How to see a game as a story first

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From the course by California Institute of the Arts

Story and Narrative Development for Video Games

654 ratings

California Institute of the Arts

Story and Narrative Development for Video Games

654 ratings

Course 2 of 5 in the Specialization Game Design: Art and Concepts

In this course, you will examine how storytelling acts as a vital mechanism for driving video gameplay forward. Looking at several historical and contemporary games, you will be asked to evaluate and interpret different story styles with the goal of identifying themes and procedures for your own game ideas. We'll examine traditional narrative story processes, such as three-act structure, and how they fit into game story flows and the strategic elements of gameplay. Ultimately, you will learn how to define character, setting, and structure to create a compelling game concept.

From the lesson

Week 1: An Introduction to Story

For the first week of the class, we will be analyzing the components of three-act structure using a classic fairytale as an example. We'll examine the characters in the story by figuring out their goals and the main conflict that creates a rising arc of action to keep the audience interested.

What makes a story compelling?3:33

How games benefit from stories4:59

How to see a game as a story first5:48

Meet the Instructors

Dariush Derakhshani
Faculty, Character Animation
School of Film/Video

In a traditional story the hero is called the protagonist.

This is the character that's primarily responsible for

driving the plot of the story.

You know, the hero.

He's gotta accomplish a mission, get to the castle, kill the dragon,

rescue the princess, whatever.

The opposing force that stands in that hero's way is called the antagonist.

This character is responsible for creating, conflict, basically complicating

the protagonists quest in getting whatever he or she is out to achieve.

This is central to a story, as well as to a game.

You need that source of conflict between these two opposing desires or goals.

In Angry Birds the birds are the protagonists and

the pigs are the antagonists.

The birds want the eggs back, the pigs wanna keep the eggs that they stole.

That's your emotional context.

So seeing your game as a story first will help you not only easier define

these two opposing forces, but also assign emotion and character to them.

This not only sets you up with a what your game is about, but

also helps you define why you should connect to it at a more personal level.

Seeing birds that have been wronged by pigs in Angry Birds is a more effective

way than seeing just a bunch of shapes and colors with no emotional context to them.

Who doesn't love birds?

Try looking at your game's hero in that protagonist context, and

try to see the forces that stand in their way as the antagonist.

Seeing them as characters, as living beings that have emotions.

Start your game's story by defining that emotional relationship

between these two forces.

What's their history?

Why is one opposed to the other?

What does each side stand to gain or lose?

These are all the things that we look for in a good story, and

I think these should be things that we all look for in good games, too.

[SOUND] Quiz!

It's not enough to just connect emotionally with the player or audience.

You need to keep that interest level rising as your story or game unfolds.

This brings up the idea of rising actions in a story,

which we're gonna analyze more thoroughly in following lectures.

Rising actions basically means the energy of your story

needs to keep increasing from the beginning through to the end.

The conflicts between the protagonist and

the antagonist forces need to develop and the tensions between them

need to keep rising until they finally resolve at the end in one big event.

The story's hero needs to run into trouble that gets worse, and worse, and

worse before finally being able to kill that dragon and rescue the princess.

We see a very tight correlation to what keeps a game interesting, and that

is in seeing a game get harder and harder to play as you work up in its levels.

With each subsequent level in Angry Birds, the pigs get harder to knock over.

Their obstacles are tougher to get around, and

they even start wearing stuff like helmets to protect themselves.

So the player of the game has got to get better at playing as they go along,

but we need balance.

So to balance out that game play,

designers also created more capable birds to introduce as you rise in the levels.

They get new functions that help get around these harder obstacles and

give the player something new to learn and master in their game play.

Much in the same way that stories present plot twists, and increase tensions,

and more increasing, dangerous situations for the hero to overcome.

We'll see these principles in studying the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty,

in our next lecture.

Before we move on, let's bring up a new game for a moment, PacMan.

Is there much of a story already there in the game?

No, not overtly, no, there isn't, and that's my point.

So as an exercise for yourself, try figuring out

how to create a more interesting narrative behind PacMan as a game.

In short, it comes down to defining that emotional history.

The relationship between the protagonist, PacMan, and

the antagonists, the ghosts and their leader Pinky.

Exploit that relationship to build a story around it.

What if PacMan betrayed Pinky and stole Pinky’s girlfriend back in college?

How could that change the design of the game in your mind?

By giving a reason for the ghosts to hunt down PacMan to get revenge,

you have a new framework to play out that story, and

you bring more emotional context to it.

[SOUND] Quiz.

So, in a nut shell, seeing your game first as a story becomes a strong,

conceptual blueprint.

And off of that blueprint you can design the characters, the settings, and

the game play to fit into and tell that story,

whether you have a simple game or you have a super, huge, complex game.

It's the story that elevates the game and

appeals to the player in that most important way.

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