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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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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
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