Open worlds and sandboxes are big, scary places for narrative designers. Whatever your mechanics may be, and however your tale is told, adhering to these four basic but essential mantras will help players better engage with and understand your story.
A clear and actionable rundown of the most important rules to live by for story design in open world games.
I was chatting on Twitter with someone about narrative games, and What Remains of Edith Finch came up. It was my favorite game of last year, and I had written this little bit on it for a forum disc…
Raph Koster explains why everyone made such a big deal about What Remains of Edith Finch - it’s because it was a brilliant showcase of conveying story and emotion through gameplay.
"The humor of a Yakuza game is a fine line to walk," says localization producer Scott Strichart in this in-depth chat about localization, the Yakuza games, and the ins and outs of Japanese humor.
A look at the challenges of localizing the Yakuza series of games for the West and the strategies Atlus has developed to overcome them (in particular working with both editors and translators together). I was intrigued by how important it is to have editors with strong understanding of the characters.
Published in edited form in the June/July issue of sister magazine Game Developer, Gamasutra is proud to present the full, extended postmortem for Quantic Dream's fascinating console title Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit, as described by creator David Cage.
Probably my favorite postmortem, this look back at 2005’s Indigo Prophecy has a lot of valuable insights. The one that’s stuck with me the most is that when writing a story, you can make the audience believe anything - but only once. An impossible premise is not a problem, but adding more impossibilities later is likely to backfire.
Let’s play - and discuss!
Let’s play - and discuss!
Let’s play - and discuss!
In games where the player character has a specific goal - save the Princess, escape the testing facility, defeat a nemesis - the player is presumed to share this goal. But even if the narrative does a good job lining up player motivations and character goals, there’s still a wrinkle. The character wants to accomplish something, and the player wants to experience accomplishing that thing. This is why we bother playing games at all, rather than just watching the endings on YouTube. If the player had the exact same motivations as the character, they’d cut whatever corners they could to beat the game as quickly as possible.
The humor in this video comes from the tension between Mario’s goals and the player’s goals. Of course Mario would want to just warp straight to the Princess and save her immediately. But for the player that would mean skipping the entire game, which would completely defeat the purpose of playing it in the first place. As long as Mario has that warp whistle in his inventory, there’s dissonance between what the player wants to do and what Mario would want to do.
So what happens when games create that dissonance on purpose?
The game is called “Prince of Persia.” But it’s not really about the Prince. (He doesn’t even seem to be a prince this time. We call him “the Prince” because he has no name.) Really, the game is about (legitimate princess) Elika.
As the game opens, the Prince is lost in a sandstorm, calling out for Farah. Franchise veterans will recognize the name as that of the love interest from the Sands of Time trilogy - but it is soon revealed that Farah is actually the name of this Prince’s donkey, laden with the riches the Prince has recently looted.
It’s a nod to the previous games, but it’s also a dig at Princess Farah’s characterization and gameplay role. She was little more than a pack animal. The Prince, lost in the storm, is trying to reconnect with her, trying to return to that simplicity. Instead, he finds Elika.
I don’t usually post anything in the middle of the week. This isn’t a normal, full essay. But I had to get it out there. I had to save people who might otherwise have bought this game.
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is a terrible, terrible game. Did you notice I didn’t link the title to the Amazon page? That’s because I don’t want you to buy it. I don’t even want to risk the possibility of you accidentally buying it. I can only imagine the wrath I would have right now if I had paid any money for it myself. As it is, I ripped it right out of my DS, stuffed it back into the GameFly envelope, and shoved it into the mail slot with as much contempt as I could muster.