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[Glaiel-Gamer]

In order to discover the best way to use games as a unique device to tell a story, look at what makes it unique compared to other mediums.

Books: Without a story, you get a textbook. A rather boring textbook at that. Other than that, most books are just stories in their most pure form.

Music: Without a story, you don't lose much meaning, yet most of the meaning and story of music, due to their concise nature, is generated by the mind of the person listening, not built in to the song itself, with a few exceptions (bohemian rhapsody, most rap songs). Good songwriters (beatles, queen) take advantage of this by using the music to invoke an emotion, and the words to place the shell of a story in the mind of the listener, in an effort to let the listener fill in the blanks, guided by the invoked emotion.

Movies: As a storytelling mechanism, movies are the most detailed because you can accomplish everything books and music can, with the added advantage of visuals. People enjoy them because in general the popular ones are only skin deep and require little imagination and conscious thought to "get". On the other hand, some films manage to dig deep in a way only films can. The first part of wall-e springs to mind, they manage to tell a story with only 3 or 4 words of dialog.

Games: Games and interactivity go hand in hand, so naturally it seems like the way to be unique in storytelling is through interactive or dynamic stories. The problem is, this isn't necessarily the only way, and a linear story where you play through it has the issues such as it is essentially the same as a movie, but with an extra entertainment-focused layer above it, and it also restricts player decision making. The other end is procedurally generated (dynamic) stories, which have the main side effect that it is no longer a work written by the creator, but a work written by the computer, and as such it is not a method of human communication anymore, but a form of entertainment. The designer can circumvent this by taken a spot in the middle of this line and having the dynamic story branch off into multiple pre-written linear paths. However, rather than providing an ideal solution, this just takes the problems associated with both and magnifies them.

And yet, it is not a stretch to say that game storytelling can have artistic value, unique to the medium. How so though, if both ends of the line and the middle result in less than ideal and non-unique methods of storytelling?

The answer is, there is another variable involved and a new way to think.

In terms of the other mediums, the entertaining and popular forms of each build upon what the less encompassing forms of communication give. It's sort of an "additive synthesis" of other forms of communication. Popular movies have a good story, witty dialog, fast action scenes, and intense memorable music.

However the artistically valuable forms of the type of media are closer to a "subtractive synthesis" of the previous forms. Take what makes each form unique and cut out the rest, yet still tell a story. This is difficult, and often results in a boring product because most people fine super fine pure art rather boring, hard to comprehend, abstract, or seemingly incomplete.

There are midpoints along this line, and by far the most effective are somewhere in the middle.

Also music is a little bit of an oddball here, because I think music is the most important part of setting a mood. Yet, when used to supplement the mood, the song alone generally doesn't try to tell a story, it's just part of the background.

So what's the other variable then? On one end we have the writer (linear), on the other we have the computer (procedural). The answer is the player. The player is capable for thinking for himself, we don't need to force feed him a story in order to force him to "get" it. The human brain has a natural and instinctual ability to "fill in the blanks"; this ability is called "closure" (notice anything?). We all recognize it, yet it seems to not even be considered when writing a story or designing a game. You can tell a story with this concept in mind and let the player fill in the blanks naturally and subconsciously. (This does not mean do a mad libs game, although imagine it... do a mad libs and have the game generate itself based on what you fill in for the words? haha but I digress). Artistically valuable songs, movies, and books take advantage of this. Think about it, if the player's own subconscious mind is generating the details of the story for him, he will be naturally satisfied with it, I mean after all it becomes him. Does this mean that you no longer have control over what the story is?
Absolutely not. This is what setting the mood does, you control the player's mind to fill in the blanks as you see fit. Convoluted and confusing I know, but it works and is fairly simple to actually execute!

One of the things I did in closure the game was keep the ending purposely ambiguous. The character could have lived or died at the end, it was entirely up to the player to interpret it as he or she thought. Looking at the responses, it was a fairly even split of people who thought she lived and people who thought she died. Only a few were dissatisfied with the end however, after all they chose their own ending.

it's interactivity, but not computer based.

Hopefully something in this convoluted web of thoughts made sense.

[Paul Eres]

I don't agree with the basic supposition of that: that there's a best way to use games as a unique device to tell a story. I don't think there's a best way, just as there's no best way to use the written word to tell a story. Different methods can work, including the methods which have worked so far.

I don't think books are stories in their most pure form. A spoken anecdote (whether true or imagined) is a story in its most pure form. They preceded books and are still probably the primary form of storytelling (in that they're told the most often in everyday life). Books are just an adaption of that type of storytelling to text, but text is not the primary "stuff" of story, a sequence of events, the characters who perform them, and the setting it's performed in are. Many of the things which apply to stories in books don't apply to stories in any other form, such as detailed written descriptions.

At its core, a story has characters, a setting, and a plot (or put another way: some people, some place they're at, and what those people do there) -- a lot of people confuse "plot" with "story" but it's perfectly possible to have a plotless story that just has setting and a set of characters. Many games do that (for instance, Glum Buster is mostly setting, as is Myst).

[Lyx]

@Glaiel:

I cannot help but immediatelly think of "Another World" regarding player interpretation. The visuals as well as the "story" dont offer much details - not a single word is spoken in the entire game - and yet, there is no need for words because the gestures and events seem "obvious".

edit: Oh, wait, thats not completely true. There are two sentences said in the entire game - both in the intro and by a computer - they are "Good morning, sir. I see you have driven here in your ferrari."

P.S.: While on the interpretation topic - "symbolic communication" is VERY important in that regard, and IMO it is way underused. To give an example: In the beginning of my game, where the player and the NPC first meet, not a single word is spoken - the "communication" entirely consists of both characters deciding to make steps "toward" the other or "away" from the other - plus meta-communication about the order in which steps are taken. Add some moody surroundings, and the player makes up himself what this first encounter represents.

[Paul Eres]

I think Out of This World had tons of detail -- not all detail requires words. But details about that world were told visually. I don't think telling a story visually means it's more open for interpretation than telling it through text, maybe even the opposite is true: when a story is told through text, there's a lot the player has to imagine in their mind, whereas when a story is told visually, they can see directly what happens without having to form a mental image about it. So I'd say that visual storytelling is often less vague than telling stories through text.

[Lyx]

"Tons of detail"? Play the game again and pay close attention what is actually shown, and what is interpreted visually Heck, in most cases, the characters in the game dont even have a face

[Paul Eres]

Yes, but the colors, the way the creatures and people move, what they sound like -- those are all details.

[Alex Vostrov]

I feel like I just hit a wall of text at 100 mph.  Most of the discussion here has gotten a bit too abstract for my taste.  I'm not even sure what the purpose of arguing my point is anymore.  I think the best way to settle this is via demonstration.  Do what you think is right, and your work will serve as proof.

@Lyx

Your posts are a bit too gigantic for me to reply to all at once, but a lot of what you talk about is addressed in Crawford's work.  Have you read Chris Crawford's books?  If you haven't, I recommend that you read his book on interactive storytelling.  I think that you will gain a new perspective on some of the problems that you bring up.

- kartia
- vanguard bandits
- kagero: deception
- the persona series
- photopia
- narcissu
- xenogears
- suikoden 1 and 2
- planescape: torment
- earthbound

I'm not familiar with most of those.  Fortunately, I've played Torment, which is an excellent game.  Let's talk about that for a while.  How did it benefit from being made on a computer?  What wouldn't have been possible if it was made otherwise?

[Paul Eres]

its dialogue system would not have worked as well as a book or in a movie, since it wouldn't have allowed the player to talk to people in a personalized way, and wouldn't have given as much value to specific things you could get people to say/reveal if you didn't have to expend effort to get them to say/reveal that. you also can't have various branches of dialogue in movies and books (at least, not as easily -- choose your own adventure books do exist)

likewise being able to do things like sell your teammates into slavery or give your teammates to the pillar of skulls in return for favors wouldn't have been as powerful if the player himself didn't choose to do those things.

likewise having those different schools of philosophy that the player could elect to join gave another element of personalization to the game (i.e. whether the player agreed more with one of the different sects or another).

also the characters wouldn't have come alive as much (or at least not in the same way) unless they were interactive. you don't associate with the main characters of books in the same way that you do in games, in games it's much more "you" than a character you're reading about.

[Paul Eres]

oh, and i forgot the most important thing (though this is a spoiler for those who haven't finished the game)

remember at the end of the game how you met various 'versions' of the main character from different 'playthroughs' of his life? that highlighted the theme of the game (the what can change a nature of a man thing), since players with different experiences could hypothetically have been as different from each other as any of the versions of the main character in the end of the game. each was a way to play through the game. so i think that totally wouldn't have been possible at all in another format, since the way the player shapes the character and the knowledge that they could have shaped him in other ways is essential to understanding that idea.

[Alex Vostrov]

Would it be fair to say that interactivity was the key then?  The player made choices and the game responded meaningfully.  In other words, there was dialogue between the player and the game.

[Paul Eres]

yes, that's fair. that was part of my point, that interactivity should be used to make linear storytelling better. there's no contradiction between interactivity and linear storytelling, you can have an interactive linear story.

[Lyx]

If the game responded to the player actions, then strictly spoken the story wasn't totally linear. What you mean i think is: There is no problem with making a story MOSTLY linear yet still allow minor dynamics as long as they do not significantly change the predefined overall "path" of the game.

So, i guess part of understanding the whole issue is being aware that there are multiple scales of dynamics. A game can make it so that on the micro level, the game progresses dynamically, yet still shapes it so that on the macro level, there is only one path.

[Paul Eres]

Well, I'm not speaking strictly then. I do think the story was linear though. There was a beginning, middle, and end. It's kind of like saying a life isn't linear just because it's interactive. Your life *is* linear, it's also interactive.

[Lyx]

You seem to be twisting terms to "win" an argument pretty hard here.

[Paul Eres]

I apologize if it seems that way -- I don't even really see myself as having a "side" in an "argument" -- I'm just explaining how I see stories and games. I'm not particularly trying to convince anyone of how I see it, just trying to explain it.

Why do you believe that stories which allow choice are not linear? I don't understand why you believe (even strictly speaking) that a story which is interactive can't be linear.