Playing the Plot - the anatomy of gamified stories

ITU May 8th 2013

Kjetil Sandvik, associate professor, Media, Cognition and

Communication, University of Copenhagen

A gamified world: the experience

economy • Staging of experiences as a consumer modus is

not only about entertainment, but about engaging the consumer.

• Regardless of the degree of participation, staging of experiences will always be about scripting narratives which appear as unfinished without the consumer’s participation.

• Especially computer games are characterized by this logic in which the consumer (player) provides actions which contributes to producing the very experiences which the games offer.

Users want play authors

Users want to play detectives

Users want play designers

Users want to play TV producers

Users want to play journalists

Production of content

Use of content

Content

Establishing shot

• In the gamified story we do not just read for the plot on the level of the story, we also do it on the level of the characters of the story and thus we engaged ourselves in playing the plot.

• We submit to an investigative reading in which the exploration of both characters actions/events and place constituting the narrative.

• In playable narratives we gain agency over the plot/place-structure and the ability to get embodied into the narrative, not only on a cognitive level (the level of perception) but on a physical level as well.

Establishing shot

• In the gamified story we do not just read for the plot on the level of the story, we also do it on the level of the characters of the story and thus we engaged ourselves in playing the plot.

• We submit to an investigative reading in which the exploration of both characters actions/events and place constituting the narrative.

• In playable narratives we gain agency over the plot/place-structure and the ability to get embodied into the narrative, not only on a cognitive level (the level of perception) but on a physical level as well.

A gamified story: a story structured so

it can be played: a narrative embedded

with a gameplay as its dramaturgy

Agency and embodiment

• The gamified story enables a certain form

of agency and embodiment:

• - the structure of the narrative grants us

the possibility of carrying out the tasks of

playing out the story.

• The narrative creates a structure and

space for actions into which we not just

project ourselves in the act of reading but

in which we also may participate actively.

Towards the playable plot

• The sense of agency, embodiment and spatial experience is working in various ways depending on the media format: – the novel, the movie, the tv-series,

– various hybrid formats which make use of cross-mediatic strategies,

– the introduction of a physical, tactile dimension when the narrative migrates into the realm of games (whether they are situated in physical space, mediated through computers or using a mixed-reality format).

• In these last examples it becomes clear that the narrative not only invite us to read for the plot, but incorporate the reader’s body and agency in the experience of playing the plot.

Games telling stories

• It is all about telling fascinating stories. We

urge ourselves to make every single level

of the game into a good story.

• Peter Fleckenstein, gameplay director on Hitman:

Bloodmoney

Basic narrative elements

• Interrelated characters

• performing together (with or against each

other) in a conflict-based structure of

actions and events

• creating a story

• about something (e.g. “even the most

unlikely of beings can make a difference”)

The playable plot: key

concepts • Narrative: the structure of actions and

events

• Dramaturgy: the anatomy of the actions

• Gameplay: the possibility for the player to

perform actions and inflect change upon

the structure of actions and events

The dramaturgical engine:

Agency

controlled by

the player

The double actant schema

Game Character Enemies/obstacles Skills/accessories

Helpers

Solving the conflict

Mastering the game

Demands/challenges Player Skills/adaptation

Manuals/cheatguides

Game dramaturgy

• The way player-inflected actions work

within the game as part of causal chains of

pro-actions and re-actions in a (mono- or

multi-) linear structure producing change in

time and space.

Storytelling Storydwelling

• The player moves in as a ’resident’ in the

story itself.

• The interactive and playable story offers

an open structure in which we are invited

inside as participants, as players.

• To play is the most important mode of

computer game narratives and a game

narrative is a narrative structure which

facilitates game-play.

Games as narrative

• In games, suspension of disbelief, which

is vital to reading and perceiving narrative

of all kinds, has become a physical

attribute in the narrative itself.

• In games, suspension of disbelief is not

just a mental activity, but a hands-on

integrative structure of agency extending

the player into the game narrative.

Prioritizing playability (Pearce)

• The key to game narrative is that it is, by definition, incomplete.

• It must be en order to leave room for the player to bring it to fruition.

• In a game it is quite possible, and often desirable, to have a narrative with no “characters” whatsoever.

• More abstracted characters leave more room for the player, and are therefore better suited to support a play-centric model

• It is important that the character is incomplete because if the character is too developed, there is nothing compelling for the player to contribute.

» Celia Pearce: ”Towards a Game Theory of Games (2002)

Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in

Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life

No spectators, only participants

• The game is not meant to be watched, but an end in itself

• Narrative complexity and coherence, psychological character development, depth in character and story are less important issues compared to the ability to be in the story.

• The thing is not to discover and uncover and to read for the plot, but to play the plot.

Gamified stories: main

concepts

• embodiment, which is the feeling of being bodily extended into the narrative space

• agency, which is the player’s ability to conduct actions within the plot structure embedded in this narrative space.

Agency

• Control is what differentiates games from

movies, books and other media. Without

control there is no game. » Aubertin, Callesen & Hauballe

Levels of agency

• Kinesthetic agency

• Character agency

• Dramaturgical agency

• Narrative agency

• Discoursive agency

Extending the player’s body into

the game universe

Playing computer games consists of an

• interplay between the player’s body movements in the physical world and the agency of game characters in the game’s mediated environment

• with the controller as a mediator remediating the movements of the player in physical space into the actions of the avatar and into its navigational operation in the space of the game world.

Interface: engaging the body

• Screen

• + mouse/keyboard or

controller

• + joystick, steering-

wheel, guns etc.

• + physical game

characters (e.g.

Skylanders)

• +dance pad, EyeToy,

Wiimote, Kinect, etc.

The bodily experience

• When the player engages in the action/event-structure, senso-motoric reactions corresponding with the actions on the screen is activated in the players brain.

• Thus immersion is not just the projection of the player’s I into the game universe and the game character, but also an activation of senso-motoric processes in the player.

• In the computer game this processes spawn physical actions which makes the plot move forward.

Body and movement

• Engagement of the player’s body takes place on several levels in computer games, ranging from

• the virtual physicality inherent in the player’s embodiment and agency found in the player’s control over the game character and game story

• to the tactility in encountering and operating the games interface.

Embodiment and agency

Wii: extending the player’s body

• The Wiimote becomes an extension of the player’s body into the computer game world in a complex way:

• The Wiimote not only controls both the avatars bodily movements, it also represents the very tool which the avatar is using when performing its actions, e.g. a sword or a tennis catcher.

Extensions of the body

(McLuhan)

Expanding the body scheme

(Merleau-Ponty):

’Becoming-one-with’ the tool

(experiences from sports:

athletes merging with or

bodily extension into the

tennis racket, the spear, the

ball).

Amputated agency

• Wii-Tennis is a tennis game of the casual variety, since it only maps the control of one particular aspect of a tennis player’s actions, namely the swinging of the racket, whereas positioning the avatar is taken care of by the AI in the game.

• The sense of agency and transfer of ownership to the virtual space may be hampered severely, since what you feel and what you see does not add up.

» Andreas Gregersen: Core Cognition and Embodied Agency in Gaming. Towards a framework for analysing structure and function of computer games (2008)

The bodily experience

• When the player engages in the action/event-structure, senso-motoric reactions corresponding with the actions on the screen is activated in the players brain.

• Thus immersion is not just the projection of the player’s I into the game univers and the game character, but also an activation of senso-motoric processes in the player.

Levels of agency

• Kinesthetic agency

• Character agency

• Dramaturgical agency

• Narrative agency

• Discursive agency

The character as vehicle

• The “character” is better consid-

ered as a suite of characteristics

or equipment utilized and em-

bodied by the controlling player.

The primary player-character

relationship is one of vehicular

embodiment (James Newman).

• We do not play e.g. Lara Croft –

we gain control over a certain set

of ‘skills’ regarding the ability to

act and which is implemented in

the Lara-avatar: the avatar’s

action become an extension of

the player’s body.

Levels of agency

• Kinesthetic agency

• Character agency

• Dramaturgical agency

• Narrative agency

• Discoursive agency

Dramaturgical agency: Doom Save game-function:

May be embedded in the game narrative (e.g. Prince of Percia

Dramaturgical agency: GTA

Levels of agency

• Kinesthetic agency

• Character agency

• Dramaturgical agency

• Narrative agency

• Discoursive agency

Narrative agency:

The Sims as story-

telling device

Levels of agency

• Kinesthetic agency

• Character agency

• Dramaturgical agency

• Narrative agency

• Discoursive agency

Player innovation: design as

global open source modification

Half-Life Counter-Strike

Sandbox game/game as design tool

Environment

Design tools

Concept

Second Life

Agency: some closing

remarks • The satisfying power to take meaningful

action and see the results of our decisions and choices.

» Janet H. Murray: Hamlet on the Holodeck, 1997

• Activity alone is not agency. • Although gamemakers sometimes mistakenly focus on

the number of interactions per minute, this number is a poor indicator of the pleasure of agency afforded by a game

• In the Danish game Blackout (1997) the loss of agency is vital to the over-all gameplay and game story

The loss of agency as vital

part of the game

• Your loss of memory renders you unable to act (others hold the truth about your identity, e.g. The Truth-sayer).

• The hostile environ-ment takes command.

• The blackouts take control over the course of the plot.

Questions?

Comments?