Return to Character Development and Storytelling for Games

 Reviews

Quandary, December 2004 by Gordon Aplin

As a player and reviewer of computer games I have often commented on aspects of gameplay that have annoyed me. Usually my little rants have been directed at adventure game developers who insist on adding timed sequences or arcade puzzles requiring fast reflexes. Or tone-matching puzzles requiring a 'good' ear which I don't possess. As soon as I hit one of these in a game I reach for a walkthrough and all sense of immersion is lost. Occasionally I will be critical of having to read 5 journal volumes at one sitting to learn about the story or glean one elusive clue. Or endure an ultra long conversation or cut scene for the same reason. At other times I have lamented the missed opportunities where a game character might have done something different or something more that I thought would have rounded out the story or a puzzle, but the designers overlooked it.

I used to think that adventure game designers added immersion-breaking elements on purpose, thinking that I wouldn't mind the disconnection or, perhaps, for a bit of variety, or even in a misguided attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience. A This-Game-Has-Something-For-Everyone approach to game design and marketing that ultimately leaves many players dissatisfied with some elements of gameplay and story.

I know now that this is not always the case. Rather it is more likely the result of game designers seeing story development and gameplay as two separate and, at times, incompatible issues. So gameplay is what the players will do in the game such as solve the lock puzzle or shoot the aliens, and story is large chunks of exposition in the form of cut scenes, conversations, journals, books and diaries. I know now that it need not always be this way.

How do I know this? Simple. I have recently read Lee Sheldon's fascinating insider's book Character Development and Storytelling for Games and, though it is aimed primarily at game writers and designers and not necessarily reviewers, it nevertheless clarified for me many of the reasons I have felt dissatisfied with aspects of some games.

Many adventure game players will recognise Lee as the writer/designer of games such as The Riddle of Master Lu, Dark Side of the Moon and Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin. More recently he worked on massively multiplayer worlds such as Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and Disney's Virtual Kingdom, and has been appointed by The Adventure Company to create a series of mystery games based on the writings of Agatha Christie. But more than this Lee is a writer/producer who honed his skills over twenty years on TV shows such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Charlie's Angels, Quincy and Murder She Wrote, to name just a few. He is also a charter member of the Game Design Workshop and has lectured at the Game Developer's Conference. Excellent credentials to write a story and character development resource book for game writers and designers.

In Character Development and Storytelling for Games Lee roams far and wide, drawing together aspects of storytelling and characterisation from Aristotle and Homer, through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Dickens, to film and television and, of course, games. Yet in all the diverse vignettes the thread of storytelling remains constant. This is not a dry as dust history of writing lecture. Lee uses examples to illustrate his themes and shows the relevance of understanding the art and craft of writing to those who would aspire to create games. As Lee says, it is not a book of rules more a book of ideas and choices.

Nor is it simply a book about storytelling in adventure games, far from it. Lee explores the creative possibilities for developing compelling stories and characters in action, role-playing, simulation, strategy and multiplayer games. Though I must admit that some of Lee's comments on the current state of adventure games caught my eye. In particular:

"Adventure games have more opportunities to tell story built into them than any other type of game. With all those chances, you'd think adventures would be miles ahead of other types of games in thought-provoking themes and rich characters. They aren't." Lee goes on to say:

"This is disappointing and surprising to me. It doesn't cost any more to create games that push the envelope of ideas. If you want to break out of a niche, you have to make waves. I see no more than ripples. The paradigm remains stagnant."

Is he correct in this assessment? With a few notable exceptions I tend to agree but I am also hopeful that adventure game writers will take up this challenge and explore the possibilities that exist within the creative imagination. And this doesn't mean adding reflex arcade sequences and combat to reach a wider audience. There is a wider audience out there that currently ignores computer games, possibly because they haven't found anything to interest them or maybe they are turned off by the way computer game playing is portrayed as juvenile both by the industry and the media. As Lee points out, the game industry has yet to reach mass market penetration when you consider that "the audience for a single episode of a hit TV show is measured in the tens of millions."

Part of the problem, as Lee sees it, is that the story and the gameplay are frequently and erroneously considered to be incompatible and are often developed separately or at least disjointedly. Lee argues that this approach has resulted in immersion-breaking chunks of exposition interrupting the gameplay. As game players we have all regularly experienced this. One moment you are actively involved in the game and then a long non-interactive cut scene takes over and you can only sit back and watch and listen as you are fed more of the story. Or you find the never-ending book that you must read to learn what has happened or glean clues for the up coming puzzles that you haven't seen yet.

Lee observes that writing the story and creating the characters is rarely given the time and resources that go into other aspects of game development such as graphics or programming. This sends a clear message that writing, the crafting of the story, is not important and this is why in so many games the story feels 'tacked on'. One of Lee's themes is about respect. Writers, he says, need to respect their characters ... even the lowliest of non-player characters deserves to have a purpose in the gameworld "beyond the designer's convenience". Writers also need to respect their audience. I'm sure that Lee would not disagree if I add that game developers also need to respect their writers and the craft of writing.

In this book Lee also tackles issues such as linearity and non-linearity and examines the structure of games. He suggests ways to break out of the notion of 'paths' through games and explains the concept of modular storytelling as a way of integrating story and gameplay. He is candid about his own past mistakes and doesn't demand that we agree with his every word, which I appreciated as I did have a few issues with some of his points. Notably, I thought Lee's assessment of Syberia was harsh and his view that Diablo revived role-playing games is probably more urban myth than rooted in reality.

At a hefty 474 pages Character Development and Storytelling for Games contains diagrams and illustrations and has an annotated bibliography. It's no mere 'how to' manual, it's more of an exploration of why storytelling and character development are crucial to the creation of great games. I liked that Lee described it as a journey or a quest and he is an interesting companion to have along as he has mapped the past so we know where we have come from and surveyed the terrain ahead so he can suggest the options that are open to us. He also has a store of anecdotes that he shares which make the journey pleasurable and introduces us to other game designers along the way.

Character Development and Storytelling for Games is a fascinating book for anyone interested in writing as it applies to computer games, and that includes reviewers. For game writers and designers and those even thinking about making their own games it's essential reading.

You can learn more about Lee Sheldon and his ideas at his website www.anti-linearlogic.com

You can purchase this book from Amazon.com

Virtual Worldlets Network

"Written by Lee Sheldon, a professional entertainment writer, with such credits as Star Trek: The Next Generation", "Charlie's Angels", and "Edge of Night" to his name, this book is all about writing good, solid, sweeping plots for interactive entertainment.

Sheldon may be a screenwriter by trade, but in 1994, he expanded his direction to include computer game scriptwriting For the last seven years, he has been giving tutorials at the Game Developers Conference on writing and designing games of all types and sizes, from stand alone to the largest MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Gameworld).

Indeed, his focus on MMOs can be seen all throughout the book, with two chapters dedicated to them, and liberal use all throughout.

You might ask what all the fuss is about. Telnet worlds have been creating story arcs for decades, what's the problem? Well, for one, Telnet worlds usually only have a few hundred players maximum - there are exceptions, of course - and are a totally different model to MMOs which may have 100,000 or 1,000,000 players at any time.

Still, this book is not about teaching you. Good story telling like any good writing, cannot be taught. You can be shown the basics, and the possibilities, the path is up to you. Within the nearly five hundred pages of this book, you will find ideas, histories, concepts, suggestions aplenty, but its not there to ram them down your throat, it there to show, and enlighten, not to teach.

Even so, its twenty chapters cover everything you need to create the basics of truly stunning story arcs. This is definitely a must for every developer's shelf."

December 2004 by François Dominic Laramée

"I've known Lee Sheldon for several years. He is one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable people I've met in the game industry, so I was very much looking forward to this book. Suffice it to say that I wasn't disappointed.

Writing for games has a lot in common with writing for other media (e.g., character and theme) and a lot that is unique to itself. Lee does an excellent job of covering both aspects - so much so that I would recommend this book to writers with absolutely no interest in interactive media. (I've read my share of writing books over the years, and this one stands at the top of the heap.)

Of particular interest to me were chapters 3-6 on character and chapter 14 on modular storytelling, the most elegant way I've seen of organizing a linear experience into a non-linear structure. The book also does an excellent job of discussing storytelling in massively multiplayer games and provides extensive background material, much of which is intended to set up and justify Lee's modular storytelling model - rather more background than necessary, actually, since you should be sold on the need for something like modular storytelling long before he gets around to explaining it.

The book's does have a few faults. For example, a couple of the later chapters feel out of place, and the text is dusted with a handful of puzzling and sometimes repeated typos (Eowen? Kalishnakov?) But these are of little consequence and should not detract from your enjoyment."

November 2004 by Norse.view

"Almost didn't read it because I started with the appendices, including an "opinionated bibliography" - that almost had rushing off to the shelves (and the library and Amazon) to grab a bunch of other books to read.

When I got down to reading the main work - it was just as captivating. He writes well, there are jokes mixed in and a good structure. Some minor typos/mis-references (a missing appendix c) and a bit overdone on the "define this word" stuff, but it doesn't detract from the overall message.

The best part? Make your rule then break it. If you willingly break a rule, chances are the result will be much better than if you happen to ignore it because you are unaware of it.

Draws heavily on ideas from many fields, so the content has value outside of "pure" game design (ie for animation, machinima, role playing, adapting books to hobby-theater)."

f13.net, February 2005 by Evangolis

"Character Development and Storytelling for Games is meant to be a resource for writers and designers and those who must work with us and who may want to talk intelligently with us at some point.”

Here is how I think he did.  Pretty well.

This isn’t a book that will teach you how to write, except by example.  It is rambling in a comfortable, conversational way; a very readable book, but then I would expect a man who has been making his living as a writer for several decades to produce something very readable.  It isn’t a step-by-step or cookbook of writing, detailing pacing schemes and such, although it does discuss a variety of features and techniques of writing stories in games.  The conversational style, together with the breadth of subject matter covered, does tend to defocus the book, but I think that was a necessary tradeoff, not a shortcoming.

This is a general audience book, as the first sentence indicates.  As such, most experienced game writers won’t be finding much that is new here.  So those twelve people probably shouldn’t bother reading this book.  The rest of us might get something out of it.  Let me thumbnail the book for you, and you decide.

The first section is a couple of chapters of background.  It deals with the general questions of why make games and why tell stories in them, and then proceeds to expound one of the author’s themes, namely that telling stories is telling stories, regardless of medium.  Not that the medium is irrelevant to how you tell a story, but that lessons and standards from more traditional literary modes generally have relevance to telling stories in games.

The next section, “Creating Characters”, covers characters, dealing mostly in basic concepts, but applying those concepts to the special issues created by writing for games.  For example, the fact that the protagonist is the Player Character produces some unique considerations.  Sheldon has rather a lot to say about respecting characters, something he clearly feels many games fail to do.

The next section, “Telling the Story”, takes a similar treatment of story, the elements of story, and storytelling techniques as they apply to games.  Here the author climbs onto a number of soapboxes.  The one that impressed me most was his emphasis on telling story directly in gameplay, rather than through cutscenes or backstory.  I was also interested in his arguments for modular storytelling in games.  Both of these ideas seem to me to hold considerable promise for improving both storytelling and gameplay in games.

The remaining large section, “Games People Play”, considers story as it relates to different types of games, and different genres of games, as well as considerations applying to console games and virtual worlds.  Some of the material in this section was rather abbreviated, but the chapters on virtual worlds reflect considerable interest by the author in MMO writing and design.  I think this disparity of depth gives the book a somewhat uneven feel, but I can’t say I’d have done it any differently.

There is a concluding chapter, and a couple of appendices, short, but worth reading.  The book conveys a reasonable quantity of information, a fair amount of personal opinion, and a few good jokes, together with some jokes that are less successful.

My only complaint is that the author tends to lapse into “when I was writing Charlie’s Angels”, or “Edge of Night”, or whatever a bit too often for my taste.  I also suspect that folks here will find him a bit too forgiving of some games.  These, however, are minor quibbles against a book that is both comfortable and interesting to read."