Story in Games

Story in Games

 

For today's lecture we covered 'The Nature of Stories' written by Chris Crawford (2005) On Interactive Storytelling.

 

Story Structure:

 

All stories required strict structural requirements to be classified as a story. The example given by Chris Crawford is the children's nursery rhyme 'Itsy Bitsy Spider', this four line rhyme contains a clear simple story. It has a protagonist (spider), conflict (rain), struggle (being washed out), resolution (crawled back up) and even a moral (the value of perseverance).

 

The key areas that are usually used to structure a story are as follows:

• People (characters) - All stories are based around a character. What a story needs to do is focus on the role of those people within the story and less upon items/objects/things. Stories such as Lord of the Rings and The Legend of King Arthur could be argued with this point as they contain key objects which seem to be central to the story, however they do not actually play the main piece of the story. In LotR the story is based on Frodo's struggle during the adventure, if the ring was replaced with a magic sock, the story would not have changed by much whereas if Frodo was swapped out for Han Solo then the story would change considerably.

• Conflict - Conflict always seems to play a part in stories in two different forms. Direct conflict which is the most common of the two as it is the easiest to implement in film and games, examples of this would include fights, wars, races etc. The other form would be indirect conflict, which is more commonly found in books as it is easier to portray with written words, examples of this would be more social or symbolic such as a characters personal dilemma or an argument/debate between people.

• Puzzles - Puzzles can play certain parts in stories and would even be a large part of story in a mystery story. However the puzzles used in stories are actually primarily about the people/characters. Puzzles are not a necessity to form a story.
 
• Choices - Choices are ultimately the decisions that people/characters make within the story. Important points in stories are usually revealed by key choices made by the protagonist.

• Spectacle - Spectacle is most commonly found in film and computer games as it is a visual form of 'pleasure from novelty' by providing exotic imagery as a form of entertainment. Films and games are continually striving to provide better graphics and spectacle for the audience. However, due to the increased amount of spectacle used within film and games, it tends to sacrifice story. A lot of younger audiences would associate spectacle with story, but spectacle is another element that is not a necessity for story.

 

 

Visual Thinking:

 

Observers have noted that in the modern day the use of imagery is rising and the use of written words is declining. This can be shown through amount of effort put into increasing the quality of images and CG (computer graphics) along with the amount of money consumed in doing so for research and development. Plus the size of images as data can be equated to megabytes whereas text would be kilobytes.

 

When you read a book, your understanding of the story is formed as an image in your head, however, it is written word that puts the image there. So without a book, if you think of the life of an item, the image provided in your head is from what you have read or seen previously - the more detailed the reading, the more vivid the image.

 

Spatial Thinking:

 

My understanding of spatial thinking is how the brain uses your imagination to fill in blanks within reasoning and stories. An example I would use is to describe a character/person in England in one chapter of a story and the next chapter they are in Spain. Different people would imagine different scenarios and images in their heads for how the character got from England to Spain, such as via multiple forms of transport or by flying there like superman. This spatial thinking is your brain making logic and order of things within a story and is only limited to your individual imagination.

 

Temporal Discontinuity:

 

Stories can be broken up into sections using stages or chapters etc. However, they can also play and make use of time - breaking up, jumping backwards and forwards, and skipping time altogether. Time in stories created drama as it treated completely different to normal physical time. Examples of this would be flashbacks, skipping years with "many years later..." and simultaneity shown via "meanwhile, back at.....". Storytelling using time, can be easily used by both visual and written forms of entertainment.