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The Toymaker's Bequest

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The Toymaker's Bequest

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The Toymaker’s Bequest

By
Yiwen Dai

Master of Fine Arts
Interactive Media & Games Division
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
May 11, 2018

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgement 3
List of figures 4
Abstract 5
I. Introduction 6
1. Game Overview 6
2. Why is it important 7
3. Project Goals 7
II. Narrative games 8
1. Point & Click Adventure Games 8
2. Problems in Point & Click Games 8
3. Successful case studies for narrative games 9
3.1 The Cat Lady 9
3.2 What Remains of Edith Finch 12
4. Game Design Guidelines for the Toymaker’s Bequest 13
III. Design Trajectory 14
1. Design narrative and story beats 14
2. Paper prototypes for core mechanics 16
3. Digital Prototype 17
5. Designing meaningful interactions 22
6. Solving narrative clarity problem 23
IV. Summary 24
2. Milestones 24
3. Story first or Mechanism first. 25
V. Conclusion 26
Works Cited 27

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Acknowledgement

In making my joint thesis project, I have received tremendous help from the USC Interactive
Media & Games Department.

First of all I would like to thank my thesis advisers Richard Lemarchand and Andreas Kratky of
Interactive Media & Games at USC for their professional advising and constructive feedback to
make The Toymaker’s Bequest into a better experience. As well as helping us being on the right
track throughout the development of game. I would also like to thank Ian Dallas of Giant
Sparrow as my industry adviser for his professional design instinct to set a high standard for the
project and kept on pushing us to aim for better.

I would also like to thank our production team for their hard work and support. I appreciate their
generosity in their time to work on the design, art asset creation, technical support as well as play
testing throughout the thesis year.

I would also like to acknowledge all faculty and cohort of IMDG class of 2018 to provide the
project valuable feedbacks and suggestions.

Finally, I want to thank my partner Jung-Ho Sohn for his devotion and belief in our project.
Without his creative input and hard work, the thesis project wouldn’t have been as thoughtful
and complete.
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List of figures
Fig. 1. Example of Automata Toys, Paul Spooner
Fig. 2. Screenshot of The Cat Lady, the kitchen scene
Fig. 3. Screenshot of What Remains of Edith Finch, by Giant Sparrow

Fig. 4. Twine Prototype for testing narrative
Fig. 5 & 6. Paper Prototypes for shadow puppet theatre level and music box level
Fig. 7. Digital Prototype for Music box level
Fig. 8. Screenshot of the music box level gameplay
Fig. 9. Screenshots of Florence , demonstration of the interactions in the game

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Abstract
The Toymaker’s Bequest is an MFA thesis project and an experiment of solving design problems
for narrative games. This paper is a documentation and post-mortem of the project development
process and a summarization of what the design team learned from the production of the project.
The subject of design methodologies for narrative games will be discussed in this paper.
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I. Introduction
1. Game Overview
The Toymaker’s Bequest is a 3D narrative game. The game tells the life story of a
toymaker, Agnes, by exploring her creations of toys to understand her perspective on her time. It
is an interactive experience to understand the character of the toymaker with the experience of
playing with crafted storytelling machines.
The inspiration for the toymaker’s story comes from the art of automata and how within a
simple cycle of animation, a story could be conveyed while also telling a lot about the creator’s
characteristics.

Fig. 1. Example of Automata Toys, Paul Spooner
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2. Why is it important
The idea behind The Toymaker’s Bequest is that we believe in the value of storytelling a
more than just learning about a series of events, and games as a digital medium as more than just
entertaining. With that in mind, we want to create a character of an ‘outsider’ who sees the world
of her time and has something to say about societal expectations. However, her way to convey
her ideology is through her creation of toys and inviting people to participate in the process of
gradually discover her message.
What more, I want to create a female character for video games that is cynical yet
genuine, and express her opinion on the society of her time in a way that is both interesting and
profound.

3. Project Goals
In this game, I am trying to experiment designing an experience which tell the story
through mechanism and interaction, and create empathy and understanding for the character’s
situation. As a game designer and interactive content creator, I want to achieve the following
goals with my thesis project
· Design an interactive toy which serves as storytelling devices
· Provide a possible solution for narrative and mechanic dissonance for narrative games
· Create a story with a female character and provide diversity in video games content
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II. Narrative games
1. Point & Click Adventure Games
The history of narrative games goes back to text adventure games and choose-your-own
adventures game. The most common and popular genre is the point and click adventure games.
This genre usually tells a linear story with puzzles as the core mechanism to progress the story.
The gradually unravelling of the puzzle works well with the narrative content excavation. Thus
the genre of point & click adventure games is a major source of influence for our game. In these
games, what I found in common is that they all follows the structure of having an existing story
(liner or with branches) and the player input as the key to unlock more narrative content. The
story is embedded and predefined, not generated by the player but evoked by the player. This is
also the structure of the narrative in The Toymaker’s Bequest as we want to tell a linear story and
want the player to discover the story by themselves.
2. Problems in Point & Click Games
The biggest problem is how the narrative and mechanics do not work quite well with
each other, which is commonly addressed as the problem of ludonarrative dissonance. In point
and click games, usually the information needed to solve puzzle doesn’t come from the narrative,
the puzzle solving part only rely on logical thinking of what I have on hand with error and trials
to reach the condition of story progression.
Solving the puzzles result in unlocking the next puzzle and more narrative content
(cinematic), but the act of solving the puzzle itself is not related to the game. The interaction
does not necessarily provide any narrative content.
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In conclusion, ludonarrative dissonance could be solved by designing more meaningful
interactions. And whether the interaction is meaningful could be measure in these three aspects
a. Does the interaction make player learn more about the story?
b. Does the interaction create the feeling of being in the world of story?
c. Does the interaction itself brings fun and provides interest?

3. Successful case studies for narrative games
3.1 The Cat Lady
The Cat lady is a 2D graphic adventure game developed by Harvest Games. It is a game
about a mid-age woman suffering depression due to a broken family and pressure from everyday
life. The game did really well in designing the interactions that reinforces the player’s experience
in finding empathy for the main character.
In the game, there is one particular scene that stands out. It is a scene where the main
character comes back home from a mental institute and tries to calm herself down by making
coffee and getting a warm bath. The player’s goal is to perform daily chores such as boil water,
find a mug, prepare the bath, etc. The game provides two progress bars, red being the stress level
of the main character and green for her comfort level. If the player correctly performs the task,
the comfort level will go up, otherwise the stress level would go up.
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Fig. 2. Screenshot of The Cat Lady, the kitchen scene
Instead of making this about following instructions directly and solving puzzles that are
almost common knowledge, the game is designed in a way that tells the cat lady’s life through
finishing the task. As the main character wasn’t able to pay her electricity bills, her power is
being cut off, and the milk in the fridge already went bad. When the player tries to pour the
spoiled milk into the coffee that they just made by washing the mug and boiling the water, the
coffee will be ruined and this act will make the main character more anxious.
Through this design, not only the player learnt about the poor situation the cat lady is in,
but also they get to have a simulated anxious experience of not being able to do the simplest
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thing such as making a coffee. This is a really good example of combining the story with
interaction to reinforce the experience of the game.

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3.2 What Remains of Edith Finch
What Remains of Edith Finch is a collection of short stories about a cursed family in
Washington state. The core mechanism of the game is for the player to enact the plot in the
narrative. The game is structured in a series of short stories and each one has an interaction
associated with it.
For this game, the focus of storytelling is on creating an interesting interaction. Different
from The Cat Lady , in this game the stories are more accommodating for the different control
mechanisms to combine the two. It approaches the narrative and mechanism problem from
another angle and focuses on the innovation of the control and interaction, and uses dramatic
elements to thread different short narratives together. Which also delivered an compelling story
with interesting interaction system.

Fig. 3. Screenshot of What Remains of Edith Finch, by Giant Sparrow

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4. Game Design Guidelines for the Toymaker’s Bequest
From the examples of the games, we found out that a lot of narrative/puzzle that did well
in engaging the players and providing an interesting story comes from having designed puzzles
around the story. But these designs are also unique and only apply to one specific game.
So we decided to approach our design in a way that focuses on the affordances of the mechanical
toys as well as the message of each vignette. However due to the scope of the project and
complexity and difficulty in the ‘one-off’ design, we couldn’t keep up with the original
production plan and has to scope down the project.
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III. Design Trajectory
1. Design narrative and story beats
Working on The Toymaker’s Bequest , the team started the ideation phase by first
deciding on what type of story we want to tell. The story of the toymaker is a continuous idea
that my partner had been exploring. We had worked on two projects that shares the idea of an
interactive theatre that allows the player to direct the story. For The Toymaker’s Bequest , we
focused more on linear storytelling and having the player participate in excavating the narrative.
Aesthetically, we wanted to continue our attempts to capture the idea of puppets and mechanical
toys.
During ideation, we settled on the idea of telling a story about a toymaker who makes
eccentric toys which do not necessarily entertain people. Instead, these toys serve as her way of
expressing her views on crippling societal expectations and her feeling of being an outsider. For
the character of the toymaker, the keywords that we want to focus on were mechanical
(automata, mechanical driven toys), outsider ’s perspective and female . We wanted her to be
someone who is capable of thinking in a logical way, using her craft of connecting parts and
gears into an artistic expression of her feelings.
The story of the toymaker is told through four different short stories about the toymaker’s
life and what happens in different stages of her life. The story is structured with four vignettes
and told under one framing story, the toymaker’s life experience.
We first design the game into different vignette stories and each one has one mechanic for the
story, themed in different mechanical toys.
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1. shadow puppet
2. marionette
3. music box
4. peep hole theatre
For the narrative beats, we mainly use Twine, an HTML based interactive narrative tool,
to implement short interactive stories and test the narrative delivery. The narrative prototype
helps us define a direction for how the stories feel as well as helping evaluate whether the
mechanical interactions suit the story.
Fig. 4. Twine Prototype for testing narrative

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2. Paper prototypes for core mechanics
For the different vignettes of the game, we wanted to introduce different mechanisms for
each story that servers as the main interaction. In this prototyping stage, we focused on creating
paper prototypes to quickly test if the interaction and mechanism had potential for storytelling.

Fig. 5 & 6. Paper Prototypes for shadow puppet theatre level and music box level
After paper prototyping, we decided to go for the rotating and path connection
mechanism which suits the mechanical nature of the music box. We also planned out how the
mechanism should be able to expand and offer more depth.
For the music box level, the mechanism is rotate circles with lines on it to form a path.
The player character, a music box dancer then moves on the path with music playing in the
background. For this mechanism, we want to express the feeling of leading a life that has been
planned out without choices.

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3. Digital Prototype
For our next milestone, we aimed to create a digital prototype of our decided mechanism.
This is also the stage that we established the code structure, art asset pipeline for the
project.Transferring to a digital prototype was also the stage that we encountered most difficulty
with the usability of the digital prototype being the biggest issue.
For the digital prototype, we focused on the music box level and implemented the core
mechanism. We spent almost 10 weeks implementing and improving two aspects of the
mechanism. First was to refine the control of the rotating interaction and the second was to have
various applications of the same mechanism to provide new challenges.

Fig. 7. Digital Prototype for Music box level
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Fig. 8. Screenshot of the music box level gameplay

By the end, we made a digital prototype that was purely functional in terms of the
mechanism, but we lost the dramatic elements and the narrative that would have kept the player
invested in the experience.
The major problem that we encountered is the core mechanism feeling less like a puzzle
and more like work before the player reached the narrative content. But the interaction of
rotating does provide the feeling of manipulating mechanical parts and structures. We designed
the interaction of connecting the path as a metaphor of a girl following the idea female image
and doesn’t have a choice of her own. However, this interaction itself feels more of work and
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following instructions, without giving player agency. We found that the on-rail experience
doesn’t hold the player’s attention for too long.
Another problem we have is the lack of dramatic elements and narrative content.
However, after we started populating the experience with more narrative content we realized that
in order to fill in the framework that the game mechanic creates, the content required is out of
our scope and production ability. With our original story structure, what the player experience
are mostly symbolic imageries and metaphors, which became ambiguous and confusing for the
player. After spending the first semester in implementing the Music Box vignette, we decide to
pivot and re-scope our project for a new direction.

4. Story first, the interactive animation approach
After the setback we had with the mechanics first approach, we decided that in order to
realize our original vision, we needed to focus more on the narrative and tell the story with
clarity. We decided to scope the project down and steer towards the direction of an interactive
animation. We decided to lose the difficulty of solving mechanical puzzles to focus our efforts
on delivery the feeling of exploring and playing with delicate mechanical structures. We
revisited our experience goal and focused on creating the tangible experience of interacting with
physical objects for a digital screen based game. We also switched the platform from PC to
mobile devices to take advantage of the touch screen support.
The changes we made were to lose the idea of each vignette story needing a new
mechanism. Instead, we focused on how to create the feeling of looking at a mechanical toy and
figuring out the way to interact with it. One of the successful examples we looked to as a
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reference was the mobile game Florence , published by Annapurna Interactive. In this game, the
story is told by having the player act out the main character’s everyday life and simulate the
feeling of participating in the story. It is a great interactive narrative experience to situate the
player with fun interactions and having them care about what happens to the characters in the
story.

Fig. 9. Screenshots of Florence , demonstration of the interactions in the game
Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy is also a game that has a similar design concept. The player
goes through the daily life of a transgender woman and feels the difficulties she faced in life. The
mechanics for both games are quite simple and easy to pickup, but by closely combining the
mechanics and the narrative, both games give meaning to the interactions that the player
perform. Although both games provide a linear story, the player’s input is always acknowledged
and gives the player something to take away from performing those interactions.
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Fig. 10. Screenshot of Dys4ia , demonstration of using of mechanism to express feelings

After rethink our project goals, we decided to acknowledge the fact that our game should
be more about the story and how people feel when interacting with the story. And the two
examples mentioned above gives us a new angle to solve the problem of narrative and mechanic
dissonance. We embraced the fact that our experience is highly scripted and linear, and that we
should focus more on designing meaningful interactive moments.

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5. Designing meaningful interactions
In order to achieve goals that we set for the project, we made a series of changes and
experiments. The first change was to bring back the feeling of mechanical toys, including the
redesign of the music box level into a self-contained scene. We also continued several designs
from the previous prototypes which had a strong sense of real material quality, such as a
zoetrope and requires player to continues cranking, the rotating interaction, sliding doors etc.
A lot of effort also went into the sound and visual feedback of the interaction system. For
instance, the system will give different sound effect feedback depending on what part of the
automata toy the player clicks on to reinforce the feeling of materiality.

Fig. 9. The Toymaker’s Bequest , vertical slice
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The second change was to give the players (limited) control over the viewing camera to
encourage the players to look around and observing the objects in the scene and utilize the
environment to provide embedded narrative content.

6. Solving narrative clarity problem
Finally, the biggest problem we faced in making a narrative games was the problem of
narrative clarity. We went back to the narrative prototype and this time instead of telling a story
about societal commentary, we went for the more traditional storytelling technique and embrace
the structure of having a beginning, progression and end.
Instead of telling the story about a girl choosing to conform to societal expectations with
a heavy reliance on metaphors, we opted for a story that clearly told player’s about who, when,
where, what and why . The story was changed to a lesbian couple of escapologists in the
Victorian time, where upon performing a kiss in public, gets criticized by the audience. The new
narrative follows the structure of a short story in trying to deliver the experience within a short
amount of time, yet conveying the same idea of expressing the toymaker’s criticism on gender
norms.
The benefit of this direction is that the design team could work with more specific
references from both the history and aesthetics from the Victorian time, which made the story
more convincing and rich in details.

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IV. Summary
In this section, I would like to summarize the things I learnt from making The
Toymaker’s Bequest in a game production perspective.
1.Pivoting project
The biggest problem that we encountered throughout the production is not having a
clearly defined standard of what is good. The feeling of not being able to meet a high bar
frequently caused frustration. Personally, I believe the cause for the lack of direction came from
not having enough time for pre-production and the problem of overscoping. Due to the one-year
timeframe for the project, the time left for pre-production was limited. With The Toymaker’s
Bequest , my partner and I started the project with a high-quality finished product in mind and
requiring us to push for entering production as soon as possible. However, the major pivot in the
project’s direction that happened during the middle of the project proves how we were not
prepared to enter full production with the previous design. I believe that making more
mechanical or interaction prototypes during that time could have served the project much better.
Fortunately, the pivoting happened in a way that allowed us to scope down the project with
reusable code and art assets, which cut down a lot of work that we were not capable of doing
during thesis year. Also the theme of interactive narrative toys continued and the project is
largely improved in terms of narrative clarity and user interaction.
2. Milestones
Another problem that I briefly mentioned before is dealing with the frustration of failing
to meet a certain standard of quality. We were given a lot of feedback pertaining to the polishing
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of a level during early stages of development, which scared us away from approaching and
continuing the original design of the project. I think in order to see the project clearly we needed
a different evaluation criteria for different stages of the production. The one vital mistake we
made with The Toymaker’s Bequest was not testing the prototypes early enough and not setting
short-term goals to evaluate the prototypes. The result of this is not being able to identify
problems early and the later changes of the project caused a waste in labor.
3. Story first or Mechanism first.
This is a classic question for most narrative games. For The Toymaker’s Bequest, we tried
to come up with mechanics first without a detailed story. What we had was a rough idea of the
message the story should convey which requires a lot of reverse engineering after the mechanics
were implemented. Another mistake with the mechanics is that we were caught up with the idea
that we needed to make the mechanical puzzles as interesting as the story, which led to the
neglecting of the dramatic elements in early development. For projects trying to bring new
content and experimental gameplay like The Toymaker’s Bequest , there is hardly any existing
formula for us to follow. However, after the pivoting the project, I found that our current design
is very close to the MDA design framework which is proposed by Robin Hunicke et al. In short,
we revisited the project from the aesthetics (player experience) to design out the mechanics
(moment to moment interaction), and then establish the dynamics which in our case is the how
player input would trigger narrative content and keep the story going.
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V. Conclusion
The toymaker in my thesis project is a character that I personally relate to, both as a game
designer and as a woman. The toys that we crafted in the game are also saying the words that I
wanted to say. The journey of making the game had a lot of setbacks, which constantly
challenges my belief in whether this project holds any value.
However, after repeated trying and failing, I still believe that games as a medium should
be diverse in both content and interactions. I hope that my time spent on bringing the toymaker,
Agnes, to life could add a unique voice to the current game industry.

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Works Cited
Exploratorium. "Curious Contraptions exhibition", Nov 11, 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi1R5qty660.
Harvest Games. The Cat Lady , 2012. Computer Software.
Hunicke, Robin et al. MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research ,
CiteSeerX 10.1.1.79.4561
Giant Sparrow. What Remains of Edith Finch . Annapurna Interactive, 2017. Computer Software.
Mountains. Florence , Annapurna Interactive, 2018. iOS.
Anthropy, Anna. Dis4ia , Newgrounds, 2012, Computer Software

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Creator Dai, Yiwen (author)

Core Title The Toymaker's Bequest

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 04/26/2018

Defense Date 05/11/2018

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

Tag digital game production,game design,narrative game,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Lermarchand, Richard (committee chair), Watson, Jeff (committee member), Wixon, Dennis (committee member)

Creator Email daiyw1992@gmail.com,yiwendai@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-495816

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