“Putting into play” originates from the site Narrative Construction, whose goal is to offer a hands-on approach to the design of an engaging and dynamic game system from a narrative and cognitive perspective. The series illuminates how our thinking, learning, and emotions interplay when the designer proceeds from scratch to reach the desired goal of a meaningful and motivating experience.
To enhance the reading experience, I suggest you start with the first part if you haven´t done so already.
As a result of the stripping of the dramatic story structure, and the removal of its standard features (acts, turning-points, rising and falling actions), the previous part revealed a learning curve. The flow-state of the learning curve (illustrated below) shows the motivating engine by how the receiver gradually builds experiences and feelings on the path towards the goal.
Balancing the pacing of the engaging and motivating forces to reach a more persistent mood, the control value of the learning curve´s flow-state is based on how you are making sense of the causal, spatial, and temporal links in regard to the receiver´s understanding and learning. Your control value of harmony (see the previous part) is where the receivers ask: What? Who? Where? When? Why? How? not because they are confused but because they are curious. It is then the access to the flow-state of the motivating forces rouses a rhythm, which enables you to deepen the emotional effect over time. To avoid dissonance, which decreases flow, the formula to harmony is achieved…
...when cause and effect are elaborated by the constructor towards a set premise and adapted to the media at hand, and when the effect of the composition supports the set goals for the receiver.
With the model's help, we can finally look into the details of how you capture the engaging and dynamic forces behind the rhythm of flow and turn the motions into a mood. These motivating forces by how the player creates meaning are interesting as they can be transferred to mechanics. An example of a mood being transferred and embedded into a mechanic was presented in the first part. The forces concerned the relationship between the player and the horse in the game Shadow of the Colossus, whose core of mood from the player´s building of experiences and feelings was transferred to the mechanics of The Last Guardian.
Bottom-up
Instead of breaking down story structures in search of verbs and motivating elements using a top-down perspective, the model assists a bottom-up approach to the building of a structure from the perspective of the receiver´s thinking and feelings. To access the curiosity-driven approach to the design of engaging and motivating experiences, the narrative principles and systems can help us clarify what media-specific elements identify video games with respect to the player’s learning.
Several aspects of the narrative systems become visible when observing from a bottom-up perspective on gameplay structuring from the player’s position. Since it is easy to mix up your perspective and position as a constructor with the receiver´s perspective and position, the narrative systems facilitate the possibility to differentiate between the roles. Keeping track of the changes between the perspectives and positions of the receiver´s interpretation of meanings provided by you as a constructor, I introduced two groups in the previous parts that assist the change of perspective. When you get to the more advanced techniques of foreshadowing, meaning you set the player´s hypothesizing about the goal into motion, the control of the perspectives and positions will be a great asset.
Regarding the bridging of the gap between writers and designers, it is worth noting how the narrative systems of plot and style unite the team constructors.
Navigating the structuring of gameplay with the help of the narrative principles of logic, space, and time by how the style mobilizes the game's components and techniques. To meet the receiver's interpretation of the plot's causal, spatial and temporal networks, games amplify:
time by how the plot and style pick up the presence of the receiver
logic by how the plot and style convey causal links between outputs and inputs (interaction)
space by how the plot and style regard the position of the receiver
By connecting the activities of the receiver´s thinking and learning to the space of activities you can access how plot and style motivate and engage the receiver's sense- and meaning making. The interaction from the exchange of meanings that you present before the receiver's senses to engage the receiver's building of experiences are depicted below.
To meet the game's style to be interactive, you can see how the activities of exchanging meanings work as a loop. Making the loop meeting the goal-states of learning, the logic of cause and effect representing the minimum of data to trigger the cognitive activities can be turned into outputs and inputs:
By adding the receiver’s position and the causal exchange of outputs and inputs to the engagement and duration axis, we will get a base to a flow model that captures the core to the conditions that enable the motivating engine of learning to propel.
The illustration of the flow model helps envision, from your perspective as a constructor, how each meaning presented before the receiver's senses triggers the receiver's meaning making, which gradually deepens the experiences along the duration axis.
The receiver/player's position determines how you approach the space of activities when obtaining the rhythm of providing and withholding meanings in relation to the player’s understanding and learning. Accessing the player's position helps you navigate through the space of activities from a curiosity-driven perspective. To show how you proceed from the curiosity-driven perspective in the setting of the causal, spatial, and temporal links that trigger the player´s building of experiences and feelings, I will start by showing a classical example of what action- and competency focused design looks like using the flow model.
Returning to The Lord of Rings (see previous part) we can observe how its conflict-ridden world leads to the development of combat and survival systems in games, in order to encourage players to act. The flow-state of actions in regard to the player's objective (goal) generates the causal contrast of going from weak to strong.
The experience of empowerment is a common expression of a player´s agency in a competence- and action-focused design.
In making the online game Journey, the game designer Jenova Chen explicitly expressed that he wanted the player to feel awe from experiencing the empowerment of caring about each other (link to the article). This initiated the removal of standard features related to competition and combat in online games (the lobby, player ID, HUD, weapons, invites, etc.). The example gives you an idea of how the change of experiences and feelings alters the core gameplay. But how you resolve the causal contrasts of going from weak to strong, to meet the experience of awe, is often a process left to the designer's intuition to handle. It is often here the canonic story offers a framework to organize plot patterns. In the case of Journey Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey's pattern generated a life journey gameplay structure.
But if we try to capture the motivating and engaging forces and how they are processed by the game's mechanics and systems from a curiosity-driven perspective. It is through plot and style you can see how
- the contrasts, as a drive-state to engage the player's curiosity, are triggered by the mechanic.
And in regard to the player's learning and the goal, it is
- cause and effect of the contrasts of awareness and unawareness that release the mechanic's rules and behaviors to propel the overall rhythm to the motivating forces of flow in the building of experiences and feelings.
By setting the core to the overall rhythm of the flow provided by the contrasts and cause and effect, you are also setting the rules and behaviors of how the mechanic provides and withholds meanings in regard to the receiver’s building of experiences and feelings.
Tracing the core to the overall rhythm of flow
To trace the core of rhythm from a curiosity-driven perspective, we will stay with The Lord of the Rings and look into how the dynamic and motivating forces of rhythm from a story (movie) can be transferred to a game mechanic.
To convert the flow of the causal contrasts from the movie The Lord of the Rings </
