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

[Sellers]

Marian wrote:
> 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.  

Agreed.  A game or world with a strong backstory (even if it's never seen by
the players) will come across as a lot deeper and more interesting than one
without such a context.  As I'm fond of asking, how many Tomb Raider players
are interested in Lara Croft's educational background, or why she's out
there raiding tombs in the first place?  Indiana Jones was an interesting
character because there was a lot of thought put into *who* this guy really
was, where he grew up, what experiences drive him, etc.  With Lara, it all
sadly seems to come down to her improbable bust size.  

> > > 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.  

For a pure fighting game, maybe all you need is a thin backstory to provide
a bit of context and some tacit understanding of the rules of the world (by
which I don't mean the rules of the game).  For a MUD-like game with
(presumably) more than just fighting, where the player exists in a social
and cultural context, more of a backstory might be helpful.  

> The question is, should you? Is it
> really that important to force the players to read something that is
> not directly affecting their gameplay?

As in other forms of fiction writing, I don't think you should EVER make the
reader/player slog through prose that has no bearing on them, the overall
story, or the game they're about to play.  That's just self-indulgent.  Why
introduce characters, settings, events, etc., that will not affect their
gameplay?  

The trick, I think, is not to write terse backstories, but instead to make
the games and gameplay live up to the promise of an engaging story.  Going
back to my previous example, maybe Tomb Raider was all it could be just as
it was.  But I have to wonder if maybe there wasn't a better game in there
someplace, one in which the players came to consider, understand, and even
care about different aspects of Lara Croft.  Should you direct her to shoot
the wolf, or chance leaping over it instead?  How might the developers have
made such decisions significant in the game from more than just a "kill
monster get gold" POV, so that in the quick decision to shoot vs. jump over
the wolf, the player is cognizant of having either played within Lara's
established character, or having changed it?  Perhaps including consequences
predictable and comprehensible to the player could make her character more
real, and the game have more depth -- she shoots the wolf, but momentarily
hesitates afterward out of grief, which you understand as you know about her
history; or, she leaps over the wolf, and the on-screen character turns to
you and flashes a bright smile.  And perhaps each of these choices have
consequences later on: the one Lara is now more cynical, and is in turn less
likely to be shown respect by NPCs she encounters; while the other is a
little happier, and is more likely to get good deals -- or something.  At
any rate, a deeper, more considered backstory would make such actions and
consequences meaningful to the player -- and would make it more likely that
a designer might think of such subtleties in the first place.  


> > > 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.

Good point.  Backstories are essentially exposition.  Exposition kills.
This is something I'm going to think about for awhile: how do you insert
backstory into the game/world in bite-size chunks, so that the players feel
gradually immersed in the world and its history, rather than just dunked in
it, being forced to endure long chronicles that they don't get and don't
even know why they should be significant.  

> > >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.

Maybe.  Unless the entire player base is as an aggregate a "small group" in
the scheme of things.  We need to rethink entirely the focus on the single
hero, or even the ensemble of heros.  My suspicion is that this leads to an
entirely new kind of fiction... one that I can see only through a glass
darkly.  


Mike Sellers
 



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