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PROFESSOR: OK, so today, we have a guest lecturer, Clara.
Some of you have probably already taken her class.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
My current victims.
PROFESSOR: And past victims.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
PROFESSOR: We'll probably need to do
something about the lights.
[INAUDIBLE].
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm still operating on Tylenol and caffeine.
So today we're going to talk about stories in games.
And Clara teaches not just the Intro to Video Game Studies
class, but also the Writing for Video Games
class in the spring.
I wanted her to come in and bring her expertise because
she's [UNINTELLIGIBLE] probably a
lot more than I have.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Hello, perfect.
[INAUDIBLE].
So yeah, Philip asked me to come here and talk about
stories in games, and as far as I remember, he said you
guys had to read two articles for today.
Chapter four in [INAUDIBLE]
and Soren Johnson's Theme is Not Meaning.
Didn't I [INAUDIBLE], too?
PROFESSOR: Yes.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: And he's late, OK.
PROFESSOR: Shh!
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: [LAUGHS]
Anyway, so preparing this has been kind
of interesting because--
I thought about this quite a bit because there's this focus
in my research studying how games and stories can be
brought together.
What does it mean to have a story in a game?
Where do we put the story?
But the interesting challenge was thinking, well, the guys
are working mostly on non-visual games.
And what do stories have to do with non-fictional games.
So here what I'm going to need is your input, because you
guys have been playing all these board games, card games,
and I want a bit of your input of what you think.
How you think these concepts apply to non-digital games,
because the part of digital games I can do pretty
confidently.
But I don't know as much about board games or card games.
So I need your expertise.
This is why you guys are here.
So the first thing that I wanted to ask you about is
that we have two different meetings, and one is sort of
about fiction and the other is sort of about theme.
But what is the fiction of a game?
I turn it to you.
AUDIENCE: The fiction of a game is, well, whatever you
want it to be.
It could be the characters in a digital game.
It could be a real environment, but you just have
fictional characters.
It could be an environment that may not exist.
It's pretty much up to the designer to figure out what
they want to--
like with [INAUDIBLE] be in the game that are real, or if
they want it to be fiction.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, there's something there, but
it might be a bit more intuitive than that.
I think that you're on the right track, yes.
AUDIENCE: I'd say it's the setting or the universe in
which the user perceives the events of the game to take
place in, or the one that the designer intends the user to
see the game take place in.
AUDIENCE: OK, so you can mention
environment as the big--
what was the word you used--
the universe, the setting, something like that.
Back there.
AUDIENCE: Oh yeah, I was going to say that the word that is
used over and over is world.
It's just a world, pretty much.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: And that's the keyword.
When [UNINTELLIGIBLE] is talking about fiction, he's
really talking all throughout about fictional worlds.
In a way, designing games and designing video games
specifically, is always thinking about what is the
world of this game.
And at times there might be games that don't have worlds.
You can make Tetris.
You could make--
There's very few video games without worlds.
But there are some.
Tetris--
AUDIENCE: Peggle.
So does Peggle.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Peggle?
Well, Peggle has characters, you know.
You were talking about this.
Characters are already [UNINTELLIGIBLE] in fiction.
AUDIENCE: You said it has nothing to do with unicorns.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes.
Who wants to say something?
We have two hands here.
AUDIENCE: I'm stealing it.
OK, in print or with board games, I think of fiction much
more as the specific explicit things they give you, like the
pictures, the rules, and all of that stuff versus what it
feels like you're doing.
So if they don't specifically tell you you're in blah place,
then that's not part of the fiction.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK, yeah.
So you put your finger on it, but when we're talking about
non-digital games, there are some non-digital games where
thinking about worlds is a bit shaky.
Do you want to say something?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, just going to add that in an environment,
you have a set of things you can do.
So you're basically given rules.
Like in a board game, you could be given a character
that has to jump for some reason.
The board game could say that they could
jump some insane distance.
Well, in real life, they can't do that.
That's just part of the fiction.
So it's whatever laws apply within that world, as well.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: This is a very interesting point
because when you were talking about--
what's that word that he uses--
incongruous worlds?
Incoherent, incoherent.
He talks about incoherent worlds, and it's like, well,
incoherent according to what?
It's obviously not the rules that are also creating part of
the fiction.
The rules are also creating what are the laws of gravity
in a specific world that we are playing in, for example.
So when we're talking about fiction, we're mainly talking
about fictional world.
Now, how does that relate to theme?
And you were already kind of hinting at that.
That in fiction and board games, it's kind of like,
well, it almost can be about anything.
But what is the theme of a g-- when you-- if you remember
Soren Johnson's discussion--
what does he refer to as a theme?
He is not an academic, so he has a more wobbly, loose
definition.
What is the theme of a game?
AUDIENCE: The theme of the game is what the designer says
to the player, this is what the game is about.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But when--
Soren Johnson is saying theme is not meaning.
So he's making a point that theme might not be what the
game is about.
Right?
AUDIENCE: This is what the game designer tells you.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah.
The example that he gives is Ticket to Ride, right?
And Ticket to Ride is not about riding trains.
It's about--
it's about--
well, the description is about going from one
end to another, right?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
And travelling across--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Is building--
AUDIENCE: It's about travelling
across the United States.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But is it really travelling, or is it
building the--
AUDIENCE: It's not even a story about--
the story's about travelling.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, the story's about travelling,
that's the theme.
But what you actually do is--
AUDIENCE: The official story is that I think it's some
number of years after the events that were Around the
World in Eighty Days, and to commemorate that, the original
people who were involved in that race decided they're
going to race across America in trains.
And that is the theme of the game, according to--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, that's the theme of the game.
AUDIENCE: Well, that sort of what drives to the point of
what Sorenson's talking about, that when theme and meaning
are incongruous--
as they are in Ticket to Ride to an extreme extent-- it can
actually turn people off from the game sometimes.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, and it's not
that it's a bad game--
AUDIENCE: Or Halo Wars.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, not necessarily.
AUDIENCE: The thing about Halo Wars was that it sounded like
you bought it thinking it was going to be an action game,
then got disappointed and were like, blah!
AUDIENCE: In the case with Ticket to Ride, it is pretty
much just what they were saying there, right?
That the theme seems to just be whoever it is that wrote
the instruction booklet say that you're doing, which may
not necessarily have anything to do with the actual
mechanics of the game.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, I have the game.
I didn't know if you guys have played it.
I made you want to play it.
[INAUDIBLE]
As of right now, [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
is a game called Too Many Cooks, and it seems to be
about cooking.
Yeah, you have ingredients, and you're
making a soup of sorts.
But really what you're doing is resource management and
exchanging.
Just imagine being a cook and having to, like, well, I have
to wait until I get the right ingredient or maybe exchange
it for another.
That's not how you cook really.
So there's always the clash of how the fiction of the game
relates to the rules.
And the interesting distinction between fiction
and theme is that theme seems to be like a layer, seems to
be like a decoration.
At times, it can be part of the title.
It can be how the tokens look like, or what
the board looks like.
That is setting up the fiction of the game.
Not the fiction, the theme.
But it doesn't really have a fictional world.
When when you're playing Ticket to Ride or when you're
playing Settlers, you have a feeling
like you're in a world.
AUDIENCE: At least, more so than Ticket to Ride.
So, I will argue that maybe the world that you feel is not
that they're telling you that you're in, right?
One of the problems of Ticket to Ride is that you never
really feel these characters exist.
But the world of the United States is very, very present.
Like the positioning of the cities, the fact that these
cities exist and can be connected by land is very--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: You guys have read the levels of
abstraction?
Talked about levels of abstraction here at all?
PROFESSOR: Not in great detail, but--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK, it's the idea that it's a world,
but the way that it works is so abstracted that it doesn't
really-- you're not in a world anymore.
It's just these little bits and pieces.
OK, we have fiction and we have theme, but
we also have stories.
And what do stories have to do with this?
How do we have the story in non-digital games?
What principle--
a story--
I'm going to find it for you to save time.
A story is a series of connected events that involve
characters.
So those characters perform actions, or there are
happenings, things that happen to them, and those actions
happen in time and in a specific setting, in a
specific place.
And in the case of games, they also involve objects.
That's like my telegraphic version of what a story is.
So what we do in games, in games we have changes of
state, right?
Every step of a non-digital game, particularly.
We can think about non-digital games as changes of state, and
having a change of state can constitute an event.
So that is one way.
So how do we generate rules that generate changes of state
that can be thought of as an event in the story?
But I want to know a bit more.
Of the games that you've played so far, how can
non-digital games--
and maybe you've played more board than card games than
anything, but--
how can we have a story?
How can we have those events happen?
AUDIENCE: So one game that I've played that has a really
nice story to it is Battlestar Galactica.
In a way, that places--
it works off of what the player already knows.
So it sort of assumes that the player has a knowledge of the
Battlestar Galactica world, and so it keeps
referring to that.
Whenever you play a card that has special abilities,
[INAUDIBLE], so it relies on previous knowledge.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: That's a very good point.
The point of--
in digital games and non-digital games, but is also
in digital games--
a lot of storytelling in games happens in the player's head.
Is it evoking [INAUDIBLE]
, is tapping on the player's knowledge.
Is not, as we've got to say, is not so much about
storytelling, but like, OK, what do you know?
We are making the player fill in the gaps.
So that designing a game that involves storytelling is
usually giving cues to the player to create the story, if
that makes sense.
Patrick?
AUDIENCE: I was going to say that a lot of board and card
games, a lot of the fiction just comes from the metaphors
of the mechanics.
So, for example, in Settlers, when you want to build a road,
if you strip away all the fiction, it's just I have
these cards, I put them down, I can put this piece here.
But adding the fiction to it, you say now, I'm not just
putting cards down, I'm using the resources to build a road.
And so that metaphorical action is another
event in the story.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, it becomes a meaningful action.
That's another--
I'm sure that you guys have been talking about that.
What is a meaningful action?
And at times, meaningful action is it constitutes a
story event.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I think the whole point of Munchkin and and
Shiggy and those games are to construct stories.
When we played it, there was a moment when someon trashed
someone else's shrooms, and then the other person played a
Go Dumpster Diving card to go pick up the shrooms and a bong
from the dumpster.
And this whole sequence of events, the [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
text on the cards, what they were, and the actions you were
taking, and you string them all together, I did this, and
this happened, and this happened with this object, and
you've got a perfect story, because you know you're
playing the geek, and that--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, there's that.
But the other thing that is good about Munchkin is that
reading the cards is fun.
There are bits of the story you'll get in Munchkin that
are like, [INAUDIBLE].
That is kind of like engaging already.
Oh, and you wanted to say something?
AUDIENCE: I was just going to say that there are some games
which are entirely about telling stories.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Role-playing games are the number one, and then
another example is something like Once Upon a Time, which I
think is [INAUDIBLE].
And then they have, also, The Adventures of Baron
Munchausen, if you've ever seen--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes.
Oh, I should bring it, yes.
I have it in my office.
Thought that's kind of difficult to set
up in half an hour.
But yes.
AUDIENCE: And actually, a friend of mine invented a game
which is vaguely based on The Adventures of Baron
Munchausen, where each person is telling a story and they
have cards in front of them which needs to be flipped over
by incorporating the elements of the story into
their hand of cards--
Anyway, don't worry about it.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, you're going a bit faster, but that's fine
because yeah, there are games that are about storytelling,
communal storytelling, and role-playing
games are about that.
And again, as game designers, what we are given when we have
the rule book from D&D is a fictional
world that has rules.
But then we have, as a designer, as a DM, we are
coming up with what is the situation?
What is the world?
What is the the specific challenges that we're
situating in this world?
How are we going to do that?
But it's about communal storytelling.
As we're going to see in a minute, there are also games
that are about coming up with stories.
We're being thrown in a similar way--
well, in Munchkin, you're kind of constructing the
story as you go.
But in the games that we're going to play today, or some
of you are, like Gloom or Once Upon a Time, the game is being
able to produce a narrative.
Being able to make sense given the specific cues.
You've had your hand up?
AUDIENCE: I was going to do the opposite extreme of a game
with a very basic story, and you kind of make a story up as
you go along, but it's not really that crazy.
This card game, Falling, where pretty much the pretense is
you are [UNINTELLIGIBLE], and you're falling to your demise.
And so while you guys are falling, you guys decide we'll
make a contest of who hits the ground last.
And so it's a real-time game, and you're dealt cards in
order, and it keeps going until you
reach the ground card.
And so you can attack other people.
OK, this is going to happen to you and
different effects happen.
And so when you're actually playing it, it's kind of like
the intensity when you're falling.
Like, oh, I'm going to die, I have to do this fast because,
before you know it, the ground is already at you.
AUDIENCE: It's interesting because it creates a longer
event of something that's supposed is
supposed to be, pop!
Gone.
Scratch, right?
But it's kind of zooming in on how long that would feel if
you were actually falling, making a mini-story of that.
It's interesting because I don't know how strongly-- this
is one of the questions we'll be talking about in stories in
games is what kind of an event constitutes an
event in the story?
Is opening a door an event in the story?
Well, in some games, it can be because it might give you
access to new areas, there might be someone showing up
that changes things.
But in other cases, like Monopoly, going around and
getting the--
how many, $100?--
$200, is that an event?
AUDIENCE: Maybe it's not.
It doesn't seem like a story event because it's such a
mundane thing that happens all the time, although clearly, it
has [INAUDIBLE].
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, it does have an effect, but as a
storytelling art, is kind of questionable.
The other thing I wanted to ask you, seeing as you guys
have been playing particular board games, there are board
games that have similar mechanics.
So, I played Race to the Galaxy, which I really like.
And I've been told that [? Potomac Coast ?]
is very similar, yes?
So does changing the theme--
those two games have different themes--
but does changing the theme affect the rules in any ways?
For those of you who might have played both?
AUDIENCE: Not really.
Not for--
San Juan, I think is closer.
San Juan is with the cards.
But it doesn't really change the game, because the
mechanics are almost identical.
It's just covered in a different shell, or whatever
it is, whatever the mechanic they're trying to mimic.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So it's like maybe you don't like
colonial or whatever--
AUDIENCE: Yeah, if you don't like the--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: The science fiction part--
AUDIENCE: The science fiction theme, you could go for this
more Earth town building theme.
But if you don't like playing the game itself, switching to
the other game is probably not going
to be all that different.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, yeah, which I think is kind of
interesting, and it's like, so [INAUDIBLE].
Yes?
AUDIENCE: The interesting thing is that in neither of
those cases, unlike, say, Ticket to Ride, do these
things feel like they're tacked onto the theme?
And in each case, the actual mechanics of the card
faithfully represent what they're supposed to be in the
game fiction, right?
So I feel that the fact that the themes are essentially
interchangeable, or that the same mechanics underlie both
games, despite the fact that they have different themes,
doesn't necessarily mean that there's something
wrong with the theme.
It's just that--
AUDIENCE: But the meaning is similar--
AUDIENCE: It's just that the mechanics are flexible, or
something like that.
AUDIENCE: But what I mean, the meaning of what you actually
do in the games is similar.
Resource management, planning ahead, knowing when you can
deploy a certain--
they are about the same thing, even if they
have different settings.
So that's probably the connection.
It's not about oh, if you like science fiction games, you can
play the Battlestar Galactica game, Race to the Galaxy,
whereas I'm guessing that for most people, it's, well, if I
like Puerto Rico, or I'm thinking of San Juan, sorry,
[UNINTELLIGIBLE] wrong place.
AUDIENCE: Their themes are close enough.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But you would play
something that is similar.
Does that make sense?
AUDIENCE: If the meaning of both games is really empire
building in some sense, right?
In San Juan, it's got historic themes, and Race to the Galaxy
it's futuristic.
But they're both empire building.
The theme is very well defined in both of these games.
That will make sense because both themes are about empire
building, only one's in the future and one's in the past.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK, so we have--
this has taken a bit of the time, but these are the
foundations of the concepts that I wanted to get across
today and discuss today.
When we talk about video games, there's an extra layer,
which is video games that are story driven versus just games
with a story.
An example I have here.
So this is Soul Calibur 2, as far as I remember--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
Soul Calibur II--
[INAUDIBLE]
I think so.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: I don't know.
[INAUDIBLE]
Soul Calibur hoping that it was familiar to [INAUDIBLE]
designing.
Anyway, so in Soul Calibur, what's the game about?
AUDIENCE: Fighting.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: It's about fighting hand-to-hand.
AUDIENCE: It has some weird story.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: And it does have a weird story that's
like, well, does anybody know the story?
I know that there's something, and there's some reason why
Sandra or Sophitia--
Sophitia, right?
I don't know.
I think her sister is Sandra.
AUDIENCE: They're related somehow, they're mother and
daughter or brothers or sisters or something.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Oh, OK.
Maybe that's what she's asking for.
I didn't know.
I still like these games.
But do I know their stories?
No.
But does it?
Eh, not really.
Enough of these.
For some people, I'm sure that they do care about the stories
of these, or the stories of the characters in Street
Fighter, for example.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Well I was going to say for games like this, I
actually kind of like the story because it adds--
the game is not the story.
There are two separate entities.
But one kind of adds to the other.
Like Diablo, for example.
There's lots of people that have played Diablo II without
really caring about the actual story--
AUDIENCE: Those cinematics were so cool back in the day.
AUDIENCE: But even though you can pretty much separate the
story from Diablo II and people would probably still
play it, the story definitely adds a layer of, I am attached
to this game.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But Diablo, in Diablo, the
difference is that Diablo's closer to being a
story-driven game.
It's closer to being an art-boutique game, where the
quests, you have to know who you're going to talk to, what
are you going to do.
I had a friend, we were working in this game service,
and we had to test all these role-playing games.
And one of my coworkers was like, oh, I have to play--
it was Baldur's Gate II.
One of the cool ones.
And he was like, OK, I have to test this, and I just have to
see that it works.
And he was not paying attention to any other text.
He was just doing the technical testing.
But then he got stuck, and we were supposed to finish the
games, and he was stuck, and he was going slower because he
didn't know what to do.
I said, well, if you had read what you actually had to do.
Well, for him, it was like, it was just a story!
Well, you're playing an RPG.
You can't leave the story out.
Somebody's telling you that you have to squash I don't
know how many arts, be happy to know that you have to
support the arts.
You have to know where to go.
So in story-driven games, what happens is that the story's
really so tied to the rules and the goals of the game that
you have, as you advance in the game, you're also
advancing in the story.
That something that, here, when you beat up somebody in
Soul Calibur or Street Fighter, whatever fighting
game you can think of, there might be a little cut scene
that tells us who they are.
One thing that I like about--
is it Soul Calibur?
Yeah.
There's a bit of taunting, like, oh, he beat me, or
something like that.
But that is building character a bit, and that means writing.
But really, it's not really story-driven.
The fact that we're getting bits of the story as we
complete challenges, doesn't mean that if we ignore the
game, we can still complete the game
without knowing the story.
Does it make sense?
So this is something that video games are doing that, to
a certain extent, some of the board games that you might
have been playing don't quite do.
Does it make sense?
We can still think of-- and there might be some people who
play these board games still at the mathematical level
without paying any attention to what the event that's
representing of.
But that's one potential of video games, that idea of
having a story-driven game where you're playing a game,
you are interacting with the world with a strong--
in the cases of story-driven games, you also have the
struggle of a fictional world that you are interacting with,
that you are exploring, that you're poking around.
So one thing I wanted to make clear here is that when we
talk about storytelling--
and let's try to use the term.
We're talking about the stories, but is it really
storytelling?
And the thing is that technically
games don't tell stories.
Who's telling the story?
Who's the narrator?
There might be games that have a kind of gimmick of having
the narrator, like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.
When you make a mistake, and he's supposed to be telling
what's happened to him, and he's like, no, no, no, wait,
when are you guys going to learn, no,
that's not how it happened.
But really, most games, again like Baldur's Gate or Diablo,
or more recently like Mass Effect, who is the
storyteller?
And the thing is that there are also
different types of stories.
When we are interacting with a game, what we are doing is
performing, and as we perform, we are creating a story.
There's a story that has been maybe prepared for us.
Going back to the Munchkin thing, in every card, we have
a bit of the story, and we are kind of putting it together,
laying it out.
So the game designers have designed each game, each chunk
of the story, what are the cues that
we're giving the player?
But then there's also what else this player is bringing
to the game.
As I was saying before, there's part that is the game
itself telling its story, and the other is what we are
evoking, what we are having the player bring to the game.
Is the story happening in that player's head?
So what I'd like to say is that it's not really
storytelling, it's about story building, and as game
designers, we are designing those little chunks.
We are creating stories that are meant to be reconstructed,
that are meant to be together.
So the difference between storytelling and story
building basically, when we have storytelling, we have
somebody who's narrating, or maybe there's someone who's
re-enacting what's happened, so a thing like
theater, for example.
But this continuous, it's something that just happens
and is not fragmented, which is what story building means.
We have something that has not already happened.
It's communicated one way, and what those events are and what
order they're told, that's determined by the author.
If we think about stories and how stories apply to games in
terms of story building, we're talking
about fragmented stories.
Stories in pieces.
Stories that we have to put together like a puzzle.
And we're game designers.
We make puzzles.
That's one of the many things that we can do.
What those fragments are, how are we giving cues to the
player to put together those fragments, or to come up with
their own ways of coming up with the story.
In a way, it's a kind of collaboration between the
designer and the player, because we rely on the player
to put this story together, to come up with their own ways of
filling the gaps, to really have a proactive role in
figuring out what the story is, and what the
order of events is.
But there are--
you guys have seen the games of progression and the games
of emergence?
Yes?
You discussed that?
AUDIENCE: Could you [INAUDIBLE]
I'm trying to remember where this--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: It's like the [INAUDIBLE] in the
first chapter, second chapter?
AUDIENCE: Well it's a seperate--
I think we had actually looked at the individual paper.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, we have the individual, not the book.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Not the chapter?
AUDIENCE: But it's basically the same thing.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK, yeah, because he talked about
the same thing in a couple of different places.
So what happens is that at times, there are games that
have a specific order of events, and there are some
adventure games, like Syberia for example, where you have to
go through a very specific sequence of events, and when
you get to a scene it's like, you have to do this.
Things like Dragon's Lair, the laser disc DVD.
When you go to a place and you have to figure out what is the
action that you have to do, and if you don't do it, you
die in horrible ways.
So those are games that set the order of events very
specifically.
But most of the games tend to have some more flexibility,
and let the players explore the world.
Things that happen in the world are generated by how the
player is interacting with the world.
So in RPGs, for example, depending on the RPG, there
might be the main quest and the side quests, and there
might be flexibility in what order that happens.
Even how a player might solve a specific quest.
In terms of table top, who here has been dungeon master?
OK, a bunch of you.
AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK, so we have a
corner of dungeon masters.
So you probably know that when you design a quest, and then
you set it up, and you have your players, and then your
players come up with a couple of different ways of tackling
your quest, whatever they can come up with.
And you have to improvise and try to--
you're building the rails of their living.
It's like they're trying to anticipate what
they're going to do.
So we're trying to get that into video games, too, but we
don't have the improvisational capacity built
into computers yet.
But as you see, it's like the dungeon masters, as dungeon
masters, we're responding to the actions of the player.
Does it make sense?
When we're talking about story building, there are games, as
I was saying, that are about story building, where the
challenge is constructing a story, improvising as you go.
You're given chunks, and you have to be able to be a
storyteller.
But you'll play these later.
We've actually talked about this before.
So when we're talking about building the fictional world
of the game--
I'm going to [UNINTELLIGIBLE] through this a bit fast.
We have until 4:30, right?
PROFESSOR: Yes.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK.
So there are also very minimal ways in which we can construct
our fiction, and these are lessons that I've taken from
digital games.
But if you think about it, many of these also apply to
non-digital games.
So for example, we have the title of a game can tell us
something about the fictional world, right?
What about board games or card games?
How do the titles build the fictional world?
AUDIENCE: The board game Mafia Wars is pretty clear about
what you're doing.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So that's a way.
It's evoking some things, like the type or
kind of world on itself.
And also setting the situation.
So here, Mafia Wars is about
AUDIENCE: Mafia having--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: There's different factions.
AUDIENCE: Getting in trouble--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: There's going--
yeah.
There's going to be betrayal probably, shooting down people
in horrible ways.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: Any licensed game?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Any licensed game?
Yes.
Thought at times, things like versions of Monopoly or
Trivial Pursuit where it's kind of like--
AUDIENCE: Star Wars--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Star Wars everything.
AUDIENCE: Risk gets kind of broad.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: And there are also skimmings of
Risk, right?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, lots.
AUDIENCE: Lord of the Rings.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Lord of the Rings everything, too.
Kind of like Barbie.
AUDIENCE: I just feel like there are so many Risks.
AUDIENCE: I know there's [? God's ?] which takes place
back in like mythological, [INAUDIBLE]?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, apart from franchises, what
other titles are--
AUDIENCE: The Settlers of Catan.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Settlers of Catan, which is evoking--?
AUDIENCE: Settling.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Building cities.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Building, sure.
AUDIENCE: San Juan.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, San Juan's going to--
that's what you told me, too.
AUDIENCE: Chinatown.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Chinatown?
AUDIENCE: It's set in Chinatown.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: And what do you do?
AUDIENCE: You build businesses that are stereotypically
associated with being in Chinatown.
[LAUGHTER]
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So with one title, it's not only we're
evoking the world, but we can also evoke rules.
What do you have to do to here?
So like Mafia Wars, you kill people.
But then, Settlers of Catan.
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But you are maybe playing what some of
the rules are, what the game is about, which is what is
important here.
And again, Soren Johnson calls attention to the fact that if
you're announcing that your game is about something in the
description booklet, the people might not always read,
or at least a part of people don't read.
You should follow up with that, because it's helping,
it's giving cues to the player about how is the story of the
game going to build up.
What is the key?
I like talking about giving keys to the player a lot
because I come from theater.
It's a very intuitive way of understanding.
It's not about us selling the story, it's about helping the
player construct the story.
So I have two examples from video games I really like
about how to build a fictional world with a title.
One obvious one in video games is Space Invaders, right?
Space Invaders means we're on Earth and--
AUDIENCE: Invaders, aliens.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Invaders from space, and we'll probably
have a fight.
AUDIENCE: Invading from space.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Another good one,
Zombies Ate My Neighbors.
There's a whole story right there.
So what's the story of this game?
AUDIENCE: Zombies ate the neighbors?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: The zombies ate the neighbors?
So what do I do in this game?
AUDIENCE: Probably kill zombies.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So probably killing zombies.
AUDIENCE: Are zombies eating my neighbors?
Or the zombies ate my neighbors and then just left.
AUDIENCE: Maybe the zombies are your neighbors.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, maybe you have to kill your
neighbors, too, now.
If there's anything left, because they ate them.
But this is a whole situation.
What do I have to do?
OK, zombies.
Whacking zombies, I'm sure, or running away from them.
AUDIENCE: The fact that you have neighbors in the
neighborhood, right?
It's not like a military zombie shooter.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, it's not Resident Evil.
AUDIENCE: They looked vaguely like '50s.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
This is like a Genesis game.
AUDIENCE: I just played a game with an old, like--
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, yeah, right.
AUDIENCE: Harkening back to the zombie movies of the day.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah.
Another great title that I found not too long ago, Earth
Dies Screaming.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Wow.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Which is actually about the '70s--
AUDIENCE: Whoa.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: The title is from a '70s British
movie that I think has nothing to do with the game.
This is like Space Invaders in a way.
You are defending the earth, it kind of looks like that.
You have your space ship, and you have invaders, and you
have to destroy it before it lands on earth.
But again, it's very evocative.
It's more memorable than Space Invaders in a way,
because it's got--
there's people attacking earth, whoever it is.
And this is going to end badly.
That's another thing, but Space Invaders and things like
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
and all those arcade games that do have an ending, you
know the ending.
You cannot really save earth.
It's really ominous in a way.
But again, we have a whole.
We have a whole situation is about--
in the title.
It's also very memorable.
I really like this title.
Another way in which we can give cues to
players to build worlds--
and I had more of this, but this applies more to video
games than to board games, card games, and even
role-playing games, is character design.
Because when we are making--
and tell me from your own experience--
but when you're making non-digital games, and even
when you're preparing your Dungeons & Dragons campaign,
you don't really come up with the characters.
The characters is something that the player brings.
For card games, if you have any examples that are counter
examples for this, please let me know.
But character design is not something that you do so much
in non-digital games.
Do you have any examples of that?
AUDIENCE: Well, [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
can be.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, in a way, yes.
AUDIENCE: I was thinking [? Acompora ?]
and other games where you have a character which is assigned
to you and often they have back story.
In [? Acompora ?] there's [UNINTELLIGIBLE], Byron, or
what have you.
AUDIENCE: I was going to say the game where
you're trying to--
Clue, Clue.
Where you choose a character and they all have their
[INAUDIBLE] and whatnot.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: The things that I--
As a player, are you really involved with those
characters?
AUDIENCE: I think I can think of one game which is an
example where you are, and it's called Android.
This game was released, I think, two years ago now, and
part of the--
actually, you should probably play it--
part of the point is that it was trying to include
developments of--
resolving characters' personal stories through
mechanics in the game.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Oh, yeah.
AUDIENCE: So you're actually playing through this choose
your own adventure-ish type scenario.
And the choices that you make throughout the game influence
what directions your character's
personal story arc.
It's a very good game.
But it's interesting, right?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, what I'm trying to get at here
is that at times, the characters are--
and again, evoking actions, evoking certain emotions, too.
I think that that detachment with non-digital games--
with role-playing games, it's different.
But again, when you're building your own characters
in role-playing, you have an investment when you're making
it yourself.
I'm talking more of the point of view of the designer.
Here?
AUDIENCE: So another [UNINTELLIGIBLE] game again,
Battlestar Galactica.
You are assigned a character, and if you know Battlestar
Galactica, you're probably going to go for certain
characters, because like, oh, that character's hilarious, I
want to be him, or, I'm going to be
Starbuck, Starbuck's awesome.
And then each player actually also has certain traits, which
are characteristic of their--
for the player in the [UNINTELLIGIBLE], like
[? tie ?], except he's now taller, so there's a certain
negative attribute to him if you're in a certain situation.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK.
All right, we have--
near the back.
AUDIENCE: I was going to say in live-action role-playing
games, like expansion, Assassin's Guild, and stuff,
the characters are entirely
designed by the game designers.
But you still get the players who take up this character and
become involved with it, because all of their actions
are based on what the designer chose to make that character.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yep, yep, that's true, that's true.
And one?
AUDIENCE: Two other games.
Cosmic Encounter is where probably a lot closer to the
thousand island kind of situation you've got.
You pick a race at the beginning of the game.
So it's not a single character.
But that's effectively the same thing in that, if you
pick something like the Cubans, you have different
goals, and you have different powers that you
can use in the game.
Whereas if you play a game like Illuminati, instead of
playing an individual you're playing a corporation, or
actually a [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
for society, for the most part, and your actual game
winning goals are different, depending on who you pick.
And part of the game is also figuring out what certain
characters are trying-- how certain characters are trying
to win the game, because not everybody has the same game
winning goal.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK.
Patrick, last one.
AUDIENCE: In the card game Saboteur, if your role is the
saboteur, then it is in the player's best interest to act
in that role.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: To perform like what?
AUDIENCE: Yes, to be some person to the other players
without letting them catch on.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, awesome.
You see, and this is why, I think, [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
I was asking.
Yeah, I think the LARPing one is the obvious case, yeah.
In video games, what we do, we can build character in
cinematic ways and cut scenes and whatever, but really, it's
very difficult to build a character that is at the same
time you, and not you are the player and not the player.
And what we can do is give them cues about the
personality of that character.
And one of the examples I wanted to give was Sonic,
because Sonic is not really you.
This is always the--
a bit of this trouble in a lot of the examples that you were
doing, except for LARPing, where LARPing is a bit more
involved, is that it's kind of like you but not you.
Who am I?
I'm the saboteur, because I'm doing this.
In games, we have Sonic, for example.
We are Sonic.
What are we?
We are a blue hedgehog.
And what do we do?
AUDIENCE: Collect rings.
AUDIENCE: Run.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So, run and collect coins, and
liberating cute animals.
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, that too.
And one of the things, one of the goals of designing a
character, particularly in video games, is
making it seem alive.
Making it go beyond the functional part.
Like, oh, we are the saboteur, we are whatever character in
Clue, for example.
Having that emotional involvement, that is something
that we are trying to achieve in video games.
And Sonic does it in a very subtle, very cool way.
Does anybody know what this picture is of?
What he's doing?
AUDIENCE: When you don't do anything, he starts tapping
his foot and looking at you.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So it's kind of like, you're not
controlling me.
Come on.
I wanna go.
I really have to go.
I have to run, because what I do is running.
So, let's go.
AUDIENCE: Mario goes to sleep.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, Mario goes to
sleep, that's right.
AUDIENCE: Starts--
[INAUDIBLE]
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: And do you remember any of the
Earthworm Jim games?
He does crazy stuff.
He starts--
he flips his head, and he dresses up, like he is
thinking, why don't I--
Yeah.
Or he gets an afro wig at some point.
What are you doing?
But it's pulling attention to, who am I?
When you're not controlling me, I'm gonna do it myself.
And is the case of Sonic, it's like, OK, I'm a running guy,
but I need you to run, so come on.
And it's very subtle, something that is very
minimal, but is building character, but is also telling
the player who this character is.
The last thing-- and this is something that, again, video
games can do very well-- is something that role-playing
games can do very well, or LARPing, but I'm not sure that
card games or board games can do this, is environmental
storytelling.
It's telling the story in the space as you go around, as
you're examining the space and what's going on.
Video games, what they do very well, is construction of a
virtual world that we can navigate, that we can explore,
that we can interact with.
And one of--
those of you who've been in my classes before, you know that
I love the beginning of Bioshock as an example of
environmental story telling, because you know what is this
world, what has happened before, and they don't tell it
with a word.
It's just going to the space and figuring
out what has happened.
Another example that I really love is Portal where a lot of
the story is told, or you figure it out, as
you explore the world.
So what is this in Portal?
So, first of all, what is the premise of Portal, the story?
AUDIENCE: You're a test subject testing a new device
at Aperture Labs.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, so you're a test subject.
But very soon, you realize that there's
something kind of wrong.
This voice that keeps talking to, kind of warps around, and
she goes and comes back.
But there's something broken, and you just go on because you
don't know what else to do.
But here, what is this?
Once you start realizing, OK, there's something really
wrong, what is this?
AUDIENCE: This is when you're trying to escape.
AUDIENCE: The hole in the wall.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: There's a hole--
AUDIENCE: One of the things is stuck forward, and you can
sneak under it or something?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, you go behind the scenes and
you realize, OK, so there's something really wrong here, I
kind of guessed it, but here we have what looks like
somebody's refuge, like where somebody was hiding, and they
were writing all these messages.
And, of course, it's very funny, because the famous "The
cake is a lie," is not something that everybody has
to go through.
You have to find it.
You have to find it in the game.
It's part of exploring the game.
So the reason why I like--
I like Portal for many, many reasons--
but one is because the storytelling is very
brilliant--and is not something that we're told,
this is what happened.
We figure it out. by listening to the voice, by listening to
GlaDOS, by going behind the scenes.
We are piecing the story together.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: If you ever pay attention to what's written on
the wall in the safe houses in Left for Dead, there's a lot
of funny stuff, as well.
And I initially hadn't realized Left for Dead had a
story, really.
And then, when you actually pause and read what's written
on the walls in the safe houses, there's almost flame
wars between different people who run to the same houses and
are writing facts about the zombie apocalypse, and saying,
oh, that's not true, that town is completely overrun, no,
you're totally stupid, I was there last week, and it had
these things going on and various two bits of trivia and
facts about the world.
And it's very, very clever, and often quite hilarious.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Because what environment storytelling
is doing, after all, we're telling the story of the
fictional world.
That can be part of the goal of solving games, figuring out
what is the story of the fictional world?
Yes, Andrew?
AUDIENCE: Was there a conscious decision to use
environmental storytelling as opposed to story building?
Well, you mentioned the difference between
storytelling and story building earlier, and you
mentioned that that was environmental story telling as
opposed to story building.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, and probably is
really story building.
So the thing is that environmental storytelling is
what people call it.
I'm using a phrase.
But yeah, this is a type of story building.
We're building a [UNINTELLIGIBLE], build it for
the player.
But yeah, this is story building.
PROFESSOR: More precisely, you will see talks on
environmental storytelling when you go to a conference.
But what they're really talking about, so you know, is
just that [INAUDIBLE] involved in research.
AUDIENCE: So maybe the closest to this kind of thing is in
flavor text in CCG's and other such stuff.
So if you think, for instance, of Magic the Gathering, then
there is a back story behind each of these
expansions which comes out.
And that's told through actual fiction, where you can buy a
really trashy novel.
[LAUGHTER]
But it's also told through little quotes between--
by significant the characters in the fiction, also the
images which are presented on the cards.
So, maybe that's the closest thing to environmental story
telling in--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, yeah.
Magic the Gathering has this world, and it seems to be very
easy expand it.
I don't know if there's a bible of the Magic the
Gathering world.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, yeah, there's an entire creative department
at Wizards of the Coast that's responsible for maintaining
the story and making sure it's all consistent and stuff.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So it's not really something--
it's almost 4:00, so I have still something, but we can go
through it very fast if that works?
PROFESSOR: If we run out of time, we can play these games
on Friday or something.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: OK.
PROFESSOR: If that sounds like a good idea.
All right.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So, we've been talking so far
about designing the story of world, designing the story of
the fictional world.
What we also have, as I was saying before, the players
also construction a story as we go.
Things that happen to the player, things that happen in
the world, because they happen to the player.
And again, one of the reasons why I was talking about games
of progressions versus games of emergence is that in
stories, we have a similar parallel of stories that have
been designed for the player, things that they have to do in
role-playing games, and I'm talking about pen and pencil--
pen and paper role-playing games, we have the story that
as the end we have designed, and then there's what the
players are trying to do.
In video games, because computers don't have the
capacity for improvisation, what the player has to do is a
lot more constrained in a way.
So what are the bosses that they have to--
how do they solve a specific problem, or how do we get over
a specific problem.
So I like giving the example of Legend of Zelda games,
where we do have a story that we're completing almost in a
specific order, because if you don't have certain objects,
you can't go to the next stage until you have certain
properties.
So even though we have a really nice, relatively open
world, a world that we can navigate, we do have a
specific order of events that we have to follow.
Adventure games, it might be something like point and click
adventure games, again, things like Syberia, things like
Myst, where there is a pre-established sequence of
events that we have to go settle.
And then, the other extreme, we have games that are closer
to these games like Once Upon a Time, or Gloom where the
system itself is producing stories of
sorts, like in The Sims.
And in The Sims, the fact that we have a way to record our
own stories and share them is proof that that's a kind of
system closer to things like Once Upon a Time.
That is, the system can generate narratives, and that
playing with the system will generate some narratives.
So we have ways in which, as designers, we can provide cues
or ways to design the story of the player.
And the first one is the game premise, what is
the goal of the game?
Game events, I don't know if I'll let that one, because
that was too long.
And we have [UNINTELLIGIBLE] a narrative.
The game premise is who are you in the game, what
do you do in it.
It's kind of similar to the title, but in this case, is
very tied to who is the player, what is the role of
the player in the game?
So things like Cooking Mama, for example.
You're Cooking Mama, so who are you, Cooking Mama?
You're not mama.
Mama's complaining about you.
You are the person who's cooking for Mama.
That's the title they should have, Cooking for Mama.
And then now they're getting pissed off at you because you
didn't do it right.
But it tells you basically so you're a cook.
Or what is it that you do.
You're trying to please Mama by cooking
something nice and yummy.
Usually, also kind of weird.
A really good example of creating the story of the
player by the premise of who you are in the game is this.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: I love this example.
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Because it's like, who are you?
You're a hacker.
And it gives you--
the cool thing about this trailer is it gives you a list
of what you do.
This is your story.
You are framing people, you are framing
innocent people, of course.
Maintaining people's academic records, building their
devices, and all those are activities in the game, but
it's also who you are.
That is your story.
Those are the kinds of things that you're going to be doing
in the game.
So again, we were talking about Saboteur before.
Well, as saboteur, you already have a series of actions that
you associated with the your character.
That is way that we can design the story of the player, at
least at the higher level, and give it that cue.
I'm skipping game events because it's kind of long and
it's very, very strong.
Two basic video games, and mostly [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
The other example that I want to make here is
micronarratives.
And again, all these are more video game things, but
micronarratives are little events, they're not even cut
scenes, they're just little events that happen as
reactions to the player's actions.
In a way, Sonic tapping his foot is a kind micronarrative.
You're not doing anything, come on, I want to go.
Or Mario falling asleep is kind of like a
micronarrative of sorts.
This is one of my favorite micronarratives
in these video games.
This is the game Jet Set Willy, which is from 1985,
maybe, something, middle '80s.
It was for Commodore 64.
Well, it was originally for the--
AUDIENCE: Spectrum.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, thank you.
He's prepared a presentation on the Spectrum, yes.
Commodore 64 and surrounding this world is Z80 platforms in
the '80s, and this was a sequel to Manic Miner.
So Manic Miner, you were Miner Willy, yes?
Miner Willy.
And you go down into the earth, and you find a
treasure, and you become immensely rich.
So with the money that you get from the first game, you throw
a party, and you throw such a big party that your house
becomes invaded by the weirdest creatures ever.
There are flying toilet seats, mutant pigs, I don't know.
AUDIENCE: Sounds like a good party.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, such a good party that you get
people from other worlds to come to your party.
But the thing was that it was such a good party, you wanted
to go to bed.
This is Willy.
This is you in the game.
So in Jet Set Willy, this is the day after, and Willy is is
hungover probably after the super party.
And he was in a bed.
In the game, to the left, you have the picture of the bed,
and that's your goal, go to bed.
But this is your landlady, who's seen how you trashed the
place, and she doesn't want you to go to bed until you've
cleaned it up.
So the cool thing, they really want to get--
and then, the animation here--
is that she has her arms like this.
She's holding her arms like this, and whenever
you get near her--
which arm is it?--
her left arm, she goes like, ha!
Go.
And it's a reaction to what you do.
With this, it's a few pixels.
It's probably four or five pixels.
And in four or five pixels, this game is telling you this
is what you have to do.
Go that way.
This is your goal, you asked me.
You've gotta come here, go that way, and clean it up.
And this is eight bit pixels!
And she's telling you all that with just a few pixels.
You don't really need that much.
But with that kind of reaction, we always want to,
again, gives cues.
What is it that the player has to do?
We don't need a cut scene.
With a few pixels, we know what we have to do, right?
And it's a very difficult game,
too, for today's standards.
Anyway, so the conclusion here is that
why do we need stories?
Why do we need fictions?
What do fictional worlds do for us?
What do themes do for us?
As we were saying, humans have a tendency the story-icize
everything.
We are natural storytellers.
Some of what these games like Once Upon a Time or
[? Bloom ?]
are playing with is because we tell other people what has
happened to us.
If you complain about something, you're complaining
in the form of a story if something might
have happened to you.
We understand our experiences as stories, and there are
different disciplines that have dealt with this from
computer science to psychology.
How we are making stories about ourselves, how we are
making stories about our worlds.
So having a story, having a game that has a fictional
world in which a story can take place is a way of
understanding the underlying system.
As I was saying, if we have a game that is called Mafia
Wars, we already have a goal, we have sets of rules, who we
are, what is it that we have to do.
We don't need a lot of--
two words have been enough to evoke a lot of that
information.
So the last thing, and this applies a bit more to video
games, is that by having a story, we're also providing
consistency to the world.
When Jesper Juul is talking about incoherent worlds, he's
really talking about worlds where there's not really a
story, and there are video games that have awful stories,
that's true.
But when you're forced, or when you're thinking about
your world not only as a fictional world as a
simulation, but also as a world that has to produce a
story that makes sense, that is going to provide more
coherence to the world hopefully.
We have to [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
But that means that you can take the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] for
games, [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
And there are things that yes there are complains about,
like why does Mario have to realize?
Well, because it's Mario, right?
Is that part of the story?
That's one of those no-man's land issues.
Does that undermine the consistency of the world?
Maybe the anthological level, the level of the world itself.
But really, it's more about making sense about the rules.
What is it--
being able to look at the world in a critical way.
I'm trying to think of an example of--
apart from the three lives of Mario--
AUDIENCE: He was a plumber.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: What?
AUDIENCE: I thought you said he was a plumber.
Oh no, that was in the theme.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: No, but for example, Kirby.
He eats other creatures and spits them.
Where does it come from?
Why does it do that?
What is the story of Kirby?
He's kind of cute, but hey, I would watch out with him,
because he can eat almost anything, and then
he just dumps it?
AUDIENCE: Kirby's a weirdly disturbing character.
[LAUGHTER]
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, if you think about
it in terms of stories.
But this is kind of wow.
AUDIENCE: Yoshi, too, right?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes.
And I love Yoshi.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, and that's another video game character--
it seems like one of the reasons why these arguments
have been raised is because there have been these huge
piles of inconsistencies.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But the inconsistency has become--
I think that when you try to write the story,
if that makes sense.
So Yoshi eats creatures and--
AUDIENCE: Then he spits them out.
Each one.
Depends on which Mario you're talking about, because if it's
Super Mario World--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: I'm thinking of Yoshi's Island.
AUDIENCE: Okay, yeah, in Yoshi's Island,
yeah, he poops eggs.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, and is like, hm, and then he
throws it, and they're like bombs?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, he throws his eggs at--
he uses his eggs as weapons.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, but all of those things become
evident the moment that we start his story
[UNINTELLIGIBLE].
So who is this person, what do they do, why do they do this?
Wow, it's kind of falling apart.
So the incoherence--
and I'm just thinking that I don't know if you guys will
really like this or not--
but the incoherence comes from the impossibility--
or not impossibility, but the problems of trying to make
this into a story and realizing, well,
this has not been--
this has been thought out as a cool game, and I love Yoshi's
Island, but as a story, it kind of falls apart.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: I think one of the really glaring inconsistencies
in a lot of RPGs in particular is that in most of these
worlds, there's some kind of resurrection card, and there
are a lot of plots which revolve around character dying
and that being a bad thing, but then you're like, why
don't you just use your Phoenix Down or--
why do we care if the human is being assassinated, I've got
this thing in my inventory which will bring him back.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, I wished that about Aeris like a
thousand times, and no, because this guy kills her?
Then what kind of--
AUDIENCE: The actual conceit there is you're not dead,
you're just knocked out.
So it's like smelling salts or something.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But there are games like
Planescape: Torment where that is incorporated in the--
you're immortal, and that's the thing, figuring out why
you're immortal.
They make fun of you waking up, and you go like, oh my
goodness, this really hurts, I feel terrible!
And then making that problem into an
essential part of the game.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: So, with the RPG thing, the incoherency is how
so many times when you're in these battles, you're doing
these incredible things.
Like you're summoning asteroids or jumping in the
[UNINTELLIGIBLE].
But then in the game world, you get to a ledge, and
they're like, oh, it's a ledge.
I have to go around.
Or it's a gap like this wide.
I can't step over it because of a bush, oh no!
What am I going to do?
There's a bush in the way.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But you're
thinking diagonals, too.
What?
No, I cannot do diagonals.
AUDIENCE: I think another egregious inconsistency that
comes up a lot is the--
and I think it's explicitly mentioned in the reading--
that you're the world savior usually, and on the way,
you're going to pillage, steal, kill innocent people,
and it's not going to be a big deal.
And even in games where they make the endpoint variable, so
all right, you can either save the world to or be a total
jerk, and that fixes one problem, they still have the
problem that during the game, you can alternate back and
forth between being really good and really bad, and all
it does is it kind of swings you one way or the other.
It's one dimensional.
So you're sort of just in a spectrum, and if you do five
really bad things and then five really good things,
you're back to where you started.
And that's not necessarily consistent in terms
storytelling.
AUDIENCE: Well, there's also the classic inconsistency of
if I don't save the world, everything will be destroyed,
but you're still going to charge me 100
gil for this phoenix?
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: It's still inconsistent.
AUDIENCE: Or, I have to save the world now because bad
things are happening.
Let me go do these 20 side quests first.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: The whole world is that--
AUDIENCE: This cat's stuck in a tree!
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: There're rats in the cellar,
man, rats in the cellar.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, but the end of the world is nigh.
Like in Final Fantasy, the end of the world is nigh, but let
me go around--
AUDIENCE: Blitzball!
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: --and get more random encounters so
that I can bump up my stats.
AUDIENCE: So that actually reminds me of--
I think it was a web-comic--
that I read around a month ago, and it was based around,
oh my god, you're our savior!
You know how to solve it!
Yes, I am, and so the whole time, he's just going on,
like, what are you doing?
They're raping and pillaging everything, they're destroying
everything, what are you doing?
Oh, I'll do that in a second, I just have to get this
really, really cool shield.
And then at one point it's like, why, what are you doing?
It's like, I'm fishing, so I can get this lure, so I can
catch another fish.
Why would you ever be doing this right now when the
world's about to end, and evil is spreading across
everything?
He's like, don't worry about it, I'm on it.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, it's very interesting.
And this is my last slide, so if you want to--
we can go on discussing.
PROFESSOR: Sure.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So at times, the little cues that
are building world or building character can also backfire.
So I've been playing one of the DS Zelda games, and one of
the nicest touches is that whenever you meet a character,
Link is going to look at them in the eye.
Hi!
You're walking, and it's like, hi.
And at times it's super weird, because the characters look at
each other.
They acknowledge that they're there, so they feel kind of
alive with a very simple algorithm, where there's
another character, they look at each other.
It's like, wow, they're alive, cool, and they react.
But then, you go into somebody's house, and they're
looking at you and you're like, hi!
[BREAKING SOUND]
You know?
You break their pots to get rupees.
And they're looking at you, and you're breaking
everything.
And it's just like, this is kind of weird.
They should react, because they're looking at you while
you're breaking their house.
And that's, again, is giving a touch that is making those
characters alive, but it's also like breaking it, like,
I'm still breaking your pots.
I don't know what's better.
AUDIENCE: I think that was subverted in--
no, in another Zelda game, Link's Awakening?
You go into the shop, and the shop owner is always looking
at you, so if you take something off the shelf and
try to exit, he says, no, you can't do that,
you can't steal it.
But if you run around him, he's not fast enough to keep
his eye on you, so you run around him until he's looking
away, and you can leave.
But if you come back in, he says, you're the guy who stole
something, and he shoots you with a laser.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: And then every character in the game calls
you "thief" for the rest of the game.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Ah, that's really funny.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, it's awesome.
AUDIENCE: I was going to say, Oblivion and Fallout do the
same, where everyone watches you if they're within--
if they're acknowledging you, and then you try to take
something, they're run up and be like, why the hell are you
taking my stuff, or start beating you up or whatever.
AUDIENCE: Or shooting you.
AUDIENCE: Or calling the town guard.
But it's problematic when you're powerful enough and you
can take the town guard.
Then it's just really annoying because everywhere you go,
there's guys you can kill that are kind of there, and you're
like, all right, come on, get out of my way.
AUDIENCE: So there was a Mega Man Legends which I don't know
if anybody ever played.
I don't think anyone ever played that game.
But essentially it was like Mega Man, but the
RPG style of game.
But it was actually slightly different from most RPGs.
Most RPGs, you just walk around, walking into people's
houses, looking for loot.
But you actually couldn't just walk into people's houses.
Their doors would be locked.
And you could knock and see if anybody was there, but it was
kind of interesting, because it was actually consistent, in
the sense that you couldn't just randomly walk into
somebody's house and steal their crap.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So one thing that I wanted to ask--
because all these things in video games, after a while,
they result in [UNINTELLIGIBLE], right?
Because we have the possibility of having a
fleshed out world that we can interact with, that is
simulated, and the times where those cracks are showing,
where the system is is showing, when it's showing
that this is limited, that we've chosen a specific level
of abstraction to simulate the world.
But do those incongruencies bother people in board games
or card games so much?
AUDIENCE: I would argue that sometimes it's a little bit of
a speed bump to learning what's going on.
Assuming some [UNINTELLIGIBLE], assuming
that is incoherent.
It seems like because it's almost impossible to play a
card game or a board game without first understanding
the rules, unlike in video games where you can just jump
right in, that is usually something that can be
surmounted if people say, oh, the rules say this, but the
theme says that, OK, I understand how to play by the
rules, and be able to step over that.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, and I think that that's an
excellent point, and when we start playing a board game,
probably what you guys do in this class, is you get a new
board game.
What do you do?
You pick up the instructions and you're figuring out the
rules first, and not the world.
In a lot of video games, we figure out the world first,
and then by exploring the world, we're
figuring out the rules.
And even if there are games that are giving us tutorials
or manuals, who--
I don't know, not many people read the manuals, if at all.
AUDIENCE: While the game is installing.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, [INAUDIBLE].
But manuals is not something that--
even though it's going to be the first thing to look at in
a board game and a card game.
And even, well, as a player, you also look at the rule book
at least to built your own character most times.
AUDIENCE: You mean on PC and computer games?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: On role-playing games.
AUDIENCE: Oh, are you talking about table
top role-play games?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yes, table top.
AUDIENCE: Oh yeah, even table top role-playing
games you try to start.
People start by looking at their handbooks.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: LARPing might be a
good example of how--
LARPing, you're just given your
AUDIENCE: Your character sheet.
You have to read it.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Your character sheet, which is very
interesting.
AUDIENCE: For role-playing, I know a lot of people who can't
really be bothered to learn the rules that thoroughly and
prefer just to experience the story and have somebody tell
them how to resolve the mechanics and
that kind of thing.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But it's funny, because when you're
building your character in a table top role-playing game,
you still have to have a look at what is the race that you
want, what is your religion, what is your powers that you
want to choose?
Even if you're only playing for kicks, and you don't care
so much about the rule.
And I'm the type of table top role-player that prefers the
story, and I don't care so much about combat.
But you still have to know the rules even before you start
playing, if that makes sense.
AUDIENCE: There are situations [UNINTELLIGIBLE] described
where people don't look at the rules, but then they're
usually relying on the GM to tell them what's allowed and
what's not allowed, which means someone read the rules.
It's no different from someone explaining to you a card game,
as opposed to having the rules--
AUDIENCE: It actually makes the experience a bit like
playing a computer game, that the GM does the
[UNINTELLIGIBLE].
AUDIENCE: Yeah, the GM is your computer, and in fact it's
more powerful than a computer, because a GM can figure out
what you're actually asking.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: I had a question about the
[UNINTELLIGIBLE], actually.
So one thing about card games and board games is that almost
everything that gets revealed or that happens in the middle
of the game is usually a player mechanics.
Sometimes there's some loose flexibility, like games where
they allow open negotiation between specific players.
But most of it's actually in the play of a card, the move
of a piece, something like that.
And especially when you're playing cards, you have to
play flavor text, especially for cards where you can just
play them at any time.
And I've seen micronarratives done--
at least what I think a micronarrative seems to be--
done pretty well in those instances.
In fact, in the example of cards, right, someone tries to
do something that might win them the game, but you play
this card, and that denies them the win, but it is tied
up with some sort of flavor text, some sort of thematic
element to that card.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Well, it could be like--
in Monopoly, what is the type of card?
Those two types of cards.
AUDIENCE: Go to jail?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: No.
AUDIENCE: Community Chest and Chance?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, like the Chance.
There's Chance when there's something that happens to you,
but there's also--
AUDIENCE: Community Chest.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: --the Community Chest, thank you,
which is something that you play.
The differences in micronarratives here, what it
means is something, it's a reaction to player's events.
It's not something that the player chooses to do.
Those reaction cards, those are also part of the player's
narrative, and in a way, the player is choosing, this is
going to happen now.
This is what Gloom is about, and these are what these two
games are about most of the time.
It's like you're trying to construct a story, and you're
trying to tamper into somebody else's story, so it's that
kind of reaction.
Yeah, we would have to find a name for it.
But yeah, the micronarrative is referring to something that
happens as reaction.
It's not something that the player does.
AUDIENCE: It's often in reaction to what another
player is doing.
So it depends on whose point of view you are taking.
So, I've got a Community Chest card, and I'm holding it until
somebody else is about to take advantage of a position, and
then I deny them that.
So it's still a reaction to what the
other player is doing.
AUDIENCE: Well, I just wanted to mention, in terms of
micronarrative, I don't know, would this
be a possible example?
In the board game that we're designing, there's a computer
in the center that you want to hack, and every time someone
tries to hack it, it gets weaker.
So it's sort of a response to someone doing an action on it.
Would that count as a micronarrative, or is that
more of a mechanic?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: It seems as an event it's
an important event.
It's a change of state.
But I don't know how much of a story it is.
And there's no science to what constitutes an event or not.
It's something that's part of my research, it's something
that I'm going to figure out.
How can we identify what's an event that is a rule and is
also an event in the story?
Because things like disconnecting the computer, or
hacking the computer, yeah, that seems to
be clearly an event.
What if we had each time that it becomes weaker, there is
something else that you can do.
So by hacking the computer, there is a new action.
You get access to new areas of the game, or you
get a new power up.
Or it's easier--
for example, if--
I'm totally hypothesizing about what your game is
about-- but if you will have a computer that is controlling
the security of a place, whenever you hack a certain
part of the system, it's letting you move faster
through the board.
In a way, that might be closer to a micronarrative, because
it's a reaction, but it's also a consequence.
AUDIENCE: In that case, in Careers for Girls, when you
choose to go down a path, is that a micronarrative?
Because the player chooses and then sort of changes the
state, [INAUDIBLE].
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: I don't know the choices, but the
events that happen, like what happens when you land on
something, might be closer.
And again, it's kind of like, it's a micronarrative?
AUDIENCE: Careers and Careers for Girls, which I both see as
really, really appalling--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: I agree.
AUDIENCE: Seems to be built on micronarratives, the whole
idea that everywhere you land, something's happening--
you're granted something.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: But the choice-- what I'm saying is
that the choice itself is not the micronarrative, it's the
landing and what happens when you land.
Oh wow.
It's almost time.
Anything else?
AUDIENCE: I actually wanted to make one last comment about
emergent stories, particularly the example of The Sims.
Is anybody familiar with Alice and Kev?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, so Alice and Kev was this really
interesting experiment that this guy did where he created
two homeless Sims, a father and--
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Ah, yes!
AUDIENCE: --a daughter.
AUDIENCE: I think we talked about this--
AUDIENCE: And just did a sort of a web-comic style display
of the lives of these two homeless Sims as she grew up
and he got older.
And it almost seemed like it became a role-playing game,
where the guy playing The Sims became the dungeon master, who
had created these characters, and then the AIs were playing
these characters for him.
In particular, there was this one moment where he gets to a
part of the story where the daughter has just gotten her
first paycheck, and she decides to
donate it to charity.
And he keeps trying to keep her from donating it to
charity, but she keeps saying I want to
donate it to charity.
So eventually he lets her donate it to charity.
And it was almost like it was the character's
choice to donate it.
At the end of this blog that he did about this specific
event, he's talking about what does it mean when a video game
character that you created makes you question your own
life choices?
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: This is a really interesting thing.
If you haven't read it, you should check it out.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Yeah, on what blog?
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: I think it's aliceandkev.com,
something like that.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: It's a story of the Sims 3.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: Any more?
AUDIENCE: Talking about non-digital games being very
involved in your character, and I felt like one game I've
played where I've been very involved with a character is
Mafia, where there's not a lot of actual
information given to you.
People are yelling at you, like, you're the Mafia, the
way you smiled at him!
Clearly you guys--
I don't know.
CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA: So you become the character more by
how people see you than how you play it?
AUDIENCE: I guess you're also assigning character to other
people, reading into their actions and things.
PROFESSOR: That's a game where the roles are designed by the
designer, right?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, but there's only two roles.
It's not like--
AUDIENCE: Well no, there can be a lot of roles.
AUDIENCE: There's a few roles.
AUDIENCE: I've seen websites with a whole list of roles,
and some of them are hilarious.
AUDIENCE: Seems good.
In digital games, I feel like there are the games where you
have a very defined character, unlike this.
If you have a very defined character in a video game, you
tend to get into it more, whereas Fable, your character
isn't defined, and changes based on the actions you use.
If you're evil, he becomes ugly and he gets
[UNINTELLIGIBLE] things.
But I never felt like I identified with the character
at all versus games that already give me a very strong
character, and I play a certain way.
PROFESSOR: That's odd because that's completely--
that runs against what you would be trying to do, at
least, that's why they're marketing games that are
trying to do it, to make you feel closer to the character
because it's the reflection of who you are.
AUDIENCE: I think that Bioshock does a better job of
that, where you never see the guy.
So you're always just looking through his eyes, and he has
essentially no personality, at least, no personality is
displayed in the game.
So it's almost as if you are directly
interacting with the world.
PROFESSOR: You're given a space to to be--
AUDIENCE: To actually project yourself into the game, which
I think is sort of what Fable was trying to do, but doesn't
really do a good job of it.
Because you see him right there, and
he's clearly not you.
AUDIENCE: I feel like Torment is a really--
Planescape: Torment has a really interesting take on
this, where the character is essentially who it is that you
play in that, but there's more to it than that, because
there's also back story to the character, which you, the
character, have forgotten, and it's
revealed to you over time.
But you know more of that character, who your character
was back then, than you know about your character now.
So your nature changes over time, and you've gone through
several iterations of this.
And none of them is the truer or more correct you.
AUDIENCE: The funny thing about Planescape: Torment,
it's kind of like a personality test.
I've been playing it again, and the first time I played
through, I was chaotic good?
And I was trying to play different.
I'm still chaotic good.
So I'm kind of freaking out.
OK, I'm really trying to do something different, but I'm
still in the same alignment.
Because a lot of your definition of--
and actually, your alignment can also decide items that you
can get or things that you can do--
but it's based on your choices and how you tackle a quest.
If you lie, for example, or if you do crazy things.
It's not something--
once you realize what the effect of your choices is, you
can kind of control it.
But there's--
playing Planescape is--
it's going to be about you and how your game playing style is
[UNINTELLIGIBLE] humanity.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, there's interesting effects in Knights
of the Old Republic if anybody's played that.
You can explicitly make decisions to
go to the dark side.
I remember when I played it, every time it came up with a
decision where I could--
the dark side has all the awesome powers, right?
So I kept thinking, I'm gonna be on the dark side, I'm gonna
have all the awesome powers, it's gonna be grand.
Then you get to the decisions, and I was almost uncomfortable
with choosing the evil options, such that I couldn't
actually bring myself to go to the dark side.
PROFESSOR: We are actually out of time.
But I wouldn't say that--
the options are thankfully all-- or, actually, let's save
discussion of Knights of the Old Republic for another class
[UNINTELLIGIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
OK, all right, well, thank you.