The story with ludology

Greg's recent post, "No Justice, No Peace": No Truce in the Narratology/Ludology War, covers well the ongoing battle between these two camps, a battle I care so little about that I thought I'd never blog about this topic.  But, never say never...

My two cents won't be too enlightening, as I've not given this topic a lot of thought.  Quite simply, I see games as formal, rules-based systems.  So, I guess I'm a ludologist.  But then, I fully recognize the grand importance of context and story in modern games, so I guess I'm a narratologist, too.

To my simplistic way of thinking, it boils down to this:

o  Abstract games do not need a story, like chess, checkers, Sorry, Trivial Pursuit, poker, Go, etc.

o  Games that involve characters are better off with a story to give meaning to the action.

That's it!

The more abstract the game, the less the need for a story to tie it all together.  But once you add actual characters to the game -- especially human characters -- there's something hardwired in us that makes us want a story to give context to the action.  It's not required by the game.  But it's desired by the player.  Stories, when characters are involved, satisfy us in a primal way that Joseph Campbell can explain much better that I (and I'm not referring to The Hero with a Thousand Faces specifically, Campbell wrote other books that covered this topic that are lesser known, like Myths, Dreams, Religions).

Bottom-line, I see this debate as a pointless distraction that has pulled a lot of smart minds into its depths.  In effect, there is no conflict between the two camps.  The ludology camp is perfectly correct, and how this can be argued is beyond comprehension.  However, modern, realistic games with characters absolutely work better as narratives.  We all love good stories, and games may eventually be a great medium for stories.

Am I wrong?  I don't see how I can be.

Comments

[David]

Scott:

You do a nice job of boiling down the debate. But I think you might have not realized that you also boiled down the problem. But that doesn't mean you solved it.

Think about this simple game design problem: Health Packs. Include them or not?

The narratologist says, "No. That's stupid. What's a health pack? And if they exist in this weird scifi world, why don't you carry around a bunch of them? And if they are too heavy to carry, why are the scatted all over the place anyways?"

The ludologist says, "You can call them whatever you want, but we need them in the game to maintain balance and challenge. Call them game boosters, if that makes it easier for you. Just don't get rid of them"

Who is right? Well, it's a debate. And as pointless and pointy-headed as it sounds, it's a real tension in games and, as a result, in pointy-headed game studies.

-- David

[Anon]

I'm with ya there Scott. I don't think there necessarily is a conflict between the two. Games with good stories will either have appropriate gameplay to match or enhance the story, or they won't. Some games don't need stories. So where is the argument? I've said many times I think the argument is a straw man for people to flex their oh-so-great knowledge of both game design and storycraft.

The best games either don't need explanations for their gameplay, or the story perfectly explains the mechanics. Everything else just muddies the topic.

To address the healthpack thing David brought up--consider it this way. A game like Max Payne uses painkillers and 'meds' to rationalize (storify) the 'health dilemma' which also fits Max's character pretty well.

Or to use an 'abstract game' example... Battlefield 2 only allows health dispensing from medics or supply crates which must be ordered via the Commander role. The context of the play, or the context of the story should satisfy all the mechanics. The Straw Man argument comes in when people seem to think that narrative competes with ludology. The point is, if you do your job well, it won't! But that's what's so difficult about making games. It's hard to come up with good gameplay, and even harder to come up with a rational explaination for it that's also compelling within the context of the world and characters. Making games is difficult. Boo-hoo.

[Tadhg]

David,
I thought the use of painkillers as defacto health packs in Max Payne sort of showed that you just need to be a bit clever with it.

[Warren]

Isn't the health-pack issue a difference between 'Gamist' and 'Simulationist' presentation? A Gamist would just want a health pickup to maintain balance between his abilities and the level of the challenge provided, regardless of what the 'looked like' - painkillers or floating boxes. A more Simulationist agenda would support health packs only if they would 'make sense' in the setting - game balance and playability be damned! Neither of those stances addresses narrative, however, which would be what does it _mean_ (in terms of Story) to be injured and to be able to recover from it?

If the narrative is to be compelling, a injury isn't really a few hit-points lost, it's an opportunity for further expression of the story -- Luke loosing a hand in the Empire Strikes Back, for example. Gamist stance would state that it's a few hit points lost, and (for the Simulationists out there) would induce pain, reduce fighting abilities and manual dexterity, etc. But in Narratavist terms, it is a lot more than that. And I don't think playing a "Luke, I am your father" cutscene after being hit by Darth really addresses that issue in the same way, and I would suggest that putting such a cutscene in your game would not make it Narratavist.

Instead (and I've said this on Greg's blog too) things like the Sims are Narratavist. They allow the player to create thier own situations and explore issues with those characters - Should Bob have an affair with this new Sim or stay and help bring up baby? I don't think that the Sims has reached a bigger audience than the usual Space-Marine with Big Gun teenage market we seem to focus on. Narrative is powerful, and I would suggest appeals to a more mainstream market than hard-core Gamism & Simulation. It's just very hard to do.

[andrew stern]

There's an aspect of the ludology vs. narratology debate that my collaborator and I believe never got satisfactorily resolved, that Greg didn't discuss in his DiGRA post, that we attempt to address in our DiGRA paper, "Build It to Understand It: Ludology Meets Narratology in Game Design Space". From the paper:

Our concern is that ludologists believe that games are uniquely agency-rich experiences, and while games can include narrative, explicit in-game narrative can at best only play a superficial role, e.g., as a largely linear layer on top pure gameplay. If pushed, a common ludological position may be that narrative is fundamentally incompatible with agency, a primary pleasure of games, and therefore is inherently less fundamental to the game experience. Based solely on the unsuccessful efforts to date of game developers to build agency-rich narratives, this is not an entirely unreasonable conclusion for ludologists to draw.

(By "agency" we mean, essentially, direct control over the plot of a well-formed story.)

We invite you to read the paper for our experiment to make progress on this.

[redchurch]

"Based solely on the unsuccessful efforts to date of game developers to build agency-rich narratives, this is not an entirely unreasonable conclusion for ludologists to draw.

(By "agency" we mean, essentially, direct control over the plot of a well-formed story.)"

Andrew, as long as there is plenty of gameplay within (or outside?) of the story, why is it important for the player to control the story itself? That may be a player-driven narrative, but it's not storytelling. This firm belief in player agency is where things break down. Everything the player experiences, even if it is the freedom to explore the environment or create their own meaning, all of it is controlled by the design or the designer. So there is no true agency going on to begin with... there is only the *illusion* of agency/control.

As a player I'm rarely concerned with whether I have true control or not. I just care that the designer has created a satisfactory illusion--either via the story, the gameplay, or both. The Ludology vs. Narratology is fixated on the notion of true agency or control, which is why I feel it's simply beating upon a straw man. Actual agency has little to do with games or gaming. All of it is a 'designed experience' whether I control the story or not. Even if I do whatever I want and create my own story as the player, all of it is still within the designer's control and intentions.

True player agency as a game would be a design-less game. Some kind of game that evolves from nothing purely based on the player's input. These kind of purely emergent 'evolution games' don't yet exist, and they are very difficult to imagine. It's a bit like the player designing their own game as they play. This is why a lot of people become game developers. ;)

So in a way the debate is really about straddling the line between player and creator. How much of the experience is pre-created and how much is left up to the creativity of the player? Given that games are created by humans, that question must be up to the individual game developers or companies. Therefore, it's not an industry-wide intellectual debate where there will be a winner or a loser, or some amazing resolution. The degree of agency is something chosen by the creators, relative to the company, individuals, and project in question. In other words, there is no 'right answer' to this issue. It's good to ask questions, but answers on this will be tautological tail-chasing.

[Scott Miller]

I fully agree with redchurch. Just as players cannot affect the other game content, such as graphics, level design, sounds, why should we expect them to affect the story?

Gameplay is the basis for any game, and then there's content and context, which elevates gameplay making it dramatically interesting. Again, this context is only necessarily for non-abstract games.

Frogger might have been a great abstract game like Tetris with just moving blocks of color and shape, each representing a different rule (you can jump on a blue block, but a red blob will end your current life). But I'm positive that the context of being a frog and getting across a busy street and dangerous stream made the game more compelling and approachable. Pac Man, too, benefited from its context, simple though it was. Even chess has a small measure of context, lifting the game from pure abstraction.

Stories have the same role in modern games. Max Payne would have been a dry, far less interesting had all of the story been stripped away. Stories add a lot to the experience, and they do not need to interactive, just as other elements of a game -- graphics, level layout, etc. -- are not interactive elements.

[Jeffool]

If not affecting level design players can often manipulate level 'layout'. (Let's not forgot the buzz that the phrase "deformable terrain" was surrounded in.) Usually this just means making craters from giant explosions, of course. But to a smaller degree it only takes a few games of Halo to realize that stacking objects (or players,) can help players get to circumvent the rules entirely and change the game.

Now this isn't to say that level design, game objects, and narrative are all obviously choices that are 'meant to be' interactive, but I see no reason why they shouldn't be.

[Apar]

Maybe this is a too little too late but I wanted to put it across, I liked the way Scott puts the words "the players desire the story" I think its purely the need to to be able to reason with the character in question I mean the character is going around killing object but how can you justify it...with a context and narration you create a more complete image in the mind of the player as to what the situation is and why the actions which otherwise considered wrong in society (some games dont fall under this) are ok to perform in the game

[Walter]

Er, look, there is always agency available in any game. If there wasn't any, you wouldn't have a game. Maybe it's more accurate to call agency in games "virtual agency", but MMOs blur the boundaries and it's not even relevant to the issue anyway. Furthermore, the idea that designers always control everything that happens in a game is both silly and arrogant.

Ludology vs. narratology is not fundamentally about whether games should be more like stories, or provide more agency. It is first and foremost a debate about methodology and how to "look at" games. This often inspires debate about what games "should" be like, and has come to be an additional debate referenced by "LvN". These are seperate debates, if tied to the same base.

I don't think anyone has been suggesting that all games must allow the player to have direct control over the story (assuming there is one...and I'll ignore the issue of whether games always have a 'story' or not, except to say that, no they don't, otherwise the concept of story is being stretched beyond recognition). Or if they have, they're wrong. The point is that play of this kind has gone woefully underexplored, and should receive greater emphasis, especially since games with uncontrollable stories is already so well explored. And it's silly to presume that players don't care about this sort of thing before ever having experienced it. At any rate, I can point you to communities of gamers that do indeed care, and are far from being academics.

[Walter]

Er, apologies for the tone of my previous post. I get a little carried away sometimes.

[Charles E. Hardwidge]

You do a nice job of boiling down the debate. But I think you might have not realized that you also boiled down the problem. But that doesn't mean you solved it.

Ignore Scott, he's a rip-off merchant. :) See my theory of strategy led design, two topics back. Thief! Narratology and Ludology are, simply, two perspectives on the same underlying principles. No difference, no conflict, problem solved.

I'll ignore the issue of whether games always have a 'story' or not, except to say that, no they don't, otherwise the concept of story is being stretched beyond recognition

You're quite right to say that common teaching or experience doesn't stretch to every game having a story, in the same way a brick wouldn't be considered as having an IQ, but other perspectives may be more universally useful. Newtonianism and Relativity are good examples.

Just for you, Walter, I've done some digging through my books and tracked down a Zen poem, by Matsuo Basho, that might illustrate this point in a less ponderous way, as well as providing some amusement in itself. It's made me stop and think a few times! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

kiri shigure
Fuji wo minu hi zo
omoshiroki

Misty drizzle -
A day you can't see Fuji!
Interesting.

Funnily enough, only the other week, I was browsing through a bookshop and chanced on Ian M. Banks latest novel, where he explores the idea of story in strategic terms, and condenses everything down to BANG! EXPAND! HISS! So, we're padding in a cosmic novel. Tetris writ large. Great.

[Quantum]

I think you kind of missed the point of the argument. It's not whether games NEED story or not. It's more like do the players push the story along, or does the story pull the players through? A narration would be the game is telling the player a story, and ludology would be the player is in a world creating their own story with the tools given to them.

A game like Neverwinter Nights (NWN) would be an example of the players pushing the story. There are NPCs everywhere and you can basically do whatever you want. Each "quest" is it's own story element, and there are a ton of ways to play the main game, and then all the player-created "expansions" and levels and such.
The player goes through the world triggering different story elements, and responding to them however the player wants. They could trigger a town invasion, and then not do anything about it, but go on and fight a completely unrelated monster in the midst of the invaded town. The player makes the decisions that drive the way the story turns out.

In a game like Guild Wars, the story pulls the player through. You go from the first mission to the second, not really knowing what the hell is going on. You either beat the mission and advance the story, or die and start the mission over.

While the ludology vs narration debate is about "video games" in general, why even bother trying to apply it to an abstract game like Tetris? That's like marketing a women's lingerie line to women AND men, because you know, there's a couple crossdressers out there.

Personally, I think we should be aiming for ludology, but games fall into both categories. While I enjoy the freedom of a world to do what I wish in, sometimes it's just easier to go from mission to mission.

[Charles E. Hardwidge]

I think you kind of missed the point of the argument. It's not whether games NEED story or not. It's more like do the players push the story along, or does the story pull the players through? A narration would be the game is telling the player a story, and ludology would be the player is in a world creating their own story with the tools given to them.

I've only taken my point so far, by explaining how gameplay and story are different aspects of strategy, and haven't expanded on many of the specific principles of strategy that Scott, for example, touches on with his comment on player desire, as well as the items you raise yourself.

Personally, I think we should be aiming for ludology, but games fall into both categories. While I enjoy the freedom of a world to do what I wish in, sometimes it's just easier to go from mission to mission.

Strategy neatly covers both theories adequately, wherever it is on the ludology and narratology spectrum, and however simple or complex the game is. Which direction the designer or gamer leans is their own personal choice, and beyond the scope of the argument I intended to present.

Sure, it's a novel and difficult concept, but it usefully fills a void in mainstream thinking, explaining and resolving a number of traditionally unrelated areas in game design, and I'd rather see people give it a positive test than spend time defending it, which I'm not greatly interested in.

[andrew stern]

redchurch wrote: Andrew, as long as there is plenty of gameplay within (or outside?) of the story, why is it important for the player to control the story itself?

Because it's a strong desire and dream of many players. Control over the plot is not necessary to have fun playing a videogame, of course, as Scott describes about Max Payne. However if it could be done, it would be very pleasurable, and a lot of people want it. The holy grail of this desire would be the Holodeck.
 
 

That may be a player-driven narrative, but it's not storytelling.

I agree — we should call it story making, not storytelling. I avoid using the term "interactive storytelling"; in fact, to me, the word "telling" feels antithetical in general to the interactive medium. Ideally, I'd rather see the player making the story as they play, not it being told to me. A better term is interactive drama.
 
 

This firm belief in player agency is where things break down. Everything the player experiences, even if it is the freedom to explore the environment or create their own meaning, all of it is controlled by the design or the designer. So there is no true agency going on to begin with... there is only the *illusion* of agency/control.

That's how it's mostly been done to date, yes, and that's one approach, and it's worked. It's much more feasible to implement, because it's more linear and less generative. But it's not the only approach to interactive entertainment. It's debatable why we haven't seen more true interactive stories yet. The primary reason is, it's very hard to implement agency-rich interactive stories.
 
 

The Ludology vs. Narratology is fixated on the notion of true agency or control, which is why I feel it's simply beating upon a straw man.

Actually, as Walter says in his comment above, the L vs. N debate among academic game scholars has mostly been about how to "look at" games — do we interpret and think about them as games with rules, versus as narratives with story structure. The answer the academic community has come to realize is: both, when useful. (e.g. it's not too useful to look at highly abstract games like Tetris as stories, and it's incomplete to look at character-rich games purely as just gameplay mechanics.)

However, the issue of agency of narrative in games, we believe, aims squarely at the center of this debate, because if you could build a game which gave players direct control over the plot of a non-linear, well-formed story being created as you play the game — an experience that has not yet been built, in many people's estimation — then you'd have something with agency in both the game and the narrative, and the question of "is it a story?" or "is it game?" goes away.
 
 
Why is agency so important? Because it's such a primary pleasure of interaction. Players want to matter, to have true, meaningful effects on the game world. Not just in the moment of gameplay itself, but globally, over the entire experience.

redchurch, Scott, why settle for just an illusion of global agency? Why not strive to give players the real thing?
 

[Charles E. Hardwidge]

why settle for just an illusion of global agency? Why not strive to give players the real thing?

My personal feeling is that too little or too much control, as with life, is not necessary or desireable, and I strongly question the motivation of anyone who tacks too close to either extreme. It strikes me that the desire for control is, fundamentally, escapism and unsatisfying in the long-term, as satisfaction and meaning is gained through struggle. The desire for supreme control is flawed, as achieving it brings other problems. In this, I think, there's moral and practical comparisons with everyday life.

Now, if I might labour the strategy point. One of the most rewarding things for me is to read a story that goes beyond entertainment and causes some reflection on myself and my relationship with the world. As with games, it's a desire and resolving desire issue that, I hope, leaves me in a better state than when I was at the beginning. Fundamentally, what I'm looking for in a game is something that leads to self-improvement and better relationships. How that's achieved isn't important and, in my mind, is the biggest single failure point of most games.

Yes, as with story verus gameplay, narratology versus ludology, limited or global agency, I'm of the mind that they're all useful tools for exploring concepts, but answer nothing as much as they answer something. Indeed, a strategic principle is to favour no weapon, but to use what is useful at the time. Ignore this, and your grip tightens and you become inflexible as you feed your desire to bash your enemy, in your journey to failure and ruin. Now, doesn't this make you wonder if the desire for supreme agency isn't just another obsession that closes doors?

In reality, I think, agency isn't something that's ever going to go away, in the same way that we're masters, to some extent, of our own lives, yet, still choose to experience books, plays, and films. We desire this, we desire that. When I get that I'll be happy, then the shine wears off and I want something else. On, and on, and on, desire never ends, just like gamers who scream for better, faster, cheaper games, and developers who crave easier tools, better compilers, and suchlike. How many times can you watch the perfect sunset before getting tired?

Scott's gone a bit Zen by choosing the middle way and, I think, he's right.

[Scott Miller]

Nicely written, Charles.

I think, in 10, 20, 30 years, we'll finally realize that the best stories are linear. People, I think, will always prefer one great linear story, versus a variable player determined story. I think it's just the way we're hardwired. The variable story sounds great on paper, but I strongly suspect it'll fail when compared to the better fixed stories, with well thought out characters, dialog and plot.

In fact, when I read that a game has multiple endings like Deus Ex, I view that as a weakness, not a strength. I want one great ending, hopefully one that really gets me thinking, or affects me emotionally.

We all know Chris Crawford has been working on a true interactive story system for some 15 years, and the results do not suggest he's onto a promising path.

[Nicolas Szilas]

I think, in 10, 20, 30 years, we'll finally realize that the best stories are linear. People, I think, will always prefer one great linear story, versus a variable player determined story. I think it's just the way we're hardwired. The variable story sounds great on paper, but I strongly suspect it'll fail when compared to the better fixed stories, with well thought out characters, dialog and plot.

One cannot compare the "great linear story" to the "player determined story" just by comparing the final result.
When you play a musical instrument (if you know how to play it), the pleasure you feel is very strong and completely different from hearing the same piece in a concert. It might be difficult to explain, but the only fact that you (re)produce a given piece is very enjoyable.
I do not want to push this analogy too far, but at least it shows that there exists a promise that agency on a story could be great, for the player, even if the resulting story will never reach the quality of a great linear story.

[Scott Miller]

-- "When you play a musical instrument (if you know how to play it), the pleasure you feel is very strong and completely different from hearing the same piece in a concert."

This analogy doesn't hold up, IMO.

The point of playing games is living within a set of rules to overcome challenges. The story isn't part of this equation, and never will be. Even a player-determined story won't affect the games rule-set. A story is merely context, and as unimportant to the rules as the style of graphics, or the music. Should we also be striving for truly interactive music in games? We could, but it doesn't really matter to the game itself.

My point is that it's a red-herring to think that we need interactive stories, or stories that flex and adjust based on the player's actions. We simply do not.

This doesn't mean that at some point there might be specialized games that have player determined stories, but I suspect these will be niche products, and games as we know them (with pre-determined stories) will remain the dominant force that they are today.

[Walter]

My point is that it's a red-herring to think that we need interactive stories, or stories that flex and adjust based on the player's actions. We simply do not.

I could equally suggest that it's a mistake to think we need linear stories with gameplay bits inside them.

Ask anyone who's played and enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic or Deus Ex: would you prefer less or more control over the plot? I think you're going to find that a very small portion of those gamers would actually have wanted less, and far more clamoring for greater control.

What was one of the major criticisms of Fable? That it did not, in fact, live up to Molyneux's promises of a deeply consequential world. There wasn't enough agency.

Believe it or not, greater agency is indeed in demand, and is not merely something that people in the Ivory Tower idly speculate about. Players want to play with more manipulable worlds and have their actions do more than merely act as a story handcrank.

It's honestly surprising to me how someone fairly analytical about the medium could fail to see the attraction and humanistic potential of implementing greater agency. A great many gamers are at least capable of seeing the former, even if they don't specifically refer to the concept as 'agency'.

[Walter]

"Someone fairly analytical about the medium" is referring to the general someone, btw.

To add to my previous post, games that allow greater agency give players more (and more meaningful) ways to express themselves, and new 'spaces' to explore (interpersonal, rather than geometric/physical). We get some of this in limited form already, and highly popular mainstream games push this all the time, albeit in small steps (KotoR 2 being a recent example, with its NPC companions the player could sway to the dark or light side of the Force--not surprisingly, the feature was well received!).

Think about the Holodeck. My memory may be hazy, but, far from being flung into a program where they solved problems by shooting things, upon which they'd watch a cutscene about someone other than themselves, they were not restrained on any axes of agency that would have been available to them in 'real life'. And perhaps the most powerful use of the holodeck was when it allowed the characters of Star Trek to complete hero's journeys of their own, rather than merely being the catalyst for someone else's.

I have no doubt that games with linear stories will always exist, and moreover, I think they *should*, because they have uniquely valuable traits of their own. But I'm inclined to think that, rather than linear story games remaining the dominant form and high agency games being niche, there's a very good chance it will be the other way 'round.

[Nicolas Szilas]

-- The point of playing games is living within a set of rules to overcome challenges. The story isn't part of this equation, and never will be.
But why? I agree that in current games, "A story is merely context". But why the rules would not apply to narrative content? Why rules would not be about dramatic decisions, interpersonal relationship, suspense, emotions, etc.?
Maybe the misunderstanding comes from the way we see stories, as a predefined content (the context) or as a process (the rules of a game). Ludology and Narratology are not opposite if you see stories in a procedural way.

[Scott Miller]

My position on this is pretty simple: Story is window dressing, no different than music and graphics style. However, story can make a game dramatically more interesting, and is therefore vital. (At least, it's vital for non-abstract games.)

We call what we do in games gameplay. Yet, there's a contingent who also want to experience storyplay. I do not believe this is the purpose of games, just as movies that try to be interactive are gimmicky, like the movie Clue which let the audience choose one of three endings. Game like Deus Ex with multiple endings are likewise gimmicky to me, and I'd much rather have one perfect conclusion, than a set of conclusions that leave me wondering which one is the best, or the real one.

It's a red herring to think we need agency within the story itself. What gamers really want is more agency within the gameplay itself, such as the physics possibilities of Half-Life 2 combined with the mission solving freedom of the GTA games. Give players this sort of interactive freedom, along with a compelling linear story and great graphics, and we'll own the bank.

[Scott Miller]

-- "Ludology and Narratology are not opposite if you see stories in a procedural way."

Nicolas, I guess I strongly believe that procedural stories will suck versus designer stories. (Not that the majority of designer stories have been great, but they're getting better, and will soon occasionally match the best of what Hollywood has to offer.)

Can a computer write a great novel, or movie script? When that day happens, then I'll change my opinion on the potential of procedural stories. Until then, the dream of storyplay is just that.

[Nathan McKenzie]

...

Doesn't the Sims essentially generate crappy procedural stories, more or less, intermixing with all the micro-scale gameplay choices?

From talking to some of the guys who made the GTA games, they seem to indicate that for most peoples' play patterns (load game, ignore fixed missions ENTIRELY, make a mess with random features, have funny situation emerge, turn off game after 30 minutes), GTA is also a crappy procedural story generation device.

And for both of these games, the underlying rule structue isn't the part that matters - people enjoy the actual representation on the screen, the strange, quirky, "like life but mangled" events that happen and that they uniquely made.

I'm not saying that all games should have crappy procedural stories, of course. I like Ico and Half-Life exactly as they are.

But it seems to me that saying that players ultimately want supremely well-written linear stories, or players want no stories, or players want interactive stories, is like saying every movie should have drama in it, or every movie should have car chases, or every movie should have teenagers, or every movie should have a singing crab doing showtunes. It's pretty clear that SOME fantastic movies should have those things.

[subtlesnake]

"I do not believe this is the purpose of games, just as movies that try to be interactive are gimmicky, like the movie Clue which let the audience choose one of three endings."

Yes, but you're talking about superimposing a static dynamic medium on a static one. Games are already dynamic, we're just talking about extending that dynamism. At the far end of the scale, you have a universe, like reality, that grants you full possibilities and choices. Do we not want these things in reality? And if we do want them in reality, why should they be not part of an interactive simulation? I thought the whole point of games was to allow us to reinvent ourselves, to allow us to escape into a world where we are free to make different choices.

At the highest level, any distinction between story and gameplay is arbitrary. You make choices, which effect the world, and because the world is effected it changes. Are these changes story or gameplay changes? Where is the line between them when the world = the gameplay?

It's only because current games have segmentalised story and gameplay so much that we see things in such black and white terms. The fact is that game is the story. When you kill an enemy in a different way, you're changing the story. Maybe at the start of the level you trigger an alarm, resulting in more guards at a certain point later on. What if an NPC (a main character, like in HL2) comments on that, and behaves a little differently? Is that a story change? And if isn't, when does it become one?

[Reid]

I love a good story and will probably make a game that has a tight narrative one day. However, I see the value in creating open ended games.

The medium of games is the only entertainment medium that allows interactivity from the user (other than improv) and we need to take advantage of that interactivity. The holy grail of that would be creating your own stories and doing whatever you want. Games offer that to a limited degree already, be a superstar sports athelete, travel to fantastical worlds and use weapons you can't in your normal day to day life. Games allow us to do what we can't do in real life. Games should allow us to reflect on the choices we make during play and learn from our personal experiences. Play teaches us survival skills, the more freedom we have during play, the more we can learn about ourselves.

[Nicolas Szilas]

-- Nicolas, I guess I strongly believe that procedural stories will suck versus designer stories. (Not that the majority of designer stories have been great, but they're getting better, and will soon occasionally match the best of what Hollywood has to offer.)

Can a computer write a great novel, or movie script? When that day happens, then I'll change my opinion on the potential of procedural stories. Until then, the dream of storyplay is just that.

I agree with your two points:
1) Stories produced by procedures will not reach the quality of designer stories
2) A computer cannot write a great novel.
But still, this does not prevent procedural interactive stories to be possible and interesting!
About the first point, I already answered: One should not compare the two. Interactive stories are interesting because the user is involved. If the musical performance analogy is not convincing, think of role playing, and how boring it can be to look people roleplay versus playing it.
About the second point: Interactive Drama does not consist in making creative computers. Even if some storytelling process is automated, the creation must remains in the hands of the author. Authorship lies in the rules; the computer just executes the rules.

[James O'Donnell]

1) Stories produced by procedures will not reach the quality of designer stories
2) A computer cannot write a great novel.

It is, of course, imperative to keep in mind here that a dynamic story need not be procedural, but rather emergent from procedural features. It's not about handing authorship to the PC, but rather to the players themselves.

[Charles E. Hardwidge]

Nicely written, Charles.

Thanks, Scott. That really means a lot to me. I put my reputation on the line with the theory of strategy led design and felt a bit down when it bombed, and that's helped cheer me up, as did the later contributions which acknowledged, in part, its utility. Indeed, looking at the last few comments, in spite of a slow start, I think, we all ended well, and look forward to returning to the topic at some point in the future.

[Seb Potter]

"Story is window dressing, no different than music and graphics style. However, story can make a game dramatically more interesting, and is therefore vital. (At least, it's vital for non-abstract games.)"

I can't begin to describe how much it disappoints me when I see people leading the games industry making comments such as this. Years ago I used to think that most of the games designers that I knew really wanted to do something more with the medium, and yet had no real idea what it would be. As time has gone on, I've come to realise that most games designers still have no idea what the medium is capable of, because they treat a computer as just a really fast method of evaluating rules, and still can't get to grips with how it can interact with human beings.

It's a tough question. How to design a game that doesn't just use plot elements as window dressing? Giving the player a greater range of expression in interaction with gameplay elements is a dead end, because at the end of the day the player won't be fooled. You could offer more agency within the physics simulation, and moving objects around is all good fun when you do it for the first time, but it's when designers start thinking outside of the mental box of giving the player new ways to shoot things that you start seeing where games can really go.

Yes, gameplay is what we do in games. So, why does gameplay only touch on story when a ham-fisted designer wants to pound home the importance of their elegantly-crafted gameplay? Why not let the player generate their own stories? Why not let players share those stories?

This is probably the one area where MMOs get it right. The success of Everquest and World of Warcraft has little to do with the gameplay, although they are both quite compelling. It's the same reason that the Sims is so popular: that every single time you log on, you're creating a shared story with other players. Almost everyone on these games goes out of their way to avoid the designer's attempts to limit their stories to the gameplay experience. MMO communities are frighteningly inventive at making up their own stories, at circumventing the strictures of gameplay design in order to use the game in their own ways.

Yes, certainly from the critical point of view, a crafted story is technically better and has a wider appeal than throwing together whatever random players come up with. The point that is being missed is that games are not linear, non-interactive broadcast entertainment like movies are. What makes games different is that the experience can be unique for each and every individual player. This matters, because to the player their own story is far superior to a Hollywood "blockbuster".

[Scott Miller]

-- "It's the same reason that the Sims is so popular: that every single time you log on, you're creating a shared story with other players."

Player stories in this respect are not the same thing I'm talking about when I refer to storyplay. Even games with rigid linear stories can have the kind of player story you're talking about, where every gamer can retell how they played a particular game in an exciting and original way. You can kick a ball around a parking lot and generate a story that can be retold later, but that's the type of interactive story being discussed in this thread.

Storyplay is when your actions affect how characters behave within the game, the decisions they make, and how character events might change later in the game, and possibly affect plot points, too. Storyplay is shorthand for interactive narrative, much as gameplay is shorthand for interactive rules-based action (or something along those lines).

Now then, I'm all for storyplay. I just do not think we'll see it as a realistic possibility for a decade or three. It might just be the most difficult problem to solve related to computer games. We'll know when we're close because first we'll see computer generate novels that compete (quality-wise) with human written ones. These novels (or comics, or whatever) will be the litmus test for testing the effectiveness of storytelling algorithms and AI.

[Seb Potter]

"We'll know when we're close because first we'll see computer generate novels that compete (quality-wise) with human written ones. These novels (or comics, or whatever) will be the litmus test for testing the effectiveness of storytelling algorithms and AI."

I think perhaps you're raising too much of an artifical barrier to the notion of storyplay being used within gaming. There's a big difference between generating convincing artificial narrative, and storyplay which doesn't necessarily require fluent use of modern language to convey an interesting dynamic narrative.

Whilst the student of linguistics within me hopes that the former will be a possibility one dim and distant day, I know of several efforts that are underway to produce compelling dynamic narratives in games. Emergent behaviour in an agency-rich interactive system should be able to provide a dynamic story without the computationally-exhaustive measures necessary to match wits with Homer.

The trick is to lay the foundations, and create an interactive framework that has the elements of stories in place, and allow the player to find their own story within the system, rather than simply generating a story (either manually or algorithmically) and using the computer as a tool to foist your story on the player.

Perhaps the Sims was a counter-productive example when the point that I am trying to make is more about a story's dynamism emerging from a player's actions in a suitable framework, rather than simply providing an environment where players make up their own stories entirely.