quote: Original post by jona

i dont know if my system will funtion.
the problem is that a writer wants to tell a story. and he wants the player to at least notice the story, and not only the story but the message behind it. i think the most difficult thing for a writer who writes stories for games is to let loose his aim to effect the player in the precise way he or she wants him/her to be effected.
a game story should never consists only of a single path.

Practically, it is very tricky to combine branching stories with simulation or "play around" sorts of games. This difficulty goes beyond the creation of the games themselves, to the way people play the games. Look at the Wing Commander series as an example. The early Wing Commander games had a branching story line, but as the series progressed, the branching was dropped. I don''t think this was just because of the increased cost of supporting the content for multiple branchs. Most people I observed playing the games would replay missions until they were successful anyway, so all the work in creating branched content was for naught. The Privateer offshoot of the series handled things a bit differently. You could play the game without following the story or depart from the story at any time. However, the game just wasn''t as interesting once you fell off the story line.

I think you create a certain mode of the suspension of disbelief with a story-based game that is essentially different than that of a simulation-based game. It is difficult for a player to mentally switch from one mode to the other in mid-game. (I''m not saying it can''t be done, just that it is tricky.)

Joe Ward

I played the orginal wing commander completely through twice. The first time I did so poorly I lost the game and was rewarded with a scene of my fleet being chased from the sector. The second time I did so well I won the game with out completing the final mission. The branching missions made the game feel more real, even when I was failing missions I kept playing and thinking we can still win. I feel that the ability to fail and continue on to victory adds alot of depth to the game and it even addresses the concerns some people have about save games being a weakness in games. Yes there will still be players who replay every mission till they succeed, they have been taught to do that by games that only allow progress through victories.

maybe in a good game there should just be the ability to play around not listining to the story.
but for it is a good game the player will dive into the story soon because the story is just too interesting.

so maybe the trick is that the player believes he/she does whatever he/she wants to do - and on the fly he/she gets on the way the story wants him/her to go.

that is an interesting point because the story of the game i am writing at the moment deals with this topic. the free will (if that is the correct name in english).

i think wing commander is a very good example regarding to ''interaction vs storytelling''. the wing commander games of the series that i know consist of two parts that flip all the time. one part is the story part, that one with the FMVs and briefings, the other one is the interaction part where the player flys around in his spaceship and so on.
the interaction part effects the story part in a way that success in a mission would lead to another branch of story that a lost mission would do. i think the motivation to get into every branch of the story is not that high. the motivation, of course, should be success.

but there is another point that is more interesting.
how should the game look like that combine the two parts of wing commander into one whole thing? has this approach lead to the adventure genre?

how can i get the player to play a story?

Yeah, we use the expression "free will" in english. We often use the word "fate" or "destiny" as the opposite. Someone''s fate or destiny is usually considered something from which they cannot escape. It is bound to happen.

As I see it, there''s three ways to do a story:

1. Environment of freedom. This is often used in RPGs, where the player can go around fighting things, earning money, etc. without needing to play the story.

2. Planned branching story. Here, the player has the freedom to go down a limited number of branches at points in the game. Every branch is planned. Obviously, many branches means not only that you have to rewrite the game many times over, but also that the average player will never see all the hard work that you did.

3. Single story. Adventure games usually spend their budget on getting the chosen story to work well. The skill here is to hide the fact that the player essentially has no freedom.

I think that one of the better ways I''ve heard to create what I call a DBS, or Dynamically Branching Story, is to create a treelike structure of scenarios, starting with Beginning, and finishing with multiple endings, with scenes branching from each other in between. The way to do this, is to use a series of maps that affect each scenario and how it is played out by the engine. For example, each node on the tree would have a map of the requirements for it to be played out. The map would look like this: the map for the scene to be played would have a switch/trigger for each scene above it on the tree, with a value of 0 = cannot have happened, 1 = does not matter, 2 = must have happened, and the map must match exactly to the previous events in the story for it to be played. I''m not sure exactly how this would work, but I''m sure someone would be able to expand on it.

yes, you are right, golan. these are indeed the 'three ways to do a story'.
now as we are discussing the whole thing from a somehow abstract point of view i would say the solution of a free but meaningful story lies in between these three approaches.
maybe one can take the 'single story' approach as the start point because the most important thing for now is the message. even when one get the player to believe that he/she has done all decisions by him-/herself he/she would notice the narrow path of the story at least when he/she plays the game a second time from the beginning. so, one has to take another approach into account. the 'environment of freedom' thing is good but i think it'd work only with a very simple storyline. althoug a 'planned branching story' is not the right choice neither - it's nice but too planned for freedom and too free for message transfer - i think branches of story are the only things that allow real freedom. because real freedom is when a players decision doesn't only lead to a specific branch but leaves a whole set of other branches out (i very hard thing for a game writer though).

so what is the right way to do a free but meaningful story?
maybe it's somewhere in what 'anonymous' or i in an earlier message above decribed:
the story consists of scenes which are not specified by a point in the timeline but by description of access. in such a discription you would find a set of indicators that provide information about if or how often the scene has been played, which previous scenes must have been played to be able to enter this scene, and so on.
i guess that 'and so on' is the tricky part...
to create a dynamic process that won't become too chaotic, one has to give the scenes such indicators as 'level in the tree', 'dependencies on other scenes and actions', 'aim or part of story'.

now, to reach a little amount of real freedom one has to make the access indicators also (while depending on the players actions of course) depend on things that aren't under the control of the player. such things as randomized actions, actions started by other characters, and though it doesn't sound like an element of freedom actions that are started by the story, thus started by the game writer.

(and where some leeks of that 'free' storyline become obvious i could use them for my 'free will' theme :-) )

i think it is very difficult to implement a 'story engine' that funtion in a way described. but in a simple way it could work fine.
taking into account mainly the randomized actions (and maybe in addition some 'must not happen' scenes) for example there could be a very nice branching structure that develops itself from the beginning scene.

[edited by - jona on May 22, 2002 6:33:31 AM]