Story building in a nutshell. There is an avatar. There is an environment. But there is no story. What would you add to create a story, if you can only add one thing?

Hmm. Is an introspective dialogue choice a thing? If not, then I'd pick an npc or something else which communicated, like a letter or a roadsign. Second best choice would be an obstacle such as a locked treasure chest, door, or puzzle.

By 'thing' I mean mise-en-scène. Anything that can be put into the environment.

You can be more specific about the thing to be added on scene. You can specify the size, color, location, etc (so that I can actually draw it).

Scenario 1:



Scenario 2:


[Edited by - Wai on December 25, 2007 12:26:22 AM]

Scenario 3:


Scenario 4:

Interlude:

Unlike books, games can encode a story into interaction. In writing, there is the saying, "show, don't tell." In game design, there can be the saying, "experience, don't show."

The forces acting on a story character are transfered to the player by designing the game environment and game rules correctly.

Example:


What can you tell about this game and its possible story just by observing the scene? Suppose you are a player, what do you think the objective is? What do you expect?

Given the avatar, the environment,
a story is formed by adding a goal state.
Scenario 03 (chest) completes this concisely:




The story is:

0.0 - The player-controlled avatar discovers a chest.
0.5 - She finds the way to the chest and open it.
1.0 - She finds something inside. ~ fin ~

The trivial conflict is the treasure inside is unknown.
Opening the chest resolves the conflict.

The player experience might be:

0.00 - Identifies that the controlled character is the green-haired girl.
0.11 - Guesses that the objective is to open the chest
0.12 - Tries different buttons to move and walks left.
0.13 - Realize that the brown column is a wall.
0.14 - Decides to explore the path above.
0.15 - Tries different buttons to jump.
0.16 - Explores the path beyond those originally shown
0.50 - Finds the way to the chest
0.90 - Tries different buttons to open the chest
1.00 - Chest pops open and surprise ensures. ~ fin ~

The moral of the story/experience is:
Learning and exploring is rewarding.

The story can be lengthened by adding more game rules manifested as interactibles.



By adding the key, the story is lengthened, but not necessarily improved.
Most players already know the relation between a key and a chest.
Adding the key does not add any learning opportunity.

To improve the story, something needs to be added to introducing a new rule.
If you can only add one thing to scenario 05, what would you add?

[Edited by - Wai on December 24, 2007 3:55:26 AM]

Here's my response.



The ghost girl tells the player that they're going to have to get past her (defeat, persuade, or avoid) to get the key, thus adding another rule, and more interest.

Technically, the conflict is not that the treasure is unknown, the conflict is that it is not immediately obvious how to get to the chest and get it to open. The unknownness of the treasure is instead a motivation, curiosity (as well as the player's trained knowledge that any unique object in a game probably has to be interacted with to make progress, and chests usually contain good loot rather than being empty or traps). Curiosity is an impersonal motivation, and the avatar is a blank character, so to improve the story let's give the player a chance to make a choice which defines the character's personality/motivation.