Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
DESIGN RULE
Randomness and Repetition
Destroy Dramatic Tension
The narrative events in a game's story must not occur randomly or arbitrarily, nor should
the narrative repeat itself, even if the play itself is repetitive.
To design a game that includes a stor y, you must inter weave the gameplay—the
actions taken to overcome the game's challenges—with the narrative events of the
story. Narrative events must be interspersed among the gameplay events in such a
way that all events feel related to each other and part of a single sequence that
entertains the player. If the gameplay concerns exactly the same subject matter as
the narrative—and it should, in order to present a coherent and harmonious
whole—then the entire experience, play and narrative together, will feel like one
continuous story.
The storytelling engine does the weaving. Chapter 2, “Design Components and
Processes,” introduced the storytelling engine briefly as the third major component
of a video game along with the core mechanics and the user interface. Unlike the
other two, the storytelling engine is optional; if the game doesn't tell a story, it
doesn't have a storytelling engine.
Just as the core mechanics generate the gameplay, the storytelling engine manages
the interweaving of narrative events into the game. The core mechanics oversee the
player's progress through the game's challenges; the storytelling engine oversees
the player's progress through the game's story. The storytelling engine and core
mechanics must work together to create a single, seamless experience.
Figure 7.1
illustrates the relationship between the storytelling engine, core
mechanics, user interface, and player. Notice that Figure 7.1 resembles Figure 2.1
from Chapter 2. Figure 2.1 showed how the core mechanics produce and manage
gameplay. Figure 7.1 shows how both the core mechanics and storytelling engine
together produce the experience of interacting with a story.
As the section “Interactive Stories” explained earlier, an interactive story contains
three types of events: player events, in-game events, and narrative events. The core
mechanics manage the player events and in-game events, as the figure shows. The
storytelling engine manages the narrative events. However, the storytelling engine
does more than just play movies or cut-scenes; it also keeps track of the progress of
the story and determines what part of the plot should come next.
