July 30th (Reading Notes) Storyplaying

-FN= decision point? first person narrative?
-decision points need more than one choice
-video games are the main thing that have choices
-there are rules that shows the options and how they will affect the story (like sids)
-Choice is what video games are about
-does the player know what the effects of the choices are?
-Agency is a thing and there are different ways of using it.
-choice can be uninformed and random
-choice can make you win and fail
-choices can give you info on the better one.
-their fullest interactivity is about knowing consequence
-choice is at least 2 options.
-player doesnt know it has to be a choice.
-awareness can be given though
-choice can have different motives behind it
-usually the player is interested
-player expect one option to be better.
-to have motivation you need to be informed about it.
-amount of context shows what kind of choice it is.
-if the game says it will have an effect in its context,the player will  think the choices are different
-there may not even be a difference in the "choices" (illusion of choice)
-one choice must be viewed better they must differ.
-motivation is usually moral

-motivation and logic helps the choice
-choices with little info and no motivation are tedious.
-player can choose logically and randomly
-context can give no info,some info with lacking parts for the whole perspective,and all the info for whole perspective
-no info= whatever choice is okay
-too much info worsens your experience.
-no conflict=no interest
-should never say the right choice
-random choices dont work even with motivation (ie gambling)
-player doesnt feel anything is certain but things could happen.
-player is uncertain on outcomes and organizes which is better based on the info they have.
-players feel they have power if they think the choices change the story/game.
-sense of choice but the choice is meaningless without different outcomes.
-Info you get effects gameplay and immersion.
-not all choices need motivation.
-not playing anymore is an option.
-in story games,player has no motive to start.
-competitive games do as its "win"
-other choices can get in the way of what you are eventually gonna do,(side missions and ditraction quests)
-choices can switch motives from game to story (ie better Armour in a side quest instead of the main mission)
-side mission can have story too but it doesnt progress the main story usually.
-curiosity is key.
-consequence makes suspense
-exploration should done at your own pace.
-since you can explore and progress story,why not both?
-linear means you cant go back
-exploration can be more random.
-exploration doesnt mean winning ,just experienced.
-completing sometimes isnt winning ,its experiencing the whole game.
-games can have no time or urgency.
-real life = theres time    game= do it whenever you feel like
-a pro to gaming is there you can stop time. (with the pause button)
-games can restrict time (turnbased)
-in turn based the moving doesnt matter time wise
because its turnbased.
-you can add urgency back into turnbased games with time limits
-timed events can be more exciting
-quick time events ....
-time in games can go wit real time to add immersion
-time is an illusion in games
-reflex choice are a thing
-thinking subconciously under pressure is a technique
-reflexes are a thing in combat
-platforming is a thing.
-barrels are urgency
-turns can have different times and level of agency
-turn based pauses agency
-you have enough time to react to make a reflex choice
-moral comes to reflex faster
-choices can have different time restraints to each other.
-choices can prevent change or cause it.
-spatial advancing enemies/problems,whereas terraria is time limit problems and prgression through environment adjustment.
-cause and effect in sim city where as minecraft can only have cause in classic mode
-starcraft/age of empires forces you to build for protection

July 30th (Game Questions) Banner Saga

Discuss the ingame design and implementation of decision point in your game ie the actual way conveying choice to the player looks and functions.

 Banner Saga:

The story choices were placed on a scroll which fit in with the character Ubin who always carried notes with him recording his perspective of history.He usually made the decisions as he had authority on practically everything at the start.Some icons glowed when hovered over to show its a thing to chose.
The text of the choices were sometimes runic and almost hidden as wind flowing over the landscape.
I felt the options should glow from the start as you could miss some hidden and think you have less choices.I missed the market the first time as I didn't see it.The text answers you could select you worded to show different attitudes.But I never knew which were choices and which were the character getting more info.It may have needed some separation eg red text could be choice,yellow text could be questions/getting info.

The gameplay choices were intuitive as the fist icon was attack and the shield breaking was to lower enemy defense.These icons linked up to the enemy health and defense icons.I did find it confusing why the health was a fist still.It seemed they connect health and strength in a weird way.
The blue squares indicated where you could go,yellow indicated using willpower to go further.
I feel the whole willpower icons and such were confusing as the choices for willpower didnt show properly to me what power was draining from where,I never knew how much willpower was left in a character or if it was just their will level.
Willpower was a star icon which to me didn't really indicate what it was all about.
Whereas maybe it could make a character glow or move differently to show that they had the option to use willpower.

I felt the tutorials icons,buttons and text/highlight showed the player the options well but some icons need to click on a player or a different place to open up other menus for them they could have been displayed from the get go.

July 29th (Gaming Notes) Banner Saga

Questions:

Evaluate use of decision points according to Sids requirements for a game choice.

Discuss the meaningful outcome of choices on the story.

Discuss the way in which the choices are displayed.

Other notes:


Quite a long introduction in an animated cutscene
Tutorial with text box UI popping up.
Introducing game mechanics.

Picture icons showing choices (fist=attack,broken shield=break down enemies defense)

I like how this lets you move at your own pace to make informed decisions.The only thing that has urgency is missing information in a cutscene.

The first choice was three dialogue answers to choice from,all spoken with different attitudes.
locations to choose had highlighted lineart when moused over.

not sure how intimidating effected Hadd's actions and future actions

stylized runic writing to describe locations.

 some choices seem to give different ideas of who ubin is to others and how they think about him directly after a choice,but im unsure if that is a short term effect or long term.

I'm wondering if certain characters can die and effect the story or some cant die and cause you to start again.

One of my characters died.

I had the option to talk to two seperate people but im unsure if that meant anything as I wenty to the other after,maybe its different depending on the order.

sometimes theres only one choice but one may have been taken away if I did something differently.
A travel sequence showing the party moving location.

Sounds indicate an upcoming battle,readying the player.

the tutorial lead my player into death while it was teaching me,that intergrated teaching and progressed the story .

I might have been supposed to lose the fight for the story.

Vognir died permanently,not sure if he had to.

A separate story seems to have started after the other party lost.

difficulty doesnt affect story.


not sure how losing affects story or if you were supposed to lose.
not sure if the first story was supposed to end there.

the choice of strength or breaking armour is difficult as they are almost equally important.

some options seem like they waste time and im not sure if this matters.

seems the characters you were playing as didn't die and the story just switched to other characters.

None of the main characters seem to have permanently died yet,so I don't quite know the consequences.


Other Notes.

Some seemed trivial eg "Does my green shirt look nice?" (By the way it does) and some seemed to effect the story or how the characters thought of you.I had a feeling the objective decisions may link back into the same next node in the story but I would have to play multiple times to figure it out.
When there was only one choice I felt like the other choices may be unavailable now due to previous decisions.Maybe I annoyed a character or they died and I no longer had that available.But to figure that out I would have to make different options while playing again.


There was no time limit on decisions which I think took away the urgency that the cutscenes had that you couldnt pause or rewind.But on the other hand it fit in the the gameplay choices as they had no urgency to allow for informed decisions.

July 23rd (Game Questions) Prince of Persia -Edited-

Story nodes in Prince of Persia, July 23^rd 2015

The story nodes didn't work well to support the game play in Prince of Persia as they tend to be fighting with each other for attention ,mostly storytelling interrupting game play.

This was shown through my experience playing it. I tend to get the general idea of the objective on on large scale through the cut-scenes but it was not helpful for any of the game play at hand so I relied on the objectives in the game play to progress rather than the cut-scenes as they were mostly context or game play catapults.
The personalities of the characters in the cut-scenes showed their motives and feelings such as the antagonist betraying everyone and tricking the prince into activating the sands of time.It just gives you context rather than how to play the game better or go about it like the surveillance nodes of cinematic shots which showing the area but even they got in the way.


The text objectives that appeared in the game play were at a scale which helped the progression better as it was what was in front of the player,not down the line and unchangeable. Game play needed to be understood to progress but the story didn't need to be understood or even acknowledged to progress.This is my main point as the story supported understanding of what was going on (context) but the game play was what we had to understand .You cannot fail a cut scene but you can fail the game play and not progress.
The story nodes could be completely ignored and would just be waiting time frustrating the player if they were not interested.

To sum everything up the story nodes gave context and objective on a wide scale so it didn't support the immediate game play objectives at hand directly.

July 22nd (Game Questions) Prince of Persia -Edited-

Did linear storytelling in your chosen game engage and excite you as a player? explain why or why not?


The linear storytelling in Prince of Persia was treated as a retelling of the story, with the mistakes made by the player ie death cause the narrator to tell you that it isn't how it went.


The linear storytelling wasn't exciting as a player but more as an audience while the swordplay and mechanics of the game were the exciting parts. Seeing how the things you learnt could be combined and thinking fast in a situation where timing was needed create the excitement from the challenge of it.
The story is engaging through its cinematics and story but from a mystery and intrigue side whereas the gameplay was engaging and exciting through its challenge, action.
The storytelling created tension that sometimes flows into the gameplay tension which kept up the exciting pace (Like when the rock falls in the cutscene creating urgency for the player)
But on the other hand the cinematics and cutscenes sometimes got in the way of the gameplay (camera changing for effect suddenly ,causing the player to die from inverted controls)
This happened many times throughout my play through as the cinematics and cutscenes took some agency from the player when you needed it (camera angle obscures vision when trying to look or fight )It was like the narrator was butting into the conversation of the game to push excitement in,taking my agency away in the process when I just wanted to fight efficiently without interuption. Objectives gave more motivation than the cutscenes but the storytelling in the objectives were small scale  and uninteresting as they were hints on how to progress.
The past tense of his story being narrated took away a lot of urgency from the gameplay making it less exciting as its a story telling instead of the story unfolding.


The world is the main thing that overlaps as its both part of gameplay (through its environment affecting the character) and through that it immerses you in both sides. Although the environment didn't fully connect with the character I believe this is technology at fault rather than storytelling.

July 21st (Reading Notes) Turning a linear story into game

Gamasutra

Turning a linear story into game: The missing link between fiction and interactive entertainment.


Talking about games getting more popular,it needs to widen its audience by using familiarity of of other text mediums.
Sounds a bit sexist.

Says games limit how you go about writing it.
Says that the article is going to give you tips on how to make a game and that they aren't that far from cinema experience.

Creating a cinematic experience:

Theme,character,script,production  are all things that texts have.   Production =how its shown
books can use a different choice of words to show it differently.
Cinematography can easily transfer into games.

Questioning how to about effectively go about the narrative.

Using a directors knowledge for cinematography.
fusion parts =interactive cutscenes.
game designers need to know narrative and cinematography.


Choice of shots
Certain shots create different moods or put the player in different situations
purposefulness of shots.
some shots arent suitable for gameplay.

these kind of shot can help balance shot control and player camera control.

-taking away player control to show them something important. agency
- issuing objectives?
-slow characters can allow use of nicer shots


Editing

Editing=use of discourse

-dividing cutscenes and gameplay
-changing shots to bring attention/stimulate things
-shortcuts to avoid repetition in gameplay (fast travel)
-context based sound


A credible universe

believable

1-proper interaction between character and environment.
2-believable appropriate decoration
3-environment being to uniform (dont tessalate trees)
4-variety of sound effects
5-avoid repetition of objects
6-give the effect of a living world
7-give life like actions to AI
8-restricting view for immersion
9-realistic damage to give believably

Appropriate game design

Game design must make room for principles above
If someone gets used to a game it bores them
no challenge,no motivation to finish
Too difficult frustration causes them to give up.
He says games shouldnt be longer than 15 hours.

The following mechanisms form solid game design:
10-Linear paced game where you are guided along it at your own pace.
11-Harmonious fusion between action and narration,regular intervals
12-Don't have too many sub plots or things going on at once
13-Side characters provide motivation for the hero,can be played and protect the player.
14-varied actions through familiar common interface
15-correct use of camera for the context of the gameplay
16-hints,skipping difficult parts,lowering difficulty based on performance
17-handle the heros death in a  believable manner

The defining traits of fiction:Theme Character Script Production
Theme being important to guide the cinematography and other aspects for the right atmosphere
Script organizes events and give appropriate info at the right times.ensures events have no unintentional gaps
production combines them all together cohesively
strong theme=successful game
games can have fully developed characters
storyline is support by strong character
story as reward
games can fully reach cinematic levels.

...
Main points
Important things
Believe-ability,Cinematography,Shot control,Balancing agency



Disagree/Agree:
-Games can be longer than 15 hours,there are ways of having quality through solid competition and gameplay with a unique experience each time.Games also don't have to end at their release date.date. -A lot of successful games add onto the existing game.
-A games lifespan can mean multiple things,the time it spends on sale (usually the consoles lifespan)
and the lifespan of retaining enjoyment of the game.
-Some games don't have to be varied and non tessellated.
-I personally don't like a game making things easier for me because I'm having difficulty,I'd rather beat it and get more of a reward out of knowing I did it.
-I don't really agree that only the villains can be weak to ensure believeability. A hero could be extremely weak and cause the player to fully assess situations ,as if they are in the characters shoes where you value your life as the player/character making it more believeable to play as.
I have yet to see a good game where you have heroes that  can perma die and have less heroes ,it usually leads to not being able to finish the game through saving and having a low number of heroes,making impossible content if you needed a certain hero.
-I agree that games usually enable the player to live via proxy,but characters devoid of character can sometimes be better than a character who you hate the personality or reasoning of.Empathy is key.
You can even fill in the personality with your own if given the freedom.
How does this relate to the game I'm playing?
To be continued.

July 17th Post 2 (Game Questions) 9:05 -Edited-

The player assumes a lot from the context they are given and tries to fill in the blanks.
This game was a metaphor about becoming the character.

The player assumes a lot from the context they are given and this may in fact not be what the story is about.This happened to me in 9:05 as I assumed from the context of the character waking up in a house that the house was my character's home when in fact the character had murdered the owner of the house and passed out from injuries before the game started,unknown to the player at the time.

There was no indication at the beginning that this house was or wasn't yours.This is where the player filled in the blanks using the dialogue said by the narrator or characters such as "You should have left ages ago" "You get out of bed" in a way that the we  thought we were a man waking up and getting yelled by his boss on the phone.

The situation of the boss on the phone to the murderer almost perfectly symbolizes the player's interaction with their character.We didn't know any better and neither did the boss.We couldn't see the character and neither could the boss through the phone.The boss assumed he was talking to the employee as it is his home number the same as we assumed we were the employee because we woke up in his bed.

As the story progressed we were given subtle hints such as"You feel like a new man" and "Who are you?!" which became more obvious over time they were not the person we assumed we were from the context of the beginning,confusing the player.

The very fact that the character didn't know his way around the house fit perfectly with the character they were in control of as we couldn't either as we are assuming the role.

July 17th Post 1 (Game Questions) 9:05

(3) Does your chosen game(s) make user input feel meaningful in terms of story direction and progression Why or why not?

The game I chose to answer this question of "Does your game make the user input feel meaningful in terms of story direction and progression and why?" was the game 9:05.

I believe the game does make the user's input feel meaningful but not in the way the use would assume although a lot of the game interaction was trivial boring things a person would naturally do without thinking but that was the point of the story in a way.Having to open doors by typing "open door" and such seemed quite boring and trivial.

The evidence I have for this is because of the meaning behind the story of the game,which is that you think you are having a boring day at work (Getting changed,eating breakfast,getting ready for work,driving to work) but when in fact you are unknowingly a murderer taking the identity of another character who you killed the night before inside his home and passed out. "You feel like a new person""Who are you?" "You had a rougher night than you thought"

This evidence shows how meaningful those actions were when the player assumed they were mundane when they were actually the murderer's attempt at identity theft.This shows how the player unknowingly progressed the story of this murderer with the wrong context of needing to go to work.

In conclusion this game made the player's actions meaningful through using the actions for the plot twist of not being who you think you are.

July 16th (Gaming Notes) 9:05

9:05 Notes:
So far it feels like the game is guiding your answers and giving hints on what you should do,but I feel like you don't have to do exactly what it suggests and sometimes it tells you you must do something else in order to do what you were trying to do.
Doesn't always interpret what you are trying to say
The game is rushing you to get to work but you seem to fight against the game to get what you need which adds to the tension of some supposed time limit
Some things are assumed by the player like entering the shower you assume it would naturally remove clothes and items for you.
A lot of these choices are trivial things we would do naturally in real life.
People's minds work differently so some words seem more obvious than others at times to some people.
Things that seem right to you can be wrong as you don't entirely know the full story.
In a way having to do every single action makes it feel like you are in full control of "Brian Hadley".

I found out game was about identity and self awareness which makes the players actions that of a murdering identity thief instead of who the player thought he was because of the players assumption that he was the person who lived in the house he woke up in.
I didn't actually think that was the end.

Other Gaming Notes
(2) How does your chosen game(s) try to achieve first-person storytelling? Is it successful?

Facade:
It tries to achieve first person story telling by making you a character that other characters in the game know.You don't really get to know yourself as a character as its about the marriage of Trip and Grace.This game is very driven by Trip and Grace.
I think its successful in making you assume the friend in the crossfire awkwardness.
But that doesn't mean its a good game.It told the story and threw you into the situation with interactivity (albeit they misunderstand you).

July 15th (Reading Notes) Introduction And Ideas

Reading Notes

Games telling stories - A brief note on games and narratives.

Introduction thoughts

(1)
The first paragraph is under the impression that we are still unsure whether games tell stories,and that the answer would help us study them and who shouldn't/should study them.
I'm assuming that if the answer was that they don't tell stories,then the narrative focus people shouldn't be involved anymore or should change their focus.
Then it goes on to say that if games doesn't fit into the already existing structures for narrative,Then we would have to start over again to figure out what games truly are and how to go about them.

(2)
The second paragraph insists that he isn't arguing what the terms he is using are,such as narrative.
He then says we can make our own decisions on what the terms are and that they can have multiple meanings.
I agree with this as a lot of the terms stem from multiple languages so the meaning can vary and the context or subject matter can affect how we interpret the words.

(3)
The third paragraph is saying that there is bias in the way that narrative has been applied to games and that some parts of the differences were ignored or were assumed as unimportant.It says comparing will show both the similarities and differences instead of pressing the narrative concepts to games.
I agree with this in theory but comparing without bias is pretty difficult and just the time period he wrote this in has created bias via technology,and gaming's progress as a whole,which I will get to later.

(4)
The forth paragraph says hes going to explain the arguments around games being narrative.

"We use everything for narrative"
This means that alot of texts/mediums/forms of media are narrative and therefore games should be too.I agree but I see the point that as a term gets a wider scope it will lose some of its meaning

"Most games feature narrative introductions and backstories"
This means say a game may have ending and starting cut scenes and such but I think he only sees this as a motivation/context for the player.
I view these as more than just a motivation or context as introductions are usually part of narrative such as "world building" or introducing characters like the first act of a story.

"Games share some traits with narratives"
This means that he thinks that since comparisons have been made people may assume games are narrative and may ignore the differences as he mentioned above.
I think narrative has a wide scope so of course there will be similarities but I don't think the differences stop games from having stories.

(5)
The next paragraph says what his points are going to be for games being non narrative/not stories.

"Games are not part of narrative media ecology formed by movies,novels,and theatre"
I think this is talking about how these forms of media interact and that he thinks games fail to translate properly or as well as other forms can.
In some ways I see how games may not have the same purpose therefore being translated differently.
But a lot of this translation failure again comes to his time period when the gaming industry (or lack thereof) was less developed.

"Time works differently than in narratives"
His point being that narratives in the other forms of text were mostly in past tense and that gaming is present tense.Interactivity is the part that changes this.
As we discussed before in class "Games are present narrative,they aren't a story until played through"
Aside from time skips the other forms of narrative are linear whereas games are like the idea of multiple universes in the way that each decision becomes a new narrative,a new story.

"The relation between the reader/viewer and the story world is different than the relation between the player and the gaming world"
His point is that in the other forms of media the audience/reader cannot affect or change the story,but the player to game relationship involves interactivity and more non trivial effort (ergodism)
I agree that the roles are different the games are more reliant on the player to tell the story but I don't think this makes games non narrative.

(6)

This paragraph is saying that in this article he is viewing narratives in a traditional sense.
He then says he will go back at the end to see if the more experimental parts of narrative fit together with games.