Interactive Storytelling - the advantages and limitation of videogame stories

My original intention for My Unceasing Mind was to blog about what I was thinking about, to get it out of my head and put it on paper. But equally I worry that what I think about may not interest everyone, and this blog has no particular theme, bar it being the outpourings of my head and my research into answering questions. Nevertheless I will carry on with this endeavour and I hope you, the reader, find something interesting here to consider.

So what have I been thinking about lately? Stories – or rather, storytelling.

Film and literature are themselves, linear. With the exception of classics ‘choose your own adventure’ books and DVD feature ‘alternative endings’ they begin and end the same way every time you watch them. Whilst it would be fascinating to watch a film and have it end differently every time, that is not what we expect; could you imagine a version of Titanic where it hit an iceberg and everyone sails happily to New York where Jack and Rose elope? It doesn't sound as much fun as a good sinking!

But videogames are a whole new kettle of fish, and whilst they may not have the same universal appeal as books and literature, in the UK we spend more money on games than the cinema and DVD combined, it is big money then. Many of these games have stories that go no further than a linear narrative, ranging from  Super Mario’s simple hunt for his princess to the lauded epic of Final Fantasy 7. Naturally the scale of narrative varies by genre and often have scripts to match the length of a novel. But in the world of modern gaming storytelling has taken on a different guise, it has gradually grown more complex riding on its one advantage over the beauties of screen and page: interactivity.

I am going to present a hypothetical scenario to show the advantages of videogame storytelling. A young man walks into a corner shop late one evening; he goes to the back to buy a case of beer for a party. Whilst he is doing this a man walks in with a gun and starts to threaten the cashier for the money in the register, the criminal doesn’t know the young man is there. Now in a novel, only one series of events can happen. How entertaining or emotionally involving it is depends entirely on the skills of the writer and actor/director. Let us say that in the book he runs out the back door and calls the police, but it is too late as he hears a gunshot moments later, he spends the rest of the book wishing that he could have perhaps saved a life. In the movie he grabs a wine bottle, sneaks up behind the criminal and clobbers him over the head, thus saving the day and getting two free crates of beer from a very pleased shopkeeper.

Any gamers reading this may spot striking similarities between the scene I described and one in Quantic Dream’s 2010 game Heavy Rain for PS3. I pick this particular game because it represents of the most interesting and groundbreaking examples of videogame storytelling, and also because its creator, David Cage, walked me through it at Eurogamer 2009 and explained in detail just how many outcomes there could be.

Me and David Cage

The six minute video above is optional, but it will show you one outcome of the scenario, here the character Scott, (a private detective) defuses a  dangerous situation. Other outcomes of the scenario see him either knock the gunman out cold right away or even get  shot. It all depends on the player’s decisions, there are many variables involved and it seems that almost anything can happen. But there too lies the issue – almost anything can happen. Not everything, it is the crafting of an illusion.

A book is restricted to one outcome, chosen by the author, thus this scenario should have meaning and effect to warrant its inclusion. In a game like Heavy Rain, not all scenarios can have an outcome that is dramatically significant. If a character is killed in early on Heavy Rain,  the story moves onwards but the player is being denied content, a portion of the game is closed off to the paying customer. Therefore  a game has to impose limitations that make it frustratingly difficult to fully take advantage of the infinite number of variables available in the medium. In the particular scenario above, Scott cannot actually be killed, only wounded as the implications of allowing that particular character to die at that particular moment are too great even for a game like Heavy Rain which probably has the most narrative possibilities of any recent title.

In the next post I will pursue this question further, to look at very different and inventive methods of storytelling, and assessing the issues that developers and writers are trying to overcome.