Game story-telling

Storytelling is a difficult business, particularly in games. And good storytelling is the last great avenue of game design to be focused on, in this age ever-improving graphics and AI.

The reason why it has been largely ignored is mainly because it is hard. Faster processors, better algorithms will not ever improve stories in games. We are used to thinking primarily of one-way storytelling, of a storyteller, and an audience. In games, however, your audience is the story. Their actions are not controlled by a central storyteller. In a haunted house game, if you script the scene such that the background music swells ominously as you move closer to a locked door, what happens to the story if the player backs off?

In the old form of storytelling, whether the main character went through the door or not was up to the storyteller. Not so with games (unless you decide to force them through no matter what, but that itself is bad) .

It is easy to see why the old ways of telling stories do not work in games. However, there are some very good ways of establishing a story. Writers know that good storytelling needs three things: plot, characterization, and exposition. Lets look at each of these elements in the context of envisioning a new way of telling stories.

First up, is exposition. Some of the best ways are to show the player important facts, instead of telling them, as per the old adage, "It is better to show than to tell." Rather than have someone say everyone is scared, show their responses to the haunted house. When your character mentions the haunted house, subtle clues like facial expressions(if possible), movement away from the player, and a change in the tone of their dialog works well to convey this fact. A sample dialog:

Random NPC A: Ho there traveller! How goes this fine day?
Hero A: Can you tell me about that haunted house over there?
Random NPC A: Uhmm, hmm, yes, indeedy this day is fine, but I think it'll rain later. I think I shall go now.
Random NPC A walks off hurriedly.

If most of, or all of the dialog is at that level, of subtle personal clues, responses, it provides a better sense of what is being shown. In that dialog there, we saw friendliness, turn to avoidance of the issue, even running away.

Second, is characterization. If your game allows for dialog choices, then a good way to convey characterization is to colour the choices in the direction required. What that means is instead of offering a plain good or evil response, the responses offered should be more ambiguous. As an example:

Random NPC B(a girl): And here the heroes be! What brings you back here?
Hero A's choices:

1. You, beautiful creature.
2. Your sweet charms.
3. Your bordello.

As you can see, the choices are all different, yet all convey a similar sense of who the character is. In this case, he's a lady's man. Maybe a good one. Or not. That would have to be shown by the responses. Or even, that would up to the player's choices.

However, this is still guiding the player, the old way of storytelling. It all depends on if you want the character to have character traits. For other such characters, providing a range is great. Recommended even! So, then for everyone else involved with the character, the above points about exposition work great for character development.

The last point is plot. And that is, quite simply the hardest. Some random blogger (IE, me) will not have a solution unless they're particularly brilliant. Which I am... except I don't have one yet. Some previous suggestions are storytelling by AI/heuristics, branching plots, or sandbox mode. By sandbox mode, I mean, GTA style gameplay.

And thats what I have today.