As Yet Unmastered

As a prolific short fiction writer, it is my constant concern that video games will never truly emerge from the narrative insipidity that plagues the medium as a whole.

When one stops to consider the constant deluge of B-list, genre fiction boiler plate banalities foisted upon the public month in and month out, it becomes amazing that some sort of monkey/typewriter effect hasn't, at the very least, managed to produce a great story at random every now and again.

This isn't to say there haven't been any great stories told in the medium. In fact, I will list a few herein. But, when measured against other related media like prose fiction or film, the amount of quality stories produced each year is exceedingly small. Film and fiction, as media, have certainly produced their share of shit stories, but, there is a certain special dearth of creative, original stories in the video game format.

What I hope to accomplish with this article is an assessment of both the causes of this problem and a few suggestions as to what can be done about it. As the medium continues to progress, more and more gamers are becoming vocal about specific titles that they feel merit artistic accolade.

While this may be true for certain games, it is my contention that until the entire medium matures insofar as narrative is concerned it is, perhaps, a bit premature to ask the world at large to embrace video games in such a fashion.

It bears noting that a few games' important story points may be spoiled throughout the course of this article (read: Final Fantasy VII, Shadow of the Colossus)

Exposition: People, Place, and Time

“Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself.” - John Searle, noted American philosopher

Perhaps the concept with which game developers have sinned most egregiously is exposition. Much like any other medium the defining sense of veracity to any story is the plausibility of its temporal, geographical, and thematic locus. When creating a reality, whether realistic or fantastical, the most important thing to consider is its authenticity.

Of course this is easier said than done, particularly in video games. At their core, video games are fundamentally a visual experience. There is, obviously, the interactivity, but where storytelling is concerned, large portions of a game are – or at least should be – achieved through the visual experience. The majority of a player's sensory feedback is imparted this way. Using this core element to convey meaning can be tricky however.

Because of the amount of time and care and money put into creating these elaborate worlds, it seems to me that many designers get caught up in the desire to drive the player into every musty corner of the narrative construct.

Unlike books and movies, games are not necessarily linear experiences. Many developers seem to fear the jump-in-and-play gamer and what they might miss, and because of this, many games become entangled in bouts of peremptory self indulgence.

Series like Shenmue and Metal Gear, are prime examples. The stories of these games became so mired in their meanderings that often the player's sense of place and time is distorted or displaced.

The creators of these respective titles seemed to have confused the difference between talking about places and events and actually portraying places and events. In this sense much of setting up done in these games become expository dialogue rather than the actual events themselves.

The answer to all of this, is indicated in the quote above. Cogency is key.

Videogames aren't books, and a writer cannot simply drag a player through the game kicking and screaming. Developers need to place more faith in the increasing sophistication of their audience.

Indie darlings like Braid, World of Goo, and Cave Story, do a lot to tell their tales through their visuals and their interfaces. Because of this, they feel very pared down and yet simultaneously very communicative.

They most probably have received such wide recognition because of this one key storytelling essential. Moreover, bigger budget, hyper-realistic games have a leg up on indies. Only minutes after starting Bioshock, did anyone need to be told that something catastrophic had happened to Rapture?

Good storytelling is about economy and discretion, not about indulging every flight of fancy or cool idea that flits across the creator's brain.

Genre Fiction Inundation

“Let it be understood, in the first place, that a science fiction story must be an exposition of a scientific theme and it must be, also, a story. ” - Hugo Gernsback, eponym of the Hugo Awards

I like zombies, nuclear detonations, and space marines as much as the next person, but, simply put, genre titles have come to represent a disproportionate amount of the gaming landscape. A lot of these titles aren't even in worlds that are particularly interesting or exciting. As I see it there are two main reasons why games based in genre fiction archetypes are so ubiquitous.

The first is because of the proven marketability of these sorts of titles. Time and again we see major tent-pole releases that are steeped in science fiction, fantasy, or historical clichés. After their subsequent success, we always see a development rush of similar titles and story concepts. The problem here is fundamentally flawed logic.

Each of these titles acts as though it is entering a vacuum. There is only so much market share, and there are only so many times that that market share can be carved up. The developers of smaller B-list titles that use similar expository devices often act appalled when their titles fail to meet expectations.

This is silly. In a world where Halo, World of Warcraft, and Killzone exist, was there ever really any room for a title like Too Human to succeed, regardless of its overall quality?

Perhaps the time and creative energy spent on titles like Too Human or Haze would have been better spent fostering ideas that would be approachable to gamers in new and different ways.

The second reason genre fiction is so deeply entrenched in the medium is because of what games are themselves: constantly dissatisfied with the technological status quo. The intertwinement of the history of games and the progression of computing technologies is so apparent that it's axiomatic.

The easiest, most prosaic way to showcase a company's latest particles effects engine is to create a kick ass laser pistol to use in it.

This sort of thinking leads to uninspired stories like the ho-hum dross that defines the Gears of War series. The characters get bulkier, the blasters get bigger, and eventually we're playing as a bunch of uninteresting lunkheads running around like idiots amidst a cacophonous maelstrom of explosions and sophomoric bombast.

A more elegant use of these resources is being attempting in Quantic Dreams' Heavy Rain. Whether or not David Cage succeeds, there a certain inspirational audacity in what he is trying to do. Rather than making fancier lighting effects, Quantic Dreams have decided to use the vast potential of the PS3 to make their characters more emotive and more relatable.

This kind of foray is both novel and exciting, and even if Heavy Rain fails to pass muster, hopefully more developers will take a cue from what is being done in this title and use it to further extend the bounds of storytelling in the medium.

Generating Character Empathy

“Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.” - George Saunders, famous American short fiction author

If I dig in my memory, it is very hard to come up with even a small list of video games characters that I've actually cared about. I don't mean to include nostalgic regard here; I'm not talking about caring in the way that I care about the fates of Mario, Peach, and Bowser. I'm speaking more specifically about ineffable connection that comes out of actually relating to a fictional character.

This is because of the overwrought and cloying ways in which videogame characters are portrayed. For myself, I was gravely unaffected by the death of Aeris (I like that name due to its katakana purity).

The people in Final Fantasy games are often more like caricatures. It seems that in many instances, when writers are scripting games, the begin with a concept and reverse engineer the characters' demostratives, emotives, and wild gesticulations. The characters become merely a game of show-and-tell, rather than approximations of an actual person.

I think this is why I find earlier entries of the Final Fantasy series more emotionally affecting. Since the technology wasn't there to show hyperbolized emotion, the script, despite bad translation, seemed to have more due diligence.

There have been a few times when I've actually been moved in a game. Suprisingly, these spare moments often come from unexpected places. Not to beat a dead horse (sorry), but I was particularly affected by the apparent death of Wander's equine companion, Agro, in Shadow of the Colossus.

This is because a lot of the specifics about the relationship were left to the player. Agro arrives bearing the main character's dead love at the start, and through the game, he is not only a constant companion, but also a major enabling gameplay component. In the end, when he falls over the cliff, the feeling of loss is huge. After this moment, I literally remembered events that didn't happen in the game.

I visualized myself prowling the open plain, spending nights parked by a campfire feeding Agro and talking to him. In addition, the death serves to cement just how far the protagonist is willing to go to complete his quest.

But that is just what I am reading into it. What is important here was the discretion used. Rather than clubbing the participant over the head with a list of stereotypes, the player's relationship is allowed to grow in whatever way he or she sees fit. These imagined connections generate true character empathy.

George Saunders has it right. When a person reflects on a wonderful relationship that they've had in life, they don't see a bunch of bullet points that plot a story. They see the sanguine beauty of everything about that relationship cast through the hazy prism of collective memory. Mastering the ability to feign this process lies at the heart of great characterization.

The “Fun” Factor

“For us, the challenge was how do you present the horrors of war in a game that is also entertaining (...)?” - Peter Tamte, President of Atomic Games, creator of Six Days in Fallujah.

While not the most widely discussed of topics, the concept of fun probably has the greatest ramifications for game narrative aside everything else. As a largely interactive experience, the question is what are the upper limits of our discomfort whilst playing? Does a game have to be fun? If it does, then every story that can be conceived follows after. You cannot make a game that does not contain some modicum of fun.

So what about a game where you play as a person who kills dogs? What about children? These are sad and unfortunate topics, and such topics are certainly suitable for examination in other media.

And this is the hardest part. While I've offered suggestions for every other portion of the article, I do not have the answer here. This is where Six Days in Fallujah becomes a relevant, somewhat realistic possibility.

Do I want to play a game where I separate families, conduct interrogations, strip search people, or shoot a roomful of civilians that I can't communicate with? Maybe. I really don't know.

I'm sure Peter Tamte wishes he could take back the statement above. But, if we operate under the assumption that games can explore the unpleasantness of real life, like any other medium, then certainly such topics need to be treated with the respect they deserve.

Unfortunately, with games, this seems impossible. Because the experience is malleable, the creator can never know what will happen with their product.

What I do know is that, with regard to Six Days in Fallujah, the idea of four meat-head assholes sitting in a bedroom somewhere and screaming, “Kill that fucking towel-head!” at their TV is so utterly repugnant to me, that I'm not sure I want something like that to exist.

However, if I choose to deny its existence, then I have placed as very serious, very austere limitation as to where game narrative can live and grow in the future. Opening the sluice gate on this sort of content is a moral quandary that I don't have the answer to, but I am certain of one thing: if games cannot attack social issues through their narrative, then they have a very distinct limitation that other media do not.

If the fun factor is a primary concern and if games cannot tackle controversial topics head-on, then I do not believe that videogames can transcend their current status as mere entertainment. This single limitation stymies and discomfits any attempt to do anything that merits deeper examination on the large scale.

A Narrative Ethos for Games

"The bad news for [video game] storytellers is that nobody cares about your stupid story." - Ken Levine, Creative Director 2K Boston, creators of Bioshock

This is probably the smartest thing that I've ever heard a developer say when it comes to storytelling. What I think that Ken Levine missed, however, is that this same this same onus is placed upon all media.

Books and movies face similar scrutiny. Nobody liked the second Star Wars trilogy or the Matrix sequels, but they love the respective universes. Why is that? It's because the dialogue that was opened up with the orignals was quietly closed in subsequent installments. Nobody wanted to hear their stupid stories.

Nobody wants to hear about a great idea. Nobody wants to be told it. Nobody wants to be instructed about how to interact with it. What they want, is the opportunity to connect with the author in a discourse about the ideas contained within.

All great stories reflect this sentiment, and if game developers think they can continue to get away with ignoring this incontrovertible fact, then they are sorely mistaken.

~James D., The Sophist