Storytelling and Narrative - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 165

Dramatic Tension and Gameplay Tension
Many designers are led astray by a false analogy between two superficially similar
concepts, dramatic tension and gameplay tension . This section defines these terms,
discusses their role in entertaining the player, and explains why you shouldn't
confuse them.
DRAMATIC TENSION
When a reader reads (or a viewer watches) a story, she feels dramatic tension , the
sense that something important is at stake coupled with a desire to know what
happens next. (Screenwriters call this conflict , but game developers use conflict to
refer to the opposition of hostile forces in a game and prefer dramatic tension ,
which is more accurate in any case.) Dramatic tension is the essence of storytelling,
whatever the medium. Cliffhangers —exciting situations at the ends of book chap-
ters or TV shows that remain unresolved until the next chapter or episode—
increase the audience's sense of dramatic tension and ensure they stick around to
see the situation resolve. At the climactic event of a story, the action turns, so that
instead of the tension mounting, the tension begins to fall.
GAMEPLAY TENSION
When a player plays a game, he feels gameplay tension , also a sense that something
important is at stake and a desire to know what happens next. But gameplay ten-
sion arises from a different source than dramatic tension does; it comes from the
player's desire to overcome a challenge and his uncertainty about whether he will
succeed or fail. In multiplayer games, the player's uncertainty about what his oppo-
nents will do next also creates gameplay tension.
THE FALSE ANALOGY
Game designers have tended to perceive an analogy between dramatic tension and
gameplay tension, as if the two terms simply denoted the same feeling. However,
the analogy is a false one. Dramatic tension depends on the reader's identification
with a character (or several of them) and curiosity about what will happen to that
character. Gameplay tension does not require any characters. A darts player feels
gameplay tension in wondering whether he can hit the bull's-eye, but that situation
provides dramatic tension only if the outcome matters to a character in the context
of a story.
A key difference between dramatic tension and gameplay tension lies in the differ-
ing abilities of these feelings to persist in the face of randomness and repetition .
Randomness means unpredictable and arbitrary changes in the course of events.
Repetition refers to identical (or extremely similar) events occurring at different
times in the progress of the story or game.