Area 161

The Importance of a Good Story, Part 2: Your Game Story

// July 26th, 2010 // By LordBron // Game Reviews, iDevBlogADay, Storytelling

Last week, I talked about finding your own story. This was in reference to your company, business, etc. This week I want to talk about finding stories in your games.

When Stories Rule, Game Mechanics Don’t Matter

There’s quite a few examples of this, but 2 come to mind that stand above the rest.

1. Myst: I think Myst has finally been dethroned as the best selling game ever, but it took some time. You also have to remember that it was released on CD-ROM at a time when not everyone had a CD-ROM. People either upgraded their machine with a new peripheral or they bought an entirely new machine just to play it. Now THAT’S dedication!
   
   If you think back to Myst, you’ll see the mechanique was very simple: Point and click. On the iPhone, it’s even simpler: Touch on where you want to go. There was beautiful graphics, but there was no animation at all during the game play. Instead, animations occurred in reaction to a move or during a cutscene. Despite the fact that you were almost in essence just clicking through photos, the game captivated millions upon millions of users, many of which were first time (and only time) gamers.
   
   What drew people to Myst was the story. It was a game in which you never died, a first I believe. You just wandered around, solving puzzles trying to figure out who you were, why you were there and how you could get out. They could’ve just made a game of the various puzzles and sold them as a game of brain teasers. However, had they done that, the game would not have been anywhere near as successful.
   
   The most amazing aspect about Myst’s story was it’s non-linear nature. You were free to go in any direction you wanted and solve puzzles in whichever order you preferred. It was like real life vs a movie. This new sense of freedom contributed to the enjoyment, so much so that many adults bought the game just to explore and never bothered to solve puzzles at all.
   
   The Miller brothers were pretty indie when they made Myst, working from garages, etc. This shows that indies have the power to take games to a whole new level when new technology comes out (in their case, CD-ROM tech). We, as iPhone developers, seem to have a new tech to take advantage of everytime Apple releases a new device. We just need to take the time to analyze it from the perspective of “How can this help us tell a new story?”
   
   
2. Dragon’s Lair/Space Ace: This game utilized the joystick and button setup commonly found in arcade cabinets at the time. The unique thing about this game is that it told you every move you needed to make. Unlike Myst, there was no wondering: Where do I go or what do I do. In fact, if you didn’t do exactly what it commanded at the moment it told you to, you’d die.
   
   Because of the linear nature of these games, they were able to make a very tight story and link it to constantly playing animation. Where as Myst was like clicking through a photo album of an unknown world, DL/SA was literally an animated cartoon world that you got to participate in.
   
   DL/SA both played to a male’s sense of manhood. They were stories that pretty much encapsulated what every little (and not so little) boy dreamed of. Who doesn’t want to be the knight in shining armor or the super-studly space pilot that defeats the enemy to save the hot girl?
   
   DL/SA was made by Don Bluth. While I’m guessing he had some deep pockets backing him, I’ll still call him an Indie because he was an Indie Animator trying his hands into video games.
   
   Both games also leveraged another disc based technology, Laserdisc. Again, we see how new technology allowed for a new way to deliver a compelling story.

A Game Plus a Story for 99 cents?

I know what you’re thinking. “These games were priced far higher than your typical 99 cent app.” You’re right. Myst, I believe, was $40 new and DL/SA were a quarter (or 2) a pop, which very easily became $40 per player. I have some opinions and some rough, non-scientific studies on price, but that will be in next week’s post. Suffice it to say, that despite our lower price point, story can indeed still be delivered.

Here are some games that are experimenting with story on the iOS platform:

• Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor – Yeah, spinning webs and catching bugs is fun, but that’s not what makes the game great. It’s the stuff outside of your control that makes it great. It’s the photos in the background. It’s the trinkets in the secret levels.
  
  Lesson to learn: You can tell a story without words and completely in the background.
  
  
• Pro Zombie Soccer – I’m still torn on this game’s story, but hey, at least they have one. One thing I do like is how they’ve integrated the comic format into their game.
  
  Lesson to learn: Feel free to mix media in your games, in this case comics.
  
  
• Robocalypse (Seems to be pulled from US App Store) – I really like the story in this game. It’s very silly and makes up for what I find to be too complicated a game. I put up with the complexity though to see more of the story.
  
  Lesson to learn: Have fun with your story and it’ll be fun to the users.
  
  
• Plants Vs. Zombies – The story here is very subtle, but the neighbor/vendor guy is a friggin’ hoot. They could’ve very easily given you a storefront without him and no one woulda really noticed. However, I’m glad they spent the time to create what has to be one of the more memorable characters out there.
  
  Lesson to learn: Even something as simple as one character can liven up a game with a story.
  
  

But It Needs to be a Good Story too.

I’ll keep hounding about story, but there’s one thing I have to admit. I hate a really, really poor story. You can’t force a story. I like Steven King’s explanation:

“Writing a story is like excavating dinosaur bones. You’re job as a writer is to carefully brush away the dirt and other items not important to the story. The story is there whole, waiting for you. You just have to make sure not to mess it up.”

However, the only way to get better at story telling is by telling stories. Therefore, don’t be scared to add a story, but just try to learn each time and learn from others:

• Chaos Rings – I love me some Final Fantasy, so I was stoked about this iPhone original. However, I think it’s fairly clear that Square Enix has their B-team working on their iPhone games. The story is painfully horrible. Maybe it’s poor translation, but I simply can’t play it because the story is so bad.
  
  Lesson to learn: Read the story out loud. If it’s hard for you to follow while reading, it’s gonna be even harder for your users.
  
  
• N.O.V.A – The dialogue in this game is atrocious. I realize that dialogue is exteremely hard to do, but that’s no excuse not to do some homework. My favorite hobby as a teenage writer was to go to the mall with headphones on my head, but with no actual music playing. I’d sit next to perfect strangers and listen to how the spoke to each other. I’d then take notes and add that to my dialogue.
  
  Lesson to learn: It’s not what your characters are saying that’s important, it’s how they say it: word choice, inflection, sentence structure, etc.
  
  
• Rogue Planet – My issue here is the amount on Non-Player Characters. I think this is an example of people trying too hard to put story into a game. “More characters mean a more complex story. The more complex the story, the more engaged the users will be.” Sorry, but that’s simply not true. More characters means you need to be a better a writer.
  
  Lesson to learn: It’s hard to keep track of a story as it is, so limit the number of characters when you can. Many of your are just starting out, so don’t make it any harder for yourselves than you have to.
  
  

“Where’s your street cred?”

So what makes me think I can talk so much about writing, eh? Why don’t I put some examples out there that can be critiqued?

Fair enough. I haven’t written in awhile, but below are links to some of my work and writing tools I’m making:

• Dragon Lore – A fantasy story of a little girl and an old dragon. I think the dialogue shines here, but you can judge for yourself. This was written about 10 years ago.
• Unemployment – A modern fiction piece about an unemployed man. This piece utilizes that trick I mentioned last post where you start and end a story with the same thing. In this case, it’s a wedding ring. This was written in high school, roughly 17 years ago.
• Poems for my Wife – A collection of almost 600 poems that I’ve written for my wife in the 13 years we’ve known each other. Some are really bad, but some are really good. I’ll let you decide which are which. I used to try to write one poem a day, but it still hasn’t happened. I also used to have this open so other guys could write poems for their wives, but no one ever signed up so I shut that part down.
• Pictstory – A website that I’m building to help get people writing more often. Basically, I’ll post a picture and then users write a story to go with the picture. It’s a tool to get in some writing via your mobile phone, during down time. It currently has issues in Firefox, but I’ll be cleaning it up as we get closer to launch. I’ll be sure to make some noise about it here when it’s ready for prime time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little two parter on the importance of story. I have some thoughts on world building too, so let me know if you want a write up on that.

Next week, I’ll be writing about app pricing. I’ve been doing some non-scientific research and the findings are rather frightening for us indy devs.