The story-rich monicker is disheartening
Partaking amazing stories isn’t essentially what video games are all about, but can you “enrich” your games with stories?
Simple, compelling ideas (Flying? Democracy? Telecommunication) do not always lead to simple designs. The idea of “entering an imaginary world” is perhaps one of these.
Taking a break from technical topics, I share our approach to diegetic games — Alice-styled, through the looking-glass experience (If the reference does not appeal, think of Narnia’s wardrobe or the Matrix movies).
This is a position article; the position we’re holding here, is that story-centric design will be key to mass consumption in a digital, interactive format.
I will outline two principles and seven rules (remember the Musketeers?) towards diegetic games. Before we start, I’ll also emphasize that diegetic games aren’t an indie or big budget thing. Purposely, what follows is a scalable, modular toolkit.
Two Principles, Seven rules
The World Building principle — Build it, or they will not come; in a story driven game, one (or perhaps several, key) protagonist(s) claim the experience as their own. With regard to story-telling, embracing this claim requires non linearly interpolating/extrapolating a range of experiences.
Without a story-verse, there is no freedom. diegetic games require enough freedom for a willing, engaged participant to not feel caged within the experience.
The Narrative Principle — Story-telling aside, narrating consists in narrowing, distilling and eliding. Narrating is: extracting the essence, condensing a world experience. Narration redeems the tedium of time and space, creating the moment.
The diegetic game is a Truman Show. Creating such games is always a balancing act. The world engages the participant’s imagination, but will not distract from the story.
Together, story and verse combine to liberate the participants.
The Rules
- Design Prosthetic UIs — learn how the participant’s intuition of input devices and sensory feedback connect them to a digital embodiment. Ban menus, menus, flashing arrows and buttons. Give up the life bar.
Litmust test: a toddler will interact with your game. - Let the story drive the mechanics — Eschewing game genres, do not treat characters, items and props as metaphors. Continuously validate gameplay opportunities against the zen of the story, characters and settings.
- Living Lore — In film, ingeniosity goes into creating the illusion of life. With interactive experiences, functional realism must stay ahead of visual semblance. If a creature lays eggs, which may then be stolen, and cooked under the ashes of a bonfire, we do not suspend disbelief, we live, and believe.
- Time and consequence— Games are inconsequential. Contrarily, seek story time, or real time. Avoid game overs and restore points. Design with cause and consequence; defend pacing.
- Laugh and cry — Design responsive, emotional characters. If your characters are emotionless, participants will not be moved. Where lifebars are not seen, bleeding signifies hurt.
- Personas —Audiences are diverse. Some players seek challenges, while others just want to follow along. Think of the Fellowship. If your design fits Grinder, Quickwit and Muscle, you percolate an audience.
- Use the cut — Use edits to enable multi-genre play and elide lengthy, predictable sequences. Use (brief, simple) non interactive shots sparingly, for exposition, and to emphasize emotions.
- Keep it short — seek action density (not dramatic intensity) somewhat comparable with what is found in traditional media. Diegetic games are not animations. Participants need time to process situations (and the input is prosthetic at best).
This one last rule is pragmatic, and reflexive of an economy of production, where you essential roll two or three games into one.
Considerations
Why do we need a new, interactive, narrative medium?
AAA games have worked themselves into a corner. Large producers are creating ever less, ever bigger games, which still address narrow market segments, and command prohibitively high prices.
On the fringe, there is a creative explosion driven by the advent of “game engines”. For the most part, this games are not being played.
Freemium games have taken up a “hack the brain” approach. Addiction is not engagement. Fans will save the OA, not Fortnite. 90% of freemium players have disposable income, and they are not opening their purse.
There are lessons to be learned from traditional, non interactive, narrative medias.
- Simple, convened interaction enables immersion and wins the popular vote. You cannot read a book without turning pages, or pick a movie without a remote (hence: no media consumption without interaction). That being said, established media do not reinvent themselves at every turn (a movie can happen simultaneously on two screens — however that is not a movie but an art installation)
Historically, all mass media evolve towards ease. Of production; and consumption.
Games are on the technology adoption curve. - With respect to personas, great stories have great leads, but they also need second and third roles. Designing diegetic games, we engage a variety of players. For the player holding their device sideways, we provide double stick interaction and perhaps a “jump and gun” experience. We then ask whether, and how, the same game can be played in portrait mode, with no running or jumping. This could mean that the participant aren’t always the lead role, as another character need to step up and do the shooting.
In all, mass entertainment is effortless without sacrificing depth. The best movies spark conversations and detailed critiques, but they’re still just movies you can sit and watch.
Games have been since the Queen of Sheba; they are here to stay, and many game designers feel that stories and games are an awkward mix — I readily agree.
Diegetic games will not happen without game designers; but we’ll also look back at some point and say, well. Games are a thing, diegetic games are another.
They’re a different medium.
Three Falsehoods
Diegesis is not about “giving choices” to the player. Let alone with far out consequences. Flatly, this question (of multilinear story-telling) is orthogonal to diegetic design.
Freedom is complicated. “Looking around” is freedom. Breaking doors you can’t unlock is freedom. A diegetic experience aims at letting the player engage with a story-verse. This does not imply a very open-world feel, what it does require is intrinsic, diegetic boundaries.
Diegetic games are not “experience” over challenges. Although I emphasize participation and a diegetic (in-game, storied) approach to solving problems (defend pacing), this isn’t to suggest that diegetic games should be void of challenges. We:
- Make tougher challenges optional.
- Avoid (or commute) deathly challenges.
- ‘Call’ diegetic hints (leaving it up to the player whether they’ll take up the challenge, or just move along)
The notion that story-driven play isn’t compatible with user retention is perhaps misguided; the relevant question here is whether your game fits a feature/one-shot format, or you adopt a serial production model; game-as-a-service and serial production are already singing the same tune.
Engaging characters and stories are gold. If your players buy cosmetic items for token characters with a hand-waved back story, they’ll probably spend more on fleshed out, personable AIs.
Footnotes
Our diegetic project owes much to a relatively obscure action-adventure game. Early on, going into action-adventure and third person games reflected a candid take on diegetic mechanics.
What came out of this: action-adventure is punitive, if this implies a linear sequence of action and puzzle solving. Only the most committed players finish these games — which unless you intended a competitive format, does not make sense.
The genre waned and (like all “dead genre”) will experience revivals.
I learned much from accidental players; In 2021, the genius of the smartphone still is: you walk up to people who’ll not admit to ever having played a video game, and look over their shoulder as they maul your baby.
Rethinking diegetic games has been at the heart of our first game pitch. We did pitch (and are still) pitching our project but this article is to inspire, so I decided to avoid references to the pitch, or the game that this manifesto answers, and extends.
With an engineering background I built much tech (Active Logic, our GOAP planner, and the jilted, yet thoroughly enjoyable Howl notation) towards our coming projects.
That said, diegetic games aren’t a war needing guns. Good design and kitchen knives will do.
I long hesitated to post this article. Discounting a diverse education (literature, architecture, multimedia and education) and par-for-the course efforts (can’t author games without designing), I do not perceive myself as a game designer. In all, the sentiment is that diegetic games aren’t being worked on, and perhaps this is an acceptable draft towards a principled approach to doing just that.
For light banter, collabs, consulting and viral resentment, I can be reached over Twitter (@eelstork).
