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[StripeyWhale]

In the end, though, non-linear simply means that there is a bank of events, and based on how the player plays the game, it can be played out in any logical order. Making sure that the logical order actually makes sense in relation to the plot/characters is up to the game designer.

Also keep in mind that, like said above, you'll often see a mix of linear and non-linear segments, depending on what is the best approach.

The problem I see isn't with plot but with characterization.

It is conceivable to create plot events that can take place in any order and still further the plot (investigate X murders, find X dungeons, etc).  However, I don't see any way to keep coherent character growth while doing it.

For instance, the way a character is going to react to a Wildebeest stampede is going to be different depending on where he is as a person.  It may not matter to the plot whether or not his father is dead, or whether or not the character has made peace with it, but it will radically effect his characterization.  In order for events to be played out in any order, they'd have to ignore where the character is in his own internal journey.

Let's say the character starts out as a selfish, immature jerk and ends having matured into a self-sacrificing penitent because of his father's death.  There's going to be a lot of stages to that.  First he's a jackass, then he's filled with guilt, he's angry with himself but takes it out on others, he externalizes conflict rather than confront himself and becomes consumed with revenge, he realizes that petty vengeance can accomplish nothing because the one he really hates is himself, he becomes increasingly self destructive in a misguided attempt to punish himself, he realizes that he cannot escape or destroy guilt but will carry it his entire life, finally he recognizes that all of his actions have been self-centered and for the first time acts for someone outside of himself.

Depending on what stage he's in as a character, he would react to the Wildebeest stampede completely differently.  I'm not talking about plot decisions - he could make the same plot decision every time. Let's say for story reasons you have to kill all the Wildebeests before they destroy the village.  Outcome is always the same, but the stage the character is in dramatically effects how he acts.  Is he still a selfish jerk unchastened by tragedy?  Is he consumed with guilt?  Is he filled with vengeance?  Is he seeking self destruction?  His progression as a human being effects every line of dialogue, every gesture, every mannerism.

An event may be able to happen in any order without effecting the plot, but it will always be affected by the state of the character.  I can't think of any elegant solution.  In a story that wants to have both non-linear events and character development, plot events would either have to be completely devoid of characterization or the writer would have to create new dialogue for each event in every single possible stage of the character's arc.  Is there some other, more feasible way out of this?

[johnki]

That is entirely true. And it's a problem that may not be easy to solve. One thing you'll notice is that nearly all games with non-linear storytelling either are light on story (the original Zelda game which was mentioned earlier) or are RPGs with characters the players create, as to let the player decide what kind of person he's going to be.

Yet another problem to look out for, especially in the case of the latter, is the poorly designed game where you spend your entire time being a good guy only to find an event where it's nearly impossible to come out being the good guy.

EDIT: Creating dialogue for each and every situation would require creating a new way for the event to play out in each situation. Depending on how many branches you have, by the end of it, you could be recreating each event upwards of 20 times, meaning for each event you'd actually be creating 20-ish separate events. And in a non-linear game where each event is completely time-independent, this could mean EVERY event being turned into 20 events, which is not elegant in the slightest.

[StripeyWhale]

Yeah, it would be pretty much unfeasible unless you have an insanely ambitious writer.  I just can't see an elegant way to have both non-linearity and serious character growth.  Any body else have any ideas?

[Lynx]

You might find this interesting:

Storytron

TL;DR: Chris Crawford has been laboring on his personal hobby-horse, developing software that is capable of 'interactive storytelling', for a long time.  While he calls his efforts a failure, you might find some interesting notions in his papers on the subject.

Instead of rendering plots as scripted events, you have NPCs with goals and verbs they can use to achieve these goals.  You still need to setup the world and various stages where interesting things can happen, but now you don't have to worry that the player might do something you didn't think of; you can view the game plot as just another kind of physics.

Another tack you might try is to throw the natural language processing problem overboard.  Instead of trying to write the same scene 20 times, depending on the player's character progression, you could have characters speak with each other through icons in speech bubbles a la the Sims.

The problem is that you'd now be trying to write a limited form of AI, so you'd better be prepared for that...

[johnki]

Storytron

I totally forgot about that! I tried the system in its previous form. To quote Chris himself, "We built a rocket ship with so many buttons and dials that everybody who tried to fly it crashed."

I had just learned about it and was starting to learn the interface when news of the changes came. It was complicated, but not impossible by any means...and there's a whole wiki dedicated to it which does a damn good job of explaining it.

Anyways, they're developing a new version that'll be much simpler, which was supposed to start crunch-time this past spring.

I do hope the previous incarnation gets to at least live on unsupported, though. It was complicated, but man, it bled untapped potential, waiting for the right people to take a stab at it.

[Panurge]

You might find this interesting:

Storytron

Thanks for that link, I hadn't come across that before. Very interesting indeed.

[Lynx]

Just keep in mind, I'm not advocating this is how things should be done.  In fact I think the lesson to be learned here would be that computer-generated story is a Really Tough Problem.  But, it is also a problem that has been studied by various academics.

Here, have a look at Brenda Laurel's dissertation:

Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System

In it, Ms. Laurel outlines various systems that would be needed for, essentially, a software system that is capable of generating a simulated universe with story for its players.  She provides a flow chart and description of the various parts of the system and how they'd work.  Interesting, very likely overkill.  If I were going to implement interactive storytelling in a game, I'd be taking shortcuts like whoa.

[Graham.]

I love the thing with the random book read, Paul.

My game - muuuy game - and nearly all of it's assets are (hah, "will be") procedurally generated: art, story, "levels," everything (nearly). I will give everybody who isn't listening to me 3 hints, which you won't hear because no one really cares.
  1. Generating story is two orders of magnitude more complex than telling a story non-linearly.
  2. That's not an exaggeration.
  3. People who have done research in this area tend to radically underestimate the problem. If you can write a _single_ good story for a game, well, you'd be the first one (oh no! not really). Generating things is much harder.
  4. You should still give it a shot because it's awesome.

The secret to exploring malleable story delivery (especially those that are generated) is building an extremely simple character, making him compelling, then experimenting with how the computer controls how his shit goes down. People who attempt this problem often aim way too high, crash, and miss-attribute their failures - but there's a lot of good stuff out there worth reading from them.

If you want to do something like this, reduce the complexity of your character down to an inch more than 0. Then allow the number of possible ways through which this character can be exposed/developed down to a number also very close to 0. Then perfect it, like completely perfectly. You might be able to do this in your head if you know a lot about whatever theory it is that let's you build good characters (like you have real writing/directing/other experience). But you'll probably just have to build it. I promise you, trying to sort these problems out on paper by general "theorizing" is a big deal. And you have to be a genius (which of course we all are). And you have to study the fuck out of narrative design.

However, if you iterate hard you can create something that generates compelling stuff within a very small narrative sub-space, then from that, create a very good, Braid-successful, game out of it, you know, if the rest of your design is tight as nuts too.

I checked out the Chris Crawford thing. That's what I'm talking about. That will definitely get your mind ticking - very worthwhile depending on where you're at - but there's no way it's viable. He hasn't solved any of the actual hard problems, such as, "what makes a person interesting?" It's all systems. If shit doesn't get religious fast you're doing it wrong. If we can generate _people_, that's like a singularity-proclamation kind of event. If your soul's not cracking, you're not approaching the general solution. Thank God, souls shouldn't be cracked.

I'm going to bed. Maybe.

[Graham.]

ty Lynx for the Brenda Laurel link. I hadn't seen that before.

[Paul Eres]

Hmm...to me the problem is that while plot points can often happen in any order, characterization absolutely must follow a specific trajectory.  Link in the Legend of Zelda is pretty much devoid of character development (or much characterization at all) - he's exactly the same (internally) at the end as he was at the beginning.  Since there is no character development tied to them, the dungeons can happen in any order whatsoever, story wise.

I think when I misremember the order of plot events in a narrative I've read, I'm usually separating plot and character development in my mind.  I may not perfectly remember which battle happened when in Seven Samurai, but I remember the character arc for Kikuchiyo and know generally the order his developments went in.  In the film, plot developments and character developments are given hand in hand.  So while certain fights could happen in any order, the accompanying character development could not.

So for a game, we are giving the player both plot development and character development.  Without completely separating plot and characterization, how can events be presented in any order and still allow for character growth?

I can see how non-linear can work for a static character, i.e. each event shows another facet of who he is.  However, this character isn't changing at all.  Can a non-linear game effectively show a character changing over the course of a story?

i wouldn't say link is exactly the same -- presumably after 8 dungeons he's more confident because he's overcome so much. it's true that the game doesn't *portray* that to you, but it can be inferred

also, the structure of 'overcoming N challenges, loosely connected' shouldn't be underestimated; some of the greatest stories in history use that structure. a good example is the odyssey by homer; he goes from island to island, having an adventure at each one. but the order of them doesn't really matter. another example is the trials of heracles. i wouldn't exactly say that those stories are devoid of character development either, although they don't focus on it

but yes it is true that if you are writing a non-linear story, certain structures work better than other structures. but i don't think character development in non-linear stories is impossible or something, it just requires different methods

for instance, let's say you want to have a character evolve from cowardly to courageous. you could separate that into five stages: each stage has a set of events that can happen in any order, but the character, when in a particular stage of cowardly -> courageous, can only access the events particular to their current stage; after they've done a certain number of those events (not all of them, but a number of them from that stage's pool of events) they progress to the next stage. so you might have 30 events for each stage (150 events total), but the player only has to play through at least 10 of the events of each stage

as for non-linear games not having character development, i think playing alter ego would make you believe otherwise: http://www.playalterego.com/ -- it's a non-linear game, but has some of the best character development i've seen in a game. the game progresses through stages from baby through all the stages of life, and in each stage various events are possible (although you can't see all the events in any one playthrough). it's one of the best examples of non-linear character development that i've encountered, so i encourage you to try it out, it's a classic of good design

[Graham.]

(To what you guys are talking about)

You could split your character's personality into "dimensions."

Think about Mass Effect, or some other game with the - "TOTALLY AWESOME" - good/evil system. They have a metric like, "goodness," which is a thing that you level up and down. Then every interaction and the rules for it are defined by what range the player's "goodness" falls into. For example, some conversation options trigger only if the player is within a certain range, and the the default NPC reaction to player decisions is set based on what range the player is in (I think, though it doesn't matter).

So Mass Effect only uses 1 dimension. But you can use several. If you pick a personality trait, like courage, then get real specific about it,  you could probably think of 3 distinct areas that you want your character to develop in before he maximizes his courage, say, being more brave in battle, being less dependent on his peers, not being a douche - whatever. Then, actions have "xp" in each category. So the category is always leveling up or down in each dimension (you can have negative xp). You can give suggestive feedback to indicate to the player how he is progressing. For example, in Mass Effect you get a sense for how paragon you are or whatever sort of based on how people are treating you.

This is very similar to your idea Paul, but instead of marking events on a binary scale you're doing it on a much wider one, and you're using several scales to determine the character's development of a particular trait. The neat thing about this approach is that the more dimensions you add, the proportionately easier it becomes to give your characters interesting traits that develop in a non-linear, player-controlled, way.

Yeah.

[Capntastic]

http://www.brodzkybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Clay.html#

[Morroque]

I just finished a booked called Salamander, by Thomas Warton. It is a book about a 01700's printer named Nicholas Flood and his employment to a crazed nobleman in a machinated castle. The terms of his employment was to create an infinite book.

Some of the ensuing chapters are Flood ruminating on what the nature of such a book might be. He comes up with a few things along the way about how a traditional book printer would allow for fluxuous, variable state storytelling.

One of which he came up with was a double-sided scroll, twisted once and sewn together from beginning to end. It told the story of two lovers, desperately looking for eachother, but destined never to meet. When they were born, the Sybil of Venice foretold that if they were to ever meet, they will fall in love so great that it will disrupt the fabric of the universe. Following her word, they built the city in a large circle with one-way roads and place the two of them at opposing sides. But as they grew up, they grew aware of the city's plan to keep them apart. They fled to the streets and began to seek eachother out, but no matter what happened, they just kept running in the circle, too afraid to stop for fear that they'll never find their love. The startpoint of the scroll had to be randomly chosen each time, as well as the direction one read it in, and once it began it would never end.

When Flood brought the draft of the scroll to the count, he rejected it immediately. "You shouldn't have picked Venice. The Sybil there was senile, and no one ever when near enough to hear her for fear of the terrible smell."