Recently in Narrative Analysis Category

The 'game system' fires up, the fans roar (or hopefully not so much), and the once black screen ignites. Immediately the player engages the video game and encounters stimuli; text; main menus, loading screens, cinematics, play mechanics, player characters, non-player characters, etc. They take witness and navigate the system using designed actions, play mechanics. Using these mechanics, the player acts as an agent within the participatory dramatic spectacle. An agent is a person or thing that takes an active role.  The player moves forward through a series of events acting with designed mechanics to bring about change in the system in order to achieve some desired outcome. To act is to cause or experience events. An event is a transition from one state to another. As a player acts he assembles a series of logical and chronologically related events, a fabula. This is the story, a series of events cognitively assembled and perceived by the player. The player authors this story through the reading of the text; the video game.

"A narrative text is a text in which an agent relates a story in a particular medium" [Bal 1994]. The video game is related, or narrated, by the video game engine to the player through both active and passive means. Text, imagery, feedback, sound, and temporal sequences are read, perceived and judged. The game engine presents a narrative text to the player and says read me; understand what I am; and immerse yourself in the simulation.

Some are better readers, better players, but all the players read and absorb the experience. As the player progresses in his play these judgments about the events, experienced as a result of his actions, cause him to modify his play to produce desired results. Reading allows the player to determine the next action needed to achieve a specific objective, or 'object of desire.' The story is needed by the player to convey the subjective meaning associated with the narrative read in the video game. A dramatic pattern that when assembled by the player creates a [player] story; a communication about the way things are within a particular system.

I like simulating war, at least, as a hobby. As a child I marveled at Axis and Allies, and games like Risk.

Having started my computer strategy gaming on a Sega Genesis with Westwood's Dune 2, working on a realistic computer war-game, or a Real-Time Strategy Game (RTS), as it is more commonly called, became for me an item of particular interest.

In graduate school @ USC's Interactive Media Division I had the pleasure of working with the Westwood team at EALA on The Battle for Middle Earth II. Not long there after we even had a course under Professor Chris Swain which focused on RTS game design. It was a blast, and really provided a deeper insight into the process and history associated with the design and production of the genre. By the time I got to writing and doing narrative design with the award winning team working on Company of Heroes it was the fulfillment of a life long dream for me.

Working on the war-game franchise made me ask questions. Deeper questions than I asked in grad school, about where my fascination began, and when this form, RTS, came to be. The roots of RTS, are war-games. Even if the setting has fantasy influences, the core combat systems of all RTS is that of a war-game: Multiple Player Units, Resource Management, Building, and Command level strategy.

In investigating the roots of war-gaming in my family I found, to my surprise, that my family began war-gaming as a result of involvement with the military in WWII and the Korean War.  They played 'war' as students, soldiers, and officers, to study military strategy. Asking my retired Air-Force officer of an uncle, he mentioned it rising into a hobby status in the 1950s. Just about the time Charles Roberts was getting started designing what would prove to be a ground breaking  game system.

His 1954 game Tactics, and the follow-up Tactics II are generally credited as the first board war-game. Tactics pioneered many game mechanics which became standard in the board wargame industry, including cardboard counters representing individual military units with separate values for movement and combat; the odds-ratio combat results table; and variable movement costs for entering squares (later hexes) containing different types of terrain.[1] Roberts knew the game had tremendous educational value. [2] It was serious, serious war-gaming. But I knew it had to go deeper, even those table-top games had to owe what they are to the ideas of their predecessors. Where did it come from? My uncle was wasn't sure.

According to The Department of Defense a war game is "a simulation, by whatever means, of a military operation involving two or more opposing forces, using rules, data, and procedures designed to depict an actual or assumed real life situation."[1]  It seems that Russia, the European Union and the United States of America, are in a very real war-game about the future of new Europe.  Grabbing "living-space" for Russia in Georgia must be a move made with a greater strategy.  Certainly it must be part of a larger campaign, but what is the goal? 

Not long ago, 'total annihilation' had the United States and the former USSR both engaged in war-games to determine the outcome of such a scenario should it escalate to "World War III".  Thanks to war-game strategic studies by the likes of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), only three outcomes where determined to be possible in the confrontation between the two powers: "1. Loss of Command and Control 2. Unleashing Tactical Nuclear Weapons 3. Gas or Biological Attack". [2]

The play is a literary form that comes down to us from Ancient Greece intended for performance. Used as a production tool to create a perceived story space on stage, it consists of characters, dialog, action, and setting. It is a form that was adapted for motion pictures then called the "screenplay". While not particularly different than its stage play ancestor, the screenplay is intended for use on linear theatrical productions such as film and television. I chose to adapt it to games for purposes of strengthening game story. While games have their design documentation, often a 'bible' of information or a presentation intended to communicate a cohesive vision, the screenplay acts as a method to create a common story vision among widely disparate development pipelines within game development, with the aim of creating a better user experience. While not a concept I claim to originate. It is a form that I have forged wholly on my own, with attention to what makes a game screenplay unique.

Part 1: Cinematics

Linear cinematic segments, while potentially altered by the player, or selected in a meaningful non-linear fashion via gameplay, are no different than traditional screenplays. As the first screenplays did not veer too far from stage plays, with minimal sets, and high caliber, sometimes over-the-top, characters. So to the game screenplay is still akin to the screenplays of film. Example 1 (below) is from my first game screenplay for "Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts".

Example 1: Game Screenplay Cinematic Sequences

Recently in an interview I was asked about other forms of the heroes story, if there are other types yet to be explored by games, and indeed there are. As an example, one form I’ve been playing with, both in thought and practice, is tragedy. This classic tragic hero archetype is one rarely given to players. To often contemporary video games follow a hand-holding method of play design which makes sure always to “please” the player and let them “win”, a discussion explored more in depth in Randy Smiths recent piece on next-gen.biz.

I was fortunate enough to be able to execute a single-player campaign for Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts which was in fact a tragedy, full of tragic heroes, engaged in tragic actions. In the end, the player, as the fictional Kampfgruppe Lehr, is successful at fending of the British and Americans during Operation Market Garden (OMG), but the tragic nature of the 3rd Reich’s downfall and it’s destruction of Germany is the stories true end. Giving both a positive and negative value charge to the players final moments of the campaign with Wolfgang Berger.

Born out of the nobility of imperial Prussian blood the primary protagonist Wolfgang Berger is innately full of hamartia (flawed judgment), in his support of the 3rd Reich (3rd German Empire) and its aims at increasing lebensraum (German living space). Torn between the conflicting voices of his heart and his mind, embodied respectively by his brother Alrdrich and Major General Voss, he struggles to stay honest to himself. Soon he looses close friend Wilhelm Deinhard and brother Aldrich to a tragic reversal of his fortune brought about by his devotion to the 3rd Reich. In the narrative climax of the campaign a true catharsis enters the  audience as Wolfgang cleanses his hands and mind of the blood-guilt left from his actions (the players actions) during the OMG campaign. As he comes to grip with his err over the body of his dead brother, Wolfgang’s broken heart is able to speak to it’s true antagonist the 3rd Reich, embodied by Maximillian Voss (see clip below).