Reading Week 10 - Games Stories

 Games Stories

 

What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story

- This is the first reading i started with for week 10.  This reading focused on story within game development and said how story is a universal human experience. 

The author of this reading "John Sutherland", states that a big influence of his is, Robert McKee. Which he states is a guru of Hollywood screenwriting. Robert McKee is the author of the book "Story" which is based on his three day intensive story lectures. 

There's a basic structure when it comes to potentially making a great story and a lot of movies and games use this basic structure depending on what type of movie/game it may be. 

- First, there's a protagonist, a hero. 

 

- His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident.

 

-  A gap opens up between the hero and an orderly life.

 

-  The hero tries the normal, conservative action to overcome the gap. It fails. The world pushes back too 

hard.

 

-  The hero then has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.

 

-  Then there is a reversal. Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn't know before, and the world is out of whack again. A second gap has opened up. 

 

-  The hero has to take a greater risk to overcome the second gap. 

 

-  After overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal, opening a third gap.

 

- The hero has to take the greatest risk of all to overcome this gap and get to that object of desire, which is usually an orderly life.

 

 

This reading also spoke about how story is Conflict. Above you can see the basic story structure, and that proves that some sort of Conflict is needed within a story to make it a good one.

 

References: John Sutherland, 27,7,2005. > https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130770/what_every_game_developer_needs_to_.php?page=1 

 

 

 

 

Telling Stories with Systems | Video Game Story Design

-  This reading was in video form on YouTube, by Game Maker's Toolkit.

He spoke about how interactive AI within a game is so important and really helps the player be immersed in the story, He highlighted how in Far Cry 4 they added a feature where wild animals are roaming the huge open world map and they can cause conflict and create a short story. Whether it was a tiger running into a bandit camp and causing havoc, or an eagle swooping down from the sky and stealing the animal you are trying to hunt. These AI systems within the game are great and they really help make the world feel more alive. 

In Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, the overall campaign story is relatively boring and i know from personal experience because i bought the game at release but only played for a week and then lost interest. Saurons army is an ever changing army of Orcs. There is one Orc captain for every faction of Saurons army, and each Orc Captain is randomly generated from their looks,design,voice and traits. They roam the map freely which gives opportunity for a small story to be created, they also have interesting personalized dialogue, if you failed to kill them before they will remember and remind you of what had happened. 

I really enjoyed watching this video, it was so much easier to follow then when i actually had to read myself. 

It also got me thinking about my favorite game of all time, DayZ. DayZ is an open world, multiplayer, zombie survival game. And i think this game has a great way of creating stories. 

There is a huge open map with up to 100 players per server, and also thousands of zombies scattered throughout the map. You spawn in with nothing and you start at the bottom of the food chain but slowly but surely you find some gear and food and you're good to go, along the way you may rung into other online players and what happens is completely up to them or you, and this can create some great stories if it goes right. The game also has a wild life system including, bears, wolfs, deer. So when you're roaming in the wilds you must always keep an eye open because a bear or wolf could be right around the corner.