Storytelling in Games

Pretty much every game has some sort of a story, whether it be an RPG (Role-playing Video Game) like Final Fantasy which has a huge amount of lore and an immersive world full of characters who each have backstories for players to lose themselves in, or a sports game like Tennis World Tour, which relies almost entirely on the gameplay to entice players, but still has a campaign game mode to let players have a virtual tennis career; which, although very simplistic, is a story in itself.

As with seemingly anything in today’s world, storytelling has a long history which paved the way for modern game story writers to do their thing.

 

The History of Storytelling

Stories have been around for as long as humans could walk the earth, but the first recorded stories were that of cave paintings.  Because people of these times had no written language, they relied on visual storytelling.  They told stories of great hunts where they killed large animals.  These paintings were also used as a way to teach others about hunting techniques.

They even used the shadows from fires as a very early form of animation.

As with anything in nature, the form of storytelling evolved over thousands of years into cavemen and women telling stories with simple sign language, and then eventually started to tell stories with their voices.

Fast forward many years into 3,000 B.C. where the Sumerians invented writing, which was a whole new format for creating stories.  This was a revelation in storytelling, as creators no longer needed to rely on reciting stories verbally from memory.  But transcribing stories into a written form was a very time-consuming task, so only a select few were recorded in this format.

In approximately 800 B.C., a rather famous fellow called Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey which became the ancient ancestors of Western literature.

In about 335 B.C. A guy called Aristotle wrote the first attempt of trying to codify storytelling.  This book was called Poetics.

Jump ahead a little bit into the Middle Ages where bards would use music to tell tales to illiterate audiences, which meant that they could enjoy the art of storytelling without having to learn to read.  These travelling storytellers would move from town to town continually learning more stories to share.

Somewhere around the year of 1440, a guy called Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press which was a great time for storytelling, as it brought stories to the wider population.

In the 16th Century, a chap called Shakespear wrote and performed grand theatre shows for both the literate and illiterate population.

A couple hundred years later the industrial revolution happened, which introduced new innovative forms of storytelling such as film and radio.  Stories were quickly becoming big business.  The fact that stories could be told to mass numbers of people by vision and audio opened up lots of possibilities for storytellers to communicate more ideas to their audiences in new ways.

At the end of World War 2, an era known as The Golden Age Of Television began.  Brands started advertising their products by telling stories on the TV.

In the 1990s, the internet started to take off. Within a couple decades anyone could tell their story, for the first time in history everyone had a voice through new mediums like blogs, YouTube, Facebook, podcasts, and so on. With little to no cost, it became possible for a good story to travel the world in just a couple clicks.

And here we are, in the present day of 2020.  There are countless mediums for storytellers to choose from to tell their stories, including games.  What started out as very simple 8-bit pixel games have now become a multi-billion pound business where games have become so complex that they are rivalling films in graphics and storytelling quality.  I’m sure that the next couple hundred years of storytelling are going to be incredible.

 

 

Game Genres

“Video Game Genres can refer to individual styles of gameplay and/or to a particular game design mechanic that is distinct from other genres.  Most often game genres are not pure breeds, but are instead hybrids with many overlapping traits.” – Video Games: An Introduction to the Industry.

There are, of course, many sub-genres, and hybrid genres like action-adventure games and story-driven games, but I’m going to try to stick to the most basic genres.

MMORPGs

MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games) are large scale games where lots of people play together online in a massive open world, typically full to bursting point with quests and side quests to level up players’ characters and gain loot.

In my experience, this genre of games typically features the female character models being slim and dressed in skimpy outfits, whereas the male characters are very muscular.  This suggests that for one to be a hero, one must be in peak physical condition, which could be harmful to young players growing up with these games, as it could impact their self-esteem around their bodies.

But player models in MMORPGs aren’t always represented in this way, as there are countless examples of overweight, short little ugly dwarves, goblins and other species exhibiting perhaps in some cases more realistic portrayals of body physique.

These games are most commonly set in a fantasy Tolkien-like universe with swords, shields, magic, and drunken dwarves etc – I think you get the picture.  Popular examples include; World of Warcraft, Neverwinter, Adventure Quest Worlds (below), Dungeons & Dragons Online, Runescape, and The Elder Scrolls Online.

Another common setting for these games is in a future-focused around space exploration where players jump around planets shooting bad guys with futuristic weapons.  Popular examples include; Warframe, Star Trek Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

Adventure

The Wikipedia definition is as follows; “An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving. The genre’s focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres.”

In my experience, a lot of story-rich adventure games focus more on the narrative and the dialogue between characters than on the mechanics of the game itself.  Although there plenty of games from this genre that don’t rely so much on the narrative and are more about the actual gameplay, like the Zelda Franchise.

Popular Adventure game titles include; Life is Strange, The Walking Dead, Grim Fandango, Firewatch, Night in The Woods (below), and The Legend of Zelda etc.  This is a very common game genre, so the list goes on for quite some time.

 

Platformers

Platform games are where the player controls a character navigating environments in either the 2D or 2.5D perspective.

The term “platformer” refers to how players are required to jump onto platforms to progress through levels.  A lot of retro games are categorised in this genre, as the technical limitations of the time prevented game devs from making the intricate 3D environments we have today in modern games, so instead had to make these platformers with pixel art.  Partly due to the low resolution, characters were designed to look very cartoony, which made them likeable and memorable.

Some famous examples of these are; Sonic The Hedgehog, Mega Man X, Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Land 2.

Game developers who grew up playing these games are always trying to find that nostalgia hit, so there are still many games today being released that are trying to emulate the atmosphere of those earlier games.  Some popular games like this are; The Messenger (below), Celeste, Fez, Super Meat Boy etc.

But not all modern platformers are in this style, as there are many that use 3D models and environments, such as the games Inside and Unravel.  These games are what’s known as 2.5D, as they use 3D models and environments, but the camera is in the 2D perspective.

 

 

First-Person Shooters

These are games where the player controls a character typically holding a gun in the bottom right corner of the screen.  These games focus on war situations either in the past, in the modern-day, in the future, or in some sort of fantasy universe.

The characters that the player controls in these games are more often than not a walking, hardly-talking, extremely muscled killing machine.   The aim of these games is to give the player as much of an adrenaline rush as possible and to make them feel badass as they’re running around killing everything they see.

These games are mostly targeted to the typical teenager or young adult male, so all of the male characters are very muscled, and most of the female characters wear a lot of revealing clothing.  This is partly done to use sex appeal to market the game to as many people as possible.  For example, the Artificial Intelligence avatar of Cortana from the Halo series.

Popular titles from this genre include: Call of Duty, Destiny, Minecraft, Rainbow Six Seige (below), Counterstrike 2, Doom, Halo (above), Overwatch, and Apex Legends.

 

Third-Person

A third-person game means that the player controls a character in the third-person perspective.

Some of the most popular titles of this genre are; The Last of Us (above), Uncharted, Life is Strange (below), The Legend of Zelda, Fortnite, Resident Evil, Warframe, and Grand Theft Auto.

Strategy

“A strategy video game is a video game genre that focuses on skilful thinking and planning to achieve victory. It emphasizes strategic, tactical, and sometimes logistical challenges. Many games also offer economic challenges and exploration.” – Wikipedia.

Some of the most popular games of this genre are; Civilisation (above), Spore, XCOM 2 (below), Age of Empires, Stellaris, and Warhammer.

Driving

Driving games are the player can control a plethora of land sea and air vehicles.  In most of these games, the player must compete against NPCs (non-playable characters) or other players online to rise the ranks to obtain the glory of the top spot.  In most of these games, the player can switch between the first and third-person perspectives.

Popular games of this genre are; Need for Speed (above), Gran Turismo Sport, The Crew 2, Rocket League, Trackmania, Grand Theft Auto, Trials, Grip, and BeamNG.drive (below).

Horror

Horror games are designed to give the player the biggest scare possible or to creep them out immensely.  Different games utilise different forms of horror to achieve this.  Some games use gore, most use jumpscares, most use creepy audio design etc.

Popular Horror games are; Outlast (above), Five Nights at Freddy’s, Silent Hill, P.T. (below), Amnesia, Dead by Daylight, Alien: Isolation, The Evil Within, Dead Space, Observer, The Walking Dead,  Soma, Resident Evil, Layers of Fear, Slenderman, Sirenhead, and Little Nightmares.

Sandbox

Sandbox games are where players are given a world or environment where they can do as they please, there are no objectives, no missions or anything, or if there are, then they are optional.  The name sandbox is very obviously in reference to a kids sandbox, where they are given the tools they need to have fun, but with no certain objectives, like the buckets and spades and whatnot would be the mechanics of the game, and the sandbox itself would be the environment.

Popular Sandbox games are; Minecraft (below), Garry’s Mod (above), Grand Theft Auto, No Man’s Sky, and Terraria.

 

Vista Game Preview

Vista is a 2D story-driven puzzle platformer about a girl and her younger brother who wake up in an unfamiliar land with no memory of how they got there.  They must brave the intimidating unknown together, using both their strengths and weaknesses to overcome every challenge they face.  Here is the running animation that I made for the sister.

Vista’s pixel art style and character design take heavy influence from such beautiful games as; Celeste (below), The Messenger, and Undertale.

The idea to have two siblings traversing a land together is partially inspired by the adventure game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

The setting and type of game mechanics that I hope to make for this game are inspired by Limbo, where the player controls a young boy who is running through a dark and scary landscape and must use objects in the environment to progress through puzzles.  The player is kept in the dark (heh) for the majority of the game about where he is, and what reason he is running around for.  If you haven’t played Limbo or any of the games I’ve mentioned in this bit then you should because they’re amazing.

The idea for the name Vista came from the term “the vista of years” from the Poem Piano by D. H. Lawrence.  The end plot twist of this game that I don’t want to give away makes sense with the name.  Here’s an extract from the poem.

“Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.”

 

 

 

Research

 

Books and Articles

The Advanced Game Narrative Toolbox.

Video Games: An Introduction to the Industry – Andy Bossom and Ben Dunning.

Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG.

https://blog.42courses.com/home/2018/7/12/the-evolution-of-storytelling

https://kottke.org/12/09/cave-paintings-were-stone-age-animations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_video_game

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44580/piano

 

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