Beneath the dim, diner lights, they whispered of great heroes, unusual creatures, and secret crimes. A crowd roared nearby as their home team scored some point against their antagonists. The small huddled group did not seem to notice. Together they spun webs within webs of intrigue and turmoil. The conspiracy invigorated them, and late into the night they spoke until the management came and asked them to take their hidden conflicts away.
The four, as there were four of them, were all storytellers in a game. Unlike many games these days where storyteller and player are divided, separated by a physical or metaphorical screen, this group was mixed. Two were "merely" players; two were the organizers of a
LARP. These organizers had asked each of their players to answer some questions about their characters' back-stories. Because of the limited scope of the world revealed to the players beforehand and the number of players involved, there was a great deal of crossover amongst the stories. Plots criss-crossed with plots to build a beautiful montage of a world of great complexity. That, and the game has not even started.
The usual perception of a role-playing game is much like a play. Even tabletop games frequently treat the relationship as very one-sided: a storyteller regurgitating a steady stream of plot to its young players. But this is not the way of actual human interaction. Even in theatre, the audience influences the show, sometimes subtly but sometimes to great effect. This relationship is more pronounced in a game, storytellers need to consume story in order to continue. They draw this, often, from external sources before the game starts, but once everyone is gathered around the table, all bets are off. The players, outnumbering the storytellers, take over.
My friends, the organizers of this LARP, have decided to bring in that player input much earlier. At the earliest stages, they are letting their players... dig their own graves. It will be great fun, but players, again and again, demonstrate a remarkable power to make their own lives both harder and more interesting. They grasp onto odd plot threads and bring in their own weird influences. Yes, they often need guidance in order to keep from breaking the theme, but otherwise they are on almost even footing with the so-called "storytellers."
The Digital AgeIn application, this is not how digital games work. In most modern, big-budget games, players are herded from one moment to another. Their choices, rather than truly impacting the story, simply determine how long it takes them to get the next nugget of plot. This can be quite fun, the process of exploration, the trial and error, and the stress of violence can all be quite rewarding and exhilarating. Saying, however, that a player is the protagonist of such stories though is misleading. They are a pawn of the designers - pushed from one threat to another - and rarely contributing to the story in any meaningful way.
This happens for a myriad of reasons. Largely having to do with money. L.A. Noire comes out next week, and I am quite curious to see how it handles this. I know a little, having watch it develop in the cubicles beyond my own, but I don't really have a good grasp of how it handles the storytelling aspects. Given the cost of producing the cutscenes, I suspect it will be like a choose-your-own-adventure novel: discreet pre-made chunks revealed to players in varying order.
A game that comes close to letting players tell their own story is actually Mass Effect 2, though, in a sense, Mass Effect 1 is actually an incredibly long character creation process for that game. Many, seemingly all, the choices you made in game 1 alter the world of game 2. It's odd. Each choice is encapsulated in a way that would not impact the larger story, but they are so liberally spread throughout the universe that player are constantly rewarded for contributing to the story.
However, this is not enough. Okay. It's not enough for what I wish to see. A game that I am very fond of is
Dying Kingdoms. Some members refer to it as the "game that says 'yes.'" Like a good improvisation, the storytellers say "yes, and..." in response to player input. Certainly this has lead to no small amount of silliness, but it has also brought consistent and great drama into the game.
I want to do that same thing inside a digital game. I want to let players choose who their enemies are and what motivates them. A player gathers three pieces of evidence: a wrench, a doll, and glowing jewel. When the sidekick asks who the villain is, the player can choose from the enemies they have discovered. "It was the Ragnorok beasts of Caer Dandor." No, the designers don't need it to make sense to them. They are not involved in this decision. "Yes", the sidekick says" of course, I should have known... but why?"
"Well" the player avatar replies, "we'll have to..."
A) Go there to find out
B) Seek out their accomplices here
C) Seek information from our allies at...
With modular and interchangeable assets and environments, it should be possible to make all of these choices interesting and visually consistent. Audio would present a problem. Likely the character would need to rely on some fake language and subtitles. More exciting, players who make similar choices could be sent to the same instances, each having uncovered the same conspiracy.
By laying out encounters and assets intelligently, such a game could be designed and created to appeal to a massive audience. Players with divergent attitudes and styles would automatically segregate from each other as they progress since their plots would not overlap. There would be a challenge involved with creating so many assets (to allow players many choices), but that could be a large chunk of the monetization of the game. Players could purchase enemy and allied factions and even plots. If you like rescuing people, buy the rescue pack. If you like a good war story, pick up "The Great War".
Developing such a game would be an enormous challenge, since it would require such a change to how we, developers, think about storyline and motivation. However, I think audiences would find the whole process quite natural. After all, this is the way we communicate every day. We let players enter into a real dialog with the game, and the game will always be agreeable.