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    THE MOONLIGHTERS

    A NARRATIVE LISTENING APPROACH TO VIDEOGAME STORYTELLING

    by

    Teddy Diefenbach

    A Thesis Presented to theFACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS

    UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAIn Partial Fulfillment of the

    Requirements for the DegreeMASTER OF FINE ARTS(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)

    May 2012

    Copyright 2012 Teddy Diefenbach

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    Acknowledgements

    To Richard Lemarchand, my good friend and thesis advisor, who every week

    challenged me on design decisions I hadnt even realized Id made.

    To my chair Jeremy Gibson for trusting me with a subject he cares so

    much about, and to IMD faculty Tracy Fullerton, Laird Malamed, Mark Bolas,

    Steve Anderson, Vince Diamante, and Chris Swain for guiding my work.

    To the shadow council Jamie Antonisse, Scott Gillies, Anthony Ko, Matt

    Korba, and Asher Vollmer for parsing my design rants into the wee small hours.

    To Mari Arakaki, Sara Engelhardt, Alexa Rockman, Kenny Wood, Katie

    Gately, and the rest of the Moonlighters team for breathing life into my ridiculous

    Hollywood JRPG vision.

    To my design partner Mike Sennott, who supported 1950s dragons from

    the start.

    To my friends and family for not forgetting my existence when I vanished.

    And to Samantha Diefenbach, ever enthusiastic, smiling, and supportive

    as I stole her brilliant ideas and disappeared for days at a time.

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    Table of Contents

    Acknowledgements................................................................................................ iiAbstract ................................................................................................................. vProject Description.................................................................................................1

    Narrative Listening Introduction ..................................................................1Goal ............................................................................................................2Game Genre ...............................................................................................2Heist Movie Influence..................................................................................3Aesthetic .....................................................................................................4

    Narrative Listening in Detail...................................................................................5The Effect....................................................................................................5Design Implementation ...............................................................................6Technical Implementation...........................................................................7Narrative Listening Prior Art........................................................................8The Tenets of Narrative Listening.............................................................10The Advantages of Narrative Listening.....................................................12

    Other Narrative Systems: Prior Art ......................................................................15Morality Systems.......................................................................................15Branching Path / Choose Your Own Adventure Systems ......................16Multiple Endings........................................................................................17Relationship Systems ...............................................................................17

    Evaluation............................................................................................................19Findings ....................................................................................................19Challenges................................................................................................20

    Conclusion ...........................................................................................................22Contribution to the Field............................................................................22Potential Benefits ......................................................................................22Next Steps ................................................................................................23

    References ..........................................................................................................25

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    v

    Abstract

    Videogames that feature pre-authored, scripted stories for their players face a

    fundamental conflict with the nature of interactive media they do not react to the

    players choices and actions. Game narrative designers have attempted a

    number of solutions to this conflict, creating systems that allow the story to

    change dynamically in response to the player.

    The Moonlighters is an action role-playing game I developed to

    experiment with Narrative Listening, a new dynamic storytelling technique.

    Narrative Listening responds to the actions the player takes using the games

    core play mechanics, and adapts small, isolated fragments of the story to react to

    these actions.

    Narrative Listenings goal is to give the player impact on the story without

    breaking the fourth wall to put her in an authorial position. It gives her influence

    without demanding that she step back from gameplay and consider that

    influence.

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    Project Description

    The Moonlighters is a videogame that I designed and created for this thesis. I

    developed it in the Unity game engine with collaborators for art, music, sound,

    and acting contribution.

    Narrative Listening Introduction

    The Moonlighterswas created as an interactive experience to test my hypothesis

    regarding Narrative Listening, a term I have coined for a new game narrative

    design technique that creates a dynamic storytelling experience for the player.

    This technique is inspired by a narrative dynamic I have observed in a number of

    games. However, this dynamic has to my knowledge not previously been

    discussed at length in game design circles as a valid, reproducible method for

    dynamic narrative.

    Narrative Listening is a high-impact, low-scope approach to videogame

    dynamic narrative. That is, changing the outcome of narrative events based on

    the players actions, and not just an unchanging plot. Using this technique, the

    designer plants Listeners at specific moments in time during gameplay, and then

    uses these listeners to make decisions later on about the outcome of a narrative

    branch, where the story can proceed on one of two paths.

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    Goal

    The stated objective of this thesis is to promote an approach to game narrative

    design that is both more impactful to the player and less grand in production

    scope. It is my hope that the techniques I use in the narrative design of The

    Moonlighterswill influence others to branch out beyond more traditional designs.

    Game Genre

    The Moonlighters is an action role-playing game (action RPG), as defined by

    the popular game genre definition that merges an action game with a role-playing

    game. An action RPG uses the primary interaction presented by an action game

    that of real-time control of a player-avatar with challenges that test her ability to

    maneuver the avatar with quick reflexes and precise control. The action RPG

    uses the structure and rewards systems of role-playing games. The role-playing

    elements typically serve secondary purposes indirectly related to the action

    challenge, but also pivotal to the experience. They include systems such as

    allowing the player to upgrade her characters traits and abilities to make her

    more powerful in gameplay, and placing non-enemy characters in the world for

    the purpose of conversation.

    Though The Moonlighters is certainly an action RPG, the design takes

    liberties with some of the tropes of the genre. Its primary departure is in its

    structure. Most action-RPGs create an open-world structure that the player can

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    explore at her leisure. Games like Secret of Mana allow the player to travel

    anywhere, at almost any time. The Moonlighters is a structured, wide-linear

    experience. The game follows a storyline that takes the player to different

    locations. Though the player does revisit the same locations and characters, and

    can explore the game space with some leisure, the games story, not the players

    exploration, determines the timing of these visits. I do this in The Moonlightersto

    create a directed, cinematic and story-driven experience, allowing me to put

    focus on the narrative design.

    Also of note is the way The Moonlightershandles the concept of a town. In

    traditional RPGs, a town is usually a safe haven, where the primary interaction is

    conversation instead of combat. The Moonlighters has this safe haven in the

    Headquarters lounge, where the player can speak to the protagonists and

    upgrade her characters. However, town elements extend into the action

    gameplay areas, as well. During a mission, for example, the player may pause to

    speak with a woman at the bar in the casino, or play a few hands of blackjack.

    Neither of these actions occurs in pursuit of a reward-driven goal. They are

    tangential, explorational, and stress-free.

    Heist Movie Influence

    The heist movie genre influenced my design heavily from the beginning. One of

    my project pillars was to ensure that the player felt clever and charismatic, like

    the smooth criminals in a movie like Oceans Eleven. I chose this genre because

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    it relies heavily on an ensemble cast of characters. I decided early on that an

    ensemble would offer rich opportunities for Narrative Listening scenarios. Beyond

    this, heist movie structure dictated the structure of the game. Each episode of the

    game revolves around one heist, which is broken down into the tasks completed

    by different team members.

    Aesthetic

    The look and feel of this game were designed to be a slowly introduced blend of

    1950s Hollywood glamour and the exaggerated Japanese high-fantasy aesthetic

    of Japanese RPGs circa 1996. In all creative elements, I strove to reach an 80:20

    balance of the former to the latter. The motivation for this was purely personal

    and artistic.

    The theme of the game

    s story is adapting to change. The story follows

    1950s entertainers who are unable to adapt to the fast changing and fragmenting

    tastes of popular culture into the teen-pop/rock-dominated landscape of the

    1960s up to present day. The game takes place in 1960 at the fulcrum of this

    change.

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    Narrative Listening in Detail

    The Effect

    Narrative Listening is a new approach to adaptive game narrative that focuses on

    a few specific moments in time during gameplay, and determines the outcome of

    a future event based on each moment. This creates a simple one-to-one cause

    and effect connection that is presented to the player at the time of effect. This

    provides more emotional impact and more nuanced meaning, because instead of

    presenting itself outwardly to the player as a narrative system, it resides in the

    background and keeps the player feeling and behaving like a character in the

    story, and not an author of the story through a playable system. Since any

    moment of gameplay could affect the future of the scripted story, it imbues more

    emotional meaning into each action the player makes.

    It does this while requiring less depth of system development than

    traditional narrative systems that do more constant analysis of the players

    decisions. Narrative Listening reflects the real world, in which the outcome of an

    event is not always a result of the sum of all our decisions up to that point. More

    often we look for a more comprehensible one-to-one causality, attributing a single

    decision to the effect we are observing.

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    Design Implementation

    Creation of Narrative Listening is straightforward and relatively simple to execute,

    depending on the scope of the Narrative Listening Event in question:

    1. Choose a point in the story for the Narrative Listening Event (NLE)

    The NLE is the point in the game where the effect of a cause-effect relationship is

    revealed. The narrative designer and writer must choose a moment that is ripe

    for a branching path, where multiple possible outcomes are interesting in the

    grander scheme of the games full story.

    2. Choose a point or points in gameplay for the Listener

    This is the cause of the cause-effect relationship with the NLE. The numbering

    here is misleading. In practical implementation, the Listener should be chosen in

    tandem with the NLE, and the two should be narratively connected with real

    meaning.

    3. Design the outcomes

    The NLE will have to present the player with one of multiple outcomes, based on

    its analysis of the Listener. These outcomes should all fit and make sense in the

    world, and each outcome should connect to the Listener and NLE in a

    perceivable way.

    The creator must consider each of these steps simultaneously. They must

    be narratively tied in a way that makes clear, logical sense to both the writer and

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    the player. The cause-effect relationship must make natural sense to the

    audience.

    Technical Implementation

    There is no specific technical way in which to implement a Narrative Listener or

    NLE. Since this approach is by definition non-systematic, there are no technical

    hurdles that designers inherently face. Each NLE is only as complex to

    implement as it needs to be.

    For example, say a designer wants to setup a Narrative Listener in a game

    level that pays attention to which of two doors a player opens first. This is as

    simple as recording a single Boolean value to store the player s decision.

    Notably, replaying the Listener moment to the player at the moment of the

    NLE can be more technically challenging than the Listener, again depending on

    how the designer wishes to do so. If, in an action game, the narrative designer

    wishes to play back the exact gameplay moment of the Listener, the

    development team may have to implement some form of gameplay recording and

    playback engine. Fortunately, the team can take as many shortcuts in this

    implementation as possible, since the engine would only be used for a handful of

    NLE moments. Perhaps the engine could ignore small details, and only record

    player positions every few seconds.

    Ultimately, the technical challenges vary widely between NLEs, from a

    single stored Boolean to a complex playback engine. As in any game design

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    task, the designer implementing Narrative Listening must be mindful of the cost

    and benefit of any given technical solution.

    Narrative Listening Prior Art

    I typically refer to two examples when discussing Narrative Listening:

    Chrono Trigger

    Squaresofts 1995 RPG Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo Entertainment

    System features the most striking and direct example of Narrative Listening

    inspiration. Several hours into the game, the protagonist and main player

    character Chrono is arrested and hauled before a judge. He is then put on trial,

    during which seven previously insignificant side characters come forth as

    character witnesses and give testimony.

    Each witness refers back to a moment during real action gameplay in

    which the player made a split-second decision that, in the eyes of the witness,

    reflected on Chrono either positively or negatively. One juror, for example,

    observed the first encounter between Chrono and his now-companion Marle. The

    two met by running into one another and falling over. Back at that moment during

    gameplay, the player regained control of Chrono after he stood back up. In order

    to progress the story, the player had to pick up a pendant that Marle dropped.

    One witness in the trial testifies about this moment in gameplay. If the

    player chose to return the pendant immediately to Marle, the testimony reflects

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    on Chrono positively. If the player chose to talk to a shop vendor and perhaps

    sell it, or even later admits to being tempted, it reflects negatively. Though this

    action is viewed as a moral decision in retrospect, the player had little reason to

    consider it would have such an impact at the time. This event creates a

    meaningful narrative moment for two reasons:

    1. The player does not view it as a narrative choice, but rather as a regulargameplay decision. This keeps her in the role of a player and participant in

    the story, instead of presenting her with an explicit narrative choice and

    forcing her to be an active author.

    2. The player does not see this coming, but is shown the events that led upto the current accusation in court. This causal link created between

    gameplay and story echoes for many hours into the game. Though no

    such moment occurs again for the rest of the game, players feel as though

    the games story could be listening to their actions during gameplay at

    any given moment, making every action more meaningful in their eyes.

    Bastion

    Supergiant Games Bastion was released this year on multiple platforms. The

    game features a voiced narrator, who narrates the gameplay from moment to

    moment, commenting on the action and the story events. Throughout the game,

    the narrator speaks based on listeners setup in the game, telling the narrator to

    make certain comments based on the players actions. Here, the players actions

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    do not affect the outcome of the story in any way, but like in Chrono Trigger, the

    player feels as though the game is listening to her every move.

    Later in the game, the narrator comments on gameplay actions less

    frequently. Presumably the designers chose to ease off on gameplay play-by-

    play to avoid it becoming repetitive or bothersome to the player. Instead, the

    narrator focuses more exclusively on telling stories about the history of the

    environments the player travels through.

    Though the narrator late in the game is commenting on player actions less

    frequently, the impact of the early gameplay listening echoes on. Since the

    player is taught early on that the game is paying attention to her actions, she

    holds onto this assumption for the remainder of the game, even when the game

    is not listening at all.

    The Tenets of Narrative Listening

    In exploring this concept, I brainstormed and fleshed out many different ideas for

    NLEs. As I weeded through them to find the best candidates for The

    Moonlighters, I discovered common razors by which I was doing so. Through this

    process I identified a list of tenets that could guide my thinking and others in the

    selection of NLE opportunities. As the project moved forward, I refined this list:

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    1. The Cause-Effect relationship should be showable

    The connection between cause and effect must be clear and logical, so that the

    player can easily comprehend. The player will understand the cause-effect

    relationship best if the cause can be played back, either in a flashback or a

    specific recounting. The cause can consist of a multiple moments, but they must

    be easily explainable without relying heavily on statistical calculation. If the player

    cant do the math, the NLE shouldnt.

    2. The Cause should be a conscious player choice

    If the player is to feel responsible for this choice, it must not be so minute that the

    player doesnt feel that she knowingly made it. Furthermore, this choice shouldnt

    involve a constraining skill check. If the player isnt skilled enough to make a

    choice, then it isnt really a choice at all. Ideally, this conscious choice also steers

    clear of explicit moral lines. Since players are likely familiar with moral systems in

    games, this could easily reveal a hidden Listener and pull the player out of her

    experience.

    3. Listeners should be as unique and discrete as possible

    As soon as the player begins to recognize commonalities between Listeners, she

    may be able to predict them, or at least be distracted by the hypothesis that she

    is able to do so. While the approach to creating variety between Listeners will

    vary between games, it is safe to assume that one should avoid overusing them.

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    As soon as NLEs become frequent, the player will start to smell a system at work

    and be distracted.

    4. The player should never miss an NLE

    No matter what her decisions in the game, the player should encounter every

    implemented NLE. If there is a path through the game that misses one Event, the

    player community will quickly identify this, and players may begin to look up hints

    online. Ease the players minds by ensuring that NLEs are guaranteed.

    5. NLEs must provide balanced gameplay benefit

    Every outcome of a given NLE should reward or punish the player in comparable

    ways, lest the player be made to feel she has made the wrong choice and is

    being punished. However, it is notable that Narrative Listening allows for unequal

    narrative impact. As long as each outcome provides a balanced gameplay result,

    one narrative result can be decidedly more negative than another. For example, if

    a member of the players party dies from one NLE outcome, the game should

    compensate by introducing a new, mechanically similar character. In this

    example, the gameplay outcome is balanced, but the narrative impact was

    explicitly negative.

    The Advantages of Narrative Listening

    Narrative Listening keeps the player in the role of active audience/story

    character, and not of an author. Since it doesnt present itself to the player as a

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    manipulateable system, there is no pressure on the player to try to optimize her

    success by making right decisions for the story. Instead, she makes the right

    decisions for her instincts, and the story reacts accordingly. This makes the story

    feel more like an adaptive, complex, nuanced experience, and less like a system

    to be prodded and poked.

    This non-systematic approach has the added advantage of touching on

    the nuances of consequence that traditional adaptive story systems do not.

    Systems, for example, that change a story based on the player s dialog choices

    are inherently more clear-cut than their real-life counterparts, in which context,

    framing, and even vocal tone can have an impact on the outcome of those

    choices. Narrative Listening, on the other hand, though it is technically just as

    simple, can make the player feel as though the game s consequences are

    nuanced. Since the cause of any given outcome is difficult to foresee, it mirrors

    that same dynamic from real-world human interactions without actually being so

    complicated as to feel unfair to the player.

    It is also more flexible. Each NLE is a one-off execution. It doesnt require

    a holistic system that applies to all facets of the game, or all story situations.

    Each event can be custom-tailored to the experience it is trying to create.

    This flexibility provides the creators with an adjustable scope. For shorter

    games, the effect is even more noticeable. With zero investment in a large story

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    system, any game creator could implement just one NLE in a game to create a

    memorable moment, much like the one trial event in Chrono Trigger.

    The main challenge in implementing Narrative Listening is that it cannot be

    designed until the story itself is designed. I faced this challenge in the production

    of The Moonlighters, as it was impossible to create a Narrative Listening design

    until I had written the story, and was difficult to test an NLE in isolation from

    gameplay context. In other words, the NLE cant be built in parallel with the

    gameplay it listens to. It must be built afterwards.

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    Other Narrative Systems: Prior Art

    There have been many approaches to adaptive or dynamic story for scripted

    games. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, for many of which Narrative

    Listening provides a balancing alternative. Narrative Listening can be used either

    as an alternative to these, or in conjunction with them to keep the player

    guessing (or giving up on guessing). Narrative Listening is not inherently better

    than any one of these. Rather, I used this list to identify what current adaptive

    narratives were unable to accomplish emotionally.

    Morality Systems

    A morality system ascribes moral judgment to the players actions, typically

    giving feedback in the form of a meter that swings from evil to good in describing

    the players sum moral choices in gameplay and/or dialog.

    Sources:

    Fableseries, Mass Effectseries, Knights of the Old Republic, Black & White

    Strengths:

    The system is very readable. The player immediately understands the nature of

    her decisions. The game gives direct, instant moral feedback to the player. It is

    easy to connect this meter to gameplay consequences.

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    Weaknesses:

    The player becomes an author in this system when presented with explicit moral

    choices. The narrative system is presented so clearly, and is often so relevant to

    gameplay gain, that the player will begin to game the system and try to milk it for

    the best mechanical outcome. Systems of this nature mostly punish what might

    otherwise be interesting moral ambiguity, and the player is encouraged to

    become a pure hero or a loathed heel.

    Branching Path / Choose Your Own Adventure Systems

    A branching path system locates key character decision points in the story, and

    then presents two or more options to the player at each point, creating a

    branching tree structure of story outcomes.

    Sources:

    Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

    Strengths:

    It gives a powerful level of player interactivity with the story at key junctions. The

    tree is highly replayable for players who wish to explore different branches.

    Weaknesses:

    It is highly authorial. It creates a high demand for content creation, much of which

    most players will never see or appreciate.

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    Multiple Endings

    Similar to a Branching Path system, but with a focus on one important outcome

    at the end of the story.

    Sources:

    Chrono Trigger, Bastion, Catherine

    Strengths:

    The user feels as though all their work meant something at the end, since the

    story resolution is customized to her playthrough.

    Weaknesses:

    It only occurs once, at the very end of the experience, so a player who does not

    research the game beforehand will be ignorant that her decisions matter. She

    only gets that reward at the very end. Since it comes after so many decisions, it

    can be difficult to impossible for the player to know which of her decisions were

    meaningful. It can be difficult for her to understand why she earned the given

    ending that she did. It has also been played up by the industry as such a feature

    that players are highly aware of it as a system.

    Relationship Systems

    The game tracks the relationships between characters in the game, often all

    under the players control. Gameplay or dialog choices dynamically affected

    these relationships.

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    Sources:

    Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars, Personaseries

    Strengths:

    The system is constantly reacting and developing. It can affect the story both on

    the grander plot level and on the level of minor relationship growth between

    characters. Since it supports multiple characters who may be interacting in

    gameplay, the system can have dramatic impact on challenges.

    Weaknesses:

    To be consistent and effective, the system must usually be complex and

    integrated into core gameplay at all times.

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    Evaluation

    Findings

    The intent of this project was to test the boundaries of Narrative Listenings

    effectiveness. From my review of prior art, I was certain from the start that

    Narrative Listening, when implemented clearly, would have an impact on the

    players emotional experience and connection to the story and game world.

    Specifically though, I set out to find answers to the following two questions:

    First: what are the unexpected requirements (tenets) of effective Narrative

    Listening? What key attributes can bolster or destroy the emotional and

    immersive effectiveness of any given NLE?

    Second: How many NLEs are too many? Previous examples of techniques

    representing Narrative Listening have one or only a few of these in their entire

    experience. In my most prominent example Chrono Trigger, only one occurs, and

    takes up ten minutes out of a 40-hour game. Is there a density of NLEs at which

    the player begins to expect them too much?

    The first question was fairly straightforward enough to at least begin to

    answer. Paper walkthroughs of Narrative Listening situations demonstrated some

    obvious factors that spoiled Narrative Listening, or simply muddied its definition. I

    cant say how refined my final list is, given limited testing at the time of writing,

    but I know that I have begun to assemble a functional guide for others who may

    wish to try this.

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    Answering the second question has proven difficult. While the first

    question could be touched on with paper testing and discussion, the second one

    is more directly dependent on my test NLEs falling within the digital game I

    designed for them. As a result, I am only just beginning testing of this (see the

    next section). My suspicion from research and interviews with players is that I will

    be able to employ multiple NLEs in a game, provided that their characteristics

    and temporal placement in the game seem too random for the player to

    anticipate.

    Challenges

    Production Demands

    By far, the biggest challenged I have faced in exploring Narrative Listening was

    the production overhead required to test the concept. I was able to do limited

    testing of the concept with paper playtesting, but those findings were merely

    preliminary.

    Narrative Listening is based on tracking choices that the player makes

    using regular gameplay mechanics and the actions they provide to the player.

    This is important so that the player cannot distinguish between any given regular

    gameplay moment, and a moment that is being followed by a Listener. As a

    consequence, this required that I build an engaging and entertaining core

    mechanic before I could conduct any Narrative Listening. I spent the first four

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    months of study working purely on the gameplay systems, as they were a

    prerequisite for my final Narrative Listening results to be worthwhile.

    Compounding this challenge is that any narrative design technique must

    reside within a narrative. That is, I had to develop the story before, or at least

    simultaneously with, the adaptive narrative in question. Even more demanding is

    the fact that Narrative Listening is event-based. For it to feel properly fitted into a

    larger story experience, an NLE cannot be the only story event the player

    experiences. Thus, any given NLE requires that I write and design multiple story

    moments.

    Non-Duplication

    Since Narrative Listening is inherently non-systematic and unpredictable, each

    NLE must be unique in what it listens for and how it responds. This makes

    iteration and running multiple discrete tests a very high-scope endeavor. Each

    NLE is unique and built from scratch. For any given game, this can be a

    production scope benefit, but for the purposes of testing many NLEs for research

    beyond the scope of one game, it proves laborious. There is little to no efficiency

    found across multiple unique NLEs.

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    Conclusion

    Contribution to the Field

    This project has produced a good primer on Narrative Listening, at least enough

    for an introduction to the community of narrative designers and encourage others

    explore it. The basic tenets I have determined provide an easy Do/Dont Do

    checklist for others who wish to learn the technique.

    Any game design innovation, no matter how unique, insightful, or powerful,

    can only impact the field at large if it is engaging enough to players. Simply, if a

    game is not fun to play, no one will play it. A brilliant game design achievement

    contributes absolutely nothing to the medium if it remains unseen.

    Following this sentiment, I believe this project will contribute very little to

    the field until I am able to release the game itself to a large audience. Thus, much

    of my immediate follow up to this thesis will be the continued production of the

    game itself, containing a number of NLEs that I will determine players will most

    enjoy. Only at that point would a larger discussion of this technique break through

    into the popular dialog.

    Potential Benefits

    Narrative Listening can provide a powerful and more nuanced alternative to

    traditional game narrative systems. All existing systems treat human interactions

    as systems that can be predicted too easily. In a game of Mass Effect, the player

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    always knows that his dialog choice to act as a Paragon or Renegade will

    directly impact the current mission; the more extreme her moral choice, the more

    reward she will receive.

    On the contrary, Narrative Listening treats any human interaction moment

    as unpredictable. As people, we have no clear understanding of how our actions

    will affect those around us. Sometimes seemingly insignificant moments can

    have grand repercussions. Narrative Listening explores this concept in the

    videogame medium.

    Next Steps

    Beyond my own continued production of The Moonlighters, it is my hope that this

    game will inspire another designer to explore Narrative Listening in a different

    game. As game designers, we recognize that our medium is an interactive and

    iterative one. No amount of discussion in response to this thesis will prove

    whether or not Narrative Listening is a viable narrative technique for many

    games, or whether it is merely a niche approach to storytelling. That data will only

    come from multiple games exploring variations on this technique.

    Data on the effectiveness of Narrative Listening will come in the form of

    indirect observations, at best. NLEs inherently do not define any game. The

    technique is designed to be subtle, and bolster the emotional effectiveness of the

    game. Most discussions I read of my primary inspirations Chrono Triggerand

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    Bastion do not reference their Narrative Listening-like dynamics as their

    primary appeal.

    Instead, designers who utilize Narrative Listening will have to look to its

    impact on players memories. We will look to see whether the Narrative Listening

    events were particularly powerful to the player in order to judge whether they are

    worth including in more and more games to come

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    References

    Barrett, Felix and Maxine Doyle, dir. Sleep No More. The McKittrick Hotel, NewYork City: Punchdrunk, 2011.

    Harrigan, Pat, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, ed. Second Person: Role-Playing andStory in Games and Playable Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

    Hashino, Katsura, dir. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Dev. Atlus. Atlus, 2009.

    Hudson, Casey, dir. Mass Effect 2. Des. Preston Watamaniuk. Dev. BioWare.Electronic Arts, 2010.

    Hudson, Casey, dir. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Des. James Ohlen.Dev. BioWare. LucasArts, 2003.

    Ishii, Koichi, dir. Secret of Mana. Des. Hiromichi Tanaka. Dev. Square. Square,

    1993.

    Kitase, Yoshinori, dir. Final Fantasy VI. Des. Hiroyuki Ito. Dev. Square. Square,1994.

    Kitase, Yoshinori, dir. Final Fantasy VII. Des. Hironobu Sakaguchi. Dev. SquareProduct Development Division 1. Square, 1997.

    Kitase, Yoshinori, dir. Final Fantasy VIII. Dev. Square. Square, 1999.

    Kojima, Hideo, dir. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Dir. Shuyo Murata.Dev. Kojima Productions. Konami, 2008.

    Matsuno, Yasumi, dir. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Des. YasumiMatsuno. Dev. Quest. Atlus, 1995.

    Molyneux, Peter, des. Black & White. Des. Lionhead Studios. EA Games, 2001.

    Molyneux, Peter, dir. Fable II. Dev. Lionhead Studios. Microsoft Game Studios,

    2008.

    Oji, Hiroi, des. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. Dev. Sega. NIS America, 2010.

    Rao, Amir, des. Bastion. Writer Greg Kasavin. Dev. Supergiant Games. WarnerBros. Interactive Entertainment, 2011.

    Schatz, Andy, dir. Monaco. Dev. Pocketwatch Games. Not yet released.

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    Soejima, Shigenori, prod. Catherine. Dev. Atlus Persona Team. Atlus, 2011.

    Tanaka, Shuntaro, dir. Valkyria Chronicles. Dir. Takaharu Terada. Dev. Sega

    WOW. Sega, 2008.

    Tokita, Takashi, dir. Chrono Trigger. Dirs. Yoshinori Kitase, Akihiko Matsui. Des.Hiroyuki Ito, Hironobu Sakaguchi. Dev. Square. Square, 1995.