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Grayline: Creating shared narrative experience through interactive storytelling

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Grayline: Creating shared narrative experience through interactive storytelling

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Content GRAYLINE: CREATING SHARED NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE THROUGH INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING by Sean Kyle Bouchard A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF FINE ARTS (INTERACTIVE MEDIA) May 2011 Copyright 2011 Sean Bouchard Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible; there are a lot of them. First, I would like to thank the Grayline team, who have contributed their valuable time, skill, and incredible creativity toward making the game a reality. This has been a group effort, and I'm grateful to have had such fantastic people alongside me. I would also like to express my gratitude toward my classmates and the faculty at USC's Interactive Media Division for encouraging me to experiment and pursue my passions. None of this could have happened without them. Specifically, I owe my deepest gratitude to my thesis committee: Steve Anderson, Jeremy Gibson, Peter Brinson, and Jamie Antonisse. Your advice and support over the past year have been invaluable. I am also indebted to those people without whose guidance and support I never would have gotten this far. Thank you, Jacki Morie, for giving me so many opportunities to learn and grow. Thank you, Elizabeth Sweedyk, for planting the seeds. And thank you, again, Jamie Antonisse, for countless hours of conversation. It has been a pleasure to have you as a mentor, a colleague, and a friend. Finally, I am grateful beyond measure to my family, who have shown me such unconditional support in all my endeavors. You are my inspiration. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii List of Figures iv Abstract v Introduction and Overview of the Problem Space 1 Project Description 8 User Experience 9 Narrative Design 16 Discussion of Influences and Prior Art 18 Adventure Games 19 Role-Playing Games 23 Alternative Conceptual Frameworks 26 Development Process 31 Conclusion 36 References 39 iii List of Figures Figure 1: World of Warcraft players often join guilds: 2 organizations of players who cooperate in their play. Figure 2: The box art from Army of Two emphasizes the 4 cooperative element of the game. Figure 3: A screen from Alien Swarm, a cooperative shooter. As 6 suggested by this image, the game's mechanics are oriented toward intense action. Figure 4: One of the introductory conversations from the 10 beginning of Grayline. Figure 5: The Theories interface for tracking information about the 14 circumstances of the crime. iv Abstract Cooperative modes of play are an increasingly popular area of interest for Games Studies researchers, as well as a popular feature for modern games. However, there has been very little development of story-based gameplay in a cooperative context. To explore the possibilities of this space, Grayline has been developed with the goal of encouraging its players to share a narrative experience through interactive storytelling. The game's mechanics not only require players to work together, but actively encourage them to cooperatively engage with the game's story. The formal elements and content of the game were refined through an iterative design process, leading ultimately to a unique game experience that supports further development of cooperative interactive stories. Keywords: interactive narrative, interactive storytelling, cooperative play, taxonomy v Introduction and Overview of the Problem Space Games are special because they provide us an opportunity to play. Within the framework of the game, we have the freedom to make choices and explore ideas in a context that is removed from reality. This is what Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman describe as the magic circle: the boundary that separates the real world from the world of the game. As stated in their book, Rules of Play, “The magic circle can define a powerful space, investing its authority in the actions of players and creating new and complex meanings that are only possible in the space of play” (98). From within the safety of the magic circle, an individual can investigate concepts that range from conflict resolution techniques to questions of identity and self-perception or the dynamics of real-world systems. Games also provide a framework in which we can play socially and use the power of the magic circle to experiment with social bonds and interactions within the context of the play space. However, although social play—and, more specifically, cooperative play—is a popular topic in both research and industry, there are significant facets of this space that game developers have not yet fully explored. Implicitly, any multiplayer participation in a game is cooperative, since the construction of the magic circle is based on the collective agreement of all players to abide by the rules of the game. Games that are explicitly cooperative, however—games in which players must work together to overcome the challenges presented by the game—provide a special social framework in which play can occur. There has already been substantial interest in the affordances of this sort of play. Consider Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The game regularly presents players 1 with obstacles that cannot be overcome by individuals working alone. Completing these challenges requires well-planned and well-executed collaborative action between dozens of players. The cooperative aspects of World of Warcraft have been studied by researchers of Computer Supported Cooperative Work. For example, CSCW researchers Vivian Hsueh-hua Chen et al. use studies of play style to categorize types of social interaction in their paper, “Understanding Social Interaction in World of Warcraft.” Similarly, in “Blissfully Productive: Grouping and Cooperation in World of Warcraft Instance Runs,” Shaowen Bardzell et al. analyze the patterns of collaboration in 5- person instance runs in order to identify the conditions required for effective teamwork. Meanwhile, Bonnie Nardi et al. extoll the virtues of World of Warcraft’s cooperative play in “Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft,” saying, “WoW promotes offline social connection by providing a shared activity,” (5) and that many play “...with offline friends and family, so the game also appears to reinforce existing social ties for these players” (1) 2 Figure 1: World of Warcraft players often join guilds: organizations of players who cooperate in their play (Selig). World of Warcraft is only one example of a high-profile game that encourages players to adopt a cooperative mode and play together. Greg Wadley et al. have even extended the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work to include Computer Supported Cooperative Play, which is the title of the paper in which they explore the cooperative aspects of other videogames and the structures that support cooperative play. Cooperative gameplay isn't just a subject of research, it's also a selling point. Some games are designed around a traditional, single-player experience with additional modes that support cooperative play. Halo is one such example; the primary game experience is designed for a single player but allows for the addition of more players who operate as a team. More and more, however, cooperative play is being developed as a core aspect of the game experience. Army of Two and Left 4 Dead are examples of recent AAA games that were designed entirely around cooperative play. In Left 4 Dead, for instance, the game's mechanics and difficulty were developed so that a team of four characters is needed to successfully complete each level. If the game is played by fewer than four people, then the intended game experience is approximated by artificial intelligences that control the other characters. 3 Cooperative play is also a hot topic among the low-budget and indie games that tend to represent the vanguard in the evolution of games. Monaco, which won the Independent Games Festival’s Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Design awards, is a game in which four players must work together to pull of a heist (“2010 IGF Winners”). Magicka, which recently sold more than 200,000 copies in the first three weeks of its release, has four players collaborating to fend off enemies (McElroy). In games that contain both single-player and cooperative modes, cooperative play is often cited as a selling point. A marketing campaign recently launched by Valve for its upcoming game, Portal 2, centers largely around the cooperative mode the game will offer. Clearly, game publishers view it as something that improves the experience for players. A 2009 online poll by the popular gaming website The Escapist supports this, 4 Figure 2: The box art from Army of Two emphasizes the cooperative element of the game (“Army of Two”). albeit informally, showing that respondents from that community prefer cooperative play over competitive play more than three to one (“Poll: Which Do You Prefer”). A recent article on Gamasutra about playing video games with your significant other further suggests that there’s a great deal of interest in the community in examining the social aspects of multiplayer gaming, especially for dyads (Cleary). And understandably so, considering the way one gamer interviewed in that article gushes about the experience of playing cooperatively with her boyfriend: “We congratulate each other and compliment each other and all that. We become a team, and that’s a really healthy thing.” It’s significant that all of the games cited above—and indeed the vast majority of cooperative videogames—focus on performance rather than narrative. Halo, for example, allows multiple players to play through the game’s campaign cooperatively, but their cooperation is focused primarily on combining firepower to mow down enemies. Left 4 Dead is specifically designed to encourage and take advantage of cooperative relationships between players, but the focus of the action is on executing cooperative tactics to survive and progress through each level. Many of the cooperative mechanics in Army of Two revolve around managing “aggro,” the measure of which player enemies are attacking, for tactical benefit. Likewise, games like Starcraft and WoW encourage players to develop a cooperative strategy. All of these games focus the players’ cooperative energy toward planning and performance, rather than discovery and story. 1 1 Here, and throughout this document, story refers specifically to embedded narrative, rather than emergent narrative. All these cooperative games contain emergent narrative elements that are directly affected by the cooperation of the players. Embedded narratives consist of designed story elements like scripted characters, settings and events. This thesis is primarily concerned with the intersection of cooperative play and embedded narrative. 5 Even in cooperative games that have a strong background narrative and a well- developed fiction, the players don’t interact in any significant way with the story or plot of the game. Generally, these games have a linear narrative form, which is conveyed through scripted events at set moments in the game; often, these scripted events will only feature one player character, even if there are multiple cooperative players. In Halo, for example, the story is expressed through non-interactive cut scenes and voice-over narration. Meanwhile, the players are focused on the active experience of running and gunning that changes very little from plot point to plot point. The dichotomy between action and story described here is not ludonarrative dissonance; it’s simply a disconnect between the part of the game with which the players are engaging and the part of the game that tells the story. Even played in its single-player campaign mode, the mechanics of Halo separate the actions of the player from the progression of the story. Playing through the campaign cooperatively emphasizes this separation further, because it adds a whole new set of 6 Figure 3: A screen from Alien Swarm, a cooperative shooter. As suggested by this image, the game's mechanics are oriented toward intense action (Wildgoose). mechanics based on the social context created by the addition of a teammate, including the coordination of flanking maneuvers and complementary attacks. Like the basic mechanics of the game, the cooperative mechanics are unrelated to the game's story or plot. Other games employ different cooperative mechanics. In Left 4 Dead, the cooperative mechanics are largely based on protecting teammates from the attacking hordes of enemies. In World of Warcraft, the cooperative mechanics are focused on organizing an appropriate group and coordinating the execution of each player's role. The cooperative mechanics emphasize aspects of the game when played in a cooperative context. In these examples, as with Halo, the aspects emphasized by the cooperative mechanics do not relate to the game’s story. Although it’s certainly not true that all games need to focus on storytelling to be effective or successful—some games can be successful without any story elements whatsoever —this issue should not be dismissed out of hand. Different players engage with games differently. Nicholas Yee identifies five motivation factors that drive people to play massively multiplayer online role-playing games: Relationship, Immersion, Grief, Achievement, and Leadership (7). 2 These five motivations can be thought of in these very compressed terms: 2 Yee's research is a refinement of earlier work done by Bartle to categorize player types. 7 • Relationship: A desire to develop supportive friendships and have meaningful conversations. • Immersion: A desire to explore a make-believe world and role-play a character. • Grief: A desire to objectify and dominate or manipulate other players. • Achievement: A desire to become powerful and accumulate rewards within the game. • Leadership: A desire to express assertiveness within the context of a team or group. Among the cooperative mechanics from popular games noted above, there are examples that relate to the Relationship, Achievement and Leadership motivations. Conspicuously missing, however, are cooperative mechanics relating to Immersion. 3 Project Description Grayline is a cooperative story-based game. In particular, it is a game in which the cooperative mechanics have been designed to emphasize the exploration and analysis of the game's story. The game is intended for two players with iPads, sitting across a table from one another. Each player assumes the role of one half of a detective team hired to solve a murder mystery. 3 Also missing are mechanics relating to Grief. A cooperative game based on the Grief motivation is a particularly curious proposition, however, since Grief subverts the very idea of cooperation. As such, we shall leave that problem for another time. 8 The players conduct their investigation by interviewing suspects and piecing together their potential means, motives, and opportunities to commit the crime. Given a limited amount of time, they must choose which suspects and which lines of questioning deserve the most attention. These choices do not effect events in the game or the solution to the mystery; all the characters and plots are pre-written. Instead, the players are attempting to explore a narrative space as completely as possible in order to discover all of the secrets being hidden from them. The primary design goal for Grayline is to encourage the shared experience of a story. The game is played over several game days. In each day, the players first conduct independent investigations for a limited amount of time, and then they discuss their findings and plan for the next round of interviews. At the end of the game, they must reach a consensus about who they believe actually committed the crime. The formal elements are designed to encourage the players to cooperate in forming a strategy and analyzing the information they discover. These cooperative mechanics emphasize the players' engagement with the game's narrative. User Experience Two players sit across from one another at a desk. In front of each player is an iPad, running the Grayline game. The players have just finished the process of connecting to the game's website and starting a game together. They are about to delve into a world of 9 jazz, radio, and sordid secrets. This is the world of New Chicago, a city at war with itself. A crime has been committed somewhere in this city, and it's up to them to solve it. Introductory Conversations The game starts off, for each of the players, with a brief monologue by the private investigator, in classic film noir tradition. Following the monologue, they find themselves engaged in a conversation with a non-player character, introducing them to the case. Of course, since the players are taking on the roles of two different detectives, they hear two different monologues, and conduct two different conversations. One of the player characters, Rick, is talking to the manager of a radio station named Varga. Varga has hired Rick to get to the bottom of a murder that took place in the basement of his 10 Figure 4: One of the introductory conversations from the beginning of Grayline. building. However, Varga is only giving Rick a limited amount of time to solve the crime, which makes Rick suspicious. Meanwhile, the other player character, Mills, is caught up in a conversation with a beautiful police officer who appears to have a mysterious connection to Rick. Vanessa Forrester is a classic femme fatale, and she seems intent of baiting Mills into a variety of mind games. The police are interested in the case that Rick and Mills have taken on, but it seems she's willing to back off for a few days, for old time's sake. Over the course of these conversations, the players begin to get a sense of their character's personality. Rick is tough, cynical, and short-tempered. He doesn't trust anyone or anything, and he's quick to start making threats when someone isn't cooperating with him. Mills, on the other hand, is more reserved, but she's curious and sharp. While she may be polite and sympathetic, she doesn't back down. She can relate to people and will play their games just to keep them talking until they say something they regret. These characteristics come across through the writing and voice acting of the short back-and-forth dialogues that make up these conversations. Each player conducts their conversation by choosing an option from a list of questions, which then triggers a short, voice-acted scene between the characters. The player characters express themselves in their own way, however. Mills will inquire after the information that the player selects, but she might phrase the question in her own words, rather than speak the question 11 exactly as written. And if she's not satisfied with the answer, she may ask for clarification or press home her point before returning control to the player. Sometimes, the information revealed in these dialogues will unlock follow-up questions or new topics that the player can choose. In this way, the introductory conversations reveal the basic structure of in-game conversation to the players in a simple, low-stakes context. Each of these conversations is designed to introduce the player to the details of the case they will have to solve, but the experience for each player is very different, because of the characters involved. When both players have exhausted all of the options in their conversation, the game moves them into the next phase. Investigation The investigation in Grayline takes place over three game days. Each day consists of two phases: Legwork and Rendezvous. In the Legwork Phase, the players conduct interviews with suspects. In the Rendezvous Phase, they share the information they've gathered and plan their approach for the next day. This pattern repeats itself three times before the investigation comes to an end. During the Legwork Phase, the players can travel through the world to a number of discrete locations. Some locations contain suspects, and the majority of the Legwork Phase will be spent in conversation with them, attempting to establish motives and alibis and trying to piece together the secrets that the characters are keeping. As in the 12 introductory conversations, this information is revealed through short, voice-acted dialogues. However, unlike the introductory conversations, the Legwork Phase is timed. This gives the investigation a sense of urgency and also creates an economy based on the time it takes to ask each question. There isn't enough time for each player to ask all of the available questions for each of the suspects. This drives the players to work together, both to form a strategy around approaching specific topics and characters, as well as to share the information they gather. Once time runs out on the Legwork Phase, the Rendezvous Phase begins. Unlike the Legwork Phase, the Rendezvous Phase is not timed. This serves a pacing purpose by allowing the players to take a break from the tension of the timed investigation. It also gives them a chance to compare notes. During the Legwork Phase, players wear headphones and are intently focused on their own screen as they try to gather as much information as possible. This leaves very little opportunity to exchange information with their partner. During the Rendezvous Phase, they can catch each other up on what they’ve discovered. This is also when the Dossier and Theories interfaces come into play. As players converse with suspects, the player characters are automatically taking notes on those conversations, and these notes are now available to the players through tabs on the side of the screen. During the Legwork Phase, there is not much time to spend looking at these interfaces, but during the Rendezvous Phase, players can refer to them to refresh their memories about different conversations and to identify missing or untrustworthy information. 13 The Dossier is divided up into pages, with each page devoted to a suspect. Notes that appear in the Dossier have to do with building a complete picture of the suspects. These might describe personal history, personality traits, or personal relationships. These notes help to characterize the suspects and, more importantly, to remind the players of how the suspects have been characterized. However, because notes appear in the Dossier based on what is said and observed about suspects, and not necessarily what is true, all notes are potentially unreliable, and it's up to the players to decide how much weight to give them, based on their source and the other evidence. The Theories interface is divided into three columns: means, motive, and opportunity. Notes that appear here have to do with possible answers to the questions of how, why and when each suspect might have committed the crime. These notes fit together like 14 Figure 5: The Theories interface for tracking information about the circumstances of the crime. puzzle pieces, to represent putting together a case against a suspect. However, like the notes in the Dossier, all the notes in the Theories interface represent subjective pieces of information obtained through conversation with the suspects, not absolute facts. The players not only have to complete a chain indicating a particular character’s guilt, but to decide that all the pieces of the puzzle are, in fact, true. The Rendezvous Phase also gives players an opportunity to plan for the next Legwork Phase. Now that they both have a sense of who the suspects are and what they say happened, they can decide which stories they believe and which to examine for weaknesses. Resolution The last Rendezvous Phase is just like the previous ones, except that instead of planning for the next round of legwork, the players have to decide which suspect they believe is guilty of the crime. The phase ends when they agree on a suspect to accuse. If they are correct, the game skips straight to the final conversations. However, if they’ve selected the wrong suspect, it triggers a course correction, in the form of a character from earlier in the game reappearing to give the players additional information. Based on the suspect that the players accused, she’ll reveal facts that the players’ investigation may not have uncovered, exonerating that character. The players will then get an opportunity to choose again, until they select the real killer. 15 The final conversations of the game take place when Vanessa comes to Rick’s office to talk to him, which leaves Mills to confront the killer. These conversations are laid out in a relatively straightforward way, with Vanessa insisting that the killer should be turned over to the police immediately, and the killer pleading for leniency. The players are then asked to agree upon a final decision: whether to arrest him and turn him over for punishment, or to let him get away. Either way, this is the end of the game. Narrative Design The story in Grayline is largely based on classic archetypes from both the film noir and buddy detective manifestations of the mystery genre. By utilizing well-known conventions and archetypes from these genres, the game gives players easy access to the story. The mechanics of solving a mystery are searching for and analyzing information about an underlying narrative. Because the genre puts the player in a position where they are expected to focus on exploration and analysis, their engagement with the game's story is seamless. The affordances of the noir genre present the player with a set of expectations for the content of the game and their role in it. It is understood that the central conflict in the game will be a crime, most likely a murder, that must be solved. The player expects to take on the role of a detective, investigating and eventually solving this crime. Many of the characters he encounters will be based on familiar archetypes like the hardboiled 16 private eye and the femme fatale. Furthermore, the player will have some expectations about the nature of the investigation—that it will be focused on people and uncovering their sordid secrets, rather than abstract reasoning or deduction. Sam Spade is not Sherlock Holmes. Because Grayline plays to these expectations, players can quickly understand what they should be doing when they play the game. 4 The design of the game, then, can focus on a more in-depth exploration of the world and characters. Grayline also draws on the buddy detective genre, which is an extension of the buddy cop film to the serial episodic format of television. Shows like Starsky and Hutch, The X- Files, and Castle focus on a partnership between two detectives, rather than on a single investigator or an entire department. One of the conventions of the buddy detective genre, as in the buddy cop film, is that the two detectives have complementary characteristics. In The X-Files, for example, the character Scully’s rigidity and skepticism are constantly contrasted with Mulder’s eagerness to believe unlikely explanations for events. Similarly, the characters in Grayline were designed to have complementary personalities, specifically in their approach to interviewing suspects. Rick is aggressive and threatening, while Mills is conversational and tries to understand the person she is talking to. Along with helping 4 In other instances, Grayline subverts the standard conventions of the noir genre. For example, by including a female lead character, which contradicts the common positioning of women within the genre. For the most part, however, even when Grayline breaks convention, it does so in a way that gives the player reference points for understanding the story. 17 the players recognize and place the story firmly within genre conventions, this convention is also used for gameplay effect. Some of the suspects are reluctant to share information with one of the player characters. This is understood as a response to that player character's style of interrogation, but it also creates information that is only accessible to one player or the other, encouraging cooperative information sharing between players. Another convention of the genre is that the two protagonists are equal partners, rather than one of them being the detective’s sidekick. While Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings often solved mysteries together, Poirot was clearly the investigator and Hastings the sidekick. In contrast, the audience recognizes that Mulder and Scully from The X-Files are equally important as investigators. Both characters contribute to solving each case. Grayline relies on a familiarity with this convention to establish that the players are both expected to contribute to the investigation, rather than one player taking on a secondary role. Discussion of Influences and Prior Art A solid understanding of narrative games and cooperative play was an important first step in developing this project. Grayline draws on a number of influences from the long history of story-based games. Since games are often categorized by genre, it is worth briefly examining the two genres most commonly associated with strong narratives: adventure games and role-playing games. While this is by no means an exhaustive 18 taxonomy of games, it should provide a solid understanding of how cooperative mechanics are currently being employed in story-based games, and how Grayline is positioned relative to the various genres in that space. Adventure Games When one is asked about story in games, adventure games of some flavor are often the first thing to come to mind. In an adventure game, the player assumes the role of a character in an interactive story. Typically, that character is already well-defined and the sole protagonist of the story. The story itself is usually linear and driven by a series of puzzles that are closely tied to the narrative. Adventure games have their roots in Colossal Cave, the original text adventure game by William Crowther and Don Woods. Adventure games were extremely popular for a period of time in the 80s and 90s, dominated games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Quest for Glory, and Blade Runner. Although adventure games have become a niche genre, some are still produced today, like the Sam & Max series or Phoenix Wright. Adventure games often have a mystery component, and a number of them have specifically put the player in the role of a detective attempting to solve a crime. Phoenix Wright is one such game, which had a great influence on the design of Grayline. Although the gameplay is quite different, both games are fundamentally about solving a mystery by uncovering the secrets kept by other characters. Grayline takes inspiration 19 from the way Phoenix Wright creates a world that the player can move through, populated by people who must be interrogated. Blade Runner also had a significant influence on Grayline's design. It is another example of a detective-themed adventure game, which includes some very interesting ideas about branching and non-deterministic storytelling, intended to create replay value in a game about solving a pre-scripted crime. It also includes a fantastic journaling system. Blade Runner recognized that the requirements of note-taking are very different in a detective game than in other contexts. For example, it’s not enough for the system to note that the player has discovered a particular fact. The player must also be able to call up the source of that fact, to recall its context and determine whether or not it should be trusted. This ultimately became an important point in the design of Grayline. Another adventure game that should be noted here is 221b, although it was not a direct influence on the development of Grayline. 221b is an online game developed as a license tie-in for the 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie, in which two players teamed up as Holmes and Watson to solve a crime. However, shortly after the opening of the movie, the server running the game was shut down. There appears to no longer be any video or textual documentation of the game, so it is hard to determine where it sits in relation to Grayline and other cooperative games. Disregarding 221b, cooperative elements are extremely rare in adventure games, with the exception of alternate reality games. 20 Alternate Reality Games Alternate reality games, like The Beast or ilovebees, are large-scale collaborative games that focus on constructing narratives. In many ways, this form is familiar to the adventure game genre: the story is largely linear, pre-written by the game's designers, and narrative progress is gated by a series of challenges. However, the mode of interaction is extremely non-traditional. In addition to taking place in fragments across a variety of media, rather than being bounded by platform and play sessions, ARGs are defined by the scale at which they take place. Puzzles are solved by dozens or hundreds of people working in parallel and sharing information with one another. Online communities allow players to organize and disseminate new information quickly throughout the player base. In some ways, Grayline is very much like an ARG, but without the two characteristics that define that genre: its transmedia nature and massive scale. The experience of Grayline consists of a single, well-defined play session with a single medium, and is limited to a very small number of players. Nonetheless, it is structurally similar to a game like The Beast. In both games, the players alternate independent investigation with information sharing and analysis. With the exception of a few key decision points, most player action is focused on narrative exploration, rather than progressing a plot. In this sense, Grayline could be viewed as an effort to make the interactive structure of an ARG more accessible, by reducing the number of participants and the commitment they have to make to the game. 21 Action-Adventure Since the first adventure games, the genre has evolved in new but related directions, the most significant being action-adventure and interactive fiction. Action-adventure is the commercially successful extension of the genre, in which the narrative puzzles are replaced by non-narrative activities, like spatial puzzles or skill challenges. Action adventure games like The Legend of Zelda and Alan Wake became even more popular as the demand for traditional adventure games died down. Many of the popular modern cooperative games, like Halo and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, can be considered action- adventure games. Grayline does not have a close relationship to the action-adventure genre, except that in its conceptual stages Grayline was largely defined in opposition to it. Cooperative play as it is seen in action-adventure games is the common understanding of what cooperative play can be, at least within the mainstream games industry. Part of the original motivation for Grayline was to push cooperative play beyond what is commonly found in action-adventure games. Interactive Fiction More directly related to Grayline, however, are the branch of adventure games known as interactive fiction. The focus of the IF community is academic, rather than commercial. While other types of adventure games evolved interface features like icon-based or context sensitive controls and timing-based gameplay, IF is still primarily text-based. 22 Although it may look similar to the text adventure games of the 1970s and 1980s, modern IF has progressed in interesting ways—most of them specifically related to interactive storytelling. However, due to the constraints of the format and focus of the community, explorations of cooperative modes of play are almost non-existent. Many IF games, like Emily Short's Alabaster, focus heavily on dialogue and conversation, similar to Grayline. Another one of Short's works, Floatpoint, is about a diplomat who must choose how to approach talks with a group of colonists. The gameplay consists of exploring the space and learning about various points of view on the issue, which culminates in making the key decision at the end of the game. Grayline has a similar structure, in the sense that the players aren't participating in an ongoing plot so much as they are discovering information about the state of the world, and then ultimately using what information they uncovered to make a decision about their situation. Role-Playing Games The other major genre of story-based games are known as role-playing games, although here the inadequacies of the traditional genre categorizations become apparent. As in adventure games, players in RPGs assume the role of a character in an interactive story. Typically, however, there are several protagonist characters, rather than just one, and the player has a hand in defining their characteristics, as opposed to them being pre- 23 determined. Unlike adventure games, RPGs generally include an element of economy management, and there is usually an emphasis on combat mechanics. 5 Role-playing games have been popular since the publication of Dungeons & Dragons, by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, in 1974. There are numerous examples among modern AAA games, such as Dragon Age: Origins and Revelations: Persona. Because RPGs are more closely tied to a tradition of tabletop gaming, there are also many more examples of RPGs that support cooperative play. Some of the more well known are Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and Neverwinter Nights. Like cooperative action-adventure games, however, the cooperative mechanics of these games tend to emphasize performance in the non-narrative challenges, rather than engagement in the story. In Neverwinter Nights, for example, two people can play through the game cooperatively. However, they are not allowed to split up and explore independently, and the secondary player cannot participate in conversations with non-player characters or make story- based decisions in the game. Tabletop Role-Playing Games The tabletop role-playing game is a precursor to many modern videogames, but it is also a thriving medium in its own right. Tabletop RPGs are collaborative storytelling games. Sometimes, as with Fiasco by Jason Morningstar, the players have a purely cooperative relationship, each playing the role of a character and also acting as an author of the 5 In both genres, the player is asked to play a role for the duration of the game, and is almost invariably set off on an adventure. 24 story. Often, however, as with Dungeons & Dragons, tabletop RPGs feature an asynchronous design in which one player controls the world in response to the actions of a team of other players. The campaign designer is afforded an enormous amount of flexibility. While many Dungeons & Dragons campaigns are action-oriented dungeon crawls, many others are plot-based, and often include a mystery that the players must solve collaboratively. A more modern RPG, Dogs in the Vineyard by Vincent Baker, is designed specifically to encourage the players to cooperatively investigate mysteries and uncover secrets, primarily through conversation with non-player characters. Games like this served as early inspiration for the structure of Grayline. In these games, the players' role is often based on exploring a hidden narrative by asking the right questions and piecing together clues. A good campaign designer will take into account the characteristics of different player characters, making role-play and cooperation key elements of success. The structural similarities to Grayline are clear, although the affordances of the medium are vastly different. Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are similar to standard RPGs, except for the number of players who interact with each other and the game simultaneously. Like ARGs, MMORPGs are played at a massive scale, with dozens or hundreds of players instead of the handful who can participate in a standard RPG. Because these games are played within an online social framework, they include mechanics that take advantage of 25 the opportunities for cooperative play. This often includes challenges that require the cooperation of several players or economies that encourage players to trade virtual goods with one another. Again, while games like World of Warcraft or EVE Online contain cooperative play, the cooperative mechanics are not geared toward emphasizing the story elements of the game. More often, they are focused on the purely social mechanics of organizing and leading teams, and performance mechanics like combat. Alternative Conceptual Frameworks While an examination of genres is valuable, it is clearly an imperfect system for categorizing games. For instance, the commonly understood definitions of these two widely accepted genres are vague and contain substantial overlap. They both describe, essentially, games in which the player assumes the role of a character in an interactive story. The features that distinguish them are rules of thumb that are frequently broken. Objective and Subjective Stories It may be helpful to consider adventure games and role-playing games as two points on a spectrum, rather than dichotomous categories. At one end of the spectrum are games in which all the characteristics of the player character are predetermined, enabling the designers to craft that character in a way that is unified with the world, plot and mechanics of the game. At the other end of the spectrum are games in which the player 26 is given the opportunity to define or manage all characteristics of the player character, giving them more agency and a greater sense of being in the world. These two extremes describe the concepts that BioWare's Armando Troisi, lead cinematic designer of Mass Effect 2, calls objective and subjective storytelling. In a featured story for EDGE Magazine's website, Mathew Kumar reports on a presentation at the 2010 Game Developers Conference in which Troisi describes these concepts. In subjective storytelling, the character is a costume that the player puts on. The player is the ultimate source of understanding and agency for the character, and they are empowered to make choices that define the character. When the game asks the character a question, it is always the player who supplies the response. Characteristics of subjective storytelling include player characters that are not voiced, even if other characters in the game are voiced, and dialogue options that specify the character’s exact wording. In contrast, objective storytelling is not attempting to unify the player and character. Instead, the player is given the role of puppeteer. The player controls the character, but there is no confusion about the two sharing an identity. The character’s identity is predefined; it’s only her decisions that are controlled by the player. In an objectively told game story, there may be important decisions that are not made by the player, but rather by the character, independently, based on the personality and characteristics she was 27 written with. Objective storytelling also tends to include a player character who is voiced, and can engage in dialogue that is not explicitly chosen by the player. In a report from the 2010 Project Horseshoe game design think tank, by Adrien Banet- Rivet et al., much the same distinction is identified, although it is referred to by different terms. Instead of focusing on the intentions of designers, the authors describe the play preferences of inhabiting players, who prefer subjective storytelling, and relating players, who prefer objective storytelling. Viewed with this frame, the games and genres discussed above generally maintain their relative positioning, with the exception of alternate reality games. Because ARGs do not provide a player character with predefined characteristics, it would fall closer to RPGs than adventure games on this continuum. This approach also allows us to include some story-based games, like Spectre and Dinner Date, that were previously left out because they do not fit within the adventure game or role-playing game genres. Dinner Date is a game in which the player character performs almost entirely on his own, and the player can offer only weak suggestions. Spectre is a game in which the player explores a small slice of a larger narrative space, trying to tell a story out of pieces of the player character's memories. Spectre's structure is closely related to Grayline's, in which the players are also trying to form conclusions based on a constrained exploration of a narrative space. 28 Grayline would fit near adventure games on this spectrum, because the player characters have well defined backstories and personalities. The characterization of the player characters in Grayline is a tool used by the designers to describe the world of the game. Similarly, many action-adventure games would be found at that end of the spectrum, and several cooperative examples of such have already been noted. Again, though, those games differ substantially from Grayline in that their cooperative mechanics emphasize performance, rather than engagement with the story. A Narratology-Based Approach While a continuum of interactive stories based on objective and subjective storytelling may be more pleasing than a system of categorizing games into ill-defined and seemingly arbitrary genres, there is no reason to believe that this framework encompasses all story-based games. Indeed, there are games like Once Upon a Time which are not included in the continuum because the do not involve a player character. It is possible, however, to take a more systematic approach to describing the space of narrative games by basing our approach on principles of narratology. In his paper, “Story and Narrative Structures in Computer Games,” Craig Lindley defines some general terms from narrative theory that can be related to the design of stories in games. “Story” describes the whole of a fictional world, including all the locations, characters and events therein. “Plot” is a refinement of story, in which some elements are privileged over others. Some characters, for example, might be deemed unimportant and so not 29 included in the plot. Events that do not progress the plot are ignored or implied, rather than included directly. Finally, “discourse,” or narrative text, is the specific expression of a story and plot in a specific medium. The same plot can be expressed in different media (as a novel, a movie or a game, for example) as different discourses. Lindley also describes three different play styles that can be applied to gamers who are interested in a game’s story. These are the audience play style, the performer play style, and the immersionist play style. They correlate, respectively, to the discourse, plot and story levels of narrative theory. A game that focuses on interacting with the story provides no structure for events; everything that happens emerges because of how the player interacts with the system. Games like The Sims or Minecraft are most likely to appeal to players who identify with the immersionist play style. On the other hand, in a game that focuses on interacting only with the narrative discourse, events will play out in a predetermined way. Thus, games like Halo and Uncharted appeal to players who identify with the audience play style. A game can also focus on interacting with the plot. Spectre is an example of this. When playing Spectre, the underlying story doesn’t change based on the player’s actions; instead, which characters and events are narrated through the discourse of the game change. This appeals to players who identify with the performer play style. As Lindley describes it, “...the game play performance is an act of partially creating a story of which the performance is understood to be a part and is performed for the pleasure of the performer” (9). Grayline is another example of a game in which the player is focused on interacting with the plot. The players' decisions are based on which suspects and topics 30 they deem most important. Different decisions reveal different information about the underlying story, rather than changing the events of the story. Lindley's framework is not the only way to think about narrative games, and it isn't a perfect description of game-space. It is, however, an interesting perspective, and it highlights the conceptual area in which Grayline sits. It's interesting to note that there are plenty of examples of cooperative games that engage the immersivist and audience identities, but there aren't any that engage the performer identity. Grayline is, in this sense, unique, because it does exactly that. Development Process Grayline has been a team project from the beginning. The project team consists of four writers, a character artist, a background artist, a composer, a sound designer, a producer and a creative director. The writing team is perhaps the most unconventional part of the project's structure, given the size and context of the project. During the early stages of development, it became clear that the game's writing would be of paramount importance, given the goal of engaging players with the story. Therefore, the role of the writing team in shaping the project and developing content has been emphasized since the beginning. The writers' work was somewhat modeled after the classic writers room in television production. Conceptual story design was done collaboratively, and then specific dialogue 31 was filled in by individual writers. Writing for Grayline started with the development of the fictional world in which the game takes place, and the backgrounds and personalities of the lead characters. Then, the writers focused on developing the plot, location, and characters of the specific case that the player would be solving. Finally, all the dialogue for the case was written, tested, edited, and voice-recorded. During the fall semester of 2010, a prototype version of the game was produced and shown at the USC Interactive Media Division's Winter Show. This version differed substantially from the final game. For example, the winter version was intended to be played online, sporadically and asynchronously; players would sign on briefly throughout the week to question suspects, and share information with their partner during their daily real-world interactions. Although the fundamentals of the underlying game system have remained more-or-less the same, many details of the implementation and content design changed over the course of development. The Grayline project has employed informal playtesting throughout the development process, especially early on, when the system and core mechanics were being established. Several paper prototypes were produced to test various game elements, such as the process of unlocking new topics and the system of putting together theories to come to a conclusion. More playtests were run on the winter version of the game, in order to see how effective that implementation of the underlying systems was at achieving the project's goals. Gameplay testing often revealed problems with the game's design. At various points, the design was re-evaluated in order to improve the game's ability to engage players with one another and with the game's story. 32 For example, the asynchronous player interaction pattern mentioned above was ultimately changed to emphasize face-to-face, real-time interaction between players. It was thought that asynchronous interaction would build anticipation for narrative content, which would help to engage players in the story. However, in testing, it quickly became clear that the disengagement created by forcing players to spend time away from the game far outweighed any such benefit. It also proved to be unrealistic to expect players to communicate regularly and effectively about the game during those stretches of time. Because the cooperative aspect is imperative to the intended game experience, the structure of the game was shifted toward a synchronous, colocated experience that is far more effective. In this case, the asynchronous interaction between players was inhibiting cooperation between players. By altering the interaction pattern, players found it much easier and more rewarding to communicate and cooperate with each other. Another change that was made after playtesting the winter version was the elimination of minigames. In the early version of the game, players had to complete a short minigame before asking a question of a suspect. The results of the minigame would determine how much information the suspect would give in answer to the question. These minigames were intended to add an element of traditional action or puzzle gameplay interspersed with the narrative elements, to create a more dynamic pacing. However, the biggest effect of these segments was a sense of disconnection from the story. Players were confused by the sudden change in how they were expected to interact with the system, and felt that the minigames created ludonarrative dissonance by separating the player's actions from the actions of the character. This dissonance made it harder for players to 33 stay engaged with the game's story. As a result, the minigames were ultimately cut from the game, and instead a time-based economy was devised to control players access to information. This had the effect of allowing for an interesting pacing structure that doesn't distract from the story. In these two cases, game features that were originally included because it was thought they would make the game more interesting ultimately proved to be barriers to the desired play experience. In the case of asynchronous interaction, it was a barrier to effective cooperation and shared experience. In the case of the minigames, it was a barrier to engagement with the game's story. When the negative effects of these elements were discovered through playtesting, it was determined that a leaner feature set with greater focus on the cooperative and narrative goals of the project would more effectively serve the play experience. Another change made to the winter version of the game is an expansion and refinement of the journaling system. Most quest-based games include some type of automatic note- taking feature, with the purpose of reminding the player of the things they are currently supposed to be doing. Originally, the only journaling in Grayline consisted of the Theories interface, which keeps track of potential means, motives and opportunities of suspects. Because some players had trouble keeping track of all the information they had gathered over the course of the game, the journaling system was expanded to include a Dossier on each suspect, as well. 34 Originally, the notes that populated the Theories interface were continually synched between players, which caused a great deal of confusion about where a particular piece of information had come from—especially because the source of the note was not specified. To address this problem, a link to source audio was added to notes in the Dossier, and the synchronization schedule was changed so that players would only receive notes from one another during the Rendezvous Phase, when they were supposed to be analyzing and discussing the information they had discovered. The source audio makes it easier for the player who discovered a piece of information to remember the context in which it was revealed, and to determine whether it should be trusted. This source audio, however, is hidden from the other player, who is instead directed to ask her partner about the source of that information. This solution not only makes it easier for players to understand the game's journaling system, it also helps to prod players into sharing and discussing information. Players of the winter version also found their interactions with suspects within the game to be too abstract. In that version, players would choose which suspect to interrogate by selecting the character's name, and then they would be presented with a character portrait and a list of questions. Suspects would respond to questions with a monologue that answered or evaded the question. However, players felt disconnected from these portraits floating in space. In response, a simple spatial system was implemented, wherein the player could navigate between different locations, with different background images, to find the different suspects. Additionally, the monologue responses to questions were rewritten as dialogues, in order to help characterize the player character and help the player feel more immersed in the events of the game. 35 Playtests of the winter version of the game also revealed insights into the differences between writing for an interactive medium versus traditional passive media. The first plot that was developed called for the murder to have been committed accidentally. This was done to provide an interesting twist in the story, and create the potential for sympathy between the players and the murderer, who was really just a victim of circumstance. However, players who uncovered this theory tended to dismiss it as too weak a motive. Although the accidental killer plot might have been acceptable in passive media, where the audience will follow along with the story as long as it is coherent, it did not work in a context where the player is asked to actively decide between which suspects seem the most suspicious. For most players, motive is the most important cue. They tend to give that piece of the puzzle the most weight, and such a weak motive caused the case against the real killer to fall apart. By changing the story so that the murder was carried out with intent (even if it was not premeditated), the theory became much more plausible to the player detectives. Conclusion While cooperative play might be a hot topic in gaming right now, there’s still unexplored territory around how the design of cooperative mechanics can be integrated into games. This is especially true for narrative games. Viewed through the frame of genre categorization, interactive storytelling lacks cooperative modes that emphasize player 36 engagement with the story. Viewed through the alternative frame of narrative theory, cooperative performance-based games seem to be entirely non-existent. There is a gap in our understanding of cooperative play in story-based games, and there is no compelling reason not to develop games that explore this space. Grayline encourages two players to share in the experience of a story. It does this by constructing a system in which the players can engage directly with the game's story, and do so together in a cooperative way. It uses common archetypes to bootstrap players to an understanding of the basic premise, and then uses narrative exploration gameplay to make the players explore the story further. The game's cooperative mechanics include discussing and analyzing fragments of the game's story and coming to conclusions about the characters who inhabit the world. Ultimately, Grayline is an experiment. It was created to explore the possibilities that might exist at the intersection of interactive storytelling and cooperative play—an area that has otherwise not been well explored. Because there are no other games that try to do this in quite the same way that Grayline does, it was uncertain how players would react to it. At the very least, it can be expected that the game will not appeal to all players, simply based on the sorts of player preferences noted by Yee and by Project Horseshoe. However, in observing players interacting with the game, from early prototypes of the basic system and continually as the formal elements and content have evolved, interest in developing these sorts of games seems to be justified. In playtests, players have demonstrated their engagement with the story through strategic discussion with their partner, and exhibited excitement at making a discovery and getting to share it. 37 These reactions are encouraging—they suggest that engaging with an interactive narrative cooperatively can be fun. By no means does Grayline close the book on game development at the intersection of cooperative play and interactive storytelling—it is merely a small step toward a more complete mapping of a socially and emotionally powerful field. I hope that experiencing this game will encourage other designers to perform their own experiments toward a greater understanding of the potentials of this space. 38 References “2010 Independent Games Festival Winners.” Independent Games Festival. Web. 1 Apr. 2011. <http://www.igf.com/2010finalistswinners.html>. Alan Wake. Remedy Entertainment, 2010. Computer software. Army of Two. EA Montreal, 2008. Computer software. “Army of Two (PS3).” Gamespot. 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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Cooperative modes of play are an increasingly popular area of interest for Games Studies researchers, as well as a popular feature for modern games. However, there has been very little development of story-based gameplay in a cooperative context. To explore the possibilities of this space, Grayline has been developed with the goal of encouraging its players to share a narrative experience through interactive storytelling. The game's mechanics not only require players to work together, but actively encourage them to cooperatively engage with the game's story. The formal elements and content of the game were refined through an iterative design process, leading ultimately to a unique game experience that supports further development of cooperative interactive stories.

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Creator Bouchard, Sean Kyle (author)

Core Title Grayline: Creating shared narrative experience through interactive storytelling

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 05/02/2011

Defense Date 03/25/2011

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cooperative play,interactive narrative,interactive storytelling,OAI-PMH Harvest,taxonomy

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anderson, Steve (committee chair), Antonisse, Jamie (committee member), Brinson, Peter (committee member), Gibson, Jeremy (committee member)

Creator Email sean.bouchard@gmail.com,sean@seanbouchard.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3822

Unique identifier UC1127095

Identifier etd-Bouchard-4294 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-456461 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3822 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Bouchard-4294.pdf

Dmrecord 456461

Document Type Thesis

Rights Bouchard, Sean Kyle

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu