**Introduction
Lore in almost all cases is one of the biggest draws to a game. It can cause the game to sell
really well if done properly, or cause it to flop if the lore is a jumbled mess. No game will succeed if
the lore is not present or shoddy. When it comes to developing a story that garners interest, there are
always certain boundaries, and boundaries that can be broken. Within the medium of video games, lore
plays a vital role to the believability and fullness of the story. In practice, it is one of the most essential
pieces to the game's design due to its influence on architecture, morals, and content.
**Literature Review
Along with that lore comes many new terms, either re-purposed for the game's story or created
entirely fresh for the game. This means that a common lexis is present and few terms need to be
explained before I go any further. To start, the basics of games and lore will be covered specific to the
game Dark Souls, which will be used as an example for this research.
Terms:
RPG: Dark Souls is an RPG, or a Role-Playing-Game. An RPG is any game or game system that
allows the player or players to have a pivotal role in which they have some say in the game world. This
system gives them key decisions to make such as “Do I save their life for my gain, or sacrifice them for
the greater good?” and other such choices. An RPG can also allow a player high levels of control over
the personality, physical traits, and statistical traits (Combat style, weapon choice, etc.).
Lore: B. Choi, J. Huang, A. Jeffrey, and Y. Baek discuss in The Development of a Scale for Fantasy
State in Digital Games the objects that go into creating a believable, living fantasy world. More
specifically, they give four parts that make up what the game world and its lore should have. These four
parts are imagination, identification, analogy, and satisfaction.
Imagination: Essentially, fantasy is used to stimulate a person's mind to create images and
ideas that help to make the game and its content more interesting. Any good lore has no obvious
failures in the construction of the games plot, history, or story mechanics, and no interesting
mysteries easily solvable by anyone, even to the story's characters. Dark Souls does this well by
making the player actually have to find the story, rather than feeding it to them. Instead, they
give the player a small bite of information with the linear plot, but all the other information is
on the edges of that stories branches and in all the dark corners of the game world. This creates
an interesting puzzle to be solved and a lore that can be read into and formed based on opinion
and still be technically right. According to this article, it is described as the experience of things
that just won't happen to you. Usually these things are impossible even under the perfect
circumstances and have an air of science fiction or high fantasy to them.
Identification: This is summarized as a connection to the game world. Obviously, a story has to
connect with its followers. If it does not, the readers/players tend to get left out and put off from
the story. A lore and game world that includes the players and plays on their likes or dislikes
tends to be more successful than perfect people in a perfect world. Usually, a story has a
character that has traits similar to the player, or similar enough to connect to on some level.
Through the course of the story, the character overcomes their faults and triumphs joyfully. The
player/reader feels accomplished as well because they helped the character overcome their fault
and in turn overcome their own (even if it was all just in their head).
Analogy: Described by the article as “experience related to the real world.” For instance, if the
country you live in is having tough economic issues, you are more likely to play a game that
deals with that than a game about everyone being wealthy. If the game is believable and broken
just like the real world is, people are more easily drawn to dealing with those problems than
they are dealing with the problems of 'everybody is rich' or 'nobody can die.' Analogy also gives
a sense of immersion, or a feeling of actually being in the game world. Dark Souls does this by
having minimal Screen elements and a fleshed out, logically built societal system and
architecture design. For example, you will never see a modern American home next to one of
the castles in the game, and you also won't see a surge of prosperity and happiness in an
abandoned city. Things appropriate and realistic are always portrayed in order to gain
interest/immersion from the player.
Satisfaction: While described as “the level of satisfaction being given to environmental
factors.” For instance, if a given location in a game makes players really happy, then they are
satisfied with that area, regardless of their reason. If it is a visually appealing place or otherwise
does not matter. What does matter is that the player can continually come to that location and be
satisfied with it. It is a simple explanation but it holds utmost priority in development. If you
can get a player hooked and really going at the story or game, then you have gained a profit and
fan that will continue to return for at least a measurable chunk of time.
Developing Lore to Engage
I find that, more often than not, developers like to use story to enhance flavor or add a sort of
'story gimmick' to their game. The main issue is that the player plays the game for its mechanics, and
ignores the story more than anything else. Take Call of Duty for example. It has very little story lore to
go by, except that you are fighting terrorism in a very realistic setting. For some this is enough, and the
game's main draw is the game-play mechanics. However, you don't find players immersed into the
game world. Instead, you find players talking in the Meta of the game, working around role-play to get
to higher efficiency. Other games, such as Bethesda's Skyrim, focus almost solely on Lore and story. In
these cases, players tend to get drawn into the world and try to play it as if they were actually there
rather than playing a game. In other rare cases, players create lore and a community existing in the lore.
Dark Souls is one of these, although a unique exception. Dark Souls has the lore already placed within
the game world, but the player must find and piece it all together. What ends up happening is players
coming together to create a cohesive tapestry or lore with the pieces left for them. In another instance,
K. Moltenbrey's OUT OF CHARACTER article discusses a game where a fresh, new lore that never
existed was created. In the original Halo game, several players came together and created a long
running series of short episodes that followed a story of their devising, completely running off the rails
of what the game's story already had. The series was a massive hit, gaining thousands of fans and
spawning a whole studio of content creation.
What is so important about this creation of lore is how it engages the player or players. In Call
of Duty, there was no engagement, and the game diffused into skill only combat with no immersion. In
Skyrim, the player was fully engaged by lore and explored to their hearts content despite simple game
mechanics. In Halo and Dark Souls, people went out of their way to create an interesting lore for them
and others to enjoy. What I find in all these examples is the desire to engage in learning new things to
increase the level of immersion and satisfaction in the game as a whole. I draw that a game's lore has a
higher level of importance than almost any other factor in a game.
Perspectives on Lore
The viewpoint which the player finds themselves on a games lore falls on the shoulders of their
choices. Waelchli describes that a players behavior directly corresponds to their decisions in games and
their interaction with it and others through online social connections. If a player can develop lore by
making decisions, then their behavior can also influence the lore of a game. For example, a player who
takes things slow and waits things out decides to let a dragon live so that he can sneak by unharmed
may have a lasting impact on the story, whereas a player who seeks only challenge takes on the dragon
and sends the game in another direction entirely. Of course, this only works with games that have a
well thought out lore. In a game where the community is very high above the game lore, a player's
behavior only affects their score. There are few ways around this, but some developers enable systems
to keep players from developing such a meta before it happens.
A game's Artificial Intelligence, or AI, handles all logical processes not done by the player.
Anything from non-player characters patrolling an area to stock market fluctuations are handled by
these AI. Naturally, a good AI system will be deceptively human, and a bad one can range from too
powerful to unbelievably stupid (S.Cass). AI that fits a games lore takes a lot of work to pull off. First,
the AI must follow the conventions of the game world and lore. If no one goes to the dungeon, the AI
doesn't go even if the player is in there. If the guards are overly cautious, then they will check every
sound they here instead of drinking a beer. So long as the AI looks and acts like someone would in that
situation, immersion is intact and the lore is strengthened to a greater degree. Information can be carved
from in game characters in this way. For example, if one of the main characters prays to a god of luck,
then we have learned that religion is taken seriously and that there is a god of luck. We can use this
information to further engage ourselves in the lore and to develop it further based on other information.
There is one issue that cannot be easily dealt with, and that is players who do not seek out
information for various reasons. A game's lore can only be seen if it is sought, even if it is given to you.
Some players may try to find ways to get around finding the lore, or even find a way to accomplish
something without doing any work. These players are known as self validators (C. Heeter, B. Magerko,
B. Medler, J. Fitzgerald). Self Validators hate challenge and risk, so any kind of game can turn them
away, and a story that has good lore that must be sought out can pose a challenge they do not want to
take. Instead, they choose to research and experience the lore through someone else's experiences. This
negatively impacts a player's view on the lore because they do not have the proper identification and
immersion to accompany their knowledge. Much is lost in this situation and even the best story can fall
apart at the seams.
Time and Lore
For many, a long and detailed history tends to be favorable over a short, spotty history. I believe
this is because of the level of detail and scope it gives to the lore and the player's purpose. In a game,
the longer you have to do things or the longer you last in a game session has a massive impact on the
player footprint on lore(J. Zagal, M. Mateas). For example, in Civilization, a strategy game, sessions
can last as long as several millennium (in the game), but only a few hours in real life. The decisions
you make in that scenario have a greater gravity than a game like Animal Crossing, which runs on real
time. Both decisions may be equally important to the progress of either game, but the effect the
decision has on the player and his understanding of the game world and lore are drastically different. In
Civilization, researching nuclear technology for 50 years has a certain mood to it that makes it
distinctly important. In Animal Crossing, buying a shovel has the same affect on game speed and
advancement, but feels much more small in comparison.
**Entering the Conversation
Lore is such a pivotal factor in games that it quickly becomes a tool for various ends. That end
ends up being marketing most of the time. This is an issue that causes the quality of the lore and its
concreteness in favor of shallow, unrealistic characters and ideas. These games tend to have a short
lifespan and do not have a large following after 12 months. Companies make cash grabs with these
games until they are forgotten, then refresh the game by making a similar sequel. It is a very vicious
cycle that dominates the game industry and it hurts both players and developers ten years down the
road.
When a game is developed with a lore that surpasses all the requirements of good lore, the game
almost always is seen alive and well several years later and is considered something similar to literature
if video games had such a category. Payout in the long term is always higher, as fans dedicate
themselves to a series that continues to fulfill them and meet their expectations. So while it makes
sense that companies should want to create a quality lore for their games in order to have a greater
foothold in the market, companies still treat the market with a 'cash-cow' perspective and create
templates on which multiple games are created, hurting their sales down the road as people realize how
cookie cutter everything is.
One of the most successful ways of doing any sort of story work, is to leave it open to
interpretation. This makes it easy for both the developer and the player to get what they want. The
developer does not have to spend countless hours explaining why something happens rather than
focusing on more pressing issues, and the player gets to use that imagination they love so very much.
For example, during my observations, I made a few conclusions here and there based mostly on
opinion and little bits of information scattered about. I concluded that Oswald of Carim, a Non-Player
character who acts as a forgiveness mechanic, must be either superhuman or in divine favor. My
reasoning behind it was the fact that he could make people who wanted to kill you suddenly not want to
kill you, and various other actions such as keeping a self updating book of the guilty, which acts as a
multiplayer mechanic. However, other people may disagree. Both VaatiVidya and EpicNameBro,
popular youtube content publishers who specialize in Dark Souls lore and gameplay, have differing and
constantly changing views on this matter, ranging from ordinary crazy person all the way to divine
crazy person.
A better example would be a controversial character called Solaire. He is the leader of the
warriors of sunlight, a multiplayer group dedicated to helpful cooperative gameplay rather than PvP.
Solaire is very powerful in comparison to many other NPCs and has a main goal of becoming “like the
sun.” Basically, some believe he may be the lost son to Gwyn, the main villian, the game talks about
occasionally. I believe he is just crazy and has no divine powers period, despite the evidence. Others
tend to float between yes and no depending on their most recent finds and opinions.
What really matters here is that the lore is diverse and it sparks both a discussion, and a search
for the truth. The players are on their own with no input from the developers, as this is what they
intended. This kind of lore development brings a whole lot to the table is it literally turns the whole
story development process on its head and outsources the player to create it for themselves.
Of course, there is always a danger to going too far. If the objective of the game is so far out of
reach, and every obstacle is a mountain to climb, it does not matter how well done the lore is, nobody
will look for it if they focus solely on surviving the game. A. Gunraj, S Ruiz, A. York say that a game's
purpose is to be anti-oppressive, enabling the player to engage the game in a way that gives them
control in a positive light. Too many people create games where you can abuse certain object and
players just for fun. This causes the appreciation of the game to drop considerably and it reception to
become tarnished. Simply put, lore and gameplay should be balanced to a point where the player looks
for the lore, but also focuses on the game.
**So What?
No matter how you look at it, lore becomes incredibly important to a games quality and
longevity. Players benefit from quality lore by being able to fairly use their imagination to create the
lore on their own with the assistance of clues in the existing game. It makes perfect sense that lore of
this caliber is something all games should aim for because of the amount of payout it gives them over
an extended period of time. If anyone wants the game industry to continue succeeding or wants to
continue to have interesting stories in video games, then they need to vote with their wallet and push
developers to start implementing some process of their choosing the yields lore that is both interesting
and cohesive without revealing too much.
Works Cited
P. Zackariasson, M. Walfisz, T. L. Wilson (2006, April 1). Management of Creativity in Video Game Development: A Case Study [Online Article] Available: http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=d014da5f-ad84-410e-8cfc-91fa72fb5d55%40sessionmgr110&vid=2&hid=105
P. Waelchli (2010, October 1) Playing with Process: Video Game Choice as a Model of Behavior [Online Article] Available: http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=5cc01829-fe53-454a-af9b-db771e819186%40sessionmgr115&vid=2&hid=105
K. Moltenbrey (2005, Nov. 1) OUT OF CHARACTER [Online Article] Available: http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=eb336b9f-58ae-4f9d-8ce5-b212b93b3b65%40sessionmgr112&vid=2&hid=105
S. Cass (2002) Mind Games [Online Article] Available: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1088444
C. Heeter, B. Magerko, B. Medler, J. Fitzgerald (2011, May 31) Game Design and the Challenge- Avoiding, Self-validator Player Type [Online] Available: http://gel.msu.edu/carrie/publications/Jan24-Self-Validator.pdf
B. Choi, J. Huang, A. Jeffrey, Y. Baek (2013, May 1) Development of a scale for fantasy state in digitalgames [Online Article] Available: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/edtech_facpubs/73/
J. Zagal, M. Mateas (2010, August 15) Time in Video Games: A Survey and Anaysis [Online Article] Available: http://sag.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/07/27/1046878110375594
EpicNameBro (2012 – Present) Dark Souls Lore [Internet Video Series] Available: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4825DBA198EBE9B9
VaatiVidya (Circa 2013) Dark Souls Lore [Internet Video Series] Available: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWLedd0Zw3c5RCXboUsPwHsZJlXB2CzCz
A. Gunraj, S Ruiz, A. York (2010, December 31) Designing Games for Ethics: Models, Techniques andFrameworks chapter 16 Power to the People: Anti-Oppresive Game Design [] Available: http://www.metrac.org/resources/downloads/power.to.the.people.chapter.pdf
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