Games: Formal and Dramatic elements

May 20, 2010 Games: Formal and Dramatic elements

Understanding elements • Formal elements • Identifiable parts of the game, they work together • Dramatic elements • Parts of the game which make it enjoyable

Formal elements • Players • Objective • Procedures • Rules • Resources – utility and scarcity • Conflict – obstacles, opponents, dilemmas • Boundaries • Outcomes

Invitation to Play • Can be as simple as an entry screen, asking a friend to play a game of cards • Other elements of the game can be inviting • Rock Band

Dramatic elements • Give context to gameplay • Integrate formal elements into a meaningful experience • Several dramatic elements are found in all games • Many dramatic elements are found in some games

Dramatic elements found in all games • Challenge • Play • We will discuss these further as we delve into game narrative

Challenge • Paradox of control • Outcome must be unsure

Games as narrative play • “Using other media as starting points, we may learn many things about the construction of fictive worlds, characters … but relying too heavily on existing theories will make us forget what makes games games: Such as rules, goals, player activity, the projection of the player’s actions into the game world, the way the game defines the possible actions of the player. It is the unique parts that we need to study now.” • Jesper Juul, “Games Telling Stories?”

Games as narrative play • Juul identifies three connections between narratives and games: • 1. We use narratives for everything. • 2. Most games feature narrative introductions and back stories. • 3. Games share some traits with narratives. • For example, some games have quest structures, some are linear, some offer reversals of fortune as many narratives do

Narrative backstory • “Imagine you’re in a one-man space shuttle traveling through the heavens as the speed of light. You and your tiny ship are totally engulfed in darkness, except for the luminance of an occasional passing star. Suddenly, without warning, there’s a brilliant flash straight ahead. You check the radar screen. Nothing. Pretty soon there’s another flash, and another. Next thing you know, the flashes have turned into one gigantic force field of some kind and it’s dead ahead. You check the radar screen, still nothing.The colors in this mysterious force field are so bright, they’re almost blinding. And they seem to be in layers. But the strangest thing is that nothing shows up on the radar screen. What could that mean? Is it possible to travel through this mysterious force field or will you crash and be destroyed. And what about the layers? If you make it through one, can you make it through the next, and the next? It’s decision time and there are only a few seconds to think about it. Turn back or blast ahead and try to make it through the layers of this brightly colored force field. It’s up to you. • What game?

Narrative backstory • Atari Super Breakout

Let’s define narratives • “There must be, first of all, an an initial situation, a sequence leading to a change or reversal of that situation, and a revelation made possible by the reversal of the situation. Second, there must be some use of personification whereby character is created out of signs – for example, the words on the page in a written narrative, the modulated sounds in the air in an oral narrative. However important the plot may be, without personification there can be no storytelling …. Third, there must be some patterning or repetition of key elements.” • J. Hillis Miller, literary theorist.

Defining narratives – three elements to Miller’s Model • 1. Situation • Initial state • Change in that state • Insight brought about by that change

Situation • All starts with the premise. • Established the action of the game within a setting or metaphor • What is the premise of George Orwell’s Animal Farm? • What is the premise of Atari Super Break Out? • How about Guitar Hero?

Defining narratives – three elements to Miller’s Model • Situation also includes story • Linear or non-linear • Linear – Do this, now do this, then this happens, etc. • The story points are laid out for you • Many games use animations at the beginning and ends of chapters to keep the story going. All you have to do is connect the dots between these chapters.

Situation - Story • To avoid this strict linear pattern, some game designers employ branching story structures. • Different outcomes possible • Can be too limited in their scope. • Still mostly linear, just different lines

Defining narratives – three elements to Miller’s Model • 2. Character • A narrative isn’t just a series of events, but a personification of events. • Our textbook discusses character in a more literary sense, calling them agents through which the story is told. • If we identify with a character and the outcome of their goals, we internalize the story’s events and want to move toward resolution.

Character • Going back to Miller’s description, we can learn some methods of characterization. • Characters are created by signals so we can use signals in our design. • What the characters say • What the characters do • What they look like • What others say about them

Character • When designing, ask yourself: • What does the character want • What does the character need • What does the audience/player hope • What does the audience/player fear

Character • Two reasons for having character your player can relate to • Agency • Empathy

Character study • Oddworld, Abe’s Odyssee • What can we guess about Abe just based on his name? • Abe's Odyssee Opening Sequence

Character • What is Abe’s agency in the game? • Where does empathy come from?

Character vs. avatar • Need one for agency • Character – Pre-set persona • Avatar – Player-set persona

Defining narratives – three elements to Miller’s Model • Form: Patterning and repetition. • Representation is constituted by patterning and repetition. • Erratic character actions confuse us. If the setting doesn’t have patterns, that’s confusing also.

We’ve just discussed the embedded elements of narrative • Called embedded because they are parts of a crafted story. Someone wrote the story, wrote the outcomes, put it all together. • But we can also look at the narrative components of a game in another way: as an emergent experience.

Designing Narratives • Goals • Conflict/challenge • Uncertainty • Core Mechanics • Narrative space

Narrative goals • Help players judge their progress (how close they are to winning) • Guide players in understanding significance of actions within a narrative context

Narrative Goals • In level or mission-based structures, completing a level or mission means reaching an objective and passing through one episode of the larger story. • Game designer maintains control of the larger narrative experience, but players still feel details of the story buy completing a level or mission.

Example: Metal Gear Solid

Conflict • Players have to struggle toward the goal, because they have to improve their skills as they move on, have to learn new skills, have to overcome obstacles. • Conflict motivates and contextualizes player action. • Conflict is at the heart of any good drama. • Romeo and Juliet • Animal Farm • Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • Ever read a book or seen a movie where there was no conflict?

Flow • NOT A NARRATIVE GOAL • This is a tangent! • But it’s a great place for a tangent on flow, because we are talking about conflict and challenge.

Flow • Csikszentmihalvi’s Theory (psychologist) • When you start performing an action, you have a low level of ability. As you go on, your ability rises. If the challenge doesn’t rise with you, you get too good and get bored. If it rises faster than you learn, you aren’t good enough, and the game gets frustrating.

Why flow is narrative too • We need to design for flow, but we can incorporate the rising action of our narrative into the increasing challenge. • Flow encourages players to give complete concentration to the task at hand. • “Once you are in the situation, it’s incredibly real, and you’re very much in charge of it. It becomes your total world.” • Fullerton

Uncertainty • • If the outcome is known in advance, who would play? But uncertainty also is a narrative concept. The element of the unknown infuses a game with dramatic tension. • What is beyond the force field?

Core Mechanics • How do your players play? Guitar hero guitar enhances narrative. • In the game Loop, you draw a line in a circle around a butterfly with your mouse. It FEELS like the swooping action of catching a butterfly in a net. • The thing your player does over and over again • Metal Gear Solid button pressing

OH GOD THE BUTTON PRESSING • “Whoever made the design decision to have a sequence demanding you mash a button at unrealistic speeds should have been shot. And if that was the same person who decided not to let you continue from there, I don't even know. I bought the essential collection, thinking I'd run through a series I've heard so much about for years, but this has honestly ruined the entire thing for me. After an hour now of running through the obnoxious cave with the obnoxious dogs, fighting the stupid boss while struggling with horrific controls, and then failing repeatedly to mash the O button fast enough, I am simply amazed that any developer would put such a sequence in their game.” • Nnickers on Giantbomb.com

Narrative Space • Space of possibility. • “Games create ‘possibility spaces,’ spaces that provide compelling problems within an overarching narrative, afford creative opportunities for dealing with these problems and then respond to player choices with meaningful consequences.” • Game designer Warren Spector

Narrative space • We can think of the space of possibility in terms of abstract decision space or as narrative place. • Spaces of chess board. • Dots of Go board.

Chess vs. Go

Narrative space • Pay attention to how you organize space. Seating arrangements of a game. What if Chess players sat next to each other?

We talked about Formal elements, Narrative elements • But what creates play? • What IS play?

Play • The potential for play is another dramatic element, in addition to narrative.

Play • Helps us learn skills and acquire knowledge. • Lets us socialize. • Assists us in problem solving. • Allows us to relax. • Makes us see things differently. • Can be serious or not too serious. • Is a process of experimentation.

Types of Play • Competitive • Chance-based • Make-believe • Vertigo • (free form or rule-based)

On Play • “[Play is] a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary life” as being “not serious,” but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings, which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.” • Huizinga. • But this doesn’t differentiate between games and play. Doesn’t ask what are their differences.

On Play • Chris Crawford, author of “The Art of Computer Game Design” identified four elements of play: • Representation – games are closed formal systems that subjectively represent a subset of reality. Game is complete and self-sufficient as a structure. Characters represent people. Rules represent the way parts of life work. Rule of physics, for example. • Interaction – Audience can explore, interact with system. • Conflict – All games have conflict. Arises naturally from interaction with game. Obstacle prevent player from easily achieving goals. • Safety – Games provide psychological experience of conflict and danger but player is not really exposed to these things in the physical world. A safe way to experience reality. (Magic Circle)

On Play • “Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a contest between powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.” • Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith in “The Study of Games.”

Meaningful play • We can define it two ways: • Descriptive • Evaluative

Descriptive • Describes the way a game operates. Meaningful play in a game emerges from the relationship between player action (which comes after making a choice) and system outcome. It is the process by which a player takes action within the designed system of a game and the system responds to the action. The meaning of an action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome. • In short, the actions you take have meaning and affect the outcome. • All games have this type of meaning. If the actions you took didn’t affect the game, why would you take any action at all? • Some games have more descriptive meaning than others.

Evaulative • It helps us critically evaluate the relationships between actions and outcomes, and decide whether they are meaningful enough within the designed system of the game. • The relationship between action and outcome must be discernable – We need feedback to know if our actions affect the game outcome. If we have to feed our crew and we press the feed button but nothing happens, did we feed them? Should we feed them more? Less? We will be mad if our crew then dies of starvation because we didn’t know that outcome might happen based on our actions. Tells us what happened. • The relationship between action and outcome must be integrated into the larger context of the game. An action should have immediate significance but also affect the play experience at a later point in the game. If you are in a triathalon and you win the running portion but it doesn’t count for anything in the end, why did you even do it? Tells us how what happened affects the rest of the game.

Games: Formal and Dramatic elements