this session 1.administrative stuff – this *-learning journal 2.storytelling 1.i will input precis...

This Session

1. Administrative stuff – this *-learning journal

2. Storytelling1. I will input precis of various papers (on Website)2. In groups, you will discuss and reflect3. You will present reflections in a plenary

3. Coding1. We shall read through a couple of UT-code examples

(including support for story-telling)2. You will do the on-line tasks3. You will have a short test (15 minutes on simple coding).

4. You will write some stuff into your “Learning Journal” (in-class or homework … below)

5. Homework – read the papers I have cited.

Storytelling

1. MIT 2000 Conference on “Games as Interactive Storytelling.”

2. FutureLab “Adventure Games for Learning and Storytelling

3. Ed Byrne (book) Chapter 4 “Storytelling

Byrne on Storytelling

1. “Storytelling was the exclusive province of adventure games … role-playing games appeared on the scene….”

2. “Basic structure of a good plot …three-act structure (Aristotle Poetics) = Beginning, Middle and End.

3. Bad approach – “Many writers … open with long-winded introduction to set the scene…”

4. “ Start with a small piece of gameplay…”

Act1 (Beginning) Act2 (Middle) Act3 (End)


“Raiders of the Lost Ark” – The Beginning

• Mysterious figure emerges in front of a waterfall• Puts together two pieces of paper to make a map• No dialogue – but establishes context• He flicks away a gun, negotiates poisonous spiders, swings

over a bottomless pit, removes the golden idol and runs for his life!


“Raiders of the Lost Ark” – The Middle

1. End of Beginning – Indiana Jones emerges and the bad guy takes the idol from him

2. Time to fill the player in on some of the hero’s background

3. He’s not a fortune hunter – he’s an archaeologist

4. So starts the “Middle”1. Story uses “obstacles”

2. Choose to reveal his psychology – faults and fears

3. Not just a question of reaching a “goal”

4. Expose his inner problems – “character growth”


The End

1. “… conclusion of a symphony… themes come together … in harmony at the end.

2. The hero must face the “external embodiment of [his] problems…. Appears in the form of the Ultimate Bad Guy”

3. Indiana Jones …..?

4. Maxim:1. “In the first act you get your hero up a tree”

2. “In the second act you throw rocks at him”

3. “In the third act you get him down”


Setting

• “… you should invent only one major What if?” • “…everything should follow logically from that …”• “… players will go along for the ride …”• “… but only if you make everything else as real as possible

and avoid contradictions.”• John Gardner (The Art of Fiction) : “Vivid detail is the life blood

of fiction..”


Character Development

• “Characters are the most fascinating part of stories”• “Events … are interesting… only insofar.. They give us

insights into people”• “Plot without character is about as interesting as a shopping

list”• “Successful games … commercial… artistic… have heroes

with well-defined personalities”• “Players … step into shoes of characters… Laura Croft,

James Bond….”• “Vital ingredient in hero-making .. Resonance… conflicts of his

own and … in the person he chooses to idealize.


Character Growth

• “In traditional literature, the worth of a story is often measured by character growth”

• In today’s games character growth is accomplished through, “more experience, strength, skill, … …” Not enough!

• How do the hero’s misfortunes inform his development?• In some stories, the hero does not change at all (cf. James

Bond).


Interactivity

• These are unique demands for the game designer• Trad media (book, film) “the author controls the story, and the

audience passively absorbs the choices he has made”.• Games “conflict between freedom we must allow player

and the linearity necessary to any well-constructed story”• “The solution is to create areas in which the player has

freedom, and to string these areas into a linear series”• RPGs = spatial areas or missions? Adventure = choice of

puzzle to work on at a given time.• “… present the player with a limited challenge… fits into larger

story”

MIT Conference Transcript

MAN: “We’re going to start immediately…”

BARWOOD: “So the question is, are games a story-telling medium”

“There are a lot of unsolved problems in computer games ... AI is abysmal… artificial stupidity”. “….plot and character hardly exist” , “… we must ship goods”

“How do story games operate?” “… narrative collaboration… branching plots… believable AI ?”

“Answer is none”

“We use two techniques… plot advancement…..character evolution”

“Computer and Video Games Come of Age: A National Conference to Explore the Current State of an Emergent Entertainment Medium” 2000 [link on web-pages].


• “What you can do is more important than what you are”• “… story unfolds through the unlocking of puzzles”• Players “… enlarge the capabilities of that character.”• “… elements of stories, chunks and locations… put together in

various ways depending on how the player plays”• Emotion: “Can a story game evoke laughter?”, “… evoke

tears?”• Exposition – book or film? “ Film exposition, you want to do as

little as possible… in a game… do quite a lot… if you don’t the player won’t know the information he must later act on”


MAN : “[Character in games] Character is capability, character is action character is what you do. The same argument is used in film….”

“…Hollywood defines character motivation often by conversation”

“… Sleepless in Seattle where the goals are Tom Hanks falling in love with Meg Ryan …very much defined by action. ….there’s always a side character for Meg Ryan to talk to… in a game … gamers would go talk talk talk let’s get out of here…”


NEWELL (Gabe CEO of Valve) :

“… story telling is an incredibly important part of game design”

“…designers have to be really careful not to view their goal as telling a story…. Their design almost always goes astray”

“So let’s talk about the things which do help”

“… narcissistic gratification … the world is reacting to me…”

“The more ways the game reacts to the player the better”

“… more ways you can …. categorize player behaviour and have things in the world respond to it the better”

“Heuristics help. An elaborate theory of game playing … we would never have shipped”

“… right now we’re generating a set of heuristics for social play design”

MIT Conference TranscriptNEWELL (Gabe CEO of Valve) :

“Can we stimulate a broader range of emotional interactions?”

“.. we’re doing better if we start seeing spontaneous playing goal setting that is driven by some overarching plot of characters”

“… are we at least connecting character and plot to something other than this linear pathway and instead starting to cause the player to do other things?”

“ Reinforcement schedules … looking at behaviour, looking at rewards and punishments for that behaviour and then having a clearer expectation for that behaviour”

MAN:

“Behaviourism tells you that positive reinforcement is just as strong as negative reinforcement for changing behaviour”

“… not knowing whether or not you’re going to get a reward from an action is powerful”

Futurelab

• “Ergodic” texts – stories (e.g. mystery) that do not have a linear structure. You (?) “choose what the character does next”

• Narrative Theory– How stories are narrated– Activities which define the ‘story’

• Laurel used Aristotle– Computer “takes [on] the role of the author”– “Action of Player must be reflected in the system”

• Murray extended Laurel– Forking paths (yes/no) must be extended “adapting to the actions

of the player”

Games as a Form of Literacy

Futurelab

• Sources of inspiration:– Narrative, Cognitive Psychology– Basic approach “… to code basic knowledge and needs and

interactions of characters and their goals…”– To “… create situations where both plot and characters develop

and form relationships”

• Narrative Systems• Author-centric• Story-centric• Character-centric

Embedding Storytelling in Games

Futurelab

• Psychological Approaches– Character-player diad pushed into situations where “they had to

act and react”– “… could draw the player more into the story”.– “scenes… depended on the emotional state of the players co-

characters”

Embedding Storytelling in Games

Discussion

• How to implement a story?– What are the issues raised by these papers?

– Which are important and useful for story telling in our level?

– Do I agree with these issues?

– Do I have ideas of my own not discussed?

• How can we use UT2004 technology to support a story?– Simple affordances (rooms, movers, triggers, text, sound)

– Intermediate affordances (scripted sequences)

– Advanced affordances (coded AI)

How to develop good stories?

this session 1.administrative stuff – this *-learning journal 2.storytelling 1.i will input precis...

Documents