Videogame Design and Programming - 06 Working with Dramatic Elements

Prof. Pier Luca Lanzi

Working with Dramatic Elements Videogame Design and Programming


Combat Chess 3DO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_zl3rSGKY4


Star Wars Chess http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBiKHqeFPws


Dramatic elements give context to the gameplay

This lecture brie!y reviews how dramatic

elements are used to create engaging games.

Dramatic elements overlay and integrate the formal

elements of the system into a meaningful experience.


Challenge

WRC2010 © Milestone


Challenge is the one thing that engages most players.


What Do Players Mean by “Challenge”?

•  Not that they want to face an impossible or very hard task!

•  They usually refer to

§ Tasks that are satisfying to complete and

§ Require the right amount of work to create a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment

•  Challenge is therefore very individualized and determined by the abilities of the speci"c player in relationship to the game

•  Challenge is also dynamic: a task is initially dif"cult and but after becoming accomplished in the task, players will no longer "nd it challenging and interesting.

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Is there a way to look at challenge that is not defined by individual experience?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Regardless of age, social class, or gender, the people describe enjoyable activities in much the same way


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Findings

•  First, the experience (of enjoyment) usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing

•  Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.

•  Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals, and provides immediate feedback.

•  Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustration of everyday life.

•  Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions.

•  Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically, the sense of self emerges stronger after the !ow experience is over.

•  Finally, the sense of duration of time is altered: hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.

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“The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep

enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel like expanding a great

deal of energy is worthwhile simple to be able to feel it.”

Csikszentmihalyi M., “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc. 1990.


Csikszentmihalyi’s Theory of Flow


In !ow, an activity balances a person between challenge

and ability, frustration and boredom, to produce

an experience of achievement and happiness.


According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi…

•  Flow occurs most often within activities that are goal-directed and bounded by rules, and that could not be done without skills

•  “When all of a person’s relevant skills are needed to cope with the challenges of a situation, that person’s attention is completely absorbed by the activity.”

•  Players are so involved that activity becomes almost automatic, they stop be aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing.

•  “[…] they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing.”

•  In !ow experiences, players know what needs to be done and get immediate feedback on how well they are achieving their goals (music, tennis, rock climbing, etc.).

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•  In game !ow, players are aware only on what’s relevant here and now (no tax problems, no laundry, just the game)

•  Many game interfaces take over the entire screen or build impressive audiovisual worlds to focus all the attention

•  The Paradox of Control: People enjoy the sense of exercising control in dif"cult situations; however it is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless the outcome is unsure, meaning that the person is actually not in control

•  The paradox of control is a key element of the enjoyment of game systems: how can we offer meaningful choices to players, without offering complete control or an assured outcome? (god-like games)

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Amnesia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M627-obxNzg



•  In !ow, we are too involved in what we are doing to care about protecting the ego.

•  Although during !ow we forget our self consciousness while we are engaged, after a !ow activity is over we generally emerge with a stronger self-concept

•  Paradoxically, the self expands through acts of self-forgetfulness

•  “One of the most common description of optimal experience is that time no longer seems to pass the way it ordinarily does”

•  Digital games are notorious for sucking players in for hours on end because they involve players in !ow experiences that distort the passage of time.

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When most these conditions are present, we begin to

enjoy whatever it is that produces such an experience.

The activity becomes autotelic.

There is no reason for doing it, except

to enjoy the experience it provides


When Designing a Game…

•  What skills does your target audience have?

•  What skill level they are at?

•  How can you give players clear, focused goals, meaningful choices, and discernible feedback?

•  How can you merge what a player is doing physically with what they need to be thinking about the game?

•  How can you eliminate distractions and fear of failure? Or, how can you create a safe environment where players lose their sense of self and focus only on the task at hand?

•  How can you make the game activity enjoyable as an end in itself?

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Play


Play can be viewed as freedom of

movement within a more rigid structure


From “The Promise of Play”

•  “Play is no-directed”

•  “Play is spontaneous”

•  “Play is not scripted”

•  “Play is loud”

•  “Play is not work”

•  “Play is physical”

•  “Play is meaningless behavior. You do it for its intrinsic value to you […]”

•  …

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Types of Players

•  The competitor - always plays to best other players

•  The explorer - curious about the world, loves adventuring, seeks outside boundaries (mental or physical)

•  The collector - acquires items, trophies or knowledge

•  The achiever - plays for varying levels of achievements; loves ladders/levels

•  The joker – does not take the game seriously, plays for the fun of playing; might annoy serious players

•  The artist – player by creativity, design

•  The director – loves to be in charge, direct the play

•  The storyteller – loves to create or live in worlds of fantasy and imagination

•  The performer – loves to put on a show for others

•  The craftsman – wants to build, craft, engineer, or puzzle things out

•  …


Can you name a game designed for

one speci"c type of players?


Level of Engagements

Spectators

Participants

(might experience transformation play)


Peacemaker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f8DKQqI-YE


Premise

© Obsidian Entertainment


Premise establishes the action of

the game with a setting or metaphor


Example: in the game you have a set of data. Your objective is to change your data to increase its values. To do this, you engage other sets of data according to

a complex interaction algorithm. If the data win the analysis, you win.


Street Fight IV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7naDgI-3qrw


In traditional drama, premise is

estabilshed in the exposition of a story

Exposition sets up the time and place, characters

and relationships, the status quo, etc.

Exposition also depicts the event that upsets the status

quo and creates the con!ict; and the point of attack,

the point at which the plot begins


Angry birds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNzRyd1xz0


S2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XIi0Pe6ZHc


Pitfall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhXMYw1lXY0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oixAg0BGSaI


Star Wars: Episode IV?

The Fellowship of the Ring?

Space Invaders?

Pitfall?

Diablo?


The "rst task of a premise is to make a

game’s formal system playable for the user

Shoot aliens, not just shoot blocks!

A premise that uni"es the formal and dramatic elements

provides another opportunity to engage the player


Characters

•  Characters are agents through whose actions a drama is told

•  By identifying with the characters and the outcome of their goals, the audience internalizes the story’s events and empathizes with its movements toward resolution

•  Several ways to understand "ctional characters in stories

§ Psychological – the character is a mirror of the audience’s fears and desire

§ Symbolic – the character stands for a larger idea (Christianity, the American Dream, etc.)

§ Historic – depicting real-world "gures

§ Stereotypical – representing cultural cliches

•  The main character’s engagement with the problem creates the con!ict that drives the story. It is faced by the antagonist.


Characters

•  Characters are de"ned within the story by what they say, what they do, what they look like, or what they say about them. These are called methods of characterization

•  Characters with well-de"ned traits and realistic personalities who undergo a signi"cant change in personality during the story, can be thought as “round”

•  Characters with few de"ned traits and a shallow personality are considered to be !at. They are also usually recognizable as stereotypes (the lazy guard, the evil stepmother, etc.)

•  Characters must balance “agency” (their practical functionalities) and “empathy”? (the potential for players to develop an emotional bound to or to identify with the character)

•  Sometimes, they are autonomous and controlled by the AI

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Four Key Questions

• What does the character want?

• What does the character need?

• What does the audience/player hope?

• What does the audience/player fear?

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The outcome of the story must be uncertain

Games involve storytelling and narratives that begin in

uncertainty and that are resolved over the course of time

In many games, story is actually limited to backstory,

sort of an elaborate version of premise.

An example is the trend of inserting story chapters at the

beginning of each level, creating a linear progression that

follows a narrative but does not affect how the story plays


S2 – Second Mission Intro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W5TspdcqfQ&feature=fvw


Storytelling

•  There game designers who try to allow the actions to change the underlying game story

•  Several ways to accomplish this

§  The simplest is to create a branching story line

§  A story that emerges from the gameplay (The Sims, Black & White, Half Life, Halo 2)

•  It remains to be seen if these attempts to allow emergent storytelling to arise out of formal game structure, but game designers are still searching for better ways to integrate story into their game systems


The Dramatic Art

•  Con!ict is the most important of the dramatic elements discussed so far

•  Con!ict occurs when the protagonist faces a problem or obstacle that keeps it from accomplish its goal

•  Traditional dramatic con!ict can be broken down into categories such as character vs character, character vs nature, character vs machine, character vs self, character vs society, or character vs fate

•  When the con!ict is set in motion, it must escalate for the drama to be effective. Escalating con!ict creates tension, and in most stories the tension gets worse before it gets better resulting in a classic dramatic arc

•  This arc describes the amount of dramatic tension in the story as it progresses in time


The Dramatic Arc of Jaws?

Donkey Kong?

What’s the difference between the protagonist of Jaw and Mario?

Videogame Design and Programming - 06 Working with Dramatic Elements

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