The Selfish Story model
A Suggestion for Writing Narrative in Games from an evolutionary, psychological and design perspective
Abstract
After having worked with script writers in creating a narrative for games, I experienced the commonly reported cursed problem[1] of the dissonance between traditional storytelling and the interactive media of games. As such, I have attempted to identify the cause of the dissonance, possible solutions and a model to help writers and designers when developing a narrative.
This model is not an attempt to restrict game narrative as a creative art form or diminish the value of passive media such as movies, books and other non-interactive story telling devices. This is simply a suggestion on how to efficiently use the power of interactivity and the psychology behind its storytelling with as little ludonarrative dissonance[2] as possible within videogames specifically.
The model is as follows:
The Selfish Story – The egoistic experience you wish your audience to create stories from.
The Pitch – The justification to play, the spark of interest and contextualization.
The Loops – What the player finds themselves doing over and over and the narrative reasoning for this.
The Hooks – One or multiple events in the game that the audience will remember and talk about.
The Sidetracks – The optional content, rewards for exploration or skill, other side events outside the main narrative.
The Resolution – The justification to stop playing, the enticement to keep playing and the cursed problem.
The Selfish Story is meant to create a helpful understanding and mindset when writing and developing the games narrative. The other parts might be considered the gaming equivalent of story acts in passive stories[3]. The reason they are not referred to as acts is because aside from The Pitch and The Resolution, the chronological order and number of occurrences may vary from game to game. They are instead ordered after their common appearance during production and level of priority.
In this article, I will give a basic understanding of the evolutionary history of humans regarding storytelling, the psychological mechanics which processes storytelling, and the basic structure of stories. I will then explain each point in the model and attempt to highlight differences between games, movies and books. While most games are developed in a team of varying size, I assume that the reader is a either a solo developer or a script writer/author and address the reader as “you”. When it is a problem, while irrelevant to solo developers, that require communication with team members outside of narrative development, I will properly address that. This article is also not considering interactive experiences that are not technically games, abstract games[4] or other games without a narrative, as well as experimental movies and books which breaks conventions by introducing varying levels of interaction.
The Sympathetic Story
The main difference between games and traditional passive medias like movies and books is obviously interactivity. Your audience is not passively observing the story, they are experiencing it through simulation. However, it seems that while the problems posed by this are commonly reported and observed, there is little awareness on the fundamental causes for this. And fundamental causes should be prefaced by fundamental questions.
First, what separates humans from animals? We are vastly more intelligent and have jack of all trades bodies that allow us to survive a number of hostile environments.
Second, what defines our intelligence and what good is a body such as ours? We are able to abstract information and run simulations within our minds, instead of waiting for evolution to kill us, we run simulations to kill off our bad ideas instead. And since we have complex bodies paired with a complex brain, the two can learn from each other interchangeably, you store what your body has done and what your body experience as information, and you can imagine relatively accurately what your body can do, can’t do, what you wish to be able to do, what is beneficial and what is harmful to your body.
Third, how does this relate to storytelling? We can communicate in detail between each other, which has even greater evolutionary benefits for us. Some things aren’t obviously dangerous or useful, so we can hear or witness the experience of others and through sympathy, empathy and abstraction we can incorporate that knowledges into our mind and bodies. That way, we don’t just kill off simulations imaginable, we can use the death of others who died in circumstances we can’t even imagine. And as a hyper social species, we therefore tend to record such information as stories in order to retell them when needed and structure information as such so that we can better understand and incorporate it as well.
This makes us historic creatures. The reason a good story grips us is because our brain finds it useful. It orients us towards our highest ideals and away from our worst nightmares, but not only that, it allows us to confront the unknown as well and gain a new and profound understanding of it in a safe environment. This is what motivates the telling and consumption of stories from an evolutionary point of view.
Now, with the absolute evolutionary fundamentals out of the way, we can go further in depth on this issue. Understanding the evolutionary benefit of stories, our brains have then evolved accordingly, which means that there are two distinct means of developing stories. Either we are told a story, and through abstract information processing we are able to interpret, process and incorporate the stories we are told as information. Or we experience an event through the physical world, our inner dreams, fantasies, simulations and imagination, and then structure the information as a story.
This is the most important aspect to consider when creating stories in passive or interactive media. The story itself emerges from both approaches, but they rely on fundamentally different psychological mechanism in order to do so. Namely sympathy and empathy on one hand, and epic syntax[5] from personal experience on the other. However, as previously mentioned, stories must emerge from events and the response to them, but it isn’t logically obvious what can be properly classified as events. One can say that everything can be considered an event since technically something always happens, yet we all experience the boredom of uneventfulness at some point in our lives. This is one main aspect of what our emotional system is for, we react to what is relevant for ourselves with emotion. If an event is considered good for us, our brain rewards us with dopamine[6]. If an event is considered stressful or dangerous, our brain activates our fight or flight instincts with cortisol[7].
Regarding how this relates to storytelling, is the fact that most stories are intended to induce some kind of emotional response. Happiness, sadness, catharsis[8], fear, excitement, etc. Still, these are mostly subconscious responses, and stories can also appeal to the more logical parts of our brain. So, by using clever writing, a storyteller can induce a specific mindset as well, critical thinking about the current state of the world, soul searching, wonder over scientific or magical possibilities, etc. Which raises the question, when writing for passive media, how is this achieved? By using the aforementioned sympathy and empathy through mimesis[9]. You write one or more protagonists[10] as the ethos[11] and your audience project themselves upon and empathize with the protagonist through eleos[12]. Then you put those characters through trials and tribulations your audience can sympathize with through fobos[13]. Then, depending on the emotions or mindsets you wish to induce, after they face the problems they’re experiencing, you make their efforts lean more towards positive or negative results by either lexis[14] or dionia[15]. As such, you set the contents of your story in a certain chronological order to make it somewhat approachable and understandable through mythos[16]. The purpose of said approach is usually to educate your audience with paideia eleos [17]about a particular subject, philosophy or some emotional response they can discover within themselves. This is the boiled down version of Aristoteles view on drama.
The Paused Game, The Ignored Narrative
We now know the basic evolutionary history of humans regarding storytelling, we know the basic psychological mechanics which responds to storytelling and we know the basic structure and purpose of traditional storytelling. All of this is vastly different in videogames. Simply because games have a definition one must adhere by, for something to be a game it must be interactive, relatively challenging, have a form of fail-state and at least one winning condition. If these criteria are not met, it is no longer a game per definition, it is simply some form of interactive experience. All games are interactive experiences, but not all interactive experiences are games. A book where you make interactive choices, but has no challenge is not a game. A movie where you make interactive choices, has a fail-state, but has no challenge is not a game. A simulated interactive experience where you can make choices, display skill, but has no win condition or fail-state is not a game. With that out of the way, we can use this definition to highlight the differences in narrative in games compared to passive medias.
While some may find this controversial, it is my belief that games cannot tell a narrative story, and whenever a game starts to tell a narrative story, it is no longer a game in that moment. They exclusively present the player with experiences which only becomes a narrative story after the experience has passed and it becomes history. This is the heart of the selfish story model and understanding this will hopefully be useful.
We know the evolutionary value of traditional stories, and games have equal value, but for different reasons. A game is very much like a dream, it is a simulation of an experience within a safe environment where you are controlling a physical extension of yourself within that simulation. The reason games are immersive and engaging is because they simulate rules and situations beyond our own imagination and the satisfaction of problem-solving mastery within those rules and situations.
Consider the following, when you read a horror novel and play a horror game, the result is the same; fear. In the novel, the character is going through some dangerous and horrible experience, so your brain projects you onto that character. As such the fear is induced implicitly through anxiety, dread, phobia, disgust, and other abstract emotions your mind conjures up to put your body in a state of fear. In the game, the fear is induced more directly. Because the avatar[18] within the simulation is not someone else to sympathize with, it is you. You are the one in a scary situation, you are the one who might die at any moment, you are the one who must act and make decisions to survive. As such, you might say that your body is experiencing the sensations of adrenalin, fight or flight instincts and intense levels of stress in that moment, which puts your mind in a state of fear. The result is the same, but the cause is fundamentally different.
When it comes to traditional storytelling and games, the end result is usually a story someone can retell. They have once again equal value, with equal results, but the psychological mechanics used are once again vastly different.
For example, when you watch an action movie and play an action game, the feeling is the same, excitement. In the movie, the character is in a stressful situation, he must push himself to his limits to physically overcome the situation. As such, the excitement is induced once again through sympathy. You pay close attention to what happens and try to react to threats and witness the character do the same, you’re at the edge of your seat and want to see if he makes it or not, even though you are pretty sure the character will somehow make it in the end. Witnessing such feats puts your mind in a state of awe and excitement and it induces said feelings onto your body. In games, it is no longer someone you root for, it is you. You are facing a fast-paced trial, you must react to the threats all around you and execute properly through your own skills. The stakes are higher however, because it isn’t obvious that you’ll make it. Your body is once again experiencing adrenalin and stress first and asking your brain to enter a flow state[19] to beat the game. The feeling of excitement is once again the same but are accomplished through different means. The story told afterwards are also quite similar. On one hand you might ask you friend if he/she watched that action movie and describe the scene that excited you. On the other, you ask your friend if he/she has played that action game, but then the story is conveyed like you are reliving that moment and talk about personal experience.
One might point out various games which are known for their strong narrative and praised story. For the purpose of accessibility, I’ll avoid using specific games as examples, but rather discuss the most common tools used for telling their narrative.
Many games present their stories with cutscenes. Cutscenes are usually short movie clips which appear within videogames and are usually used to direct your focus towards points of interest, display events outside your field of view or narrative disposition. Something to note, is that the cutscene is not a part of the gameplay[20]. It pauses the game, to display a movie which tells a story, then the story is paused so gameplay can resume. When you are controlling a character within a video game, that character is a physical extension of yourself, and everything that happens to your avatar happens to you. What happens to your character is your own, egoistic, moment to moment experience. When you lose control over your character to watch him/her in a cutscene, it is no longer the same character, because it is no longer you. The character speaks, acts, behaves, succeeds and fails beyond your control, and you now feel sympathy and empathy for that character instead.
This does not mean that games with cutscenes are not games, they are simply not games in that moment. Look at it this way, you are watching a fantasy movie which is 2 hours and 30 minutes long. It has various creatures, and orcs are one of them. Now, every time an orc appears in the movie, you have to beat a level of “Orc Sudoku” to see the rest of the movie. But you can press the skip button and see the rest of the movie right away if you want. A silly example, but highlights my point, it is a movie, but the moment you are interrupted to play “Orc Sudoku” it is no longer a movie.
Another tool used to present stories is through visual storytelling, or in the case of games it is usually called environmental storytelling. It is when a certain scenery implies that some event has taken place. It is a powerful tool, because unlike cutscenes it does not forcibly pause the gameplay for the sake of presenting a narrative. However, it still not a traditional story and is more comparable with something like a painting, picture or visual poetry. It has no beginning, middle or end, it does not require sympathy or empathy, and you are not told the situation, only the result. It might be a story since it is history, but it is no narrative. And even if the player is smart and attentive enough to piece together the exact narrative you had in mind; it is still separate from the game itself. Even if you can interact with the scenery, it has no challenge, fail-state or win condition, it is simply there to be observed. As far as the game itself is concerned, there’s no need for the scene to be there and can be replaced with anything else. And if the game itself is not concerned; it is something that a player can choose to completely ignore.
The last tool is three part, namely text, audio clips and dialogue/monologues with NPC’s[21], specifically words. Usually, texts are reserved to be displayed outside of the gameplay itself. Either you interact with something in the world, which then pauses the game so you can read it at your own pace, or you must pause the game yourself and navigate through some kind of menu to find the text entry. Some text appears real-time, but they are usually reserved for instructions, are subtitles to something said, environmental storytelling or appear more as short and fleeting poetry since your attention is usually required elsewhere. Audio clips are usually something talking over the gameplay, where it is either a prerecorded monologue or a voice that reacts to the actions you perform in-game. In the case of monologues, they tend to convey background information, another character’s experiences and other lore. This is a decent tool to increase the amount of narrative told without decreasing the amount of gameplay, the main issues with this approach is that players might find the game too challenging to properly pay attention and play at the same time. In which case they might ignore the audio clip and play the game or stand still in their tracks to listen. Important to note is that listening to something while playing, does not make the gameplay itself tell a narrative story. When it comes to dialogues and monologues with NPC’s, it is a great tool to create immersion and make your world alive and interesting. It has a problem of balance however, because either the NPC’s does not interrupt gameplay and simply talk at you, or they pause the gameplay to make their statement and wait for the player response before they continue. Where the former makes them fall more into the environmental storytelling category and the latter makes them fall more into the cutscene category.
With these tools in mind, one might argue that it is possible to tell a story without interrupting the game itself, which is true to some degree, but remains false in other aspects. Remember that text itself is not interactive until you must make a decision. Remember that audio itself is not interactive, if the audio tells a story while you are playing it might be relevant to the game, but the purpose is still more similar to that of a music soundtrack. Also, if the audio is a voice which comments on the actions you perform while playing, the fact doesn’t change that you are experiencing the game first and the experience becomes history after the fact. Lastly, remember that NPC’s might tell their own stories and might ask you to react to it as a player. They are still separate stories from the gameplay you are experiencing. The player and the player avatar are in the process of experiencing something that will become their own story. And it is ultimately up to the player if the NPC’s stories will be a part of it or not.
One of the greatest sources of frustrations of writers, is when the audience wish to see a movie, read a book or watch a theatre play, they are obviously only in it for the story. However, this is untrue for games, games cannot tell a narrative story, so the audience is in it primarily for the game, the story is secondary at best. Which means it can be completely ignored by players and if it can’t, some might say that
