Is the player an artist? - Redux

In case you did not follow the comments on the last blog post with my views on the player as an artist, you might have missed that James Portnow from Extra Credits responded and he and I had a brief exchange. This discussion is now up on the Escapist in case anyone is interested in checking it out:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/misc/8976-Extra-Credits-Addendum-Discussing-the-Role-of-the-Player

The articles has lot of interesting responses from the readers. I think I have already said what I have to say, so I will not discuss it further here. However, do feel free to continue the discussion in the comments!

The Player - the artist?

Introduction
In this week's Extra Credits it was argued that we should treat the player of a video game as an artist and co-author of the game. One major point was that other media can be said to be valid without an audience, but not so for videogames. In video games a player is needed for the work to fully come to life. The other point was that players have an artistic role in this co-operative creation and that understanding the feelings that drive an artist can be used to make better video games. You can watch the whole video here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3555-The-Role-of-the-Player

While I think that Extra Credits is an excellent show, I do not really agree with this. The hypothesis of player-is-artist sound quite plausible at first, but I think that if you take a closer look it does not really hold up. I also think that if we choose to design games with this mindset, we might be missing out on very important things that can be done in the medium.


Why an audience is crucial
Consider the information that a novel transfers to its audience. More than often a few words is all that is given as base for the reader to imagine a scene. It is assumed that the reader is able to fill out large informational gaps, make assumptions and to even retroactively dress earlier scenes as new information comes along. A novel also throws a lot non-trivial concepts at the audience. Just consider something simple as a person being labeled as "depressed". In order for the reader to understand the state of mind of this character, a personal knowledge in human behavior and psychology is necessary. The reader simply cannot understand literature without a certain amount of experience.

What I want to say with this is that books cannot be enjoyed in a void. They have to be processed by a human with a certain amount life experience in order to come alive. An alien would be completely unable to understand any literature even if it could decipher the language. There are just so many prerequisites needed that a deep study of humanity would necessary for full comprehension. And even then it might not be possible for the alien to understand; the very workings of our minds is probably crucial for a proper enjoyment of the work.

Further more, the mental image painted up in our mind is not merely an opinion-based interpretation of the written text. It is a full blown world, populated and maintained by ourselves. We are not just doing a trivial text to sensory input conversion when reading. We are doing an actual simulation, constantly adding and updating details based on the written words of the novel. The book helps us a long on the ride, but at the end the heavy work is done by the audience.

This mental construction work is not passive exercise either. We choose where to read, what to skim, where to put focus, if something should be skipped and so on. This is even more evident in other media. When watching a movie, interactions with other audience members can help shape the experience (a simple example would be laughing during funny moments). When listening to a piece of the music, the settings, our own movements, etc all change the way in which we experience the piece.

Enjoying a work of art is a very human experience and I argue that in this regard videogames are not different from other forms of media. What is so special about video games is that data flows in two directions and that the audience can help shape the output to an extent far beyond any other media. However, that does not mean that experiencing a videogame is totally different kind of activity.


Why players are not artists
Unless a game is incredibly linear (e.g. Dragon's Lair) everybody who play it will come away with their own personal experience. Because of this it is easy to imagine that videogames differ a lot from other media by essentially making the player a story-teller. And as being story-teller is essentially equal to being an artist, it leads to the conclusion that players are artists. I do not think this holds up though.

Consider doing a trek through the woods. Even if several people follow the same route in the same forest, each one will have with very different experiences. Some might take side-tracks, have some unique encounters, do the trekking at a different pace, etc. The possibilities are essentially endless. The person doing the journey shapes his/her experience in a unique way and has a big responsibility in how it all turns out. Still, this is not an artistic endeavor.

That is until the hiker decided to write, paint, talk, etc about the trek. Once a narrative, in whatever media, is created of the personal experience, an artistic process takes place. The art is not in living the journey, the art is in conveying it to other people; to create a work that expresses the very personal sensory input, actions and emotions evoked.

The same is true for videogames. Even though the player posses a great freedom in shaping their path through the virtual world, this does not equal the player to an artist. Likewise, even though readers of books create and simulate complex worlds, this does not make the reader into an artist. It is not until the personal experienced is expressed in some kind of medium, be that a written narrative of a game session or a painting from a scene in a novel, that art is made.

Sure there are videogames that give great opportunities for creating art, Minecraft being an good example. However, this artistic creation is a side thing and is not a requirement. The players can simply just let themselves be one with world, build a shelter, etc. It is not until the player simply sees the game as tool and foundation for their own work when the line between player and artist really blur.

With all this I am not saying that the activity of enjoying art is void of creativity. As explained when discussing how we read books, I made it quite clear that it takes a lot of effort to do it right. However, this does not mean that the act of reading a book is categorically equal to writing one. Instead it is more like the difference between solving a puzzle and creating the puzzle in the first place. Both activities are creative and challenging, yet quite different.


Why this matters
Why even have this discussion? Is it not just a silly debate over semantics? Well in part it is. But if we do not take care and use the words properly they will start to loose meaning. If we would say that the activity that players participate in during play is the same as artistic creation, then I think we simply stretch the concept of artistic endeavors too far, making far less usable.

A more important reason is that the way we see the relationship between players and videogames greatly shape the direction we choose we take the design of videogames. Even though video games have a very different voice from other media, we should not think of the activity of experiencing it as completely different. I fear that if we see players as storytellers and artists, we will miss out on a lot of opportunities at expanding the videogames medium. If the player is an artist, then our focus on game developers will be on creating brushes. This implies a bottom-up design, were short-term effects trump the bigger picture. If we want make games with a deeper meaning this is not the way to go. Instead we must focus on a higher level, something I think the player's role as outlined here greatly encourages.

Also, saying that the player is an artist and storyteller shift the burden in the wrong direction. If we grant the player a large artistic role, we make it easy to blame the player for any lack of meaning in a videogame and discourage the creators from trying to add it. A painting should not require a painter to enjoy it, a play should not require you to act for it to be engaging, and so forth. Like great works of art in other media a videogame can require a lot from the player. However, this does not mean it is up for the player to create meaning and depth, it should instead be there for the player to find and become immersed in.

Finding videogame's true voice

Introduction
The main gist of this post is that we are not using the full narrative capability of video games. I believe we fail to take into account certain aspects that lie at the core of making artistic creations powerful and thus miss out on crucial strengths of the video game medium. To get to the core of these strengths, I will first have a look at other media (specifically film and literature), and then explore what lessons that can be applied to video games. What I end up with is a way of thinking that use basic elements of the film and literature experience, yet is quite different from these.

It is very easy to look at other form of media, see what they do well, and then try and copy this. I think this is a big problem for video games. Whenever a game focusing on a narrative-oriented experience is made, it is instantly compared to other media and judged according to their strengths. For instance it is very common praise to call video games cinematic, or to concentrate critique on their plot structure. Obviously, I do not think this is the right approach. Instead I think we need to take a step back, and consider what it is really in these other media that makes them work. We must then explore in what ways these concepts can (and if they can!) be applied to video games.

My suggestion for this "magical essence", which I will outline in this article, are empty spaces. The bits that require the audience's participation and imagination. Basically, the part of art that require us to be human.


The power of imagination
First of all let us take a look at literature. For this "The fall of the house of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe will be used as an example:

"I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. "

This is an excerpt of a quite lengthy passage where the narrator describes the House of Usher as he approaches it. Even though it says a lot, it gives us very scarce information of how the house actually looked like. The focus is instead on the feelings and actions of the protagonist. The text tells us the response that the imagery evokes in the narrator and based on that it urges us to make up our own mental image of the scene. This is typical for literature. Descriptions are usually sparse and instead emotions and events are used as to paint a scene for the reader. A lot of responsibility is shouldered on the audience, certain knowledge is assumed and this (which I think is especially important to highlight) without the author losing any artistic control.

Next, let us consider movies. Normally one would think of movies as being very exact in their portrayal of a story, almost like a window to an alternate reality. However upon a bit of analysis it is clear that this is not the case. Film requires us to make non-trivial connections between sequences and invites us to read the minds of the actors. The Kuleshov Effect makes a clear case for this. Just watch the following video yourself and consider how your interpretation of the face changes depending on the context in which it is shown:



As we see a character on screen, we are meant to start imagining what that person might be feeling. Whenever a cut is made, it forces us to make up a casual relationship between the juxtaposed events. This can easily become quite complex as this short clip from the famous Odessa stairs sequence show:



Somehow we are able to make sense of this cacophony of imagery, constantly making connections between clips, weaving our own coherent narrative inside our minds. Just as books require readers to fill in the sensory details of a scene, a film forces the viewer to imagine the emotions and casual relationships portrayed. Both literature and film heavily depend upon the audience's imaginative interpretation and will lose its impact without it. I would even say that the greater this gap of imagination is, the more room for interpretation, the more powerful and artful the work becomes. By this I do not mean that the more obscure art is, the better it becomes. Rather, the ability to leave plenty of gaps for the audience to fill, without making the work incomprehensible and meaningless, is what makes great artists and great works of art.


Filling a gap
Even though this audience participation required in books and movies might not be obvious at first, it does not feel that strange once you realize it. It is quite easy to see that we make up worlds in our head when reading or that we construct a fluent narrative from edited imagery when watching movies. But viewed from the perspective of somebody who encounters this for the first time, I would say that is far from evident. It is really quite weird that we can count on the audience to build up whole scenes in their heads. This based on almost purely emotionally descriptive content. Dialog in literature is a great example of this, where the spoken words are alone at conveying the look, actions and sometimes even emotions of the characters involved. There are tons of background knowledge required to makes sense of this, and it would be extremely hard to teach computers the same tricks.

I bring this up mainly because I want to show that, even though all of this is now part of our everyday life, it is far from self-evident truths. For instance, film editing took a while before it was properly figured out, and its complex usages even longer. This should hint us that whatever there is left to figure out about the videogame media, we should not expect it to be self-evident or even seem like it would work when first encountered.

Another important reason for bringing this up is to show that all of these gap-filling has a retroactive aspect. For instance when connecting clips in a film, the whole meaning (ie the action that the clips portray) come together afterwards. Yet to us it seems like a continuous experience and in a way we actually inject false memories of an imagined event. This is basically how animation work, where we first see an object in one position, then in another, not until both event are experienced making our brain interpret the entirety as if motion occurred. However, we never experience it like that; we simple see it as a motion of an object from one point to another and do not notice the mental effort required.

This is even more evident in literature where descriptions of objects can come far after they were first introduced. Even though this may seem like a jarring discrepancy, it pose no problem to us and we can meld these new facts with the earlier event portrayed. For example, if we remember a tale the early happenings exist in our mental images with the detailed characters shaped during the full read-through. They are no longer the unknown entities they were when we read the passage for the first tine.

What this tells us is that we should not be afraid of giving the audience incomplete information or experiences. Not only does this "removal of facts" not pose a problem, but it actually seem essential in creating a powerful experience. It is actually as if something "magical" happens when we are forced to complete the work ourselves.

Side note:
Split-brain persons show a very extreme example of our human urge to, often unconsciously, fill these sort of gaps. For example, outlined here are some experiments where the subject effortlessly made up details from incomplete information without conscious knowledge about it. I think it clearly shows how the brain is hard-wired for this kind of behavior and that it is essential to what makes us human. This visual illusion found here also show how eager we are to create casual relationships, and how the context makes us change how these are made.


In search of the void
It is now time to take a deeper look into games and to search for an equivalent of the "gap filling" concepts found in literature and films. Instead of meeting this head on, I think it is important to discuss what it is that is especially distinct and descriptive (and thus not requiring the audience's interpretation) in games. I would say these things are:

• Details of the world. Not only are games extremely clear on what a scene looks like, they often allow it to be exploration and makes it possible to very closely examine the various parts of the world. This is something that is especially true for 3D games, where players can view objects from almost any angle they please.
  
  
• The fluidity and coherence of actions. As players are in direct control of the protagonist, there is never any doubt of what events are taking place. Because of the interactive nature of video games, a constant feedback loop of actions and consequences are required, forcing the events taking place to be exact. Video games are all about right here and right now.

Side note: I am aware that the above might not be strictly true for all game types and is more fitting for real-time 3D games. Although this should not disqualify any further conclusions, it might be preferable to think of the following discussion as focus on 3d video games in particular.

The above points mean that if we want to leave room for imagination in games, it cannot be the scene building from literature nor the connecting of events in film. With the level of detail of the world provided, little is left to the imagination. And the fluent events demanded leave very little room for players to fill in their minds. So what other gaps are there to be filled? To find this out, we need to take a look at a core feature of video games: interactivity.

So what exactly does interactivity encompass? I like Chris Crawford's definition (from this book):

"A cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listen, thinks and speaks."

What I like about this wording is that it makes it clear that interaction is not all about a user providing input. It is also about considering and then reacting to this input, and that the same applies for both sides (meaning both the human and computer). When it comes to finding opportunities for adding gaps of imagination, these are all of course on the humans side. Also note that the gaps might take place at any of steps: listening, thinking or speaking. With this in mind, I will make an attempt at some gap finding.

So where in this interactive cycle does there exist room for the imagination? The most obvious place is of course the "listening" (meaning any input). Even though we get a clear view of how the world looks like, there are still things left for our us to craft in our minds. This is something that is already present in some games and comes in the form of "environmental storytelling". Through exploration players can pull information from the world, gather details on past events and imagine emotional states of the world. Bioshock is a good example of this, where much of the attitudes and history of the sunken city can be found out purely by, the interactive process, of exploring the environment.

However, environments are lifeless entities, and while they can portray the aftermath of actions, they do not give us any feeling of agency. This greatly lessens the impact and diversity of imaginative gap-filling players can make. To take this to the next level, it is quite obvious that we need to included simulations of conscious beings. This allows us to construct mental "theories of mind", something that greatly increases the possibilities of expression. The problem is that we simply cannot do this with current technology, except at a very rudimentary level. While our techniques for facial expression is constantly getting better and better (L.A. Noir is a good example), this is only meant for prerecorded usage. When it comes to real-time procedural generation of expressive characters, we are at an extremely primitive stage. Because of this I believe that this can be very interesting to explore in the future, but not something that can be used right now.

So what else can be done? With expressive characters in real-time not an option, we must turn focus onto the actions themselves instead. As stated above, the events in video games do not leave any room for interpretation. But there still room for the imagination here though. What actions to make and why the are made.

Constrained role-playing
Imagination of the what and why of actions probably sounds a bit strange and needs some explanation. When players take control of an avatar in a video game, they are free to do what they please as long as it is accordance to the rules of the game world. This freedom might seem as the kind of gap that can be used to mimic the "magic" from literature and film. However not in the way actions are normally implemented: very specific and unambiguous. I reason so because there are two major problem with this approach.

The first is a technical one, namely is that it is pretty much impossible to give the player access the space of possible actions for any given situation. This means that there will always be events that the player can think of, but will be unable to carry then out. This limits the ability to role-play and might also leave, according to the player, the most intuitive and plausible action unavailable, breaking up flow and presence. The second problem is that the more events are added to aid role-playing, the harder it is to have artistic control, making the experience into an open-world simulation instead. As both of these problems work against one another, I think we have gotten pretty much as far as we can using this kind of design.

My suggestion for solving this problem is to have a limited number of actions available, but to lure players into imagining that the actual action performed was exactly the one they wanted to do. A very simple example of this can be found in games Samarost and Windowsill where the player can never in advance know what a mouse click will result in, yet when the action occurs it feels very intentional. This imagined motivation does not have to occur on a such low level though, and can include larger segments of the game. An example of this is The Path, where players are thrown into strange environment and forced to make up their own reasons for being there. Often this is something that is built up over a long time, yet greatly shapes how you view your entire session. I am not saying that these games are doing it the right way, only that they incorporate rudimentary versions of the ideas I am talking about, and hence can give one a basic hint of where to start from.

I bet that many will think of this concept as cheating. How can tricking the player be a proper design choice? If the whole interactive experience is an illusion, how can it carry any meaning? I argue that the same is true for other media. The events that you think happen on in film are in fact illusory too. Not only in the way that they merely consist of acting, set pieces and post production effects, but that many of the actions perceived was never filmed at all. They were instead conjured in the mind, by interpreting visual and auditory stimuli. The same is true for literature, were most of the mental images are never found in the text. Despite of this we do not describe the experiences these media give us as meaningless tricks.

Why "motivational imagination" sounds so strange has to do with the nature of interaction. When we watch a movie or read a book, this is passive experience where data only flow as input. But in the cycle of interaction, we are also part of creating output data. So when we create gaps of imagination for this kind of art work, we are unable to see it as a one-way stream of information, but have to include ourselves into it as well. The upside of it all, besides the solving the problem of role-playing, is that it fits neatly into same kind of concept that gaps in literature and film build upon. First of all, it contains a retroactive aspect to it, as players will need to digest a certain amount of data before settling on a certain motivation. It also forces us to make up a theory of mind, not for a fictional character, but for ourselves, inversely figuring out how we could come to a certain conclusion.

With this hypothesis I am not urging people to create games that are extremely linear and only require a single input. I still believe that we can have a wide palette of interaction choices, but that we might not want to be too specific about the exact actions that ought to occur. This is actually very closely related to the concept of player-avatar-symbiosis that have been discussed in an earlier post on this blog. I also do not believe that this takes away anything from the experience, but only adds to it, just like the same line of thinking does to other media.

End notes
This is far from a full theory at this point, and "environmental storytelling" and "imagined motivation" are most likely not the only imaginative gaps that can be used in games. Because of this I would be very interested in getting feedback and to hear your response on this work.

I would also like to point out that all of this awfully untested. It would be really interesting to see some Kuleshov-like experiments on the concept and see what kind of results can be made. It might be the case that this hypothesis does not work at all, or it might that it lead to wonderful and totally unexpected insights.

I also want to add that not all kind of experiences can be created like this. The same goes for literature and movies too, where leaving too much up to the audience simply does not work. Non-fictional books is one thing that comes to mind. Still, that is not a reason to not try this out. Before we try out all options that the video game medium provide, we will have no idea what can be accomplished with it.


Additional Notes: In Scott McCloud's book "Understanding comics" two similar "imaginary gaps" are explored in the medium of comics. One is the literal gaps between panels, that forces the audience to complete the missing information implied to be between. This is very much like what is found in books and movies, as it forces the reader to use external knowledge and also comes with a retrospective aspect. The second gap is one of cartoon symbolism, where simply drawn characters often can be more expressive than detailed ones. Again this requires quite a bit of interpretation from the audience.
I think this shows that the features discussed in film and book, apply to other media as well, making me more confident that they ought to play a big role in video games too.

Acknowledgments: This essay has been greatly inspired this post by Michael of Tale of Tales. If not for him I would probably have never started thinking in this direction and none of the above would have been written.

The Dragon Speech

This weekend I discovered the "Dragon Speech" by Chris Crawford and found it really great. He brings up a lot of good stuff, and touches on many subjects that I have ranted about. You can watch it here:

Part 1 "The Dream Well"
Part 2 "Interactivity"
Part 3 "Genesis of Art"
Part 4 "Characters"
Part 5 "Charge!"

I am actually a bit embarrassed that I never seen this talk before. I have heard about it, but never thought much about it and thinking it was not worth any attention. Now that I have seen it, I can say that is definitely not the case and it is one of the best things I've heard/seen on games.

Which brings me to another point: This talk is almost twenty years old and yet not much have changed. The points he bring up on focus on "fun" and serving a hardcore market are all still very valid. Also, characters in games have evolved very little, in fact, apart from a few IF games like Galatea, not much has happened since Monkey Island days. It feels like his views were ignored by most people in the industry. (If anybody has sources on what kind of impact it had on other people at the time, I would be really happy to hear about it!)

I like to think that things are shaping up a bit though. For instance, players and media have started to accept that games does not have to just about "fun", but can be about other type of emotions as well. (Something I like to think the horror games of the last ten years or so as had a part in). We are also starting to see the first step at a merge between the "casual" and "hardcore" market*, with games such as Drawn, which I see as the beginning of a less specialized market. The situation is far from good, but at least there are some sources of light.

Another thing of interest is that Chris Crawford has never made a conventional games since he held this speech. Right now he seems to be involved in something called Storytron, which I have to admit I do not know much about and have never tried. Now I feel I really must give it a go though! If anyone has tried it, I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts about it.

Finally, I also recently heard that Chris will be giving a speech at GDC this year. So will definitely try to attend that (me and Jens will be going there because of IGF and all).


*I do not like the names casual and hardcore. because they compartmentalize the audience far too much and I also think it is a bad way at looking at things (either you like to shoot stuff or play simple puzzles!!!). But since I refer to a trend in the industry I thought it was kinda okay to to use them.

The Dead Island Trailer and the Future of Games

By now most of you have probably seen the teaser trailer for Dead Island. If not, you can check it out here:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/cinematic-trailer-dead-island/710652


This trailer has been getting tons of attention over the Internet and many seem to think that it is one of the best game trailers ever. I find that this is quite interesting, since just about everything that makes the trailer good are things that modern video games lack. I would even go as far as to say that a video game made using modern gameplay-centric design could never create something that gives the same experience.

This is why I think so:


Non-coherent narrative
The video does not have follow the normal rules of making a narrative (where time flows coherently through plot events), but instead provide a disjointed one. Past and present are not explicitly stated, but is something that the viewers must figure out themselves. Game with a focus on story just do not work like this and instead go through plot points in a predetermined (although sometimes branched) fashion.

In order to get the same kind of feeling you get from the trailer in a game, stories needs to be looked upon in a different way. A story should not be seen as a string of plot points, but as a certain essence that is meant to be communicated. (See this post for further discussion on the subject).


Violence is not the focus nor the fun part.
This is something that I have talked about lots before, most recently in a discussion on Dead Space 2. When you start to focus on making sure that all gameplay is fun, then that trumps any other emotions that could have been evoking. The violence in the Dead Island trailer is not fun. It is desperate, repulsive and tragic. How can you possibly hope to evoke the feelings of a man forced to "kill" his own daughter if your aim is for it to be fun?


Hard-to-repeat moments
An important part of video games today is that they stop you from making progress unless you meet specific requirements. This is mostly in the form of some skill-based challenge (succeed or restart), but can also be in the form of navigational or puzzle-like obstacles. While of course imperative in some games, this sort of design can greatly decrease the emotional impact of events. Mainly because forcing a player to relive an event dilutes its impact and sets focus on mechanical aspects. Secondly because blocking the player from progress can make certain situations unbearable.

The trailer has both versions of this problem. For instance, the chase sequence where the child runs to the door is not something that works when repeated. Also, the event when the child falls through the window is an example of something that you do not want to replay or get stuck at. (A more in-depth discussion can be found here.)

Just so I am clear here: I do not mean that a game should try and replicate the events exactly like in the trailer. Video games are a different medium from film and needs things to be done differently. Instead what I do mean is the recreation of the essences of these events and situations; to provoke the same kind of emotions and thoughts. Not to make a direct copy.


A holistic experience
What I mean by this is that you need to see the whole thing to get the full experience. Unless you see the trailer until its end, you will not the get full meaning of the work. Mainstream games almost never work in this way, but rather focus on maximizing the entertainment value moment-to-moment. This is partly because of the goal to make games "fun" above all else. Other causes are the focus put on length of the experience as a large part of the value, and a general attitude of games as products rather than works of art (explained nicely here and here).



With the above in mind, it should come as little as a surprise that I find it highly unlikely that Dead Island will be anything near what the trailer is like (although I hope the reactions to this trailer inspire them to give it a shot and perhaps succeed!). I think there really is a desire for games that offer a different and more emotional experience, the attention this trailer got being a clear sign of that. But if we stick to the tried formula of making video games, these kind of experiences will remain beyond our reach.

Story: What is it really about?

Introduction
Upon hearing the word story, most people probably think of a chain of connected events. For example: "A princess is kidnapped; a brave knight rides to save her; the knight faces a dragon, the knight slays dragon and saves the princess; finally the knight gets half the kingdom and marries the princess". Most likely, one also thinks of even smaller details as integrated parts of the story; the way in which the princess is kidnapped, how the knight struggles against the dragon, and so on.

This is not the right way to think of stories. The chain of events is just the plot, and it is a device used in order to get the story across to an audience. What really lies at the core of the story are themes, locations, emotions, and so on. Pretty much all stories we have heard in our lives have been plot-based, but this is because this has been pretty much the only way of telling them. Now that we have videogames as a widespread medium this is no longer true. Still, the idea that story equals plot remain strong. It is a common belief that when a game becomes less linear, it is less about the story. I do not think this is true and if we want to advance the storytelling of the medium, this view needs to go.


By the Campfire
Humans have been telling stories for a long, long time, well before the dawn of civilization. These stories were not written down, but spread by being told over and over, never repeated exactly the same way. These kind of "camp fire stories" still remain, traveling from person to person, constantly evolving and changing. Yet, while the way the stories are told change, in a way they still remain the same. Anyone who has ever told a story like this knows that you often never know the exact words. Instead, you know of certain important things the story is supposed to "say".

It is very common that you change a story like this depending on your audience. If the people listening do not seem impressed by the hero's strength, you add more details, more events, descriptions and dialog. Your goal when telling the story is not be give an exact replication of how the story was told to you. What you are trying to do is to copy the impact the story had on you and any change you can do in order to accomplish this is a valid one.

The moment you do something like this, you have realized, although perhaps unconsciously, that the essence of the story its not the words that make it up. Instead, the story is about something on a higher level.


Peeling an Onion
When a section of a story is trying to convince the audience how strong a hero is, it is something that exists above the words that make it up. Still, this "strong hero" theme, might not be at the highest level either and simply be a vessel for a yet greater goal. Perhaps it sets up an overarching theme of how even the strong will eventually fall. The levels might not stop even there and eventually the essence of the story might be boiled down to a few essentials. These essentials is what the story is really about. Remove any of these and the structure collapse and the original story is no more.

It is also important to have in mind that some levels might be connected. Something that is at a higher level might not manage to stand on its own. A certain part of the story might be about the hero overcoming overwhelming odds and is meant to provoke sympathy. At the same time it is about the hero being subjected to torture and treated very badly by some people. If you remove the torture part, then what you have left is only two very fuzzy themes and not something that alone can build the story. Thus it is not always so that the important pieces of a story are all on the highest level, but they might spread out in a hierarchy. And while this might actually continue down to the very lowest level, it can only do so if removing the part destroys the story. It is not a way to justify that every single detail is essential.

I think most people already have these layers in their mind when thinking up a story, but then along the way give great weight to the details on the lowest level. This is especially harmful when making games, something I will address shortly. First I must go over what I mean by the essence of a story.


What is the Essence?
One might argue that a certain story is not possible to distill into a few high level concepts. It could be argued that a certain scene must be in a very specific way; that one cannot simply describe it as some flimsy themes. I think this happens if one thinks that the themes must be deep, thought provoking, artsy, or whatnot. This is not what I mean with the essence though and it can be any number of things.

For example take the "attack on the village"-scene in the movie Predator, something I am sure few people would call deep, thought-provoking or similar. What are the high level concepts here? Is it just be boiled down to "mindless violence", "how the civilized world rapes nature" or anything similarly pretentious? Not so. Instead its essence is things like the environment, the oppressing jungle; to have a team of sweaty super-humans storm a village, showing off destruction and gunfighting. At a higher level it is also meant to be fun watching and must keep a certain distance to reality and stay away from certain things (like murdering of innocents) in order to keep the audience entertained.

What I want to show here is that a story does not need to be have some kind of moral lesson, ask an existential question, or whatever deep meaning, at its core. It can be shallow and just for fun. Even so, there is an essence and it is what really matters in the story.

Consider any good book/movie you have ever read/seen. Is it really the lowest level of events and details that made you like it? Was it not the locations it took you to? Was it not the interesting relationship between character? Or the way slowly uncovering a mystery made you feel? I argue that no story, no matter what sort, is not about the exact way in things happen, but about the essence of these events. This is something that is crucial to have in mind in video games, as simply nailing down a few details that satisfy the essence is not enough. A video game is a living, breathing world and the essence needs to be portrayed through the right use of the mechanics (such as gameplay, art, sound, etc).


Stories in Videogames
Actually videogames already use this kind of story telling! For example, first person shooters have not set the exact sequence how people get shot or houses blown up. The thing that matters is that people do get shot and houses do get blown up. Exactly how this happens is not important for the story, only that the essence of the action stays the same.

The same is true for portrayal of environments in most games. It does not matter how the protagonist traverse or interact with it, the designer simply constructs a world and the rest is up to the player. By setting up the mechanics of the game a certain way, the designer then pretty much guarantees that the player will have a specific kind of experience and that the essence is kept intact.

However, this how far it goes in most the games today. Once a videogame gets to trickier parts of the story, lower level details are given more and more importance. When it comes to concepts like love, betrayal and grief, pretty much all current games rely on a specific set of events, a plot, to convey them. No longer does it consider the essence of the story. Instead, it becomes focused on the low-level details. Take God of War as an example. There is no need to have cut-scenes showing how angry and prone to violence Kratos is - the gameplay does this for us. But when it is time to bring up other emotions, like showing the reasons behind his rage, the game resorts to plot-based cut scenes.

This does not have to be the case. I think that just about any essence can be expressed by a virtual world guiding the player using various mechanics. This can be conveyed just as good, or perhaps even better, than what a carefully planned plot is able to. I believe we are already seeing this with deeper themes such as a fear. As has been proved by games like Silent Hill*, over ten years ago, video games can be used to provoke fear in a way that is impossible to do in any other medium. While certain kinds of horror lends itself extremely well to the video game medium, I see no reason why other emotions and themes can not work just as well. There are of course also games like Fallout and Shadow of the Colossus that touch upon other themes without using a plot, giving a glimpse of what could be achieved. However, this is just the tip of an iceberg and videogames as a story telling medium is still far from where it could be.


End thoughts
Abandoning plot and a linear progression does not mean that one is creating a sandbox game. It simply means that one picks out the essence of the story and design a virtual world that delivers just that. I believe that sticking to old fashion cut-scenes is a dead end if we want video game story telling to progress. Instead we need to look at a higher level, figure out the essence of our stories and focus on that. When this way of creating a story reaches into areas previously reserved to films and books, storytelling in game will be a force to truly reckon with.


* A major inspiration for Silent Hill was the movie Jacob's ladder, and this serves as an excellent example of how to take the essence of a story and putting it in a different medium. Compare the movie's hospital scene to the otherworld found in Silent Hill and you will find there is a remarkable keeping of its essence. The feeling of being trapped, the environment, the sound design, the uncertainty of what is real and even the style of music. Silent Hill shares very little in terms of low-level plot details with the movie, and yet they manage to be remarkably similar.