Playng the Plot: on the anatomy of gamified stories
0 likes712 views
The document discusses the concept of "gamified stories" or narratives that are structured to be playable. It describes how gamified stories allow players to gain agency over the plot and characters through embodied gameplay. This gives the player the ability to participate actively in the narrative, not just cognitively but physically as well. The document also examines different levels of agency players can experience, from controlling a character's actions to shaping the overall narrative structure. It explores how interface devices like motion controllers can extend the player's body into the game world and how this embodied participation is key to the experience of "playing the plot."
Playng the Plot: on the anatomy of gamified stories
- 1. Playing the Plot - the anatomy of gamified stories ITU May 8th 2013 Kjetil Sandvik, associate professor, Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen
- 2. 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.
- 3. Users want play authors
- 4. Users want to play detectives
- 5. Users want play designers
- 6. Users want to play TV producers
- 7. Users want to play journalists
- 8. Production of content Use of content Content
- 9. 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.
- 10. 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
- 11. 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.
- 12. 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.
- 13. 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
- 14. 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”)
- 15. 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
- 16. The dramaturgical engine: Agency controlled by the player
- 17. The double actant schema Game CharacterEnemies/obstacles Skills/accessories Helpers Solving the conflict Mastering the game Demands/challenges Player Skills/adaptation Manuals/cheatguides
- 18. 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.
- 19. 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.
- 20. 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.
- 21. 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)
- 22. Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life
- 23. 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.
- 24. 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.
- 25. Agency • Control is what differentiates games from movies, books and other media. Without control there is no game. » Aubertin, Callesen & Hauballe
- 26. Levels of agency • Kinesthetic agency • Character agency • Dramaturgical agency • Narrative agency • Discoursive agency
- 27. 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.
- 28. 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.
- 29. 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.
- 30. 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.
- 32. 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.
- 33. 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).
- 34. 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)
- 36. 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.
- 37. Levels of agency • Kinesthetic agency • Character agency • Dramaturgical agency • Narrative agency • Discursive agency
- 38. 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.
- 39. Levels of agency • Kinesthetic agency • Character agency • Dramaturgical agency • Narrative agency • Discoursive agency
- 40. Dramaturgical agency: Doom Save game-function: May be embedded in the game narrative (e.g. Prince of Percia
- 42. Levels of agency • Kinesthetic agency • Character agency • Dramaturgical agency • Narrative agency • Discoursive agency
- 43. Narrative agency: The Sims as story- telling device
- 44. Levels of agency • Kinesthetic agency • Character agency • Dramaturgical agency • Narrative agency • Discoursive agency
- 45. Player innovation: design as global open source modification Half-Life Counter-Strike
- 46. Sandbox game/game as design tool Environment Design tools Concept Second Life
- 47. 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
- 48. 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.