[MUD-Dev] Storytelling in MMOGs article

[Koster]

http://www.gamasutra.com/resource_guide/20020916/klug_01.htm

Kinda simplistic, I thought. He's dead on about the need to go to an
episodic structure for Live updates, I think, but skips all the
details and hard parts. And his discussion of dramatic structure is
basically meaningless. He almost lost me at "Everquest is a good
example of how stories are told in massively multiplayer games" but
redeemed himself on the third page.

-Raph

<EdNote: Below>

--<cut>--
Implementing Stories in Massively Multiplayer Games

By Chris Klug
Gamasutra
September 16, 2002

Why Tell Stories?

People like stories; when they play games, part of what they do is
play a grown-up version of pretend. When we played as children, we
were devising our own stories. Players of massively multiplayer
online game, when thrust into a new world, will create their own
stories lines. People do this all the time; story is woven into the
fabric of our daily lives ("Boy, you should hear what happened to me
on my way to work this morning..." "That guy at the check out stand;
what a jerk!" "What is with Jennifer today?") These statements all
act as introductions to stories. Our very lives are structured in
three acts --youth, middle age, and old age -- and we see all the
events in our lives as narratives. If the players will create their
own drama, why bother trying to tell stories in massivley
multiplayer games? Why not just make a sandbox and let people play?

You're already telling a story, whether you meant to or not. Every
single thing you do when you create a game, from the look of the
interface to the colors of the spaceships to the way the avatars
move to the amount of grass you put on the ground tells a
story. Sergei Eisenstein, the father of Montage, summed it up like
this: if you show an image of a dead man followed by an image of a
woman with a knife, the audience will synthetically assume that the
woman killed the man. The following two paragraphs quote liberally
from a web site on film directing
(http://members.tripod.com/~afronord/montage.html). Any errors I
have made in interpretation are pretty much mine alone.

"Montage is based on what is known as the Kulishev Effect' -- this
early Russian film-maker played with his footage, gluing together
man's face and then a shot of a plate with food, or the same face
and then a shot of naked girl.... Surprisingly, the same close-up of
man looks different next to a new following shot. First sequence --
hunger. Second sequence -- lust. How could it be? It is because of
what the viewer does in their head when they see the images. They
try to connect the two images and make sense out of the combination
of two shots. Sergei Eisenstein, the Russian film director, declared
that any single image by itself is "neutral" (have zero meaning till
it is revealed in position of context with other shots)."

"You see, the original meaning is only the first part of the visual
statement, according to montage theory. It's open and --
incomplete. What montage does is this: the thought (action) in
evolution with the next shot "throws the meaning" on the previous
shot! (In primitive terms we call it a reaction shot). The second
shot in its turn is incomplete also -- it asks for another shot!
That's why we crave for continuity and can't take our eyes away from
the screen!"

So, Montage effects the experience a player has with a game as
story' even more than when that player watches a movie because, in a
game, the player is creating the next image by choices he makes
during play and is more invested in the secondary image than a movie
watcher can ever be. And how does a game player create these images?
By interacting with the game universe. And how does the player do
that? By using the game systems and interface the designers have
provided him. This is, in part, what gives games their great unique
power to evoke emotion. But that means that every part of every game
tells a story. Game developers need to also be expert story tellers,
because we are telling stories even if we think we aren't.  The
current state of MMOG stories

Now that we know we (the designers, not the consumers) are
responsible for creating a story, I think it would be incumbent upon
us to tell a good one. First, a definition:

Story = change due to conflict.

That is pretty much a universal definition of what story is. You can
do a lot of research, and I'd wager a fair amount of money that what
you'd find pretty much equates with that definition. Story has lots
of elements and such, mind you, but most people would agree that
without change and without conflict you don't have much of a
story. Games meet the requirements of storytelling very well,
actually: a character, controlled by the player, engages in some
activity that will, over time, change something (whether that is as
simple as going from no state at all to raising their
characteristics to winning') and that change will come through
conflicts of one kind or the other.

Everquest is a good example of how stories are told in massively
multiplayer games. EQ is fundamentally an RPG, and as such it does
tell a story; a character is created, changes in ability through
fighting MOBs and grows. Okay, so we got a story here. While EQ has
a fairly immersive world, and clearly there are lots of moments
where the players is drawn deeply into the emotional reality of that
world, it ultimately is a very unsatisfying story.

For a story to exist in an MMORPG universe, the world and the
characters in it both have to change, and they have to change due to
conflict within the world. In EQ, the characters do change as they
level, but the world doesn't change hardly at all, so in the end
you've got an unsuccessful story. What is EQ missing? Well, for one
thing, dramatic structure. For a story to be successful and
emotionally rewarding, the experience needs to have a solid dramatic
structure.

Dramatic Structure

Everquest approximates the tried and true three-act stucture: in Act
I (the newbie game) we are not told what in the heck the conflict
is, so our actions in the world have no context; we dont know what
the stakes are. In Act II, we still dont know what the stakes
are. There are lots of conflicts, changing locales, epic
adventuring, but Act II in Everquest lasts forever, as there really
is no Act III. None. In Everquest, the world doesnt change at all,
and certainly the world doesnt change as a result of the players
actions. There is no payoff, no enjoying the fruits of victory; the
carrot keeps dangling just beyond your reach.

If they could just deliver a satisfying climax to their audience,
theyd have players hooked for life. But MMOG games dont offer easy
endings, and the carrot always stays just out of reach.

Whether the designers of the games create a satisfying ending
themselves, or whether they let the players do it, they have to
understand that we all seek closure to any extended activity we
engage in, we all seek Act III's in our lives. If the MMORPG
designers want to give the players simply a sandbox and let players
have at it, they must give the players the tools to create dramatic
structure for themselves, or else players will feel empty at the end
of the day.

Adding Structure to an Open-ended Game Design

To build an engaging story in an open-ended game, you need to write
the story content early in the game design process, making it an
integral part of the game design process. And, I dont mean here
story as backdrop or story as fiction to explain why the game system
works the way it does. In a MMOG, the story is the way in which
universe changes after the game goes live. Think of the game as if
it was a TV series, with episodes and seasons, and story arcs and
subplots. Isnt that the kind of game world everyone would want to
play in?

Game companies, for the most part, arent used to thinking script
first (for goodness sake -- they arent used to thinking of the
script at all!). For this to change, the game design process has to
respect and allow for the story weaving process a little more than
it does now.

The game designers have to be willing to make systemic decisions
that support the needs of the story. Right now, story tends to be
the blacktop that is laid down last to cover all the potholes the
game system has left in its wake. This lends itself to the creation
of stories that dont make much sense. And remember, since every
moving image a player sees tells story, if the script is done last,
after the artwork, the odds are even better that the game system
will tell one story and the artwork will tell a different story and
the poor writer will be pulling their hair out trying to make it all
fit together.

Sandbox theorists assume that stories created by the players will be
as entertaining and compelling as stories created by designers, and
if you could dynamically edit out 90 percent of the boring stuff
that happens in these worlds that might be true. If you gave the
players story telling tools (in essence, AI-driven Gamesmaster
tools), they might as well. But, until these two needs are met,
designers and writers are still going to do a better job of
economically delivering compelling story content in on line
worlds. Players want to be players. I think this is the biggest
reason that ultimately, until the tool and technology get better,
audiences want us to entertain them.

System as Story

I have often heard that game system changes made after MMORPGs go
live have more of a story impact than any story that the designers
are telling. There is an idea that games consist of story' (often
defined in a limited way as what the NPC dialogues say) and a game
system', and they are somehow separate. This is absolutely
false. Every single thing the player experiences as he plays the
game goes through the big sifter in his head and comes out as the
game universe. System is Story. To use this fact, game designers
have to be willing to make systemic decisions that are aware of and
support the story, as well as the story being used to support the
game system. Right now, story tends to be the blacktop that is laid
down last to cover all the potholes the game system has left in its
wake. This encourages the creation of stories that don't make much
sense. And remember, since every moving image a player sees and
every system a player interacts with tells story, if the script is
done last, after the artwork, the odds are even greater that the
game system will tell one story and the artwork will tell a
different story and the poor designer/writer will be pulling their
hair out trying to make it all fit together.

The Benefits of Telling Stories in a MMOG

An Audience that stays tuned in. There isn't a single customer of a
MMORPG game that wasn't raised on TV. We're bred to understand that
every Monday night at 10 or every Thursday night at 8 there's gonna
be a new episode of our favorite show. We're wired this way. TV
advertising execs know this very well, because whenever a show goes
on break, or delays episodes because of the Olympics or sweeps
month, the networks go out of their way to tell their viewers "Hey!
We know you've gotten tired of the re-runs. Well, guess what? Blah
Blah shows has new New NEW episodes starting next week." Why do they
have to blare that stuff as loud as they do? Because they know that
you've probably gotten out of the habit of watching your favorite
show due to all the reruns lately, and they have to capture your
attention span back. Now, with TiVo and all the other services, this
habit forming nature of the TV business might change, but I doubt it
will change demonstrably anytime soon. So, our/their audience
expects to get regular updates to their stories and be told well in
advance in a very loud voice when this update is going to
happen. Our audience is ready and willing to go along with us on
that ride; we just have to let them know we're gonna go there. So,
if we deliver changing content that wraps itself in conflict, and do
so on a regularly scheduled basis, we're playing to our audience's
expectations.

Advertising campaigns. Advertising can be centered around game-world
events. Okay, so after a MMORPG ships, how do marketing gurus build
a successful campaign to increase market share? I mean, with typical
box product, the campaign is all about targeting that first month a
product is on the shelf, because we all know in this business that
at the end of that first month, the ultimate success of the product
is gonna be pretty well known. However, if the game's story is
changing every month, and those changes really mean something, and
they are dramatic enough that gamers will care about those changes,
then marketing can advertise them just like TV shows ("Join us when
the Romulans try to take back 61 Cygni! Will Kirk be able to stop
them this time?") And, now the kicker: in an interactive gaming
environment, marketing can add this to the pot: "Will you help Kirk
or hinder him? Come play with us this Friday 9pm Eastern Time when
the Romulan offensive begins." Now, that could be leveraged only in
a gaming environment and one where players cared about the story.

Emotional content. When you start doing stories in games like this,
you begin to work off of a story model known very well to
advertisers: The Soap Opera. The Soap Opera works like this: you
establish characters viewers care about, and then you add a
tablespoon full of villains who oppose those characters, and you
reveal a little of the story every day, gradually hooking the
audience into needing' to watch to see what is happening to their
friends' in this factional place. The Soap Opera formula works well,
and has worked for a long time. Fiction serials in magazines used
the same formula. A current best-selling fantasy series heading into
its ninth or tenth novel uses this exact model to facilitate its
success. One key to the Soap Opera model is getting the audience to
care about the characters, and then manipulating the hell out of
that audience (taking them for that emotional roller coaster ride)
which is exactly what they want you to do. Attention, game
publishers: notice the word emotional' in the sentence above. To
engage people emotionally, you must present them with content that
stirs their emotions. All this depends on delivering emotional
content. Games need to get up to speed on delivering emotional
content, because many people in the game biz don't know how to do
this; we tend to avoid the issues of emotion in games. But that's a
different article.

Long-term audience retention. Once you've hooked the audience
emtionally, if you know how to manipulate them in the right way, you
can keep and grow that audience for a long time. And, creating
long-term subscribers is what this business model is all
about. Again, look at Soap Operas.

Opening up the marketplace. The gaming business has long talked
about attracting non-gamers (alternately described as getting
normal' people interested in games). The typical TV watcher and/or
movie-goer wants to go for an emotional ride. That means putting
emotional content into the product so non-gamers can see what is in
it for them. Everyone understands story. Only gamers really
understand games. Story is a way to bridge that gap.

Soften the hard edge of gaming. To attract these new audience
members, we have to present a face of gaming that isn't so
competitive. There are many 40-ish potential gamers who don't think
that battling against 15-year old joystick jockeys is a fruitful use
of an evening. But if the game was less threatening, they might be
interesting in joining in. Story isn't as threatening as combat is.

Making the Story Work in MMORPGs

How do we start marking the story work in MMORPGs? First, by
treating the script like it was a movie or a TV show. Aim for high
quality. Write the script before you design all the systems. Use
story as the glue to hold everything together. Design systems that
support that story, instead of writing a story that somehow acts as
the glue that justifies and holds together disparate game
systems. This process is ultimately cheaper, because a script is
very inexpensive to develop as opposed to a game prototype.

Hire real writers. The game industry seems to define writers as "the
people you bring in to write dialogue for characters and stories
that the game designer has created." If you try and deliver
emotional content (see above), well, that's what writers are trained
to do, so maybe we can learn something from them. Writers don't need
to understand the game business if they are paired up with a
talented designer to act as their guide. They add a great deal to
the overall project. Just bring them in early. Hire good ones. The
really smart ones are beginning to understand interactive more and
more. Yes, for a development environment that isn't used to that
financial line item, they might look expensive. But, do you want a
game that just sits there like a pancake or do you want a game that
people care about? If you want the latter, hire a good writer.

Budget for a talented live team. Assuming you now understand that
telling a story in a MMORPG live environment is worth doing, take a
different look at the composition and role of your live
team. Remember, from points raised above, you're going to need to
deliver a changing world that uses dramatic structure to deliver
conflict to the players. Instead of looking at the live team as a
stable of second-class designers, programmers and artists (because,
after all, the first-class team members have already moved onto
other projects as leads, right? Who wants to work on the live team,
after all?) treat them instead as if they were first-class talent in
a broadcast environment. Ultimately, I believe the success of any
MMORPG will be based on how well the live team reacts to and treats
the audience. That means keeping your stars on board for a while
after you go live. And these people need to really be talent:
writers, actors, designers, programmers, artists: people who
understand broadcast entertainment delivery. Because that's what
you're doing, broadcasting to an audience.

Design tools that serve the live process, not just the build
process. The toolset used to create static games isn't necessarily
what you need for ongoing changing story. You need to track the
game's bible (what's been told in the story, what hasn't, who talked
about it, what art assets were used, what changed, how the players
reacted to it etc.). You need someone with broadcast experience to
begin to create this kind of toolset.

In 10 years, we will be in the same space competing for the same
time and dollars as TV. Either they will move into our space or we
will move into theirs. Whoever makes the move first and with
conviction will dominate the following decade of broadcast
entertainment. Games can do it, but we have to take ourselves as
story tellers seriously. Let's start today.
--<cut>--
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev