notthatwillsmith

WARNING: i’m low on battery, so there are raw notes ahead, I’ll clean it up and make it intelligible later

Warren (the System Shock and Deus Ex guy) is talking about making great stories in games. He’s talking about the static worlds that are populated by static characters. Pacing is crap. Games get harder as they go along, as the players capabilities increase. This makes the games slower as they proceed, not anything else.

Games should be about something. Most games are all surface, rescue the princess, save the world. Nothing else. Bioware, maybe Valve are the exceptions. Five approaches to storytelling. Rollercoaster (linear game narrative. Mission 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. No real choices, just the appearance of choice, at best.

Second way, is the retold story. Games like WoW, Tetris, etc don’t really have a story. There’s no overarching narratives (or if there are, then most people don’t know about them.

Will Wright school - You make your own story. It’s just pure play. Requires creative people who want to create content.

Shared Authorship - branching storyline, like Wing Commander. Or alternately, you build a world and send people to different places at different times. Linear mission structures wtih different acts that have different sub-objects.

Procedural story generation - no script, player is in control of the whole thing. Tools ensure that the story is always interesting and powerful. Facade.

Refine vs. Replace - Do what works and make it better each time. Letting players choose mission order however they want is way more work than it’s worth. Faction interactions are a good way to do stuff. Track trends, rather than make them choose gates.

Must reward work from games well. Accomplishing story goal, getting something good, etc. Big or small, rewards are important. If I don’t do this, my brother will die is more compelling than getting a long straight piece in a hole.

Gamers can be paralyzed by choice. You need to give players cues and constrain them a bit.

Warren’s talking about character design being shitty, and representations not being particularly good. Warren likes the Miis, and says that people are more attached to their Miis than to whatever other character they play as.

In a game, you have a very limited game world, where people are locked on rails. Worlds, not sets. Make sure that players never see the limits of fidelity, fill it with scripted and simulated info. You have to make people believe that it’s a real world.