Sheldon Lee and Chris Crawford: Comparisons

I've just finished reading "Chris Crawford's Guide to Interactive Storytelling" and "Story and Character Development For Games" by Sheldon Lee (which are both great books, if you're starting into game design), and it was such an interesting experience reading them one after another. First off, while they share some similar views, most of their main underlying themes and goals are very different (and not just because one is about game design straight on and the other is about "interactive storytelling").

Crawford maintains many times throughout his book that interactive storytelling and games are two very different things, and denounces games as proper storytelling mediums at several points. While he gives credit to games' evolution through the years, he dare not give them as much credit as they deserve (at least in my opinion). Many of the techniques that he lists that are "flawed" ways of diversifying an interactive storyworld are techniques that Lee talks about extensively and encourages for enriching a video game. (It's important that I mention that I know Crawford is talking about interactive story engines; very different things in his opinion than video games. But, the point for me is to take lessons for both and enrich my game designing, which is why I'm reading these books in the first place).

Crawford says that simply filling your world with characters is a hollow way of adding depth, and while this is correct, Lee encourages this practice as long as you're taking the time to add depth and dimension to the NPCs. I believe that there is truth to both statements, as there's nothing more worthless than NPCs who give the one piece of information they're programmed to give and then repeat it over and over. While it's impossible when populating a game world to make every character live and breath and speak like a normal person with feelings and thought patterns, it is possible to select the characters that will truly be important to the story and the world and make them 3-dimensional and worthy of the player's empathy.

Although, the two authors do seem to agree on one thing: branching storylines and dialog are usually a mistake, but for different reasons. Crawford says that people usually don't like it because of the workload involved, while Sheldon says that the idea is a good one but usually poorly implemented. And from reading the responses in the discussion boards at school about what the students think contribute to interactivity, many of them happened to mention branching storylines and dialog with different outcomes help greatly with it.

But, I'm often thinking about why Crawford's book was chosen in a course about storytelling in video games, not interactive stories, which are a completely different medium. Chris Crawford's storytelling engine that he's worked on for the better part of two decades is centered around a totally different goal, which is the pursuit of a truly interactive and immersive  story, which he has taken plenty of time to separate boldly from video games altogether. This is fine. Many of these concepts can certainly be applied to enriching the stories that we game designers create every day in our work, and I feel as I've walked away with much more wisdom than when I entered the class. As a mainstream industry, there are few examples of truly famous interactive stories. I feel that the closest that we've come to the concept in this generation of gaming has been Heavy Rain, a title that feels much more like an interactive movie than a video game.

What do I think? I'm a story kind of guy. I like linear stories, and games with linear stories. Far more of the games that I associate with and love are linearly told stories than games that have multiple endings. Personally I think that video games can be a great vessel for telling a great story, as the person who wrote it intended. I feel like I'm in an increasing minority on this one, as lots of players tend to "skip" the hell out of cutscenes even when they haven't seen them before or experienced the story at all. They just want to shoot crap and get on with the gameplay. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But, I think that there's just as much duty to providing a fantastic story that IS there to be experienced, no matter whether the player gives a damn or if they truly are looking for a great story to touch their heart. This is what I want to have a hand in. Making great stories, with excellent worlds to employ them in.

MCCLOUD'S UNDERSTANDING COMICS

This book was shipped to me as part of my first game design course, and at first I didn't really understand. Comics? This is game design. But, as I've learned the hard way several times before in my short college life, sometimes my naivete knows no bounds. After reading the first two chapters, I soon very much realized why this book was put in my hands. Huzzah!

After reading only a little bit of Understanding Comics, you soon realize that the word comic in this case is very much interchangeable with other nouns: games, and movies. As I read through, I got into the habit of simply switching out the word comic with video game. Or even just game, really. Doesn't have to be a video game. But, as we all know, most people who get into game design aren't usually thinking of analog games, and I'm no exception. My brain operates in video game mechanics and scenarios, dabbling forever in that realm of sense that is beyond the conceptual realm, thinking of new ways to breath life into a world and characters that can be manipulated by my Playstation controller. But...this isn't my point. On to McCloud's book...

In Chapter 2, titled "The Vocabulary of Comics", McCloud explains that the picture of a tobacco pipe isn't a tobacco pipe, despite that the picture is telling the reader otherwise. It literally says, "this is a tobacco pipe", or something to that effect. It's a picture. Of a pipe. But really, it's just lines on a paper, with shading and other details, made to look like a pipe. Comics are an art form that use symbols, and icons, to represent what we as humans can identify as that symbol's and icon's real world counter part. This example is shown better in the picture of a man's face. There are several different steps, starting from a drawing with almost photographic detail, to a stick figure/smiley face combo. But what does our mind see in either case? A person, or a man. Whichever.

What does this have to do with video games? Everything. It can make several different statements, none of which are any less important than the last. Games themselves are indeed a representative art form. Although facial-capture technology and 3D graphics in general are expanding, games even five years ago left a lot of blanks to be filled in by our brains. But this is where I think the whole affair is brilliant: games are nothing more than stacks upon stack of imagination, compiled together to make a journey and experience for humans to take. You could say that a lot of imagination is poured into the creation of a digital game, and a lot of imagination is required to play most analog games. In either case, myself as a game designer and we, people, as players, must be willing to let our minds do what they do best: fill in the blanks.

In the same chapter, McCloud talks about the conceptual world and the realm of senses. The realm of senses is where video games thrive, and I could write much more on this...but I feel it's a little too late in the evening. Next time, then.

March 9th, 2011 - Must Design

   So it's been a couple of crazy weeks. I've truly started to get into the flow of what my life is going to be like, but I'm still working on it. I've started adding contacts, got more in-depth with my storytelling, and also have working my way around some basic game design programs before I tackle the big stuff. Big stuff being? C# and C++ coding language for one, and also the Unity 3D and Unreal Dev. Kit engines. I learn more every day, but I have a certain tendency to try and challenge myself with way too many projects at one time. I keep telling myself, take baby steps, because there's no way all of this information is going to fit inside your head. You're going to lose some of if for sure. So, I'm going to try and stick to my guns and tackle my tasks one at a time.

This is what the agenda has for me: I'm using my Action-Adventure/RPG/Platformer design, tentatively titled 'Dirty Harey', as my focus in my storytelling course right now, so this is giving me a great opportunity to know what is required in order to fully flesh out my stories. There are two big designs in my head right now, 'Dirty Harey' being one of them, and I have so many ideas but lack the structural information to set it all up in order to put it into an actual game design. So I do all the work required for class on DH, then I copy all those same assignments and do the same thing for 'Sanctuary' (my passion project...will detail in a later post) and any other designs I might have. I'm going to take on the "Building a World" and "Interview with your Main Character" assignments tonight.

The other task I need to focus on is making it through all of the tutorials for Game Maker. Luckily, some of the advanced tutorials introduce me to concepts that hold water in other subjects, such as coding, so working my way around game design programs such as this is going to be a big help. There are a couple other programs on my list that I plan to download before moving on to learning C#, but again...baby steps. Game Maker first.

Also, I need to start making the best of my LinkedIn connections and start talking to people. What good is a connection if you don't actually have a relationship with that person? It's no good! At all! But this is another one of my main problems...I've taken the Networking Bootcamps, I'm making use of some great networking sites, but I still have a lot of trouble going up to people (in person and on the internet) and talking to them and getting to know them. I get the feeling I came a little too late, that everybody in my classes is already talking, and I missed out on some big inside joke. This is something I feel in the rest of my life as well, not just with my professional connections, and it's a big problem that I need to overcome. Does anybody know how I feel? I hope so. It's always good to know you're not alone, but seriously kid...get over it! Put yourself out there! It'll do you good - people WILL like you.

And...I've digressed. I have a feeling I'll be doing that a lot in these entries, but that's what I'm using this blog for: a professional and personal journal that I invite all to see. I hope when I'm interviewing in the future, my possible employers come across this.

NEXT TIME, ON THE PETER VAUGHN SHOW...I'll talk about my two main designs, so that whoever reads this knows what the heck I'm talking about!