1 STORYTELLING Storytelling 2 Game Story Places for

1 STORYTELLING

Storytelling 2 • • • Game & Story Places for Storytelling Linear Writing Pitfalls Game Stories The Dream

3 Game & Story Do we need? Tetris, Centipede, SSX no story / limited story Halo, Thief wide story Does not have to have a story but gets stronger itself, the game.

4 Designer’s Story Movies & Novels, series of a dramatic events Static and unchanged events The End Success or Fail, Success complete all tasks Fail beaten by enemies The designer dedicates all the story components by herself Maybe little embranchments possible

5 Player’s Story All levels includes short stories about winning & failing the game Players decision is crucial on winning & failing the game Embranchment is important Interesting for the gamer (maybe not for the listener the real gamer herself)

6 Designer’s Story Versus Player’s Story Advantages of Designer’s Story Conventional storytelling ways, interesting characters & events Makes the game meaningful, related by gamers performance Ideal Story; Combine the Designer’s Story by Player’s Story, interactive story in the conventional dramatic events Characters and events are unchanging but player is included in the game flow.

Places for Storytelling 7 • Out-of-Game • In Game • External Materials

8 Out-of-Game Widely used Game running but player does not playing Cut-scenes or player is informed what to do Popular in movies, novels etc.

9 Out-of-Game Cut-Scene: Cinematic technique. Applied by blinding screen completely before another scene is attached or move camera 180 degrees around player. Text: Used to inform player by writing materials Audio: Directives by human voice when the budget is short for animated materials Images: mixed with text, shows player some chapters of the game, sometimes comic style

10 Out-of-Game “Damage Incorporated” Dialog & Text

11 Out-of-Game Flowing techniques Minimum cut-scene Compatible with game dynamics Not forget out-of-game is less user friendly

12 In-Game Text: Text adoption inside the game world Level Settings: General setting for game world either story-dependent or none. Dialog: Dialog by NPC’s NPC Behaviors: Not just by dialogs also by movement and other behaviors affect the player in story

13 In-Game Showing is better than telling Showing In-game storytelling Telling Out-of-Game storytelling Falstein says game design is “Show, not tell” and the rule is “do, not show” To keep player actively in game, instead of showing make her doing the events Player can miss some story parts, images or text

14 External Materials Limited disk capacity Game guides and story books Wasteland has a reference book, if player needs game tells refer to # paragraph of the book

15 External Materials Nowadays short brochures tell how to install and use game No need such guides to play the game Infocom increase the players experience in-game

16 Linear Writing Pitfalls Games movie considered So many cut-scenes used Games are interactive in comparison to movies: Game can have linear story and gaming experience. Game writers creates powerful characters but players want to have the power in the game

17 Game Stories Shall not be linear Shall not have many characters Shall not have many cut-scenes Shall not have repetitive story Shall make the player first character itself Shall not exaggerate the background Shall be told detailed Shall be speculative

18 The Dream Players should feel ownership over the actions in their game, and thereby ownership in the story that is being told. Allow players to craft their own unique stories when playing your game

19 Bibliography Rouse III, R. (2005). Game Design Theory and Practice (2 nd ed). Wordware Publishing. Thanks