Linear vs Non-Linear Narratives

This post is about the differences between linear and non-linear narratives in video games. Linear narratives are defined by the fixed manner that objectives are completed and the inability to change the storyline and ending. While non-linear gameplay can be characterised as having objectives that can be completed in different ways, branching storylines, and multiple endings.

Linear narratives present in video games create a story similar to watching a film were while the player is controlling the character and using them to progress the story they can not make any of their own decisions. This can be a problem as the player is stuck into the choices of the designer and this can affect the way the player enjoys the overall game. If the narrative is compelling enough the player may not even notice that there are not many choices and become immersed all the same.

Non-linear narratives give the player a lot of freedom and a lot more choice than linear games, it has become popular to allow the player choices while playing. Modern games in particular have a tendency to lean towards giving the player a sandbox to roam about in.

Sandbox games are the biggest example of non-linear narratives, they provide usually a large area for the player to have a choice over their actions. Most of the action adventure style games I have played recently have let me run around collecting animal skins, flowers, and doing random fetch quests in the pursuit of experience points, most of the time. Done right and the game continues to feel fun and I do enjoy the freedom to jump from tree to tree and ignore any quests but I know sooner or later to finish the game I need to start the quests I should have been completing.

Open ended game play like The Sims and Minecraft are other examples of non-linear game. They give the player a world with set rules but no detailed narrative, to play the game you build your own and there is not an ending in the same sense of other games.

Endless Cutscenes

Cutscenes are a common sight in games and have been since the 80s, they can give the players a deeper feel for the story and impart important information, but they are often found as a nuisance by players. We are so used to having cutscenes forcing us to take a break from playing the game that it is often strange to play a game that tries something new without cutscenes.

I originally started thinking about cutscenes after I tried to play Eternal Sonata, as I am not a big fan of the particular style of rpg I was a bit sceptical that I would like any of it but the story was interesting and the fighting was fun. The main reason it is now gathering dust on my shelf is the cutscenes, they are beautiful cutscenes that educate the player on the life of Chopin but I found that they were too long for what they were trying to tell me. 

Eternal Sonata is an extreme case but it made me think about how much time games spend showing me cutscenes instead of letting me experience the narrative and made me ask myself how much I actually pay attention to them. 

Cutscenes feel like they are needed in games they are a quick way of holding down the player and telling them important information but they are also counterintuitive to the interactive idea of video games. Cutscenes can be very powerful if the player is invested in the game they are playing they may not mind that control has been taken away from them, I found Mass Effect did this particularly well. Despite this I feel all too often that I don't pay attention to cutscenes, it has become ingrained in me that it means break time, a time where I can put the controller down and check my emails etc. This is not how a game should be played, the concept of putting down the controller and still be "playing" is not the interactivity asked from a game. 

To counteract the lack of control in cutscenes quick time events can be introduced, these kind of events are often disliked as they can be seen as being lazy or only added to placate the players on the amount of cutscenes. To a certain extent I agree, games can be there to challenge players and quick time events are not really challenging, despite this I find them often fun and means that the character who I'm identifying myself as can do something that as a player it's possible I could never make the character do. 

Assassins Creed tries a different approach to cutscenes, throughout the game you may need to learn more about a situation or receive orders/objectives. Instead of a cutscene they will let you retain full control of the character but you must follow an NPC or be required to stay in one particular spot otherwise you are desynchronised and must do it again. This way gives you the impression that you are still in control even though you are being forced to pay attention similar to the cutscenes.

Personally I think cutscenes are not necessarily essential as proven by games such as Half-Life but I think I would miss them. It might be that the ability to pay attention to them is a problem that I have and my gaming experience would be all the better for watching them.

Narrators

When playing Thomas was Alone I was struck by the idea that I wasn't actually enjoying the gameplay but what kept me playing was the story, in particular I liked the way it was presented to me. If you look at Thomas was Alone from a mechanics view it is essentially a puzzle platformer but with the addition of the inner monologue esque narration it became more, I started to actually care what would happen to the shapes I was playing with. This started me thinking about in game narration in other games I had played and I noticed distinct differences.

There is the obvious narrators of Bastion, and Little Big Planet were the narrators, while arguably are not necessary, are such a big part of the game that it is hard to think of the games without them.

Dear Esther is another game that without that narration there would not necessarily be a recognisable story. The situational narration is needed otherwise you would walk around the island learning about it but not what led you to this place and a whole chunk of the narrative would be missing.

When thinking about the different types of narrators I wondered about the narration of characters and in particular NPCs. Portal is an excellent puzzle game but the addition of Glados and its continual reminder that it is there watching you creates an extra dimension to the players struggle. They also seem to use the narrator to cover the fact that the character is silent, usually the character would be able to respond to the antagonist but the way Glados teases you continues to add to the players drive.

A clever way of using a narrator that took some time for me to realise was the use of a narrator at the beginning of the game to set the story, examples of this are Borderlands and Dragon Age. The way it is presented at the beginning allows the game to impart back story to the player but in a way that makes it feel like the player was the one that had created it, of course it helps if the game is a sequel such as Borderlands 2. However this technique is the one out of all described above that if taken out of the game would not be missed, that's not to say that it isn't an excellent narrative device.

Overall I think narrators can make a good story much better, I know I haven't really said anything about narrators that haven't worked in games but when I think of any the main reason they have not worked is due to bad localisation.

Ludonarrative Dissonance

Ludonarrative Dissonance is simply put when the narrative and the gameplay of a game are opposing. Whilst researching this topic I found a lot of negative views about it, while understanding is it really as big a problem as they seem to suggest?

I have enjoyed a lot of games that when looking back at had this type of dissonance and while occasionally I admit I did notice some actions and narrative that didn't fit with each other I still enjoyed them. The game, Bioshock, that spurred the coining of the term Ludonarrative Dissonance is in fact one of my favourite games and not until I read Clint Hockings discussion on the topic did I even notice the 'problem'. Not to be hard on Hocking as he did say at the end of his review that he did like the game it's just that he couldn't help but notice the dissonance between what the narrative and the gameplay were asking you to do.

It's not only Bioshock that shows this dissonance it's apparent in many games, in particular games that try to share an immersive narrative and also try to be a shooter. Games such as Uncharted, and Tomb Raider convince the player that the character is good, real, and human, this is then contradicted when they seem to have no trouble running around killing hordes of people. In other cases the character can seem totally opposite to how they act in gameplay like Max Payne 3, were Max often describes himself as old, fat, and not up to the job yet when he is jumping around the game world he doesn't match up to his description. These dissonances may be annoying but it wouldn't be the same game that you may have enjoyed without them, true I have read in many of the reviews that the characters could show more development to allow an easier transition from the beginning character that doesn't want to hurt people to the character that does what they must or depending on the game starts to enjoy it.

As I've said before I am not entirely disagreeing with the concept of ludonarrative dissonance but the idea that it is the main problem with games today. Games could improve drastically if this dissonance was taken away such as making violence less of a mechanic in certain adventure games and maybe making characters more realistic. Is there a possibility that by doing this players won't have as much fun though, games are there to take you into fantastical worlds that while may be close to ours is a place where you can do things you can't or shouldn't in real life, so would taking away the dissonance make games too realistic or would it immerse players more.

I believe that there is room for games with and without dissonance, it may not always be intentional but it can be fun and that's what games are about.


Bibliography

"Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock", Clint Hocking, 07/10/07, http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html, retrieved 06/05/13

"Ludonarrative dissonance: The roadblock to realism", Brett Makedonski, 26/09/12, http://www.destructoid.com/ludonarrative-dissonance-the-roadblock-to-realism-235197.phtml, retrieved 06/05/13

"Vicodin Visions", Tom Bissell, 31/05/12,
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7989584/on-rockstar-games-max-payne-3, retrieved 06/05/13

"Bioshock Infinite, ludonarrative dissonance, and "next-gen game design"", Daniel Sims, 01/05/13, http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/01/bioshock-infinite-ludonarrative-dissonance-and-next-gen-game-design/, retrieved 06/05/13

The Narrative of Violence

When looking through the GDC vault for 2013 I came across an interesting talk by Walt Williams the lead writer and narrative designer of Spec Ops: The Line at 2K. The talk was called "We are not heroes: contextualizing violence through narrative" in it he spoke about how they tried to write the narrative of Spec Ops: The Line with thoughtful violence. He discusses how in real life killing is an impactable action and you are likely to remember every time you kill but games can make it feel 'mundane' and 'filler'.  For Spec Ops they tried to make the violence meaningful, they did this by creating an illusion of causality. Williams describes the four steps they took to create this illusion and uses examples of how they did this in game. 

The first step is to embrace ludo-narrative dissonance, in particular the fact that characters can be hypocrites. Williams speaks about the action of killing and how it should not be justified because of the situation but by the character, this allows them to have more dimensions and be flawed. If the character is flawed they are more real and any hypocrisy that appears makes the character more relate able.
These flaws also lead on to the next point Williams makes about the character should always be evolving with the narrative. In Spec Ops they used generic evolution were in they wrote a set of generic lines for the character and all NPCs that matched certain tones and were triggered at certain narrative points. They gave the example of the main character Walker, at the beginning he is professional and doesn't really want to kill but sees that he might have to in order to do the job, he also is leading his men not ordering them. The second set of generic lines shows that he has become distant and he's finding it easier to order his men about, the third set shows how far he has come as a character as he has become unhinged. At this point he is seeing his wounded squad mates as inconveniences and all he wants is vengeance. The enemies are also given evolving lines were they begin confident that Walker and his team won't succeed to them being terrified, the writers wanted to show the enemies as victims as they would be if the game was from their viewpoint and to remind the player that while you are killing them they are human. 
The third step is that the choices of the player should reflect gameplay, with Spec Ops they tried to make the player really think about using guns and killing. An example of which is when the player is shown two men that have committed crimes, one of stealing water the other killing a family and you are told whether you want to kill one of them or neither of them. This choice gives the player a deeper understanding of the enemies they are facing and is meant to question whether it has been and would be wrong to kill them. The choice is morally grey and Williams states that they should be as the creators of the game should not be the ones to judge. 
Letting the players judge themselves ties in all the other steps of the illusion it doesn't force the idea of what should be right down the players throat but instead makes them think. In Spec Ops they do this with two types of judgement, silent and direct. Silent judgement has to be optional with no repercussions it makes the player feel guilty with no resolution. Direct judgement asks the player to make a conscience decision and makes the player judge themselves. This kind of judgement is best for the end of the game as they can look back on all they've done and gives them closure. 

Williams finishes on the thought that creating violent games are too easy and wonders about trying harder to create less bloodthirsty characters. In a Edge magazine feature that discussed why we use violence in games so much, they showed that programming death is much easier than life and the idea that killing is a part of video games. It also discusses as Williams did the idea that killing is an easy way to create drama and doesn't not require a lot of work on the narrative. 

However there are games that strive against that such as Spec Ops and Dishonored. The developers of Dishonored tried to create the idea that while you can kill people to achieve your goal there are other ways. They do this by pointing out that killing without thought is something the enemy would do and you are meant to have honour, and through the chaos meter. The chaos meter tracks the amount of kills the player has made and changes the environment according to this. In a sense they use it to judge the player, were they are saying to the player "Be good and don't kill otherwise the whole city suffers".

Violence in video games has been around since the beginning and as such I feel it shouldn't be abandoned fully. The type of games that have been created that show meaningful violence, such as the two discussed briefly, are definitely a step towards creating a better narrative with the violence giving players a choice to ignore the violence or pay attention and maybe even learn something about yourself. 

Bibliography 

"We are not heroes: contextualizing violence through narrative", Walt Williams 2K,
GDC 2013 Talk

"Why we Kill: what is it that makes us find videogame violence so entertaining?", 18/12/12,

http://www.edge-online.com/features/why-we-kill/ , retrieved 06/05/13

"To kill or not to kill? dishonored's makers on the morality behind murder", Keith Stuart, 16/10/12
http://www.edge-online.com/news/dishonored-to-kill-or-not-to-kill-that-is-the-question-and-there-may-be-no-answer/ , retrieved 06/05/13

Game Studies and Narrative

Frans Mayras paper "What is game studies?" discusses the topic of digital games as a part of culture and the evolution to become a discipline in its own right. The definition of a discipline, according to Mayras, is to have;

1. A subject of study,
2. Theories within that subject,
3. Methods of practice,
4. Terminology that relates to the subject in a particular way.

Or a learned community that aims to evolve the knowledge of the subject of study.Games have all of these points as shown by the numerous academic groups and journals associated with the creation and analysis of digital games. Mayras continues discussing the development of games studies by discussing the ludology vs narrative debate. The debate is between those that see games as a medium for narrative purposes, while ludologist believe that computer games don't need any narrative to be a game. Ludology helped to show that games are unique and in need of a separate discipline. 


Jullian Kucklichs paper "Literary Theory and Digital Games" discusses the idea of digital games as a hybrid medium in particular with relation to literature. Kucklich shows the similarities between digital games and literature and uses three approaches used in literature to demonstrate the different answers of how reality and fiction relate. These approaches are;

• Poetics: the study of literary conventions and rules,
• Hermeneutics: the study of literature's meaning,
• Aesthetics: the study of literature's effects.

Poetics in digital games are the general conventions that are used in games such as the idea of scores and difficulty curves. The genre of a game affects the poetic conventions and rules that are expected from the game, such as the expectation of a range of weapons in a first person shooter.

Hermeneutics is similar between games and literature as despite the interactive nature of games the meaning that is created is affected by external forces. In particular the intertextuality of a text shows this approach, if you play a game such as Space Quest without any external film or literature knowledge of space some of the game play may be lost on the player.

Aesthetics in digital games are noted as being 'aesthetics of control' as what immerses you into the game world is the interactivity and that is often through the control of an avatar or protagonist. Also the control of the game on the players emotion such when a character you were emotionally invested in dying.