This is a sneaky way to get some feedback on my thesis paper: I'm posting section one to the blog. This first part runs through a lite history of interactive narrative, and argues that role-playing games form the dominant paradigm for almost all our interactive stories. I've taken out the footnotes for your reading sanity... but everthing else is intact. What do you think? Is this readable? Sensical? Rife with grammatical no-no's? Read! Discuss! Please???
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Joseph Wheeler has lived a full life… seventy-three long, strange years lay behind him. With time, however, his memory has thinned, and now he can only remember a few fleeting moments. Spectre is a new interactive narrative that explores this character’s experiences, and uses play to examine the idea that no one “story” can do a person justice.
The concept of an interactive narrative is not, by any means, a new one: novelists have flirted with the idea of reconfigurable or branching stories since the early twentieth century[1]. Digital interactive fiction, or IF, was born in the 1970’s[2]… the term refers to text-based games where the player uses written input to solve puzzles and progress through a story.
Early IF pieces were, in large part, inspired by and modeled after role-playing games. In a role-playing game, a player assumes the identity of a character within a world fabricated by another storyteller (often called the Dungeon Master, or DM[3]). The player queries the DM for information about the world, announces their actions, and awaits the DM’s response (which tells them “what they see”). We can see how this model was directly transposed to digital IF by examining the opening lines of the early IF text adventure, Zork[4]:
Fig. 1: A screenshot of Zork, showcasing IF mechanics.
This player-system relationship remains largely unchanged through to modern interactive narrative. Players of IF nearly always embody a character within a story. They express their actions through keystrokes or button presses. The computer system, playing the storyteller, adjusts the story environment in response, relaying the next perception of the character.
A wide variety of single-player games, whether story-focused or action focused, can be reduced to this interaction paradigm. The player is placed in the “role” of a character, internalizes and expresses the characters actions through key, button, or joystick presses, and the system, acting as the DM, responds by explaining the new relevant state of affairs.
To show the breadth of games that utilize this paradigm, let’s take the example of Super Mario Bros, an early two-dimensional platformer. At first glance, the differences between Mario and Zork may be more apparent than the similarities. Super Mario Bros is largely graphical, using very little text. Whereas Zork was controlled with a keyboard, Super Mario Bros makes use of a control pad. Zork takes on an implied first-person experience, while a player sees Mario in front of him on a television. However, if one changes Mario’s mode of input and output, looking at the player/game dynamic through a different lense, the results look surprisingly similar:
Fig. 2: The same screenshot of Zork, with text replaced to reflect the
opening level of Super Mario Brothers.
Clearly, by transposing a graphical world to text descriptions and controller output to written commands, the game becomes a creature quite different from Super Mario Brothers… and yet this IF experience accurately describes the relationship between the player and the story system. The player, personifying Mario, uses their input to tell the system what Mario does. The system responds with an updated description of the world surrounding Mario. Many single-player games are told, from beginning to end, in this form.
Through this interaction paradigm, players have been exposed to a wide variety of unique and engaging experiences. They have embodied acrobatic plumbers and whip-toting vampire hunters. They have expressed actions through text, joysticks and gestural motion. They have explored game narratives through written words, rich graphics, and dynamic sound systems.
However, this paradigm of interaction, if perpetuated as an unquestioned assumption, creates a practical limit to the kinds of stories narrative games can tell. The central character of these role-playing stories are invariably puppets, controlled by the player. While this opens up great possibilities, it also creates major roadblocks for story designers in terms of vocabulary, story structure, and content depth .
One might ask what alternative there is to a role-playing interaction paradigm. To attempt to answer this question requires the use of some terms from narrative theory.
Narrative theory describes the telling of traditional stories by dividing a given tale into two components: szujhet and fabula . Though precise definitions vary, fabula is generally defined as the “plot”, or the nature of events and the order in which they are understood to happen. Szujhet, the other major narrative component, is the “telling” of the story, the quite-possibly-different ordering and selection of events from this plot to form a tale.
In the prevailing “role-playing” paradigm, a player is primarily modulating the fabula. His/her job is to determine the active characters’ next moves, and subsequent events follow those activities . Since the fabula is being constructed (within parameters) based on player actions, the szujhet is often limited to a relatively straightforward accounting . After all, if the player is ostensibly controlling the plot, a jump backwards in time cannot “explain” their later actions, nor can it have major direct consequences for the fabula.
Players are accustomed to this particular fabula/szujet configuration. By adjusting it, however, and giving players less control over the fabula and more over the szujhet of a narrative, designers may be able to create new paradigms for player/game interactions. Such explorations could pave the way for different sorts of experiences, and new relationships between players and their stories.
Comments (4)
This is a pretty good beginning of a dissertation I must say. If course you knew I had to comment :)
In your description of the similarity between Zork and Mario Brothers you rely on the fact that the generalized actions taken by the player can be substituted from one game to another. This is a potentially dangerous thing to do because it leaves out the kinds of options the computer has in conveying the results of your actions.
Role playing games, as they have their roots in table top gaming, put the player in the shoes of a fictional character. Not only do players have to interact and navigate the fictional world, they are entitled and encouraged to imagine their own emotional responses and in that sense they are building a fictional human entity other than themselves.
Game designers have tried to capture this in game mechanics and to my personal astonishment are straying further and further away from the goal. Let's look at the examples you provide. In the first case of Zork I could imagine that the last action taken by the player 'get leaflet' is followed up with a computer response such as: "You carefully read the leaflet, which by some magical means seems to be addressed specifically to you. The curled up piece of paper speaks of a terrible crime you don't remember committing at all and informs you you are a wanted man from now on".
What this text does is firmly put you in a role and what's more (if it were well written) it would stir a response that is unique to you, the reader. Ideally it should open up endless possible feelings and adventures.
In the example from the Mario Brothers this approach would not work because by the nature of the game mechanics, you know that in the world of Mario your next action will be either: jump, run, shoot, etc. Even though you play a role in Mario, the role of an American Italian plumber, you don't get the opportunity to identify and understand his subtle motivations for the things he does. We could liken this to the difference between role playing and acting. Role playing is mimicking the behavior of another person, whereas acting is becoming and taking over the identity of another human.
Basically I would like to warn you that just because the surface form (the way you interact with the world) appears to be similar, doesn't mean you can draw conclusions as to how it works on a narrative and role playing level.
Posted by FingerPaint![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jantonisse/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 21, 2009 11:20 AM
Posted on March 21, 2009 11:20
Interesting stuff, Martin! Seems like you're focused more on the immersiveness of a game and its potential to generate emergent narrative, a story which takes place in the player's mind and outside the formal system.
The distinction I'm drawing is one of interaction paradigms, and I do think it holds in both cases. The quality of game stories using this paradigm, and whether or not the interface invites the player to engage with the role, is something that always concerns me as a designer... but as you frame it, its more a question of vocabulary. What's the player's vocabulary (usually limited for practical reasons) and what are the game's potential responses?
I know you can only see section one here... but don't worry, I'm not making any claims that I've "improved" the interaction paradigm in my game, just that there are ways to engage players in different sorts of narratives.
Posted by Jamie Antonisse![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jantonisse/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 21, 2009 2:14 PM
Posted on March 21, 2009 14:14
On OpenRPG there is a 'persistent role playing game' called Neo DBZ - and several that spinoff of similar genres, such as Naruto or the Marvel Universe, that only really functions because the players agree to adhere to a mutual set of rules. The servers, at best, provide assistance - the players are by the very nature of the game forced to control the telling of the story, and they are the ones who have to adjudicate the rules. There are game masters, of course, but it's an extremely loose configuration that's been hard to find elsewhere - I want to replicate it for my own forums someday, but the horsepower and underlying technological base to actually let such a thing be web driven has only become possible over the past few years.
I actually had to deal with a lot of confusion - what role playing is, and what games are, are subject to a rather large amount of argument and ignorance. Many members of forums like mine and RPoL are not even aware of the existence of Dungeons and Dragons. I've had one argue that a Mafia clone was absolutely, positively not a role play.
So, definitions are by nature a bit loose. As humans we like to categorize things but every human has those categories they like to balk, reject, refuse to understand. But categorization makes them useful - if all games are role playing, what use is the term?
In role playing, the very idea is that you can break with the script. That's sort of the point. Role playing games, as far as computers are concerned, are generally considered such and most praised for accommodating the player's natural desire to do just that - break from the script.
Even if it's not intentional on the part of the developers. Especially then. Escaping the Vault as a baby in Fallout 3 is just as awesome as the pacifist victory in the original.
Super Mario? Well, you can skip parts of the story. You can take on various personal challenges - get 99 lives on world 3 or whatever. You don't get to define much about the character, however. Nor do you have the option of breaking from the general plot, unlike most things that are termed RPGs. Even the original Final Fantasy let you jack around in whatever town you felt like, for however long you felt like, until you actually entered the Temple of Fiends for the last time, and you could still claim that the result is somewhat interesting.
Take your Super Mario script
> Go left
You cannot go left.
> Hug goomba.
The goomba touches you. You die...
Zork, and other games like it, made a nominal attempt at handling 'go left'. I think the closest thing any FPS or sidescroller has come is finding creative ways to kill yourself, which seems to be the antithesis. In the ideal role playing game, you can lose, but never win.
Posted by Vekseid![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jantonisse/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 27, 2009 2:56 AM
Posted on May 27, 2009 02:56
That's a really interesting way of defining a role-playing game... I've never heard of improvisation as the root of the form, but of course, in paperpencildiceandconversation-based RPGs, it is absolutely central.
While I like the notion, I'm not sure I buy it as the defining characteristic of what makes a role-playing game. I certainly don't think the digital games we've classified as RPG's are any less restrictive or more improvisional, by their nature, than other categories... GTA allows more off-script action than Final Fantasy by a mile.
My personal definition is very close to the term... role-playing is about stepping into someone or something else's shoes.
To answer your question, my title was a little bit facetious... I don't think all games are RPG's, especially outside the digital realm. Where is the fictional character you adopt in a game of soccer? To my mind, there is none. Of course, I suck at soccer, so what do I know.
There are also games out there that reject or strongly sublimate the issue of role-playing. In many simulations and strategy games, especially Will Wright's games (The Sims comes to mind) there is no explicit personification for the player, no "first person" lense. They are simple engaging with a controller, and controlling and manipulating things (and people). Gamers are so used to adopting a particular role in our interactivity, however, that we find this odd, and codify these simulations as "God Games" in an attempt to define our "role" in the experience.
I suppose that's my answer for "what use"... role-playing is a part of games that's much more pervasive than I think we give it credit for. But it's only one element of games... and one we can probably play with more.
Posted by Jamie Antonisse![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jantonisse/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 11, 2009 3:10 AM
Posted on June 11, 2009 03:10