Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
for all intents and purposes, us. And in a properly constructed story, we
very strongly
identify
with him.
In games, the player almost always takes on the role of Hero. Because of
this, identification with the Hero is even more crucial than in other
storytelling media. After all, you aren't just watching or following the Hero;
you inhabit the character's body, controlling him not unlike the way you
control a car.
In his seminal noniction graphic topic
Understanding Comics
, Scott
McCloud points out that when a person drives a car he considers the
vehicle to be an extension of his own body. If someone bumps his vehicle
from behind and you ask him what happened, he won't say, “That jerk's car
hit my car!” He'll say, “That jerk hit me!”
This happens in games, too. When you're playing
Tomb Raider
and you
see your avatar Lara Croft fall to her death, you don't say, “Dammit, she
fell.” You say, “Dammit, I fell.” You're not just following the Hero—you
are
the Hero.
But it goes even further than that. While a player avatar is a vehicle of
sorts, it is much more than a car. It's a character, a person, with opinions,
desires, and intentions. And if those character traits put him at odds with
the desires and intentions of the player, it can generate
ludonarrative dis-
sonance
: an uncomfortable contradiction or disconnect between the
player, the game design, and/or the narrative elements.
The dissonance may come from the narrative depiction of the main
character not being consistent with what that character actually does in
gameplay. Or it may result from the player's desires and the player charac-
ter's desires (or required objectives) being at odds.
A hypothetical case of ludonarrative dissonance would be a standard
military first-person shooter game design paired with a narratively pacifist-
ic player character. The player who picks up a military FPS
wants
to shoot
enemies, and plenty of them. That's why he bought the game! If the char-
acter controlled by the player does
not
want to shoot anyone, the result
will be either a glaring contradiction (the player is allowed to shoot despite
the character's stated moral code) or frustration (if the player is blocked
from shooting due to the character's pacifism).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, an excellent case of player/avatar
desire alignment would be a situation in which the enemy has frustrated or
angered the player character and the player at the same time, causing
them both to want payback. A good example of this is in the opening play-
