Posts

What why and how of environmental storytelling

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I continue exploring theory of good narrative design, and few days ago I’ve read ‘What happened here’ by Harvey Smith and Matthias Worch It is originally a talk at GDC which I consumed it in form of slides, that explains ways to tell the interactive story using environment, and how to do it beautifully. I would explain environmental storytelling as spacial non-verbal and static communication - and I emphasize on static because it doesnt involve sounds, music, and other variables that work together in scene definition. It includes physical scene and action limits, communication points, player identity shapers and reinforcement and the narrative context. First 2 concepts belong more to Mechanics and Dynamics if we look at it from the MDA framework perspective, so its understandable why authors arent focused much on them. Reinforcing players identity is where it becomes interesting, because here aestetics- who player is - directly influences mechanics - what player should be able and sho...
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The motivation of hiding: Control vs Trust

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My today's subject is not about gaming but is tightly related. I’ve just read about the Iceberg mode of narrative. It’s a writing technique that was introduced by Ernest Hemingway and emphasizes minimalism by only telling the surface-level actions, dialogue, and details, leaving readers to infer the deeper meaning themselves. The main idea is to trust that the reader also knows the background that the writer does, and to allow the reader to develop their own perception and own feelings. It is an interesting approach, and even though on the surface engineering works similarly, in an API we expose as minimum as required and hide the logic and wiring underneath, the motivation and the outcome are quite the opposite. In engineering, encapsulation is to control what information is exposed, and if the user understands the working logic differently, it is, in essence, a bug. Whereas in narrative, the evocation is there to entrust the reader with knowing the shared context, and a new insig...
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The Room - and how I forgot I’ve already played it.

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I love point and click games, and The Room turns to be first game of this genre that I played using my new narrative design ‘lense’. The irony of it, right?   The room initially gives impression of simple point and click game, with complex but not overly complex puzzles, and it goes parallel to the story from the inventor, who discovered The Null. The story is told in letters, he calls the Null a fifth element along air water earth and fire, he is describing it neither matter nor energy, and the non conformity of element is being emphasized everywhere. In the end of main game there’s a door that - next letter lets us know - we cannot come back to real world anymore. Its all phantasmagorical and logically illogical.  I say puzzles go in parallel with story, because it is really so - they are not connected, and it creates a lack of narrative interation.  My main love point from the game design perspective is how developers kept amount of items to use and scenery limiti...
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Firewatch

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 I played Firewatch couple of weeks ago, but I know already it will take a very special place in my heart. It is far from being either first or most exciting game I’ve played, but it is first game I -looked- into. I chose it from proposed list of games with strong narrative, and it first it didnt strike me a game I would even enjoy. Beginning with text choices and very limited graphics, a lot of talking and walking.. I ended up so involved! it cause strong emotional response in me. The best in the game is even having absolutely no time pressure, it succeeded in creating tension! Action! I couldnt imagine the game that doesnt involve any weapon, fight or in fact any real human interaction, can in same time have jump scares! I was achieved through environment graphics, light and sound flawlessly, and it was a perfect case of how narrative works in a scene. I loved so many details in that game - the backstory with main hero’s wife, the unfolding in-game story itself, the way it unfol...
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