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| Home > Articles > Tutorials > Game Design > Developing a Game Story/Game Writing
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Developing a Game Story/Game Writing
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Author: Modesty
Updated: October 05, 2007
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Introduction
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A game can be described as a series of interesting choices. In a game, the
player leaves the real world behind and enters the game world, even in games
like Charades, Tag or Baseball. In Tag tapping someone’s body has a specific
meaning in the game-world that would be utter non-sense in the normal
world.
A Story is a series of conflicts and resolutions. It also makes a
reader leave the real world behind and enter the story world. That is if the
story is well written and engages the reader.
Combining these two ideas
is the challenge of writing a Game-Story. How much choice will you give to the
player so that it’s still a game and not just an interactive novel? How will you
make it a good, interesting story to captivate the player? |
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Contents
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1. From the Beginning
2. Hero's Journey Model
3. Basic Story Structure
4. Story Telling Elements
5. Tips to Try |
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1. From the Beginning
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Every story and game starts with an idea or concept. That idea can be a
character, a situation, a relationship, a creature, a place, another game, a
battle system, an item, an event, and so on. Once you are clear on your idea you
can build a story around it. But there are some things to be careful
of.
You should always keep in mind that this is a game and not a movie or
book where the audience has no choice in what happens to the characters. The
player needs to feel some level of authorship. Keeping your audience in mind is
called PLAYER-CENTRIC DESIGN. (This is what is being taught in Game Design
Programs.) It not only needs to be a good story, it needs to be
fun.
Developing a Game Story is really not much different than developing
a story written on paper. There is just the extra challenge of making the story
playable. |
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2. Hero's Journal Model
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Almost 99% of RPG games features the “Hero’s Journey” type story. Lord of the
Rings or the Hobbit are classic examples…as is Star Wars oddly enough. There is
a general thread through these kinds of stories.
A) The hero is an
ordinary, everyday person until an event/mentor shows them the door and they
begin on their journey.
B) They are met with an obstacle they are unable
to overcome
C) They are challenged by their mentor or an event that they
do over come.
D) They lose their mentor and now must grow on their
own.
E) Hero continues to overcome obstacles and grow.
F) The hero
can now overcome the obstacle they were unable to overcome before.
G) The
hero returns home. |
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3. Basic Story Structure
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While the "Hero's Journey" is a specific model, all stories follow a similar
structure.
Introduction - Conflict - Climax - Resolution.
Stories
are made up of Conflicts and Resolutions.
A novel is actually a very long
list of conflicts and their resolutions.
Short stories generally only have
ONE conflict and resolution.
Translating this to a game is not too
difficult.
Personally, I try to think of a game in a series of events. The
cut scene before the event, the player plays and at the end another cut scene
plays to state the resolution of the event and start the next.
Longer
games may have several conflicts and resolutions.
Take a Game like Ocarina
of Time (warning some spoilers).
The first conflict is the Deku Tree is
dying.
The resolution is defeating the boss inside the dungeon.
The
steps between that conflict and the resolution are many.
First you have to
learn the game controls. Then you have to talk to Mido. Then you have to find
rupees and buy a shield. Then you have to find the Kokiri sword. Then you have
to talk to the Deku Tree. Then you go into the tree dungeon.
After that
conflict is resolved, the player is presented with another one.
The conflict
is there is evil rising in the land and the world is in danger. (And you also
learn that you were adopted.)
Each dungeon or level after that has some
sort of conflict.
Fire Dungeon, the Gorons are starving and the cave is
blocked.
Water Dungeon, the princess is missing.
Each had a cut scene
proceeding it telling you of this specific problem as well as provide another
step towards the resolution of the BIG conflict.
The main quest should
be the main conflict in the game. The resolution will be the final
boss/battle/confrontation. All other side conflicts must lead up to this Main
resolution with their resolutions.
A good game designer/writer presents
interesting conflicts for the player to try and resolve.
Sometimes there’s
only ONE correct resolution that you can give. Other conflicts can have more
than one resolution that the player can choose. This may affect the resolution
of the main quest.
Conflicts for a character based story are
usually:
Man vs. Man (The character is opposed to another person/group of
people)
Man vs. Nature (The character is opposed by forces of nature, storms,
plagues, etc.)
Man vs. Self (The character is opposed by his/her own mind or
some spiritual struggle. Psychological type stories.) |
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4. Story Telling Elements
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You have to present your conflicts somehow. Usually this is done with cut-scenes
and in-game dialogue. It is almost always text based.
To write the
explanation in the game while keeping the player immersed in the game, story
telling is best done through dialogue cut-scenes. The side route is to have a
bulk of text to read on screen. For action games and first person shooters, it
is better to just have a mission log displayed. |
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5. Tips to Try
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High Concept Document: While you may not really be pitching this idea to a
company, the information you need to include is perfect for getting peer
feedback for your game/story. It gets the barebones idea for your game story
down on paper.
This document should include:
Game Title/Working Title
Game Genre
Setting:
Player Motive:
Features:
Unique Points:
Design Goals:
Extra details (Audio plans, Character descriptions, voice
actors planned, list of location descriptions.)
(Example: My Little Pony:
End of Flutter Valley)
Quest Outline:
When writing out your game plan,
make a story outline for the game. Don’t worry about dialogue or cut scenes.
Play through the game how you intend the player to go through it. I usually work
things out as a series of quests. I make quick notes about what I want to happen
during that quest, what I expect the player to do, and the goal/result of that
quest. Usually receiving an item, getting a new quest, a player joining the
party are the results of quests.
Example:
1. Opening Quest – Trading
Quest for money and unlock first cut scene.
2. Finding “Niece” – help ELF
find informed NPC, Elf joins the party
3. Catch Thief – Chase Thief, Thief
joins party
4. Travel to Capital City – Travel to the Stop, Meet Fae Chief,
demon character joins party
5. Demon Wolves – Fight Demon Wolves, meet Wolf
Pack Leader, Sprite Character joins party
6. Sneak into Capital City – enter
city without getting caught, meet king
7. Find a Unicorn for the king –
travel to centaur village, get unicorn seeds, trap unicorn, Unicorn character
joins party.
8. Flee the Dragons – run to the Lake, run up the mountain, meet
Sea Serpent King and dragon queen.
9. Travel to Enemy City – go to enemy
town, catch Caravan, arrested
10. Challenge Boss – fight your friends, fight
Dragon Lord
11. Chase Boss – chase Boss through labyrinth
12. Battle
Boss/Save World – Fight minions, fight final boss
Prior to making this
list, I had already created the story-world, the characters, and the basic
storyline. What the quest list does for me is turn events in the story into game
quests. This is the bare-bone trail for my game, it does not include side-quests
or random game events.
Game Design Document: A Game design document goes
further in depth than a Pitch Document. You must take the ideas from the outline
and pitch document and form a larger database of information. For industry games
these documents are pretty hefty, but really just expanding on what you got
should do it.
The Game design document should include:
General
Information
-Game Name
-Game genre and setting
-Description of the
world including important towns, unimportant towns, names of places and probably
a quick map.
Game System
-Specifics on Battle Systems, Class Systems,
Menus, and on screen displays. HUD’s and the like.
Story
Elements
-Premise of the story
-Character Descriptions
-Types of NPCs
encountered
-Types of Monsters/Bosses
Other Things
-Victory
Conditions, Weapons list, Ability list, quest list/game outline, cut-scene list,
dialogue scripts (usually a separate document).
If you are working with
a team it is absolutely crucial that you have a detailed Design Document for
everyone to follow.
If you are working alone, it’s just good to get down the
details you need to know.
(Full Design Document: Saving Cambredia)
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