The Power of the Narrative Experience

The Power of the Narrative Experience

 

For me, whether it's a book, film, or video game, the element that sticks with me the most afterward is always the story. A good narrative has the power to make cheap production seem exceptional. Unfortunately, it works the other way around. A poor story can destroy any technically impressive product. An immersive story gives games replayability, in my opinion, although I will concede that good gameplay can also provide replay value.

     I must confess that I have never been intrigued by games that attempt to contrast the conventions. While I  can respect and appreciate the effort, those games never keep my interest, even if the story is enduring. I have to agree with Don Norman in saying the breaking the conventions is failing. Not's not to say that gameplay shouldn't evolve, because it certainly should and it has. Rather, I prefer to see the evolution of games through the emergent behaviours of already conventional games. No offence to the Wii because I feel like it has done wonders for the game industry, but games that try to force some new mechanic always appear gimmicky and unrefined. Nicole Lazarro says that games must be challenging in order to create enjoyment. While I agree with this statement, for me it only applied to conventional games. Often with games that introduce a new mechanic, the difficulty comes from the unfamiliarity with the controls and programming errors with the mechanic. It basically comes down to me enjoying what Lazarro describes as "easy fun", or the curiosity and intrigue that comes from a good story. Don't get me wrong, I love a good challenge. In fact, on my first playthroughs, I always pick the hardest difficulties. But it comes down to how these games affect me long-term and "easy fun" games resonate within me longer.

    I think it was most fortunate that my teammates were on similar wavelengths as me. During brainstorming, our focus was not so much on what kind of gameplay we would implement but rather what kind of story we wanted to tell. Once the story was fleshed out we decided that having a known and proven mechanic (2d platforming) would help complement the story since a new, unconventional mechanic could just push the story into the background. In terms of designing and Zimmerman's iterative design, much of it was playtesting and figuring out how the levels could serve as metaphors for the story. What helped in speeding up the process of our iterative design was the we already had a proven mechanic and all we needed to do was build it around the story we had. Of course, in order to avoid making a game like Spectre which was so focused on the story that all "hard fun" was thrown out, we had to test the levels to make sure that the platforming was being used effectively and in a way that would challenge and entertain.

    In order to make our game more attractive to no-gamers, we took on the task of getting rid of  "fail-states". Essentially, whatever the player did, we tried to give positive feedback to show them that they had not failed the level or done anything else wrong. One could see this as trying to implement a unconventional mechanic but we saw it more as emergent gameplay, gameplay that had derived from the structure of the story. Our story had several endings as there was no way to actually "lose", thus the use of the "no fail-states" didn't seem against our conventional platforming mechanic.

    The concept of our game came down to what our self interests were (story), how we could still create a fun game with an old mechanic, and how our target audience could be expanded through the natural progression of our story. Norman states that the use of metaphor can be dangerous and understandably it is because it can either go over the player's head or be misinterpreted. However, I believe what made our game successful was that the metaphor wasn't necessary to understand in order to enjoy the game. In other words, the best kind of games are those that find the balance between the intrigue and experience, and challenging goals. I believe we came close to that equilibrium.

Bibliography

Lazarro, N. & Keeker, K. (2004). "What's My Method? A Game Show on Games." In CHI 2004 Conference Proceedings, April 2004. http://www.xeodesign.com/whatsmymethod.pdf

Lazzaro, N. (2004-2005) "Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story." Self-published white paper. www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html

Zimmerman, E. (2003). "Play as research: The iterative design process." http://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Iterative_Design.htm

Comments

[NicoleLazzaro]

Great post David. I have to say that Easy Fun is a huge part of why I play. Story, exploration, being silly, sheer joy from the controls consume hours of my play time. We're using metaphor in the Hard Fun of the level design as well for our upcoming iPhone game "Tilt: An Adventure in 1.5 Dimensions." Using elements of the story to inspire the Hard Fun makes the game play feel more integrated. In my mind it's like wrapping the Hard Fun chewy center with a sweet swirly Easy Fun candy shell.

Looking forward to reading future posts.

And if you wouldn't mind I prefer my last name spelled like this: Lazzaro
Think "puzzler" 2 z's and 1 r.

Game On!

\o/
Nicole Lazzaro