Actual Video Games

Approached to Game Construction

Chapter 9 of Story mode, written by Julialicia Case, Rick Freeze, and Salvatore Pane, discusses the different elements creators must address when constructing narrative driven games.

Player Type

When talking about games that are primarily text-based, this aspect is kind of confusing to me. It’s easy to imagine a fighting game dev wanting to target social players. Players who enjoy “competition and community.” However, how can someone creating a visual novel (essentially) target them. I don’t even think it’s an exclusive example. Other player types like achievers, action, and even creative players seem like a hard demographic to reach. I would think the central target would be immersion players.

With more time, I realize that this was a pretty limited way at looking at things. Single player visual novels actually can target more than just player’s looking for a good narrative. Even something like Ace Attorney has a large fanbase and community. It’s not just what the devs code into the game, but what the players take out of it. Player types are not isolated. They bleed into one another.

Perpectives

The three perspectives brought up in this chapter were the customizable avatar, indeterminate protagonist, and the specific central character. The first two are probably the most unique to the video game medium, since they allow the player to place themselves into the game’s world. However, I will always prefer playing as an established character. It’s something about the link between you and the character that is more interesting than imagining what I would do. Speaking on non-text based games, silent protagonists are usually not that interesting either.

I still believe that silent protagonists are the weakest avatar. Immersion has never been a main reason for why I’ve liked a game before, and the protagonist’s lack of personality typically hurts the narrative. Those games also have the tendency to overly praise the protagonist or put words in their mouth. That always makes the world feel smaller.

Structure

Okay, this is an area that I can see hooking other player types. The idea branching paths does sound good for replayablility. I haven’t played them, but games like Until Dawn, Life is Strange, and Night in the Woods seem like good examples of this. Games that take pride themselves in allowing the player to alter the story as they go on. I guess that would be good for achievement players, as they would want to see as many different scenarios as possible. Puzzles would be good for mastery players types. So, alright… I can see how they might be constructed to appeal to a wider audience.

Choices

One of the worst things a game can do is bombard me with meaningless choices. I can think of so many rpgs that give you two dialogue options that are just slightly different variations of each other. That’s one aspect of text based games that seems promising. They don’t shy away from consequences and permanence. I can see how that would create “memorable and significant” moments throughout a story. Most other narrative driven games are like watching a movie, as your choices don’t really matter. They can be really good movies, but they’re not taking advantage of the medium.

After finishing our Interactive Nonfiction projects, I now see how difficult it really is to balance choices. How much freedom should the player have, how difficult should it be to proceed, and how do you leave the player with a feeling of fulfillment. All of that became a major pain as we built up our script.

Conclusion

Video game design is cool