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"If you want to tell a story, don't make a game.  Write a book.  Shoot a movie."

This is a statement I disagree with, but I'm a little challenged to articulate why.  I'm interested to hear responses from the game-narrative-writers here.


Here's my attempt at explaining why the combination of narrative and game, rather than those things taken on their own, is important to me:

It's my skillset.  I'm an excellent programmer, a good game designer and of at least amateur competence in other relevant disciplines.  My prose-writing experience is limited.

Immersion and exploration.  I cannot quite name the visceral feelings I have when given an opportunity to navigate an unfamiliar space with a body which is not my own.  When I project myself into that situation and begin to explore with the mobility available to me, a depth of experience is something I treasure profoundly.

(When the space being explored is not only physical but narrative, more tangible thoughts and emotions can be built upon that basis -- but is this an afterthought?)

Agency in narrative.  Games let us make decisions, which adds to the emotional and mental situations we can create for our audience.  Unique to our palette are regret, reward, indecision, confusion, frustration, attachment, protectiveness, malice, playfulness and numerous others.  If we use them artfully they can be powerful colors for painting a story which no other medium can.

The problem is that linear stories are not what games are good at.  You take away from the game by having a linear story.  Books and movies are linear by design, and that's fine.

When games tell a 'story', they need to do so in a different fashion.  They need to allow the player some creative control in the story.  This is difficult because many gamers are not story-tellers.  You need to provide them a means by which to tell their story, and some hints on how to make them happen.

For example, Dishonored.  That game lets you choose how you get around the city.  Sneaking on the rooftops, killing everyone you see, possessing things and simply walking through...  Many options, but all given by the game.  And the missions are similar.  You can usually (always?) kill them head-on, or sneak around and do tricksy things.  Even the fate of people in the story isn't set in stone.  You apparently don't have to ever kill anyone, and can instead find other ways to remove them from the city.  (They aren't always obvious, though.)

So decide what kind of story you want to tell.  If it's interactive, and depends on the user, then a game is the way to go.  If it's completely static and the gamer is just forced along a path, use a book or movie.

The simple fact that many linear narrative games, which don't really even have that good of a story, can resonate so strongly with players simply because they're "in the game" is reason enough in my opinion. 

I think that games are actually very capable of telling good linear stories. As you mentioned, Evan, because agency is given to the player, games can evoke emotions in ways that other media cannot. I actually wrote a short essay about Shadow of the Colossus (http://betafishmag.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/shadow-of-the-colossus-and-the-unique-capabilities-of-games-for-storytelling/) in which I argue that games can arouse emotions in a unique way that makes them a potentially amazing storytelling medium. Games like SotC, OFF, and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery, all tell great linear stories that I believe would not be as effective in another medium.

Not only do I think that games can be as valid a method for storytelling as prose or film, but in many ways I think that they can be a better method for storytelling. The problem is, most games tell crappy stories, so their potential is very rarely realized.

I appreciate some games for gameplay (Spelunky) and others for story or message. Take Aether for example. It only took me 45 minutes to beat but it left me dumbfounded as the point Edmund was trying to make was obvious. Not many movies leave me like that.

i think some in this thread are assuming something which isn't true: writing for games isn't necessarily linearly. it's perfectly possible to have a non-linear story in a game and also to have a lot of good writing (e.g. planescape, fallout 1 and 2, alter ego...)

Just a note:  Let's not let this tangent into a discussion on linear vs. nonlinear storytelling.

The points made so far are interesting and I agree with them -- even a linear, seemingly non-interactive story can be made compelling by gameplay.  But in what ways do the interactive aspects add to storytelling independent of changing the story?  How do they arm us to tell stories better?

I'm inclined towards my "exploration" answer -- that we can take things at our own pace -- but it's maybe a bit skewed.  Exploration is my whole paradigm for looking at games and tends to be how I evaluate them.

i think that even if games don't *add* to a story, who cares? what matters is audience. here's an example: what did the harry potter movies add that the harry potter books didn't already have? not much, except: a larger audience, a different audience, introducing new people to the books

games are similar. media affects who is going to see something. if more people will see your story in game form (or visual novel form) than in book form, that's justification alone for making it a game or visual novel rather than a book

according to what i've read, only 13% of people read a book to completion for pleasure in the last year. but, i suspect, way more than that have played a videogame to completion in the last year. so videogames currently have a much larger audience than novels do

so basically, even if you like to write stories and don't care about videogames, it'd often be better to put your story in a videogame than in a book, because more people will likely see it

I used to believe this myself. Nowadays, I think games don't necessarily need multiple choices to push the envelope when it comes to narrative. That's one possible direction, and I still love it when games manage to give me the feeling of choice, but now I admit it's not the only direction.

I've rather become interested in how games could tell a linear story in ways other mediums can't. The presentation can also make a huge difference in emotional investment as long as the game creates a fascinating world, even when the player is ultimately helpless in how that world is created.

What I'm trying to say is that control is not the only variable in immersion.

I think one of the big problems with people trying to tell a story through a game is they try and tell a complete story. If a developer forces their player to go down a particular path just so they will see all elements of the developer's fabulous story, they are doing it wrong. Writing for a video game is about telling part of a story and setting up mechanics so that the player can tell the rest of it.

The difficulty of writing for games isn't that games use different tools to tell a story than film or books. It is because games can't tell a story without the players interaction. Through that interaction the player contributes part of the story, and that part may be much different than the writer's original intent.

I think this is only true for first person stories in games.  When I'm playing a good well written protagonist I *want* to go down that story

That's true, but it is possible for a game to make the player think that he has many choices, but is actually incentivized by the game to take one specific path, so that all players experience the same story but still feel responsible for their own actions. For example, in Bioshock the player naturally chooses follows the instructions that Atlas gives him without question, and the game uses this choice as an element of the story. In this case, the player actively contributes his part of the story and sincerely believes that it is his own contribution, but the contribution is exactly what the writer intended. It's a win-win situation.

However, you are ultimately correct in the sense that, even if a game does do this, it is impossible to prevent all "unintended" player contributions to the story. in Bioshock the player can still add unintended contributions by doing stupid crap like making his character teabag every enemy he kills or repeatedly charge at a wall with a wrench. The player character as the writers intended him to be wouldn't do those things.

I can't speak for the others, but I wrote about games as a means for linear storytelling because games are obviously more capable than prose or film for non-linear storytelling (simply in that choices are possible). If you want to tell a non-linear story, telling it through a game or interactive fiction is an obvious choice. If you want to tell a linear one, then you have many more choices of media - so in that case the question of "why write for games" instead of books or film is more relevant.

well if he's just looking for why to have linear stories in games rather than no stories, i think the most obvious thing is: because people like games with stories. story-heavy games sell pretty well. the trend in games for the last 30 years has been towards more story, not less. it's what people want. isn't that reason enough? to make people happy, to give people what they want?

as for a more philosophical reason why, i think it's basically that most people care more about people (characters) than they do about things (mechanics). 'save the pink dot' isn't as motivating as 'save the princess'. whenever a game doesn't have a story, i don't really see any reason to play it for very long; it's like: why am i killing these dudes? who are they, what do they want? what's the point in all this fighting? what is this world that i'm wandering around in, what's its history? who am i, do i have a family, where was a born? if questions like that are unanswered, the game doesn't have enough context to be interesting, because it's only about abstract objects rather than people, it's not relatable

To be honest, I think this thread is full of valid opinions- I think that games, just like every other artistic medium, will constantly keep moving forward and there's no one "right way" to use the medium.

Cave Story, for example, has a lot more lines of dialogue than Don't Look Back, but both were effective in their narrative; I felt like I plenty of emotions at the end of both games, it's just that both games took very different approaches to storytelling. =

That said, I do believe that games need to continue combining gameplay with storytelling in order to advance as a medium.
I love lengthy cutscenes as much as the next guy, but some of the most memorable parts of games I've played happened when I was actually acting out a part of the game's story; the ending of Bastion comes to mind. While I'm not going to spoil it for anybody who hasn't played it, would that penultimate scene have been nearly as strong if it was just a static cutscene?

Also, this is my first post here, hopefully there are many more to come :D

Good points. When it comes down to it, I guess that I'm answering the question "If you want to write, why write for games and not something else?", while you're answering "If you want to make games, why write for them?". Narrative clearly strengthens games, but do games strengthen narratives? I think that they can be reciprocally beneficial to each other.

well, i mentioned audience earlier: more people play videogames than read novels. so if you want an audience, and want to write a story, putting it in a game will get you more attention. just in terms of sheer economics, it's very hard to make a living selling novels, compared to selling games. i mean, both are hard, but as hard as it is with games, it's even harder with novels. something like 299 out of every 300 novels are rejected by publishers. and self-publishing your novel as an ebook or something isn't as developed or as viable as self-publishing your game is

also, with novels, standards of writings are higher. a novel that's only mediocre would be way above-average as a game. that's another reason; if you write for games you aren't competing against doestevsky or hemingway, you're only competing with kojima or something. for an illustration of this, read the comments to the immortal defense greenlight page (in my sig) -- almost all of them praise the story. but if that game were a novella instead, a) nobody would have heard of it since it'd have gotten less attention, and b) it wouldn't be as notable because it'd be competing with all the sci-fi classics, which set a much higher bar

I feel like game storytelling only reaches its full potential when the message is delivered primarily through the gameplay itself. Games are an almost uniquely participatory medium and reusing the same narrative techniques (e.g. pre-written linear story) from more passive forms like film and (to a lesser extent) written fiction will rarely have the same impact as they would in their original form.

This is a bit difficult to expand on, but take for example a game like Far Cry 3. For all the ways in which it succeeds it's a game beset with a staggering level of (ugh) ludonarrative dissonance. There are two distinct stories there which have almost nothing to do with each other. The "story" story is your typical privileged white manchild coming-of-age affair with a side of "becoming a monster to stop a monster" and a sprinkle of mystic nonsense. The story told by the gameplay is that of a supersoldier's murderous holiday jungle romp. It's not too hard to deduce which story the game does a better job of telling (what's your most vivid memory of the game, a scripted plot point or a moment of gameplay?).

A game's real story isn't written in English but in C++ (pick your language).

Well-spoken, d.  Well-spoken.


So here's my story:

I had a narrative I had designed, based on a dream, and begun writing as a short story.  The idea grew and I decided to make it a game instead.  I did this because I wanted to do the story justice with my best skills, but I was also aware of a great conflict that created.  You can't simply move something from one medium to another.  It is deeply changed.

I spent some time pondering this conflict and what ultimately shook me out of my indecision was a Jon Blow talk about mechanics.  (I can't remember which one, exactly.)  I conceived a system of game mechanics that would uphold the story, in which every atomic action taken by the player is a meaningful action taken by the character in the narrative.  A system that is explorative in nature, suiting my favorite type of play.  The story has developed greatly since that decision, and the game design alongside it.  It's become a somewhat co-dependent relationship.

I've waited and delayed and fiddled with a lot of technical ambitions and now I'm making headway.  I don't know if I'm doing things right, or if my story and game will be as cohesive as I expect, but I feel a warmth on the horizon.  I'm writing this game because I'm excited to step into this world I've been dreaming of and meet its people.

It sounds silly, but I write for games because I want to bring that dream to the waking world.

I think the medium in which you deliver a story is very important. If you' writing for games you are communicating the story and the person's experience will shift. Some stories will work better in some mediums than other, whilst some seem more adaptable.
I often think about the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy since it has so many different versions in different mediums Radio play, text adventure, film, tv series. All of those are enjoyable in their own way, but still offer a different experience.
I also think the idea of using gameplay to tell the story make sense, " show not tell" is often repeated bit of advice for writers and I don't see why games are any different.

(Hello by the way, I've been lurking here for a while and this thread seemed really interesting to me so I thought I'd jump in.)

This thread is a good one. Sometimes we do well.

Games are powerful because of mechanics, obviously, relative to other mediums. Writing for games is about enhancing your story with mechanics, or your mechanics with your story, or both at the same time (in the ideal scenario).

I don't like the idea of writing for books because I don't feel liberated by the thought. I know technology. I know like, a lot of technology. I also know teamwork, and I like frontiers. Games are heavy on all 3 of these things. Books are not. Books are best written when the author wants to express an idea that doesn't suit games, or can't get the funding for it; books fund cheaper.

Want to write about Russian history? How much detail do you want to include? Or do you just want to capture a particular sensation and drill it in your reader's/player's brain? The answers to these questions are the kind that determine where your writing talent belongs.

Anyway, good thread.

I think it depends on the game you're making. If you're trying to deliver a powerful plot-driven experience then writing is unnecessary for the same reason its needed in any other form of media (Such as Mass Effect). Likewise if your game's experience is based around introspection or say interaction with the game's mechanics (Such as Anti-Chamber) then writing would detract for the actual experience.

Here is a new video talking about just this (Mostly about characters and the hero in the game)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qEzNrjTzC-s#!

She says pretty interesting things about not why she writes for games but why players want a written game.

I don't always put narrative in games,
but when I do, it's to tell a story...

This can be as simple as conveying a single series of events that mean something to me, and I want to share with the player.  For example, the story of a puzzle game can be quite linear: short blurbs or scripted events that relate some narrative to the level's solution and hint at the new obstacle or mechanic to employ.   Wik and the Fable of Souls (http://www.wikgame.com/) employed this techinque, but they were a bit over wordy, IMO.  World of Goo's sign painter is a great example, and it has great writing -- The bare minimum game mechanics are fine, but with just a bit of story you can add a lot of interest.  With a weird universe like those I kind of wanted to know why I was swinging with my tongue, spitting honey at the beast, or why the goo was going into the pipe, why the world went digital all of a sudden...  Without a story these would have still been good games, but the weirdness would be nonsensical Just being weird for weird's sake is fine, but it's usually better received if there's some reason.

Humans seem good at picking up on the story that's embedded in events that they can (somewhat) understand.  You can understand why killing a child would cause the adults near-by to fight you to the death, but in more abstract or alien worlds narrative can serve to explain events that would otherwise be meaningless.

When I first started playing games they didn't have any graphics.  You had a dialog with the game itself, in text.  You could type "look door" to get a description of the door, or "hit monster" to fight something.  Walking around was usually something like "go west" and then you'd get an overview description of the surroundings you were now in.  You could even move in 3D in my favorite multi-player text-based games (see: MUDs, like Crossroads (http://crossroadsoftheelements.com)).

Now, lots of people seem to miss out on the important things that we learned back in the era of text based gaming, despite nearly all other games, from Adventure to puzzle, from RPG to MMORPG, being direct descendent's of the genre.

Firstly:  You can give the player narrative overload.  Say what's important.  The trick is to be clever and funny with the least amount of words, and not to be too repetitive / annoying -- Jokes get old FAST in games.  E.g., no matter how funny the 1st time, by the 3rd time hearing it I was sick of the Psychonauts voice actors, especially for needlessly lengthy explanations of inventory items you have to frequently and repeatedly purchase, "you take that psi-core there, and you put it together with... blah, blah, blah" I wanted to kill that old bastard more than any boss.

Secondly: Just like you can get lost in a book, narrative can actually be quite immersive, even if it's just text.  Story isn't just about the story arc.

Thirdly: In a text based game EVERYTHING is made of words, but there are many different ways to use words!  Words don't always mean "narrative".  The description of a Gun in a menu, can tie into the story, but it can just as well be part of the world's setting.  It's important to make the distinction between linear narrative, essential informative data, and world crafting.

It's easy as a writer to make the mistake of lumping all that together and overloading the main narrative with too many descriptions of things and explanations of stuff.   It's also easy to not include enough narrative and leave players feeling that there's no meaning to their actions.

Now that we have graphics we don't have to use words for everything, but the lessons of writing in these old non-graphical games still apply.  For instance in a text based game it's easy to tell a story using only world crafting:
------
You're at the edge of a small sunny clearing in the trees.  Dense forest surrounds you in every direction but east.
> go east
Many blackened tree stumps dot the lonely clearing of the surrounding canopy.
Charred earth crunches loudly beneath the young grass with each step.
The sun glints from a tiny spot on the ground nearby.
> look ground
You've uncovered the skeletal remains of a fallen warrior.
There is a round steel shield, iron sword, and skull on the ground.
> get shield
You pickup the round steel shield.  It reeks of brimstone.
------

These descriptions use world crafting techniques to tell the fateful story of a brave knight's last fight with a dragon.  Some would call this "telling a story with gameplay", but the gameplay had nothing to do with the story.  The player could have easily left the remains, or passed through the clearing without discovering the dead knight.  The game plays the same if there were just a sword and shield left in the middle of the forest.  The player may or may not discover similar clearings in the forest with signs of other battles: magical dragon scales, lost supplies, the knights dead horse. (>kick dead horse.  "You find this strangely satisfying.")  We can incorporate the writing into gameplay by having nearby townsfolk reward you if you give back the family shield, or send you on a quest to get revenge on the dragon.  We can just as easily leave the dead knight's story as is, just adding a bit of interesting historical detail to the world.

I write all sorts of little stories to flesh out the history of each part of a game world.  This adds richness and depth -- What makes the real world feel so real is all of the history behind everything you see...  To me a game's narrative is simply the top slice of the game world's history: what's happening "now".

I don't have to tell all of the story via direct narrative, and not all writing detracts from gameplay: "There was a fierce battle in this clearing between a knight and a dragon, blah blah blah" (ugh).  Much better to weave that little story into the world and let the player decide how much to experience of the game's narrative.

In a visual game these same world crafting techniques can be employed -- You would make the actual clearings and place the items, trigger the sound effects instead of describing them, but why the world looks the way it does IS a result of "writing" the history of that place.  Not all games need writing: Tetris doesn't need it -- However, Tetris Worlds does have writing, you beat levels to make worlds inhabitable for the Minos because their star is dying.  The settings and cute customizable cube characters add atmosphere to an otherwise very abstract game where completing different objectives with blocks changes the look of the world for some reason.  The sparse narrative in Tetris Worlds gives meaning to why the worlds start out desolate and end up lush (besides rewarding the player with visual interests).

There are many different ways to communicate events and weave a story.  The non-linear narrative of world crafting can be used to weave a thousand stories into the game, and give the player the freedom to go out into the world you've made and discover their own story.

-----

This is sort of an aside, but one thing I've noticed is that with the advent of graphics and sound and voice actors game assets got MUCH more expensive to make than in the old text-based game days.  As a result the worlds are typically more sparse, there is less world crafting, and every asset is sort of thrown in your face over the course of the game.  Thus, the games lose replay value, and feel less real.  For example, in that text based BBS MUD I even detailed the inside of the knight's skull's eye sockets.  It took me less than 30 seconds to do so, and I didn't care if the asset actually contributed to the story or gameplay, it was for atmosphere and a nice place to put a little non-intrusive comedic relief.

-----

I'm not saying that writing based games are better, just that we should reflect back on them because much like an old timer, these old games still have lots to teach about game design.  The next time you're pixel arting a wall do some writing and give it a bit of character -- You don't have to use words to tell the player the story of how that brick got cracked -- it doesn't matter whom the blood that now stains it belonged to; The world tells tiny tales of forgotten history to create character.

Well said, VortexCortex.

Yes, thanks VortexCortex. A really thought-provoking post.

I think people who see text as being automatically inferior to graphics often forget that they are essentially saying that apples are way better than oranges. I can personally vouch for the fact that some people really do prefer to read. In terms of how much I enjoy and appreciate various art-forms, reading will always come first, then games, music and visual art on about a par, then film and TV. Of course, this will vary for everyone.

Text engages the brain in an entirely different way to other media. I never find myself reading a book and thinking 'Oh man, I wish they'd make this into a film,' and my favourite books are pretty unfilmable. Similarly, a lot of the games I play are text adventures and I really do think we're set for a renaissance in interactive fiction - games and books have already started to mate awkwardly on iPads and kindles (for anyone who hasn't already, by the way, check out Em Short's new Versu engine, released yesterday - it's very interesting). So even outside of the need for stories and characters, I think there will always be a call for the written word in games.

I grew up on games, and I've studied Theatre for years; the more I think about it, the more those two media have in common.

Consider this: When a playwright writes a play, he has a story to tell. A kills B, and C needs to get revenge.

Since it's a play, though, there's only so much you can give to the actors. The dialogue is usually spoken word for word, and stage directions (He moves upstage or (Angrily):) are typically heeded. But, ultimately, it's up to the director and the actor, two outside bodies that the playwright doesn't know when he's writing them, to interpret the work. Laurence Olivier's Hamlet is much different from David Tennant's, for example. Then there's also the set designer, the costume designer, the lighting designer... all sorts of artists who come in and change the original project from being a play to being a production.

(Of course, there are occasions where the play is being written as the production is being established, and the playwright will accommodate the designers and actors, but after that in initial production, it's an open field. Unless it's Samuel Beckett.)

In video games, you have the original product, which is a game. But, like a play, it's just a shell. It needs another person or group of people to make it complete. Without players, what is a game?

Games are meant to be interpreted, and a player's interpretation is the way they play. When I played Mark of the Ninja, I made it my mission not to kill a single guard. I wanted to resist the corruption of the tattoos. It made the climax that much more heart breaking for me. Despite all I did to try and stop it... I can't change my destiny.

In this way, I consider the player as being an artist as much as the developers. Just as acting is a skill, so is gaming. In fact, the word 'player' used to refer specifically to what we know as actors today, playing a play.

So, why write for games?

I write plays. The joy in dramaturgy comes in knowing it's not finished. There's still interpretation to be done. Why does Hamlet say 'To be or not to be'? Is he contemplating suicide? Or is he trying to make the people spying on him think he's depressed, so they won't suspect him of plotting a murder?

I make games. The joy in gamedev comes in knowing it's not finished. There's still interpretation to be done. Why does the Kid smash those ashen figures of people he used to know? Is he mad? Is he paying his respects? Does he want to erase them from memory? Does he even smash them in the first place?

The difference is that I've consumed more games than any other medium. It's what I know, so it's what I'm going to make. 

Very insightful comparison, mysteriosum.  Wisely spoken.  <3

I don't have time to find it right now, but there's this great interview on Rock Paper Shotgun with one of the creators of Kentucky Route Zero about theatre's influences on the game. It might interest you.

EDIT: Okay, here it is.
Part 1:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/22/interview-kentucky-route-zeros-mountain-of-meanings/
Part 2:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/23/what-lies-ahead-for-kentucky-route-zero/

I write games because it's more personally exciting for me to see the characters and story "come to life", and I have a background in visual art as well as writing.

Sure, if I could screenwrite a movie, I would, but this is the easiest way to me to do that and also see my work disseminated.

That's not to say that I like games that play like movies, far from it. I like giving a certain degree of interactivity, but I also like games that are story-heavy.

It'd be cool to see IF make a comeback, but just as cool would be to see text parsers make a comeback. They had their problems but they had their strengths as well, and it was like instead of working through those problems everyone just gave up on them. The common complaint was the discrepancy between a player's expectations of what words the game should understand and what words the game actually could understand. Well, we have games today that can understand every noun you can find in a dictionary and even show you a relevant graphic for it. (Scribblenauts, I think?) Would a game that can understand every verb be impossible?

The one text parser game I recall getting a lot of enjoyment out of was Trilby's Notes.  And that's a recent-ish (mid-00s?) one.

I notice an interesting divide in this thread between the discussion of text (literal "writing") in games and story (figurative "writing") in games -- the latter is the original topic and the former might be good material for a new thread if somebody wants to boot one up.

I did something to that effect. (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=31684.0) I'll take any chance I can get to talk about my favourite Paper Mario moment.
:handthumbsupL: ;D :handthumbsupR:

EDIT: had the wrong url, oops

In response to the original post, I'd say you are completely correct, Evan. Some stories are better told through a game than through a movie or book. In a movie/book, you are watching a character experience the world around him. As a story writer for a game, you are saying "I have this world in my head. I don't want you to watch somebody experience my world, I want you to experience it for yourself."

Non-interactive media only lets you see what the narrator sees. Games let you go explore. And any fantasy/sci-fi writer will tell you that the setting is the most important part of the story.

Feels like exploration is often talked about when people want to describe how they feel immersed in a game. And I think that leads to the essence of discovery, which is kind of present in both books and movies in the way that we don't know what is going to happen next.
I never read the summary for movies anymore since you then sit there for 30-45min and just wait to catch up with what you read. So, I think it is in the moments of suprise and understanding that we harvest the feeling of being immersed, which must be one of the most rewarding feedback a writer could get, to have the audience believing and feeling the story/setting/characters...

A good creative writer can most likely bring forth these moments in either medium. What I think games are doing wrong is that they cloud the story and the in-game world with things that doesn't give anything back to the story, like collecting coins or grind for experience points.
I also think that games could be better at giving their worlds a history. Most games have wonderful worlds that we don't really get to experience or understand something about. They just exist as eye candy for the player to run through.

I would like to see more games that focus on the whole experience and try to weave all aspects of the game together. Where story, visuals and game design can compliment eachother and exist without conflicting.

Re-enforcing-mechanics are important. They should be everywhere. Coins are stupid, except in Mario, because they make sense there.

Like, spend a shit-ton of time figuring out what your environment is, then build mechanics that re-enforce that. Do not do anything else. Ugh. Games.

Is there a tat of irony in the Mario statement? :) Otherwise I would like to hear the argument for coins making sense in the Mario games. I have not really played any of the recent Mario games so the sense of coins might have been introduced in there somewhere. But from my view of the older games I see no context connected point to collecting coins. Especially not from a writers/story point of view.
Maybe if the Princess had violated some law and Mario was going to bail her out, that would have made some sense. Or if you would tie it to her being kidnapped and Mario needed money to pay the ransom.
Though, while playing a Mario game the actual story is not really in focus, at least not in the NES ones where the coins were introduced.

And I don't think you have to start with the environment and build mechanics around that. Me and a friend are creating a game where the mechanics were the interesting thing to begin with. So we rather spent a lot of time re-enforcing those mechanics when creating the environment and story. And that have been working really well so far. Re-enforcment I then think should go both ways. There is probably no blueprint for creating an immersive experience but paying attention to details and put thought in connecting all aspects of the game will most likey pay off in a good slightly more immersive way.
 

I wasn't trying to say environments come before mechanics, just that they need to re-enforce each other. The order is up to the dev.

No irony in the Mario statement. Mario is huge for a reason.... The design is good. The coins make as much sense as the koopas. They are silly and fun to interact with. They link together with everything else thematically, aesthetically. Where does plot ever factor into Mario? How is plot relevant? (As you said).

I agree with you Graham.
And you have a good point in that Mario makes sense in the way that nothing makes sense.

Haha, this made me want to watch that old live-action Bob Hoskins - Mario Bros. movie, it probably has some good answers to the themes of the Mario universe...

That movie is awesome. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. It does explore a tangent on the themes though, awesome tangents.

The focus of Mario is on the gameplay, and coins are a tool for the level designers to add pure gameplay dynamic to their art. If there were no coins in Mario, there would still be... let us call them 'encounters'; however, each encounter would either be reduced in complexity, or even, straight up, contain fewer challenges. Consider this encounter:

(http://s3.postimage.org/rmxt42vsc/bendrowned.png)

Without the coins, this encounter is pretty straight-forward. Choose to either swim under the plant or go over the plant. Even with the coins, the option is there to skip them entirely.

Important to note is that the plant spits four fire balls that fall through any collision. Looking at the image, you can see that one of those fire balls is perfectly positioned to go straight through the Yoshi coin. Swimming is already enough of a challenge in Mario, now you have to eke in there between fire-volleys in order to get the coin. Then the question arises: do you go for the little coins that don't matter?

This is a point where coins offer the player an opportunity for self-expression (which is sometimes toted as the most important aspect of game design). I would get those coins, heck yes the danger is worth it! I got the coins! It's sort of a compulsion. But I mean, it's a little silly. That's a difficult passage, and the coins' total value is 3/100 of one life. But I identify as the type of person who would go out of his way to get coins, because I like the challenge. Some people couldn't care less about coins, or think that the Yoshi coins are necessary but each other coin is pointless, as long as they're good enough and don't die often.

This is the beauty of the level design in Mario, and frankly, one of the reasons I'm interested in 'writing for games.' If we look at games as text (in the same way as a film or painting is text, each open to interpretation), levels are the chapters and these encounters are the paragraphs. There is a literacy involved, and level design has a whole bunch of tropes all on its own...
/rant

Coins should be like 20 to a life, and just be less of them. Maybe even 10. Yoshi coins aren't great because they don't stack - you need all 5 in one level for them to matter at all.

Coins were way cooler back when I was a kid and couldn't figure out their real value. When you get older they are a pass-time and some times monotonous. Coins are great, could be better.

I take a little issue with the notion that strategy and challenge are mediums for self-expression.  By that logic any kind of motivation a player experiences induces a form of expression, which makes the idea a bit more broad than I'm comfortable with for game design purposes.  But then I suppose we're getting into semantics.

I guess I tend to regard anything that the player approaches as an optimization problem as a situation with no potential for expressive decisions.  Economics is a science, not an art.

Whoa that is so not true my mind hurts just a little. Strategy for one is defined by its abstractness. Good strategists rely on instinct. That's what makes it strategy.

Second. Action, tactics, puzzles and so on may have right answers but varied execution. Watch pro Starcraft players play. Each one has a style. Look at sports. Exact same thing there.

A correct answer will always have insane freedom on the path to get there. Think about the Olympics. Olympians who win find novel patterns to run their lives by to squeeze the extra inches out of their abilities. Training hard is definitely not enough.

You have to make your training program, mental state, everything suit who you are as best as you can. Beyond that many strategic problems have many correct solutions, or as they are in games, have some solutions that require a different skill set to execute than others, making a strategic choice even more stylistic.

Good thought though.

Not necessarily. I remember coming across a video that talked about there being two types of decisions in games: "problems" and "choices." The former are the optimization problems you are talking about (what do I need to do to get the highest score, kill these guys and take the least damage, get the best weapon, etc), while the later refer to decisions that do not have an optimal outcome (which character should I romance, what color should my character be, etc).

This raises the questions of whether only making "choices" in games are self-expressive, and solving "problems" is not, and whether allowing for multiple methods of solving a problem, none of which are clearly superior, allows for expression.

Right. Optimal outcome: I rescue the Princess. It's my choice whether or not to get the Yoshi coin, because it puts me in danger. It is frequently not optimal at all. I would spend multiple lives getting a Yoshi coin whose only purpose is to give me a life if I get all 5. But, afterwards, it's a point of pride - I got all the Yoshi coins in all the levels! (I actually haven't set out to do this... yet... but have in recent Mario games which have similar ingredients.) This decision is part of what makes me me; this is how I play games. It's not how my roommate plays games. :O

The more I think about it, the more I think of 1P games as a performance art. I was playing VVVVVV time trials at one point and I realized it's all muscle memory and flow - the same things required when I played cello.


Coins serve multiple purposes, beyond simply giving lives, which wouldn't be possible if their value was increased so. If placed correctly, they can train a player to jump at exactly the right point, optimizing their height. On a mine-cart level, they could hint at where you're going to need to jump. There are rooms full of coins, where the challenge then becomes to collect as many as possible as the screen moves along steadily - it becomes just as urgent as getting to the end of the level, but it's just pure joy in collecting so many freaking coins. It even opens up a new level of potential strategizing and experimentation: should I make long, high jumps or lots of smaller ones?

Though one thing I must say: bananas > coins. Donkey Kong Country 2 made the best use of collectibles I can think of to date.

I am very new to all this. But if feels like most of the arguments for Mario Coins are based on game design, where they are put to good use.

While being part of a small team I can see that being both a writer and a game designer can be done by one person. But isn't writing for a game different from designing a game?

In an ideal world there would probably be a unity between writing and design where things make sense in both terms, or as was mentioned above, a complete lack of sense where things have no resonalble connection, which then would create a sense out of not making sense.

Could the Mario Coins then have been 'anything' really, since they are mostly there for design purposes anyway? Of course they might be of a symbolic value, since money is something that we work hard for to collect and use, to pay for a living.
Though I don't think symbolism should be applied to a Mario game.

From a design point of view you would probably want to design a Mario Game, but solely from a writers point of view, not so much in my opinion.

Coins are great. I know what their purpose is. What I am saying is that they wear thin after a while. Most coins don't become interesting after a while. You see coins accessible to a tricky jump and you don't go for them because they aren't worth it. They are often useless achievement points - not always but often.

A simple fix. Remove the Yoshi coins. Make 2 coins value sizes. Have the 1 cent ones, and then 5 cent ones.

Mario is a game about being terrible at Mario, and the coins are best suited to that. They are less useful when you are good.

Mario 64 made 'em health points, trying to shove their value back in. Then they made New Super Mario Bros 2, which was all about a million coins. Nintendo is trying to make the coin valuable. They want it to be valuable but not so much that it unbalances play. So they made 'em almost valuable.

I agree with DKC being better. Bananas there are much easier to collect, can come in bunches - x10 - and are often given for free. You also aren't given 3 bananas for a ridiculous jump. You are given 3 for a single jump. Crazy jumps give you 20, and not in some separate room that takes 10 seconds to move around, in 2 bunches that you glide through.

I find myself counting my banana supply in DKC, squeezing out an extra life when I need it, getting to the next save point on the edge. In Mario free lives are more like excitement points from coins.

Bananas also take up less space. Though I think both games could have improved their placement of their collectibles. They didn't always consider balancing. Makes the games far less replayable.

edit:

Another difference between Mario and DKC: Mario coins often require you to take a slower route to get somewhere. DKC bananas are often on the way though trickier to get.

I don't see a huge separation between writing and level design. I think not seeing them as the same thing is often an issue in game design.

Screenwriters can to control the length of the scenes - approximately - in their work, their tone, who is in them, what order they come in. In games the scriptwriters can control only some of that stuff. The level design adds so much more, that controls the same feelings as the script does.

Imagine a script that at the end of every scene there is a blank page that says, "now a bunch of random things happen for 1-10 minutes." That's game script writing. You have to consider the level design because the player is always being traded between the two: script and level.

The idea that music and script and design and animation and environment art are these separate things are what can get you into trouble. The backbone are the mechanics I think then everything else grows out from there.