Backstory (was RE: [MUD-Dev] New poll)

[Marian Griffith]

On Sat 10 Jun, J C Lawrence wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Jun 2000 15:34:31 -0700  
> Sellers, Michael <MSellers at maxis.com> wrote:

> > Hmmm.  Yes, I think back stories (not "backing story," btw)
> > *should* do a lot of these things -- they should explain the game
> > and give context, make the game more real, help the players create
> > their own stories, and give the key for the game culture.

The back story(s) of a game also provide help for the game developer
to make everything in the gameworld  fit together.  That may well be
the most important function of back stories.  They are not there for
the player, at least not directly, but indirectly they help create a
coherent game which is more understandable,  and more 'real' for all
the players, even those who do not care about the back story.

> > Unfortunately, the reality is that they're almost all meaningless
> > and irrelevant babble.

To many players they are.  If to somebody the game is about fighting
and amassing experience points then the back story is irrelevant and
the best you can hope for, as a game developer, is to hide some info
inside it that the players need.  The question is, should you? Is it
really that important to force the players to read something that is
not directly affecting their gameplay?

> > How many games have you played in where you didn't just rush past
> > the exposition and backstory in a "yeah yeah yeah -- get out of my
> > way and let me PLAY" sort of mode?  
> 
> Which is the real convinving factor.  If backstories are so
> thoroughly ignorable and ignored, and yet we are achieving some
> modicum of success in communicating the framing of our games (ie the
> backstory), then what is actually doing the work?  Is the backstory
> really a critical part that merely pretends to be irrelevant?  Or is
> the backstory truly irrelevant and there's something else which is
> accomplishing what we consider the purpose of a back story, and we
> just don't realise it?  Or, is a back story really only used by a
> very small percentage of the player base who then memetically infect
> the rest of the player base with the appropriate effects from the
> back story?

> My suspicion is that its the third form that actually happens.  I
> don't have anything to demonstrate it other than gut feel however.

There is of course a fourth  and even a fifth possibility.  All back-
stories are pretty much the same.  If you have read one you know what
is in the rest.  Not the details perhaps, but the general content. So
players can ignore the actual story and go by what they have read be-
fore.
The fifth possibility is that even if the back story is not read much
by the -players- it is used by the -creators-  which inserts a lot of
information from the back story into the game.  Players learn some of
what is in the story simply by playing the game.

> > Backstories suck.  They shouldn't, they really shouldn't, but
> > almost all of them do.  Why is this, do you think?

> Because the only defined purpose we have for them is to act as a
> data dump for the players, usually dressed up in glitzy clothing and
> a wonder-bra, rather than as fictional narrative devices.  We try
> and bubblegum the player to the drama with sex and effects rather
> than interest.  We're not looking at them as fictional works which
> incidentally happen to have a data load, but instead as either a
> data load wrapped in a fictional skin, or a genital waving
> introduction to the game implementor's assumed capabilities
> (demoware).

Also, they are put at a point where the (potential) player is not im-
mediately interested in it.  People dislike them  for the same reason
they dislike elaborate character creation. It takes time, they do not
see the point and they want to do something else instead. Backstories
can be ignore, while character creation can not,  so players will put
up with that but will ignore the back story.

> We're dealing with stories here, which immediately rephrases part of
> the question as to what scale of stories are we dealing with?
> Hollywood movies are inherently a short story form.  They're
> certainly not novels tho they keep pretending to be.  What is the
> narrative scale of our games?  What is the narrative scale of our
> player's participation in our games?  I see many mostly abortive
> attempts to establish vignette and ultra-short-story contexts in
> MUDs, all with the seeming assumption that by piling those on, by
> bundling them endlessly into a player's growth curve and game
> experience that we can eventually create a novel in some magical
> happenstance fashion, and I don't buy it.

This is very true.  Of course, there is no equivalent from literature
that can be applied to muds. Mud designers do not tell stories.  They
write plays, but without audience.  Instead  the audience becomes the
main character in the play, and the reader at the same time.

> What is the actual fictional scope of a player's intended experience
> in our games?  That seems something worth knowing.

There is a duality here.  Players both want the game to be entertain-
ment, which leads to a traditional narrative structure, and they want
to be the protagonist in the story,  which makes  that same structure
impossible. As a game designer you can not even chose to provide only
one of the two. Well, you could theoretically create a game that does
only provide the second.  The game becomes a stage for the players to
fill with their own stories, as many mushes do.  Of course this gives
the game designer  very little influence  on the actual experience of
the players, and makes the game passive.  Nothing happens, unless the
players make something happen.

> >From a game design vantage: Romantically, narratively, how big a
> story are we trying to drag our users into?  Is it really possible
> to go whole hog and realistically aim for an epic?

Hardly possible.  The underlying premise of an epic  is that a single
person,  or a small group of persons, can make a change to the entire
world, or even the entire universe.
With -every- player being the main character in the epic you have too
many heroes and no secondary characters.
A second problem is that when the epic is concluded, there is nothing
left to do. The hero(es) overcame impossible odds and saved the world
what more could they possibly want to do?


Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey




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