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Essay Questions on Storytelling
Essay Question 5. In his closing keynote at MIGS 2008, Jon Blow expressed opinions about the intersection between stories and videogames. Summarise what he said and offer an opinion of your own.
Jon Blow stated that stories in videogames were a losing proposition because they were either not interactive (and therefore didn’t belong in the interactive medium) or, to the extent that they were interactive, they would always be inferior to stories authored in advance by a human mind.
He cited foreshadowing as one technique with which a pre-authored story crafts resonance and structure by using advance knowledge unavailable to a story that is being written interactively on the spot.
It would be nice if interactive stories could attain that high water mark of quality, but it probably isn’t necessary for making videogames equally valuable in their own right. Much like real life, which is also made up as it goes along, we are invested in the unfolding, emergent story told by our actions in a videogame specifically because they are our actions. If they lack the perfect economy, balance, and structure of an expertly crafted story, then they make up for it with immediacy.
Essay Question 6. Is a football game a story?
No. It is not the case that any series of events is a story. No series of events is a story until it is related. Once you describe a football game to a friend, or watch it on TV, it becomes a story, because of the subjective judgments of how the events should be conveyed: what should be emphasised, what should be left out, etc. The process of interpretation and the process of relating transforms events into stories.
Essay Question 7. Is ‘story’ an art form?
No, because a single story can be told in many different art forms, such as film and literature. Paintings and photographs can even ‘tell a story’. There are, however, artistic elements of a given story, such as structure and theme, that are consistent across all media.
Essay Question 8. What is the difference between a story in a film and a story that a friend tells you about his/her day? What does that difference imply about stories in videogames?
Robert McKee described an ideal that film stories aspire to: they are a compressed, distilled sample of the most poignant moments in life. The compression makes it worth your time to hear about the lives of strangers, and in this sense traditional film stories can be thought of as an unnatural workaround for the obstacle of not having a personal relationship with someone.
By contrast, because you are invested in the minutiae of your friend’s life out of personal connection, you will happily listen to the story he tells you about his day, even though the events would seem bland in a film.
A crafted story distills distant events into poetics to create meaning, whereas real life is immediate and intrinsically meaningful. The events in videogames are both immediate, because they are authored by the player’s actions, and distant, because they are crafted and bounded by a stranger, the game’s designer. The best games strike this balance well, giving the player freedom to tell their own story within a set of designer-authored parameters.
Essay Question 10. Why are stories important to videogames?
Stories are no more important to videogames than they are to any other medium. A film or painting can be without narrative, capturing a feeling, a sense of place and time, or anything of equal value, and so can the mechanics of a game.
However, as in all media, a story binds together evoked emotions into a larger structure that imitates their occurrence in life.
Essay Question 11. What is the difference between having an experience in real life and having an experience in a videogame?
Pablo Picasso, in response to being harassed for making “unrealistic” art, asked his accuser to produce something realistic. The man handed Picasso a photo of his wife. “This is exactly what my wife looks like,” said the man. “She’s very small,” said Picasso.
All representations of things are inaccurate interpretations. Photographs represent and convey appearances. Videogames represent and convey experiences. If someone reproduced real life in an interactive media without bias, they would be creating a simulation, not a game, and even if the simulation were perfect, it could only be a representation, never the real experience. But games don’t aim to reproduce experiences faithfully, they aim to interpret experiences via selective judgment: what should exist in the game and how it should feel.
Grade: C. On the right track, but incomplete thoughts.
Jon Blow stated that stories in videogames were a losing proposition because they were either not interactive (and therefore didn’t belong in the interactive medium) or, to the extent that they were interactive, they would always be inferior to stories authored in advance by a human mind.
He cited foreshadowing as one technique with which a pre-authored story crafts resonance and structure by using advance knowledge unavailable to a story that is being written interactively on the spot.
It would be nice if interactive stories could attain that high water mark of quality, but it probably isn’t necessary for making videogames equally valuable in their own right. Much like real life, which is also made up as it goes along, we are invested in the unfolding, emergent story told by our actions in a videogame specifically because they are our actions. If they lack the perfect economy, balance, and structure of an expertly crafted story, then they make up for it with immediacy.
Essay Question 6. Is a football game a story?
No. It is not the case that any series of events is a story. No series of events is a story until it is related. Once you describe a football game to a friend, or watch it on TV, it becomes a story, because of the subjective judgments of how the events should be conveyed: what should be emphasised, what should be left out, etc. The process of interpretation and the process of relating transforms events into stories.
Essay Question 7. Is ‘story’ an art form?
No, because a single story can be told in many different art forms, such as film and literature. Paintings and photographs can even ‘tell a story’. There are, however, artistic elements of a given story, such as structure and theme, that are consistent across all media.
Essay Question 8. What is the difference between a story in a film and a story that a friend tells you about his/her day? What does that difference imply about stories in videogames?
Robert McKee described an ideal that film stories aspire to: they are a compressed, distilled sample of the most poignant moments in life. The compression makes it worth your time to hear about the lives of strangers, and in this sense traditional film stories can be thought of as an unnatural workaround for the obstacle of not having a personal relationship with someone.
By contrast, because you are invested in the minutiae of your friend’s life out of personal connection, you will happily listen to the story he tells you about his day, even though the events would seem bland in a film.
A crafted story distills distant events into poetics to create meaning, whereas real life is immediate and intrinsically meaningful. The events in videogames are both immediate, because they are authored by the player’s actions, and distant, because they are crafted and bounded by a stranger, the game’s designer. The best games strike this balance well, giving the player freedom to tell their own story within a set of designer-authored parameters.
Essay Question 10. Why are stories important to videogames?
Stories are no more important to videogames than they are to any other medium. A film or painting can be without narrative, capturing a feeling, a sense of place and time, or anything of equal value, and so can the mechanics of a game.
However, as in all media, a story binds together evoked emotions into a larger structure that imitates their occurrence in life.
Essay Question 11. What is the difference between having an experience in real life and having an experience in a videogame?
Pablo Picasso, in response to being harassed for making “unrealistic” art, asked his accuser to produce something realistic. The man handed Picasso a photo of his wife. “This is exactly what my wife looks like,” said the man. “She’s very small,” said Picasso.
All representations of things are inaccurate interpretations. Photographs represent and convey appearances. Videogames represent and convey experiences. If someone reproduced real life in an interactive media without bias, they would be creating a simulation, not a game, and even if the simulation were perfect, it could only be a representation, never the real experience. But games don’t aim to reproduce experiences faithfully, they aim to interpret experiences via selective judgment: what should exist in the game and how it should feel.
Grade: C. On the right track, but incomplete thoughts.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Good article. To comment on some of the topics:
EQ5. I agree. I don't find my own life boring because foreshadowing rarely occurs. Besides, I do believe games could one day employ such techniques by observing player behavior and making predictions. Sure, things won't always pan out to fulfill the foreshadowing event(s), but as long as the narrative is consistent it won't break the story. In fact it could still help because the player might have been aware of the foreshadowing only to be surprised by an altogether different outcome (this happens in more traditional storytelling forms as well).
EQ6. Well put. I enjoy skillfully told stories so much that I actually prefer to watch football on TV rather than see a live game - the carefully orchestrated camera cuts and commentators (narrators?) make the experience more interesting to me.
EQ8. Again, very well put. This has been a constant challenge to game developers as they try to make their games feel more realistic without burdening them with the mundanities of everyday life.
EQ10. I was recently playing the new Prince of Persia while my girlfriend watched. She agreed it was pretty, but didn't understand why the characters didn't look more realistic. Her perception was that all 3D games were striving for photorealism. As I explained that the developers intentionally wanted that look, I thought it would be good to remember that myself because we as an industry tend to seek and admire realistic 3D representations above all others.
what makes videogames so unique is that they amalgamate all storytelling mediums, AND the player can feed his response back into the game . A good designer will incite the player to an emotional reaction - then allow this emotion to be represented in gameplay. The obvious example is gear2 chapter titles. Its not 'level 1' but ' The Tip of the Spear' - a Wagnerian charge to battle.
Inciting emotion is reasonably easy.... But allowing players to feed their reaction back into the game.... thats the difficult part. At the moment it is too difficult/ expensive to implement true freedom of expression in gameplay. For example in gears2 I really liked the 'tip of the spear' Derrick battle but I wanted the freedom to drive the Derrick rig down into the lower valley forests, or to jump between the rigs etc etc..... designers would also have to embrace the most feared concept in the games industry.... REDUNDANCY
Of course freedom of expression, consequence & redundancy in games will evolve naturally. In GTA VII I'll no doubt be able to ignore all the scripted story and concentrate on detonating building & bridges, turning the city into my own version of Mad Max. However by then Rockstar might have implemented a full criminal records system with cctv & detectives hunting u down. Good luck balancing the gameplay there!