tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093379.post115539285982574209..comments2023-11-02T15:47:29.001+00:00Comments on particleblog: Stories Etc. ReduxTadhghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14763670950211297013noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093379.post-1155639121886412842006-08-15T10:52:00.000+00:002006-08-15T10:52:00.000+00:00How many great adventure movies are there as oppos...<I>How many great adventure movies are there as opposed to how many rubbish ones? easily 1 to 10, probably even lower.</I><BR/><BR/>Sure, 90% of adventure stories are crud because 90% of everything is crud! (With apologies to <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law" REL="nofollow">Sturgeon</A> ;)<BR/><BR/><I>How many are as memroable as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The 39 Steps? Very few.</I><BR/><BR/>Yes, but adventure stories (and adventure movies) have been and still are being written (and made). Should people stop writing adventure stories because so few are quality? Sometimes a story is written just to be enjoyed, not to make a lasting cultural impression. We are, after all, still in the business of entertaining people, and some entertainment happens to be mental cotton candy. Yes, I'd like games to be considered "Art" as much as anyone else, but that doesn't mean that each and every bit has to be high art. Especially as we're trying to find our legs in this whole "storytelling" thing.<BR/><BR/><I>Far be it from me to issue a blank statement of populism equating to quality, but I think that there is a case to be made that in many cases, the Avalon Hill style games are actually poor games and their interest value is purely one drawn out of simulationist interest rather than play interest.</I><BR/><BR/>And...? There's nothing wrong with servicing a niche. From a design point of view, making something you feel passionately about and being able to share that passion with other people can be rewarding. From a business point of view, servicing a niche well can be easier and more profitable than trying to challenge the 800 ton juggernaut that's chewed through all the low-hanging fruit. Popularity does not equal quality, no matter what people may say in our industry. Just because <A HREF="http://www.meridian59.com/" REL="nofollow">my game</A> doesn't have subscriber numbers to compete with WoW does not mean it's not worthy of attention and respect.<BR/><BR/><I>Poetry is not about simplification, it is about synthesis and density. Metaphor, use of language, position of phrase, rhyme, meter, development of theme, even in apparently "free verse" poems, requires tonnes of structure.</I><BR/><BR/>Poetry certainly is about simplification, especially when you compare it to prose. All those elements you mention as important for poetry can be an important part of prose, so what really makes poetry different? It's the simplification; you can't write 5 pages of backstory for a character in a sonnet. You can't have five paragraphs of flowery description in a haiku.<BR/><BR/>Now, just because poetry is simplified compared to prose does not mean the forms are simplistic. The highly structured nature is why you have to simplify your words. In fact, you leave more unsaid than you say, and this is why I think it is applicable to games. Making everything explicit, like people tend to do in prose, makes it had to integrate into a game and still allow for interactivity.<BR/><BR/>Finally, I've never meant to imply that I think we need to disregard structure in stories. On the contrary, most of my arguments have been that we need to learn a different structure for storytelling in games than we do in other media. But, this difference in structure will be radical compared to the changes we've seen before.<BR/><BR/>Now, go write your blog post, Tadhg, so we have something new to discuss and tear apart. ;)<BR/><BR/>Have fun.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093379.post-1155591377212619852006-08-14T21:36:00.000+00:002006-08-14T21:36:00.000+00:00Thanks to everyone for the interesting discussion,...Thanks to everyone for the interesting discussion, it has been a pleasure to read.<BR/><BR/>Tadhg, I appreciate your description of stories as deepening, brittle structure and I don't see how anyone would disagree that the quality of a story is heavily tied into the complexity and uniqueness of it's structure. I also can't see anyone disagreeing with the contention that an interactive version of a story, could such a thing exist, would be less structured and thus of lesser quality than a traditional version. No surprise, a red ball is clearly more red than a purple one. If there ever is an interactive story it will be judged not by structure alone but by how it combines structure with freedom.<BR/><BR/>Where you lose me is when you jump from lesser quality to cannot exist. I would be interested to hear you talk not about the top of the spectrum, not the best stories, but the bottom. The stories that lack the structure that could have made them great but, to all appearances, are still stories. Or more interesting, a compelling scene or character in an otherwise disjoint whole. You rule out every possible "story-ish experience" in an interactive medium, which seems an overstated conclusion based on the arguments you present.<BR/><BR/>Thanks again all.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093379.post-1155482686914090652006-08-13T15:24:00.000+00:002006-08-13T15:24:00.000+00:00Hey Brian, thanks for the replyTake the adventure ...Hey Brian, thanks for the reply<BR/><BR/><I>Take the adventure story</I><BR/><BR/>Not so fast there. How many great adventure movies are there as opposed to how many rubbish ones? easily 1 to 10, probably even lower. How many are as memroable as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The 39 Steps? Very few. <BR/><BR/>Why is this? Because the various parts that make up Raiders and 39 are arranged in such a way that they really maximise tension and exhiliration. If one scene or one chapter were out of place in either story, they would be far less than they turned out to be. That is structure in action. Whil a great adventure story may appear to be more easily put together, in truth they are as hard as any other kind of story. The *plot* may not have the same level of structure that a political thriller does, but that is only one part of structure. <BR/><BR/>The villains and such are not that interchangeable at all. They may tend toward the more two-dimensional, but the question is which two dimensions. If the bad guys in Raiders weren't a combination of a torturer, a decadent Frenchmen with a certain respect for Dr Jones and an uber-clipped Nazi, would the film be the same? No, not close. Who would you have to love to hate? Where would the interplay of the characters come from? These are all things that feed into and derive from the structure. <BR/><BR/><I>First, just because the story derives from something mundane does not mean it is not a story.</I><BR/><BR/>I didn't say they were, but you're side-stepping the point here, which is that these theatres of experience are not themselves generating the stories, but rather it is the random occurences within these theatres that may or may not give rise to them. Most games of football, days at the office and so on don't result in interesting events, and while you can create stories based on mundanity, that is as much and artificial creation of an author as any other.<BR/><BR/><I>Sure, but this is just accurate as saying in the game you only have the potential for fun, and that is outside the control of the game designer. While this is strictly true (players can and sometimes do sabotage their own fun), designers that fail to make games considered "fun" do not deserve to be called designers.</I><BR/><BR/>And the way to do that is to make the fiction interesting, or the game mechanics balanced, or both. Like I say, I have a whole theory that I'm prepping at the moment that I hope to answer this in more complete detail with. <BR/><BR/><I>I would argue that this is because the rules for Tic-Tac-Toe are too simple. The rules, particularly rules about board size, do not allow for much variation. Add in a bit more complexity, such as having four 4x4 grids and trying to connect four in a row, and you get a much more interesting game. The game required a touch more complexity to become fun. And, Chess and Go are significantly more complicated even than the 4x4x4 game. Trying to simplify either of these games down to this level would diminish them.</I><BR/><BR/>This is why I've been choosing to use the word 'elegance' rather than simplicity where I can. I'm talking about where the rules and mechanics are reduced down to the point where there are as few as possible, and yet still the game is fun. TicTacToe's lack of board area is the very thing that imbalances it, which is why it doesn't work. 4x4 is more interesting. However, 5x5 or 6x6 or 20x20 would likely be less fun because it would become quickly futile to establish a long line. More complexity in this instance = bad.<BR/><BR/>And Chess and Go are elegant. In real terms, Go consists of two piece types, some very basic rules of interaction and some very basic rules of movement. Chess likewise. They aren't *complicated* games. They are balanced games, and their balance gives rise to emergent complexity. <BR/><BR/><I>Further, some games require complexity to fulfill their purpose. For example, war games require a lot of complexity in order to create a simulation of the circumstances of war. Simplifying the rules would make the game much less interesting to the people that enjoy playing it for strategy.</I><BR/><BR/>That depends on the people. The most popular war boardgame in the world is Risk. Diplomacy is also massively popular, and it is pretty abstract. Some of the more Avalon Hill-ish wargames, on the other hand, are so complicated that the player that wins is frequently the one that remembers all the rules.<BR/><BR/>Far be it from me to issue a blank statement of populism equating to quality, but I think that there is a case to be made that in many cases, the Avalon Hill style games are actually poor games and their interest value is purely one drawn out of simulationist interest rather than play interest. <BR/><BR/><I><BR/>This is true for some stories, but not all. Some stories are more effective if you keep things simple. Heck, do you think the typical summer Hollywood blockbuster is all about intricate elements? Hell no! Yet, people still go see them and enjoy the "story". True, there are some movies that do have intricate plots, but they tend not to do so well. I think Memento is an awesome movie, but box office receipts didn't agree with me, if I remember correctly.</I><BR/><BR/>But it also didn't have the marketing budget that Pearl Harbour did. Yes, simplicity is good. Jaws is pretty simple, as stories go. However, to think that these stories are not tightly structured is to miss the trick. Jaws *appears* to be a simple tale. In actuality, it's a very well told tale, and that telling comes from the structure of it. When the scenes happen, how the emotion flows from one to the next, when the precise edits and shifts happen, that's all a part of structuring the tale. That's why Jaws remains timeless when so many lesser, poorly structured stories in the blockbuster vein flounder. It's all about structure. <BR/><BR/><I>For an extreme example, consider poetry. It's all about the simplification of emotional content to the core needed to still provoke the emotional reaction. Yes, some poetry is about complicated rules and structure, but some of the most emotional writing is the pieces that use a minimum of structure and excess words.</I><BR/><BR/>All great poetry is an exercise in masterful structure. Poetry is not about simplification, it is about synthesis and density. Metaphor, use of language, position of phrase, rhyme, meter, development of theme, even in apparently "free verse" poems, requires tonnes of structure. Bad poetry, like all sorts of bad writing, lacks structure. Poetry is the most densely loaded and structured of all the written forms.<BR/><BR/><I>And, I completely agree with you. But, the problem is that it tried to apply a rigid structure of a heavily controlled story into what should be a much more flexible medium of a game.</I><BR/><BR/>I disagree. It's a tightly structured, appropriately developing game that understands the relationship between mechanics, fiction and context. Faulting it for not being more flexible is missing the point of the game in the first place. Games are not worlds in which we play characters and parts and live out fantasies. They are fields in which we make moves, accomplish tasks and are rewarded with entertainment value. At their most literal that is.<BR/><BR/><I>I think the people that created the story for God of War did a pretty good job with the story. But, now they have to move beyond what they have learned: they have to apply their storytelling ability to a new medium. This can be hard, because you essentially have to unlearn everything you know about other media and try to formulate new rules for the new media. We'll have a lot of floundering, but I think it's possible that someone, somewhere might actually break through and demonstrate a wonderful combination of gameplay and storytelling. But, we're still a very long ways away from that time.</I><BR/><BR/>You see, I think this is a nice sentiment, but it's baseless to me. The first lesson in "unlearning" to make is that we aren't making stories at all, and many of the assumptions around the philosophies that have inspired this line of think are not, on reflection, grounded in anything other than hopes and wishful thinking. There is a definitive place for fiction in games, and it is right in the heart of them, but it is not and never will be a story (or story-ish) experience or medium.<BR/><BR/>I hope to explain the relationships between the different elements more clearly in the next article (although it might take more than one at this rate :))Tadhghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14763670950211297013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093379.post-1155462020920847432006-08-13T09:40:00.000+00:002006-08-13T09:40:00.000+00:00Tadhg, it is a pleasure to discuss this topic with...Tadhg, it is a pleasure to discuss this topic with someone so thoughtful. I think this may be one of those "we agree to disagree" situations, but this discussion has helped to better form my own opinions.<BR/><BR/>Let me apologize in advance for the massive size of this comment. But, I want to mention a few things to spur the discussion, or at least entertain the spectators. ;)<BR/><BR/><I>How easily it can be changed is directly connected to how complicated the structure of the story has become.</I><BR/><BR/>Sure, and while you're right that a political thriller has a complicated structure, other genres aren't so complicated. Take the adventure story, the tale of a young person engaging in exploits of derring-do. There are a million interchangeable heroes, villains, events, prizes, etc. This type of story is a lot more approachable and dynamic, and a better fit as a story to tell in a game than a political thriller.<BR/><BR/><I>What Brian is actually talking about is the stories that we derive from experience, but what he's missing (in my opinion) is that these stories just derive out of the random events of life. For every interesting thing that happens with a roleplayer's 20th level paladin, there are 45 hours of trudging around killing orcs. For every day that I come home from the office with something interesting to tell, there are four where the day was just dull.</I><BR/><BR/>First, just because the story derives from something mundane does not mean it is not a story. The events of a fantasy adventure may be mundane for the characters in it, but we find it interesting because we don't live in that world. In fact, it is sometimes the fact that it was surrounded by other mundane events that makes the story worth telling. If every single day were high excitement at the office, you probably wouldn't come home with stories for the missus.<BR/><BR/>And, if a paper GM makes me slog through boring hours of slaughtering orcs, I'm not going to be in that game long. Sure, not every combat is going to be an epic tale of putting your life on the line to save the peasants of your kingdom, but a good GM will make even seemingly mundane orc bashing seem exciting, worthy of a story to recount later.<BR/><BR/>This is something we developers see a lot of criticism about in online games. People are tired of slogging through hours of busy work to get to the "fun stuff" and they are calling us on it. There's a delicate balance because you still need some downtime for socialization and to make the epic stuff be more than just rote ordinary stuff.<BR/><BR/><I>In all three cases, with an office, a game of football, a roleplaying game, all you really have is the potential for interesting things to happen. The environments are not creating stories of their own accord. It is the people who create the stories, and that is outside of the control of the game designer, the office manager and the Football Association. You can lead a horse to water....</I><BR/><BR/>Sure, but this is just accurate as saying in the game you only have the <B>potential</B> for fun, and that is outside the control of the game designer. While this is strictly true (players can and sometimes do sabotage their own fun), designers that fail to make games considered "fun" do not deserve to be called designers. (Or, sometimes get promoted to management. ;) Similarly, people who fail to tell compelling stories in games should not be called "storytellers". Just because some individuals can't make fun games does not mean fun games cannot be made. The same can be said for stories.<BR/><BR/><I>Brian is right in that games are all about balance. Tic Tac Toe is simple, but it is not balanced. Therein lies its flaw and the reason why it doesn't have much potential. There is one winning tactic, and therefore all games of Tic Tac Toe are variations on the same game.</I><BR/><BR/>I would argue that this is because the rules for Tic-Tac-Toe are too simple. The rules, particularly rules about board size, do not allow for much variation. Add in a bit more complexity, such as having four 4x4 grids and trying to connect four in a row, and you get a <A HREF="http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=983" REL="nofollow">much more interesting game</A>. The game required a touch more complexity to become fun. And, Chess and Go are significantly more complicated even than the 4x4x4 game. Trying to simplify either of these games down to this level would diminish them.<BR/><BR/>Further, some games require complexity to fulfill their purpose. For example, <A HREF="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1499" REL="nofollow">war games</A> require a lot of complexity in order to create a simulation of the circumstances of war. Simplifying the rules would make the game much less interesting to the people that enjoy playing it for strategy. Similarly, the <A HREF="http://www.mcvideogame.com/" REL="nofollow">McDonald's Video Game</A> could have a vastly simpler interface, but this complexity has a point: It shows that running this type of business has many different layers, and it is really hard to balance it all (in addition to other lessons). Simplifying these games misses the point and diminishes the game.<BR/><BR/><I> The whole skill of writing good stories boils down to the ability to build an intricate matchstick house of elements.</I><BR/><BR/>This is true for some stories, but not all. Some stories are more effective if you keep things simple. Heck, do you think the typical summer Hollywood blockbuster is all about intricate elements? Hell no! Yet, people still go see them and enjoy the "story". True, there are some movies that do have intricate plots, but they tend not to do so well. I think <I>Memento</I> is an awesome movie, but box office receipts didn't agree with me, if I remember correctly.<BR/><BR/>For an extreme example, consider poetry. It's all about the simplification of emotional content to the core needed to still provoke the emotional reaction. Yes, some poetry is about complicated rules and structure, but some of the most emotional writing is the pieces that use a minimum of structure and excess words.<BR/><BR/><I>Brian later addresses God of War, which is interesting because I think God of War is one of the best examples of fiction in action that I've seen in about three years.</I><BR/><BR/>And, I completely agree with you. But, the problem is that it tried to apply a rigid structure of a heavily controlled story into what should be a much more flexible medium of a game. <I>God of War</I> may be a game, but it's a game that tries to tell a story. And, it's the weakness of the traditional story structures that harm the effect, in my opinion. Fun game mechanics, but a story that felt dictated rather than experienced as it should have been in a game.<BR/><BR/>I think the people that created the story for God of War did a pretty good job with the story. But, now they have to move beyond what they have learned: they have to apply their storytelling ability to a new medium. This can be hard, because you essentially have to unlearn everything you know about other media and try to formulate new rules for the new media. We'll have a lot of floundering, but I think it's possible that someone, somewhere might actually break through and demonstrate a wonderful combination of gameplay and storytelling. But, we're still a very long ways away from that time.<BR/><BR/>Hopefully that clarifies some. :)<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the discussion, Tadhg.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093379.post-1155457120641566622006-08-13T08:18:00.000+00:002006-08-13T08:18:00.000+00:00Good job I wasn't using him for such then.Good job I wasn't using him for such then.Tadhghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14763670950211297013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093379.post-1155411934765377132006-08-12T19:45:00.000+00:002006-08-12T19:45:00.000+00:00The problem with argueing this is that it is a wic...The problem with argueing this is that it is a wicked problem, there is no optimal solution and no stopping rules. Likewise for a conversation about this problem, theres not optimal position to take and NO stopping rules. We could argue about this until Ysgard falls.<BR/><BR/>I'm one of the people trying to utilize storytelling and game design in closer concert, but I've stopped describing my project as a "storytelling game" or "storyworld" or any other cute terms (well I'm using the term "drama game" in the sales pitch, I think thats a better term for reasons I'll expound on). <BR/><BR/>Imagine a new genre of game, a new ur-game, where the system's material units consist of socially interacting agents, or characters, and the formal constraints consist of contextual rules regarding this social interaction. I'm not talking about a top-down Narrative Intelligence generative thingamajig, because I don't think that approach is the best place to start - like you I'm a fan of emergent complexity. Now going from a churning soap opera that doesn't really go anywhere to a system whose patterns tend towards interesting escalations that might resemble a dramatic arc, is no easy task, but it can be done with a lot of craft and careful tuning. This tuning isn't an imposition on user agency, rather its an exponentiation of it, you're setting the system up to adapt in more interesting ways. <BR/><BR/>Does the after-the-fact narrative of playing such a game stand up to the structural intricacy of the best linear stories? Who cares, thats not what this medium is about. This medium is about active creation, not willing suspension, its about participating in an experience, not sitting back and experiencing something vicariously. Non-interactive media use structure as a way to occupy the mind and get it to forget that its playing audience to a fiction. Interactive media doesn't need to rely on instantial structure nearly as much, rather relying on discrete structure. If the social play of characters in a dramatic playground coalesces into something highly structure on 1 out of 100 plays, thats fine, but the loosely structured narratives that are produced the other 99 times will have their significance multiplied in the player's mind by their active involvement in creating them. <BR/><BR/>What I'm talking about here is a new kind of approach to designing rules, involving characters and social dynamics, its not the end-all-be-all but it is a powerful set of tools that are still primitive, but will hopefully see great advances as more experimentation and work is done. The potential for implied narratives in thise genre, or maybe meta-genre, to resonate with players is higher than, say, a really good game of Mario, because the symbols at stake are "people" instead of objects. However, game fiction also stands to go through a massive reimagining in the light of these new rules. No longer confined to hacknyed genre-based justifications for commiting monster genocide, game writers working on drama games (or comedy games, or politcal games et al.) can frame the simulation in a representative fiction that deals with human issues, things like love, death, sex, drugs, money, family, loyalty, the whole she-bang. That the rules directly involve "people" means that the fiction can address deeper issues in a way that isn't just a tack-on, like the "love story" of FF8, or countless other examples of games about tactics getting pretentious fictions grafted on. <BR/><BR/>Robert McKee may know something about a good screenplay, but he's a really terrible source for discussing new forms of game design.Patrickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13614962832390315553noreply@blogger.com