Half-life provides a narrative for which the
player is expected to play the protagonist.
might and magic was grid-based at the
core, and designer Jon Van Canegham
wanted an explanation as to why the
world was perfectly square and had
an impassable barrier on all sides. In
this instance, he saw story as design
spackle, suited for covering up game
elements that were nonsensical
and inconvenient.
Story used in this fashion is an
incredibly useful design tool, but
the designer should be wary about
going too far and instead drawing
attention to what you had hoped
to hide. When knights oF the old
repUBlic was in the early design
stages, they recognized early on
that the walk back to your ship was
killing their game flow. Their first
pass design to solve the problem
called for a "call speeder" button that
summoned a speeder bike to where
the player was, animated the player
getting on it, and then teleported the
player to his starship after a fade-to-black. The feature raised more
questions than it answered—why
isn’t a player riding a speeder all the
time? Where did it come from? Why
can it be summoned anywhere? The
designers killed the long, convoluted
idea and changed the button to a
simpler "return to ship." By hand-waving away the explanation, the
designers drew less attention
to what was an important but
incongruent feature.
In most video games, the main
character is designed to be somewhat
of a blank slate, so that the player
can more readily see himself in that
role, taking part in the narrative. This
raises the importance of the auxiliary
characters: Minsc and Boo, or Chloe in
Uncharted 2, or even the squadmates
in Bad company and the little sisters
in Bioshock. These characters and
companions add personality and
warmth to the game experience,
give emotional cues as to how the
player should feel, and perhaps most
significantly, once you like them,
give the designer something in the
narrative that the player has an
emotional investment in.
Most screenwriters accept as
dogma that audiences are more
biased toward saving a loved one
than a world—in their hearts, they
would choose saving Lois Lane over
a nameless, faceless Metropolis
every time. This is a triumph of heart
over mind that audiences want in
our escapist fantasy, but it is also
something that can be manipulated
by the designer in order to increase
personal investment into the game.
Rescuing the princess is one thing—
rescuing your love interest is quite
another. And spoilers alert, but would
anyone be talking about the story
of Final Fantasy Vii if it weren’t for
the death of Aeris? Or talking about
the story in starcraFt if not for the
capture of Kerrigan?
Narrative as explaNatioN
» It turns out that the world of
might and magic is not a fantasy
world. Not to spoil the story for
those who were really hoping to
go back and play dark side oF Xeen
someday, but according to the first
might and magic, these worlds were
all giant terrariums hurtling through
the void for some cosmic purpose.
A nifty upside of this science-fiction backstory was that it allowed
for robot bosses and laser rifles at
the endgame, but the real reason was
much simpler: the tech for the first
Narrative as player ageNcy
» Last, but not least, we have
the game’s narrative acting as
the primary means of a player’s
agency—the player makes choices
within the game that dramatically
affect the outcome of the game’s
narrative. This is, of course, the
bread and butter of the game design
behind Bio Ware games like dragon
age and mass eFFect. The intricacies
of designing these are fascinating,
and well worthy of their own
discussion—so we’ll talk about them
next month.
DamioN schubert is the lead systems
designer of Star War S: the Old republic
at Bio Ware Austin. He has spent nearly a
decade working on the design of games, with
experience on Meridian59 and ShadOWbane as
well as other virtual worlds. Damion also is
responsible for Zen of Design, a blog devoted
to game design issues.
www.gdmag.com 53
