Three major problems faced by story narration in the game

The game contains huge and inevitable obstacles, which will hinder the traditional story telling.

The following are the three major problems faced by the game plot:

1. System problem

The system creates the fun of the game, but it is boring for other media. Players like learning, playing games and mastering the system.

How the game uses the system:

The game will take time to record every step and reload the soldiers' steps when the two sides are at war. No movie will be like this. Complex combat systems will make the content interesting. Managing ammunition, measuring the risk of advance, using cover, and then firing bullets and hitting the enemy are all interesting. If the system cannot be used effectively, it will cause temporary exit. Shooting is one of the fun elements of fighting games. "Was it long enough for me to fire two rockets at the tank when lightning struck the people in the bunker?"

How to use this system in movies;

But in movies, gunfights are interesting only when we have emotional connection with the characters. In war movies such as Apocalypse Now, Black Hawk Landing, hurt locker and All-Metal Jacket, shouting and shooting are less than half the length of the films. The fun of movies mainly comes from the interaction of characters. "Jeff is a reliable soldier, but he is crazy. Can he kill everyone in the next raid? "

Books don't pay attention to action, such as For Whom the Bell Tolls, Black Angel and Red Medal of Courage. These books focus on discussing the thoughts and feelings of the characters. "I volunteered, but I consider myself a coward."

Tell the same story in different forms:

Books, movies and video games can tell the same story. But the fun in the game comes from different aspects of books or movies.

In the movie, it only takes 2 minutes to learn how to fight. It takes hours to learn how to fight in the game. This is actually a complete experience.

Similarly, movies will take a long time to describe the development of characters. In the game, there may be only 2 minutes of cutscenes to describe it.

Yes, it's really too simplistic. You can combine action with character development, which is what most stories do. We make this distinction in order to clearly present the advantages and disadvantages of each media.

This is a big problem for story telling in the game. Traditional writing methods are ineffective here. When we play games, we become goal-oriented and want to integrate into the system. Anything that separates us from the system is an obstacle between us and our goal. Even death is a perceptible element in the system. In other words, the traditional story is not like this.

Lovely scene: worse than death?

In the game, death is only a temporary setback that prevents us from approaching the goal in a fixed time. We can quickly check how long it will take, and then press the "reload" button to start the action again.

However, in the game, the cutscene is a temporary setback, which prevents us from approaching the goal in an unknown time. We don't know how long these characters will talk, what they will talk about and whether they will be interesting. In the game, cutscenes may be more terrible than death.

I like a certain number of cutscenes, but my personal tolerance time is always less than 5 minutes. When the game forces the player not to play the game for a long time, it is in big trouble.

The success or failure of the game depends on its system. However, the traditional story narration is not suitable for the current system.

Can this situation be solved?

Maybe.

The best way to cultivate emotional involvement is role development and interaction.

In real life, we will have many goal-based dialogues, that is, according to our understanding of others and how to use words. Dialogue is a system.

Theoretically, the interactive dialogue system can be the basis of the game. If players know what they want when approaching an NPC, if their skills in manipulating the dialogue system can affect the results, and if the system is interesting, then this is a brand-new game level. Role development and emotional involvement are out of sync. This needs constant upgrading. But it's not that simple.

The game has magical power, which can control the interactive ability of players with the game world, enemies and their tools. But the system that can explore the emotional interaction between human beings has not yet appeared.

The gun in video games is a simple, interesting and beneficial interactive tool. But "press a" to start a conversation is not the case. Shooting can create a system based on the skills and disciplines of the science department. But branching conversation trees can't.

It's interesting and worthwhile to break ground in a simulated city and watch your stadium grow. In Plants vs Zombies, it is interesting and worthwhile to collect enough sunlight to build your fifth watermelon pit. Drifting in a tense cycle of extreme happiness is interesting and beneficial. The response to choosing "polite" or "rude" is not.

Without a system that can be learned, manipulated and mastered, human interaction will continue to exist as a game obstacle.

2. The problem of "cheating"

Players will always play the game again until they get the desired result.

In the movie "Cheating", the character played by Bill Murray will be resurrected repeatedly on the same day for some unknown reasons. Every day he tries something new, but every morning he wakes up in the same bed in the same town on the same day. In a sense, he is trapped, but he can do whatever he wants.

On the other hand, the external gateway protocol can replay any scenario until it gets the desired result. Designers don't force players to make specific decisions.

The playback is very powerful. In the game, we may never die, and we can try it countless times. We will use every life to create a parallel universe, and the life we stay most often is the object that can lead us to victory. The boss in the eighth level may be as big as a house with claws, but nothing in the game can compete with eternal players.

Bill Murray said, "I am God."

Andie macdowell said, "You are God."

"I think I am a god, I am not a god."

"Because you survived the car accident?"

"I didn't just survive a car accident. I was not only attacked by an explosion yesterday. I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hanged, electrocuted and burned. But every morning I wake up safe and sound. It seems that I am a fairy. "

This is what we do in the game. This is a huge story-telling problem.

Those who influence characters in other media also affect our fears and motivations in real life, and will not affect our game characters. We usually break into a strange square, then jump on the roof 20 feet high and attack the devil without thinking. But the problem of stealing love will destroy the tension and credibility, and make the player's ability contradict the story explained by the developer.

If there are inevitable events in the story, players can't have any choice about them. Players will choose what they want, not what the narrator wants. They don't choose based on normal people's thinking, but stand in the perspective of immortals. Developers must carefully judge the degree of freedom offered to players.

Can this situation be solved?

Maybe.

It is a long way to go to solve the problems of system and cheating. If NPC can promote the integrity of the story, the player's choice can no longer affect the main plot points, and designers can write content at will. Then the rest is to connect the player's motivation with the game world.

3. uncanny valley's theory

Today's art and technology are not enough to help designers create real characters in games.

An emotional motivation that makes games superior to other media is immersion. There is no such profound experience as the game world represented by Thief, Misty Island, Mass Effect, Fury or World of Warcraft. Movies usually last only three hours, but books will only make you fantasize constantly, instead of really putting you in the story world. Instead, the game creates a world that can attract your attention for weeks.

But when you get close to those gorgeous and exquisite NPCs, all illusions will be shattered. Simple scripts that control thinking cannot be compared with complex scripts that control actions. Alex Vance may have a program that can constantly change the level of eye contact, but if you want to hear what she has to say, you should be prepared to listen to some compliments from her. Although the appearance has changed a lot, the internal results of NPC today are not much different from 1995.

We know human beings very well. But the best NPC in the game world will show his inhumanity in 30 seconds of interaction.

The theory of horror valley is a huge obstacle to emotional input. Whenever Alex Vance repeats a sentence, or blocks your progress, or stands in the distance with glassy eyes, you will know that he is not a real person. She's just a program.

Players have adapted to this situation. We can have emotional connection with the mysterious legion in the game. But non-players can see some deeper content better than we can.

I showed mass effect 2 to my wife, but she was not attracted by the sound and animation of science fiction, but said, "The dialogue doesn't seem to be very synchronized, does it?" That's true. For a person who is used to seeing high-quality works like Pixar, mass effect 2 really looks rough. We come from a world where you can see Cloud respond by pressing X, but she comes from a world where countless teams spend months adjusting Buzz Lightyear's facial expression.

If there is no emotional connection, there is no story

Can this situation be solved?

Yes, we are solving this problem. Artists avoid this problem by telling stories about animals, caves, toys, robots or aliens. Or they will stylize the game characters around the limitations of the media. Or they will use wireless transmission and recording to move the characters on the screen. So in the case of limited technology, developers can also use some tips to tell stories better.

Conclusion:

Games have the potential to tell immersive, fascinating and life-changing stories, which are incomparable to stories told by other media. Before that, we just need to solve some problems. I know many of you are trying to solve these problems. I also look forward to seeing your creative performance in the near future.