novels, history books, marketing books, whatever, draw you in by creating or relating characters to you, or even go so far as to make you a character in their narrative. They build a sympathetic connection you are able to follow, tying you to the actions and motivations of the characters. The main character(s) become proxies for your own temporary escapism. We read to be transported which happens best when we connect to a character and, in some small way, become them.

Games with immersive storytelling in their core design usually depict the main character as a strongly defined individual or a faceless avatar. On one had you have characters with recognizable profiles, pronounced design, carefully written dialog, and even voice acting. The character is crafted to fit the role and each touch builds a better character. The idea is to create a strong link with the avatar by making it distinct and catchy — something you would want to emulate. The other hand holds the blank, generic, undefined, and sometimes unshown visage. There is minimal writing, and almost never any voiced dialog. By leaving the avatar as blank as possible the designer hopes that the player will imagine himself in the role, adding their own (possibly adopted) behaviors and reactions to the character to bring it to life. These techniques are amplified echoes of similar character development styles in traditional writing, but with a heavier focus on agency. The players are encouraged to become the characters, either by emulating the character given, or by assuming the role of the character left blank.

It is this agency in games that acts as a further step towards transparent escapism, when done properly. Rather than following along inside the character's head, or hovering, invisible, just over their shoulder, we take control. We inhabit their head, decide their motivations, direct their actions, and reap their rewards directly. Agency is the most powerful interactive story tool because the direct connection we have to the character can be exploited to create tension, conflict, and other story elements. Properly directed, and with a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief a game may even be able to induce self-reflection and internal change in the player. I'm getting off track. The question I want to address is: why is understanding character connections and motivations important for video games?

Focus and Intent

A book that is written from the perspective of a nobody who inhabits a world where nothing interesting happens is boring. No one would read it because there is no conflict, and our connecting character is uninteresting. Even books that claim to be about nothing, or have boring characters, are lying; the theme is a facade for the internal conflicts and meat of the story happening inside the outwardly boring world. I just want you to imagine the impossibility of a narrative that has no story, because nothing happens. Now we can make a small change and create story without altering our boring character: Make Mr. Boring a witness to interesting things happening to other people. Conflicts create interest, but notice that the focus is now on world (and people) that surround our non-character. The focus has shifted without our intended avatar changing. You can move the focus back to our boring guy by having the interesting things around him change him. With the conflict internalized again (even if the actual events are happening to a 3rd party), our relationship is now with our intended character again and nothing interesting has to happen to him directly. Notice that he also isn't as boring as he used to be. Of course this would make for a shit game.

In a story and character focused game (like most cRPGs, MMOGs, FPSs, and Platformers), if there is nothing interesting happening to your avatar in the game world then there is no direct action, and passivity makes for unsatisfying gameplay (hence all the complaints about cut-scenes). So games tend to be about exciting things happening to you. And because games are relatively immature (as a storytelling form), they tend to be about fantastic things happening to you. So you fight Hordes of Terrible Monsters and Save the World, or battle the Unstoppable Armada and Save the Galaxy, or travel through Impossible Worlds and single-handedly Save the Princess from captivity. You act and your heroic efforts turn the tide and save the day. You are special and important (the mantra of all good escapism, and most public schools), or you become so because to do otherwise would — we assume — be boring. This is the general motivating force behind most non-abstract games, from Mario to Shadow of the Colossus. The fiction is that you are the center of the world's attention, the sole hero. So what happens when you aren't alone?

Repeat After Me

HELEN
Everyone's special, Dash.

DASH
Which is another way of saying no one is.

One of the things I find absurd about many MMOGs is that they try to support a focused story and a core linear narrative. Everyone follows the same quests, does the same trials, fights the same bosses, gets the same loot (Corvus beat me to talking about this). You sit down, you load up, you log into a city where everyone is a hero or villain (can anyone guess which game I'm think of as I write this?). In fact the active, intelligent population is 100% special, with abilities far above the "norm" of society. Except the game isn't about living in a world peopled with superhumans (or Underwear Perverts). The narrative being told is about how your actions affect a world filled with normal, helpless people. Normal, helpless people that had to be invented. I find it bizarre that in a world where everyone has incredible power the majority of the population has to be created out of digital stuff. Special people wouldn't be special without everyone else. To support the player-as-hero infrastructure, the world has to be constantly refreshed and maintained, rebuilt and changed, so that the repetitiveness of the actual gameplay can be hidden beneath a thin, shifting veneer of self-important storytelling.

Jeff Freeman and Raph Koster have been recently back-and-forthing about rewards in a linear style MMOG. Their discussion has been mostly about how rewards are related to progress and prestige, and how those status symbols are corrupted by a system that allows people to purchase advancement. I'm more interested in Raph's later comments about the control developer's have over the feedback the game provides. In one comment he says this:

With the games we’re making now, people are mostly going around and doing stuff independent of one another. We aren't even measuring and then giving out prizes based on how WELL they slew the dragon — just that they took the ride.

Reaching New Depths

Eventually, video games will strive to new depths of creativity, interactivity, and (ultimately) storytelling. What that may look like is anyone's guess. It may also depend on how we play our games in the future. Games intended to be played alone may look very different from games intended to be played in community. Single-player stories can achieve incredible levels of pathos if we learn to use the tools of storytelling we have in new ways. Massive worlds may become interesting and sustainable if we learn to create balance and diversity that allows players to tell their own stories from anywhere inside the complex world of the game. Realism isn't something that the graphics designers have to worry about. Storytellers, world builders, game designers have to be reaching for new ways to make something real — tell something true — in the story-worlds that they are building, whether they are meant for one or meant for many.

Perhaps the greatest design change we can look forward to is the realization that different tools lead to different ends. As an outside observer I see a lot of time and effort being thrown at "problem areas", when oftentimes the answer isn't in the code. This is a common engineering design flaw which has bled into games through programmers (engineers of instruction sets) and designers (engineers of play structures). We see something that we think needs a particular solution and single-mindedly drive through hell and high water to find a solution. What we often miss is the beautiful and elegant solutions already around us, and the irony. I'll illustrate with a simple question:

Why are single-player games being designed to solve the problem of complex social interactions, while massive online worlds are being designed as linear stories with limited playable scope?

The Medium is Not the Message

The discussion of narrative and story in games has cycled back again. I started this blog because I found myself reading a number of blogs and articles on the subject and in need of an outlet for the overflow. Here we are again, this time discussing the role, or perhaps roles, that story and narrative have on games.

A reiteration, in a brusque and slightly inaccurate fashion, of the posts and positions recently presented:

• Computers can’t tell stories, because stories are complex, so a computer creating interactive fiction is silly. (link)
• The story is not the game. It is just a small element, like other aspects of gameplay that give the user feedback and should be used as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a story snob. (link)
• Stories follow certain forms, granularities, styles, and levels of immersion. Despite current “wisdom”, story is not expensive and perhaps necessary to draw new players in. Story is therefore obvious. (link)
• Any story that can be seen, or is being delivered is a bad story. All interactive stories should be transparent, any visible story is worthless. Story is everywhere and should not be treated as a separate segment of design. (link)

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The thing that bugs me the most about almost all of these posts/articles is that they assume (or come close) to an absolute version of what story should or should not be in a game. It has to be an element and cannot be the gameplay itself. It cannot be told in a recombinant form because stories are fragile things not conducive to reassembly. Story must be delivered this way, or that way.

Gah! Who said story was absolute enough to define? We are talking about a form of communication, creation, and art that is older than any other. Before there was recorded history there were stories, it was how people remembered. Stories are oral. They are written. They are visual. They are interactive. They are static. They are serial. They are a great many things, none of which is absolute. Hell, we can’t even agree on a definition for story, narrative, fiction, drama or a half-dozen other words.

So, of course, we have done the one primary thing that humans do when faced with an amorphous concept: we’ve classified it. The first level of classification is, arguably, medium: how the story is delivered. Written stories are different from film stories, are different from interactive stories, etc. Each medium has shared tools and medium-specific tools. You have to show things in a film where you could allude or describe in print. You can evolve characters in games according to play where you’d have to evolve them (or leave them static) by specific choice in other media. The medium of the story defines a toolset available for telling the story.

Another common classification is genre. From theme, to style, to emotion, to mechanics, genre provides a common framework for a story. Independent (to a degree) from medium, the genre of a story provides a further specific toolset based on convention and commonality. New genres are created through creating new conventions, while new mediums are created through new technology and formats. In this way, genre becomes a subset of medium by further defining how the story can (and should) be related.

But a story is not specifically defined by these characteristics. A story is defined by the characters (including settings and props), and the events presented. The medium and the genre that they are presented through affect the consumption without altering the underlying story. This is why fairytales can be retold – the interpretation changes the narration without affecting it on the story layer. Archetypes exist outside of medium and genre, allowing them to appear in any form. Stories, or at least the core of stories, do the same; often boiling down to base archetypes.

Thus you have the ability to take a story, consisting of particular characters and events, and present it as a romance novel, or a thriller-noir film, or a tongue-in-cheek cell-shaded action-platformer. Each time it is presented it becomes a specific narrative. If I’ve gotten the terms story and narrative backwards, according to your particular world view, please feel free to reverse them. The idea I’m trying to get across is that the mechanics of media and genre have only superficial effect on the story, changing its presentation. At the same time, each presentation is a unique narration, and independent from each other narration.

So why do people think that Books = Movies = Games? Or even that one genre of game would transpose to another genre? Why would the same set of story tools be used to create a story for an RPG and an FPS? They might share a small set of tools; indeed as they are both of the same medium (broadly) they do. But as different genres there will be particular conventions that apply to one and not the other. The gameplay is not the same, why should the narration be?

Designers are trying to use the wrong tools to do the wrong job. Hollywood mentality and storytelling will not work in most games, just as comic book pacing needs to be adjusted and changed for the silver screen. Neither can we create a single set of tools for all interactive storytelling. There can be a shared language, common conventions that reach across genres, and even the creation of certain pluralistic tools. But when you get down to the nitty-gritty, the designer will have to find a voice for the story that is unique to the game, and the play, that they are trying to deliver.