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The return: a case study in narrative interaction design

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The Return: A Case Study
In Narrative Interaction Design

by

Sanghee Oh

_________________________________________________

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 2013

© Sanghee Oh 2013

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T ABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF FIGURES 3
ABSTRACT 4
THE RESEARCH TERMS AND CRITERIA 5
CHAPTER I. CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION OF THE RETURN 6
I-I. The Desire for Emotional Stories 6
I-II. The Conflict between Narrative and Gameplay Mechanics 8
I-III. How Do We Interact with Stories? 10
I-IV: The Terrible Feeling When an Understanding is Drawn 15
CHAPTER II. ESTABLISHING DESIGN FRAMEWORK 19
II-I. Narrative Design Guidelines 19
II-II. Interaction Design Guidelines 22
II-III. Platform/Interface Specific Design Guidelines 25
CHAPTER III. THE RETURN AS A CASE STUDY 27
III-I. Building a Relatable World 27
III-II. Designing Narrative Interactions in The Return 34
CHAPTER IV. INTERIM RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS 44
BIBLIOGRAPHY 45

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T ABLE OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1: TO THE MOON (FREEBIRDS GAMES, 2012) ...............................................................................8
FIGURE 2: EXAMPLES OF NARRATIVE/ACTION DICHOTOMY .................................................................9
FIGURE 3: HYPOTHETICAL ALTERNATIVE DESIGN CHOICES FOR THE KILLING OF LEE'S
BROTHER IN THE WALKING DEAD .......................................................................................................... 24
FIGURE 4: LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE APRIL 2013 COVERS .................................................................... 30
FIGURE 5: SIDE CHARACTERS ............................................................................................................................ 31
FIGURE 6: INITIAL STRATEGY TO CREATE A REALIST LA ..................................................................... 31
FIGURE 7: CHANGES IN ENVIRONMENTAL ART STYLE .......................................................................... 32
FIGURE 8: INITIAL NARRATIVE STRUCTURE .............................................................................................. 32
FIGURE 9: FINAL NARRATIVE STRUCTURE .................................................................................................. 33
FIGURE 10: MUSIC & SOUND ............................................................................................................................... 33
FIGURE 11: DIFFERENT COLOUR PALETTES USED FOR DIFFERENT EMOTIONAL SPACES. THE
SPACE OF OVERWHELMING STIMULI (LEFT), THE SPACE OF DEPRESSING REALITY
(CENTER), THE SPACE OF MEMORY WHERE A PAST-RELATED EVENT OCCURS (RIGHT)34
FIGURE 12: CORE USER EXPERIENCE CHART ............................................................................................. 34
FIGURE 13: DIALOG SAMPLE FROM THE "OVERHEARING THE CONVERSATION" EVENT ...... 36
FIGURE 14: A SCREENSHOT FROM THE FIRST SPEECH EVENT BUILD ............................................ 37
FIGURE 15: A SCREENSHOT FROM THE RACING EVENT ........................................................................ 39
FIGURE 16: A CONCEPT ART FOR THE DIVORCE EVENT ........................................................................ 41

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Abstract
This paper consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I will discuss the traditional
conflicts between storytelling and agency afforded to players who experience a narrative through
an interactive system, followed by examining the potential of user-centric design for the
construction of a complex, emotional interactive narrative experience, and constituting a
hypothesis on narrative interaction design. Next, I will establish an alternative design framework
based on the hypothesis in chapter II. In the final chapter, I will use my MFA thesis project, The
Return, as a case study using the proposed design framework. This case study will illustrate the
methodology and process used in both the design/development and production, assisted by user
research methods. At last, I will conclude this paper with the interim result to discuss
applicability towards other projects in the future.

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The Research Terms and Criteria

 Due to the need of contextualisation in order to explain my design philosophy, I chose to
incorporate prior art references into the paper itself, rather than having a separate
section.
 The first half of the paper will be dedicated to discussing the theoretical framework, while
the second half is used to discuss my MFA thesis project, The Return, as a case study to
illustrate the design frame I proposed based on the hypothesis presented in the first half.
 To meet the Graduate School requirements and deadlines for the MFA thesis production,
this paper will discuss in-progress designs, and conclude with interim findings and
conclusions.
 I will be using specifically defined criteria and terms in the following:
1) Complex emotional responses in players: this refers to both positive and negative
emotions aroused in players during and after a period of gameplay that are not singularly
classified as what players casually call “fun” or excitement; in the case study of The Return,
the intended emotional experience would be related to sadness, nostalgia, depression,
curiosity, relaxation, etc.
2) Narrative gameplay: narrative gameplay in this paper refers to gameplay interactions
that are designed to create and enhance the player’s narrative experience (meaningful
actions in the given narrative context), instead of pushing the player through various
story nodes.
3) Story-driven games: story-driven games are games with strong storytelling
components. They include traditional Role Playing Games (RPG), adventure games, and
others with strong story components. However, narrative gameplay and story-driven
games are not necessarily inclusive of each other.
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Chapter I. Conceptual Foundation of The Return

The first chapter will establish the conceptual foundation in the making of The Return, an
iPad narrative adventure game to demonstrate my argument that in order to create complex
emotions through the narrative gameplay, we need to incorporate user centric design principles
into video game narrative design. In addition, the usage of tactile interface could enhance the
player’s relationship with the story.
I-I. The Desire for Emotional Stories

The interest in creating emotional experience has been part of major discourse among
video game developers and players in recent years. This is certainly not a case of sudden
revelation that people discovered the need to tell stories. After all, the game industry already
experienced a renaissance of text-based narrative adventure games in the 1990s where Sierra
and LucasArts adventure games dominated the market (Kings Quest, Gabriel Knights, Monkey
Island series). Yet, there is something different about the current discussion of narrative: people
are talking about emotions coming from the interactive stories.
Novels have done it for over a century of time, followed by theatre and film. These old
media have perfected their art in telling stories that evoke emotions in the readers. And video
games, now trying to establish themselves as something more than popular entertainment, find
the need to move people.
This desire to tell better stories is rooted from both business and creative needs in video
game development. In Oct 2005, upon announcing a three-titles collaboration deal between
Electronic Arts (EA) and renowned film director Steven Spielberg, Neil Young, a by-then Vice
President and General Manager of EA Los Angeles and EA Maxis, said,
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We’re going to try to bring together sort of his [Spielberg’s] sensibilities of broad
audience appeal and great concepts, great storytelling and our sensibilities around
game design … one of the things that’s really important for us is answering the
question that our company was founded on: ‘Can a computer game make you cry?’
1

A similar sentiment was also expressed by Quantic Dream CEO David Cage, known for his
story-driven game Heavy Rain. At the DICE Summit 2013, he pointed out,
‘When you think about it, you realize many games have absolutely nothing to say!
[…] Can we create games that have something to say? That have meaning? […] we
need to put games at the center of our society, the center of our life. Games can do
that in a very unique way […] think about your friend who don’t play. Think about
your parents. Most of the time they don’t play video games. They barely know they
exist.’ But you can talk about books, movies, TV, with them, because those mediums
are perceived as being for everyone.
2

Both emphasise on the importance of mature, emotional storytelling in games to reach out
to a wider audience, and present a new partnership with Hollywood as a means to resolve the
deficit of good storytelling and emotional experience in video games (“They master linear art,
and we master interactivity. We should bring them together”
3
). This approach is a popular one.
Nowadays we see many game studios nowadays seek out writers as narrative designers. And it is

1
Totilo, Stephen. “Steven Spielberg Confesses Games Addiction, Announces Next-Gen Projects,” October 13, 2005.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1511482/steven-spielberg-confesses-games-addiction.jhtml.

2
Sheffield, Brandon. “David Cage: Game Industry Has ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’.” Gamasutra, February 6, 2013.
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/186167/David_Cage_Game_industry_has_Peter_Pan_Syndrome.php#.US_9GzDCZ
8E.

3
Sheffield, Brandon. “David Cage: Game Industry Has ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’.” Gamasutra, February 6, 2013.
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/186167/David_Cage_Game_industry_has_Peter_Pan_Syndrome.php#.US_9GzDCZ
8E.
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commonly agreed amongst the gamer community that well-written stories are necessary to make
good games.
I-II. The Conflict between Narrative and Gameplay Mechanics

There is no question that quality storylines, world building, and writing improve the
gameplay experience. However, in reality, despite the common understanding that games need to
tell better stories, story-driven games with heavily pre-authored contents often meet with
criticism that brands them as interactive fiction or “not really a game” due to their limited
interactions; else, they become subject to their core mechanics, which systematically define the
behaviours and social persona of playable characters, which in turn narrowly dictate the story
experience.

Figure 1: To the Moon (Freebirds Games, 2012)

Freebird Games’ To the Moon certainly belongs to the former category. Despite its being
widely praised by video game journalists over its mature storytelling on the unusual themes of
dementia, loss, and regret in life, it has been also described as “this isn’t really much of a game,
and that’s something you should definitely keep in mind”
4
and “I can’t quite call [it] a great

4
Locke, Jarin. “To The Moon Review.” You Call That A Game?, November 26, 2012. http://yctag.com/to-the-moon-
review/.

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‘game,’ exactly, because for as much as [it] is something you play, its attempts at interactivity are
often relegated to the sidelines in favour of pure narrative.”
5

On the other hand, Bioware’s Mass Effect and the Dragon Age series have been hailed as
some of the best storytelling games of our time by many gamers. Structurally speaking, though,
they are constrained by the common binary structure of “narrative/action” where the player
oscillates between the story phase (introduction to a conflict or story) and the combat phase
(usage of physical means to resolve the conflict). And as the combat is the likely form and
resolution of a conflict, the protagonist is almost always defined by his or her combat prowess
and must keep improving it in order to overcome more difficult challenges.
Dragon Age 2 Fallout 3 Final Fantasy 13
Main Game Mechanic: Turn-
based combat
Main Game Mechanic: Real
Time Combat
Main Game Mechanic: Turn-
based combat
Main Narrative Mechanic:
Cutscene
Main Narrative Mechanic:
Quest Dialog/Cutscene
Main Narrative Mechanic:
Cutscene
Protagonist’s Profession:
Warrior/Mage/Rogue
Protagonist’s Profession:
Engineer
Protagonist’s Profession:
Former Soldier
Figure 2: Examples of Narrative/Action dichotomy

Of course, there are alternative approaches. Some games systematically allow more player
interactions (i.e., Planescape: Torment allows the player to opt out of combat situations by
choosing a specific dialog option), and others focus on environmental storytelling experience
entirely (Journey, The Sims). Yet, it is true that story-driven games in general are experiencing a
disjuncture between the game mechanics and the narrative, especially when they feature a
progression of sophisticated, not-so-abstract story structures which gradually build dramatic
tensions to a point of climax that induces an emotional impact for the player. This separation has
not gone unnoticed. Game developer Ara Shirinian puts it well:

5
Navarro, Alex. “To the Moon Review.” Giant Bomb, December 6, 2011. http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/to-
the-moon-review/1900-453/.
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On the face of it, it's a logical progression and combination. You just watch film. But
you play games, and anything expressed in film can also be contained within a
game, so the narrative that you actually get to play must be the next holy grail of
gaming, right?
But why haven't we achieved that perfect synthesis of gameplay and narrative yet?
Why have there always been compromises and stilted combinations of the two?
Are we too naive, or just not smart enough as game developers to figure it out? Or
is it something else?
6

Part of the reason for this disparity lies in the way we see video game narrative. We are
still actively applying what works in other media to video game storytelling. We have also lost
ourselves in the vicious, unending cycle of debate between the cinematic storytelling enthusiasts
and the gameplay purists. And as a result, we have been distracted from thinking about how a
player actually builds emotions from her interactions with the story itself.
I-III. How Do We Interact with Stories?

In order to examine the player’s interactional relationship with stories in games, we must
return to the origin of the phenomenon: how does a story make us feel? Literary scholar Franco
Moretti asks in his essay Kindergarten (1984),
Novels continued to be written which were designed to make people cry, and
people continued to read them in order to cry. One says to oneself, this is a curious
phenomenon, worth looking into more closely, and one soon discovers that

6
Shirinian, Ara. “The Uneasy Merging of Narrative and Gameplay,” January 26, 2010.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4253/the_uneasy_merging_of_narrative_.php.
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although there are numerous theories of the comic, many of them sired by
prestigious names, silence reigns over the “moving”.
7

Even though he is focused on a very specific emotion (“one must try to explain how the
crying is brought on, and what could possibly be the function of texts able to generate this
effect”
8
), Moretti’s view on this phenomenon is worth noting. He believes that a ‘moving’ effect is
produced by the moment when the reader draws an understanding out of pre-established facts
too late; it induces the reader to experience an instance of powerlessness because there is nothing
they can do in their powers to reverse the course of events.
I am going to use Uncle Tom’s Cabin to illustrate Moretti’s point:
1. The reader learns of Uncle Tom’s admirable character [and forms a perception of Tom].
2. Uncle Tom is sold against the protest of George Shelby, the son of Tom’s owners, who
considers Tom as a friend and a mentor [George Shelby is introduced].
3. St. Clare, a sympathetic slave owner, promises that he will free Tom [the reader knows
St. Clare has the power to save Tom].
4. St. Clare dies from a stabbing at a tavern before he can pledge to release Tom [the
reader feels a sense of helplessness].
5. Tom is sold against his will to a vicious slave owner, Simon Legree, who hates Tom
[there is nothing the reader can do].
6. George Selby learns of Uncle Tom’s whereabouts from an escaped slave [a possibility to
save Tom is presented]
7. After Tom helps a slave to escape, Legree orders Tom to be killed.

7
Moretti, Franco. “Kindergarten.” In Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms, 157. New York:
Verso, 1983.

8
Moretti, Franco. “Kindergarten.” In Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms, 157. New York:
Verso, 1983.
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8. Shortly after Tom’s death, George Shelby shows up to buy Tom’s freedom at last, only to
find his arrival too late.
As effective as this example is, one might argue that this structure of drama is focused on
denying what we want, which is anathema to the expectations of video game players; that players
are far more interested in having the freedom and the power to solve the problems of the world,
instead of being subject to its constraints. This was well understood in the case of public outcry
in the gaming community after Mass Effect 3 was released.
[Gamers] were furious when in the end they weren’t given the same freedom to
choose the outcome as they had during the rest of the game … Thousands blasted
the game’s creator, Bioware, of Edmonton, Alberta, on forums. A Facebook page
demanding a new, "better" ending received more than 57,000 "likes." One angry
gamer went so far as to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission for
"false advertising." A group of protesters even sent Bioware 400 cupcakes in three
different colors so that "no matter which one the developer would pick they would
all taste the same," protest co-organizer Sam Zaslavsky said.
9

Nevertheless, Moretti’s argument offers an interesting perspective into how we engage
stories. Instead of focusing on the plot structure, he points at the reader’s cognitive
understanding, which is relevant to the current practice of interaction design, information
architecture, and perhaps most crucially, story-driven video games. First, he assumes that there
is a carefully structured complex of meanings emerging from the text. Second, upon registering
these meanings, the reader actively engages them and forms an interpretation or a conclusion.

9
Horiuchi, Vince. “Video Games: Fans of ‘Mass Effect 3’ Want a New Ending - and They’re Getting It.” The Salt Lake
Tribune, August 5, 2012. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/53819703-80/game-games-art-bioware.html.csp.

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Last, when a conclusion is drawn out of the human cognitive processing of information, it could
yield an emotional response from the reader (and crying, in his view, requires too-late-ness).
This cognitive process is in fact the very foundation of how humans construct narrative.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers call it Narrative Intelligence, an “ability to organise
experience into narrative form,” which is “central to the cognitive processes employed across a
range of experiences, from entertainment to active learning”
10
. Narrative Intelligence operates on
the context of a situation, and together “action and interpretation are seen as being embedded
within particular social and linguistic settings and backgrounds of pre-understanding”
11
. Context
plays a significant role in Human-Computer Interaction research, as it forms the integral
interaction between the software interface and the user.
In social interaction, people orient towards a sense of context, and use it as an
interpretive resource, but it is important to recognize that this sense is never given
but is rather their own interactional achievement; it is a “resource which is
constructed and drawn upon in the course of their practical interpretation work”
(Woolgar, 1981:12). The primary means of for creating and sustaining a sense of
context is the use of language. This has two consequences. First, it effectively
broadens the dimensions of context beyond the limits of the immediate empirical
situation, because participants’ use of language brings into play a wide range of
cultural frameworks, language games and ways of speaking. Second, if context is an
interactional achievement, there is no guarantee that a consensus will be reached.

10
Riedl, Mark O, and Vadim Bulitko. “Interactive Narrative: An Intelligent Systems Approach.” AI Magazine 34, no. 1
(2013): 1.

11
Cooper, Geoff. “Context and Its Representation.” Interacting with Computers 3, no. 3 (n.d.): 246.
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A way of reading the interaction […] is that context is contested rather than
agreed
12
.
If we accept this open-to-interpretation nature of social interaction, we could explain the
conflict between the pre-authored game contents and the player agency,
1. Mass Effect players have built their own interpretations of Capt. Shepard’s journey
based on various contexts provided to them.
2. They meet a pre-authored ending that does not account for the players’ interpretation
of what this journey has been about (forced ending).
3. Players choose to contest the given ending instead of accepting it.
And we could also explain the conflict that occurs when a game offers a dialog choice yet
does not appeal to the player’s interpretation of the game narrative.
1. In The Witcher, the player encounters a Templar named Siegfried in the sewer. Prior to
this encounter, the player has no context or understanding of Siegfried’s character.
2. Siegfried offers to help the player [player forms a good opinion of Siegfried based on the
given context].
3. Later in the game, the player is approached by Siegfried who asks him to help his
Templars. The player must choose a reason why he is or is not going to help the Templars.
All options indicate the player is aligning with a specific political faction, a central theme
in the game. However, at this point, the player cannot have formed enough understanding
of these factions to have a preference [insufficient context]. The only guaranteed context
the player has is his understanding of Siegfried’s good character, yet this is not presented
as a possible reason to act on [which leads to the player’s contesting the dialog options].

12
Cooper, Geoff. “Context and Its Representation.” Interacting with Computers 3, no. 3 (n.d.): 247.
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Thus, we could argue that while playing video games, the player’s mind constantly
engages in the various forms of contexts, makes interpretations out of them, forms
understandings, and reconstructs the narrative. And this is, according to cognitive literary
theorist Lisa Zunshine, how we enjoy stories, even if it is not “fun.” The pleasure of reading a
story comes from the reader’s mind being constantly stimulated through engaging these
representations of textual information on characters’ views and feelings; because the reader is
capable of thinking in a meta representational capacity, she can see “a pattern behind a series of
seemingly unrelated conceptual processes information our interaction with works of fiction. We
begin to recognize that the same cognitive predisposition, that is, our ability to process
information under advisement, makes possible both the metamorphosis of the once-proud or –
prejudiced protagonists into romantic lovers and the metamorphosis of the formerly trusting
readers into “detectives” querying the author’s motives”
13
.
I-IV: The Terrible Feeling When an Understanding is Drawn

Previously, we established how a video game player cognitively interacts with the
contexts in the game. In this section, we will discuss the relationship between the player’s
knowledge and her emotions.
Information scientist John M. Carroll notes that user’s mental models based on the
contents of the mind (“what do people believe about an aspect of the word, what is the relation
between these beliefs and reality, and how do the beliefs affect their behaviour”
14
) are important

13
Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Theory and Interpretation of Narrative). 1st
ed. Ohio State University Press, 2006.

14
Carroll, John M. Interactive Technologies: HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary
Science. Morgan Kaufmann, 2003: 139.

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as people’s behaviour is often explained by what they know and believe from the contents of
their memories, independent from the mental structures and mechanisms.
For example, the work on naïve physics (e.g., McCloskey, 1983) attempts to explain
people’s reasoning about the physical world, not in terms of working memory
limits or particular representations, but in the terms of the contents of their
knowledge— the nature of their theories of mechanics or electricity, for example.
(Which is not to say, of course, that there would be no role for any constraints of
the cognitive architecture in some account of how naïve theories are constructed,
but that question is secondary.)
15

Even though most video games are set in fictional worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and
alternate histories, we could argue that the player’s understanding of the world is still based on
the social and cultural frameworks of the real world. Even if the player chooses to commit an evil
deed in the game, it is least plausible that the player subscribes to a different value system that
promotes the aforementioned evil act; yet it is most likely that the player is fully aware that her
actions go against the boundaries of what is socially acceptable, thus she becomes able to draw
pleasure out of it. The emotional satisfaction comes from her being empowered to go against the
norm, which is highly likely associated with her real life experiences.
Perhaps we could say that emotions aroused in us after interacting with stories are
directly or indirectly based on what we already know. A good example of this phenomenon is
Brenda Brathwaithe’s Train, which operates on the player’s prior knowledge, or the lack thereof.
Train, a handcrafted board game where players lead a train full of passengers to an undisclosed
destination, hits an emotional mark when the players realise what they are performing is a re-
enactment of Holocaust, driving a crammed train of Jewish prisoners to a concentration camp

15
Carroll, John M. Interactive Technologies: HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary
Science. Morgan Kaufmann, 2003: 139.
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(the realisation is achieved through the player’s cognitive process mentioned in I-III).
Brathwaithe recounts in her interview:
Some people approach the game and see it for what it is immediately, and their
reaction is no less visceral than those who play the game. There are those who play
all the way until the end and then realize where the trains were going – and it is
such a steep drop. People become nauseated. Their faces flush. People have cried.
There is always a one-hour period of discussion after (or two hours at MIT) … I am
fascinated when one player figures it out – puts it together – and suddenly stops
his or her progression toward the end and instead works diligently to thwart
everyone else.
16

Gray Ranks, a storytelling board game, also creates heavy emotions through the player’s
memories and realization. In Gray Ranks, the player takes the role of a Polish child soldier leading
up to the tragic Warsaw Uprising in 1944 against the Germans. Throughout ten chapters (over 15
hours of episodic gameplay), the player performs multiple seemingly menial and innocent tasks
to help the resistance movement, builds up an understanding of the world, compares it to our
knowledge of the real world, and begins to grasp the magnitude of personal tragedy inflicted
upon young people during the war. Similar to Train, the gameplay of Gray Ranks is often followed
up by a group discussion. For instance, the group I played with managed to survive the war, aside
from one player who had to amputate her leg. The group admitted their relief that the war was
finally over, and each chose to give their characters a sort of relatively happy ending (retiring to
the countryside, staying with the injured and helping the hospital, etc).

16
Brophy-Warren, Jamin. “The Board Game No One Wants to Play More Than Once.” Wall Street Journal, June 26,
2009. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/06/24/can-you-make-a-board-game-about-the-holocaust-meet-
train/.
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Telltale’s The Walking Dead also utilizes this procedure. The Walking Dead plants subtle
cues in the in-game world that the player explores in the manner of a traditional point-and-click
adventure, and the found environment objects reveal bits of the protagonist Lee’s personal
history. As the game progresses, the player learns that the convenience store the player and
other NPCs are trapped in was owned by Lee’s parents; learning that Lee’s parents are dead
informs the player of the tragedy. However, it is an indirect tragedy in which the player didn’t
participate. The next scene, however, forces the player to actively engage in the trauma: the
player must control Lee to kill his own brother, who has turned into a zombie, to retrieve the key
to escape for life. Once the act is done, the camera lingers on Lee’s huge, almost blank eyes. The
player understands that Lee is now truly alone.

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Chapter II. Establishing Design Framework

Previously, I established a hypothesis that, in order to create emotional narrative
experiences, the designer needs to consider the aspects of Human-Computer Interaction on how
a player constructs a narrative understanding out of contexts. In this chapter, I will discuss the
design framework based on this hypothesis, in order to be applicable in actual design practice.
II-I. Narrative Design Guidelines

There are three design guidelines for designing emotional narrative experiences.

Design for Relatability

As I argued in Chapter I-IV, the players are likely to yield emotional responses based on
their prior knowledge. This prior knowledge is not necessarily limited to the player’s personal
experiences; it could be taught through understanding cultural traumas (i.e., the horrors of war),
upbringings (i.e., appreciation for parents’ sacrifice for their children), and moral beliefs (i.e.,
“cruelty towards the weak and the old should not be tolerated”). This knowledge of relatability is
almost always present in universal themes in the works of fiction: love, tragedy, sacrifice,
heroism, desire, etc.
In the popular practice of interactive entertainment, it is often expected to create a world
full of visual spectacles and wondrous adventures (Avatar, the Indiana Jones series, the Uncharted
series). However, very often, these spectacles carry less emotional depth compared to the
everyday narratives we are familiar with, such as a couple’s argument, the plight of a homeless
person, or financial struggle. When designing for emotional narrative experiences, instead of
looking for exotic themes of excitement, the designer needs to pay attention to these elements of
relatability, both positive and negative, and utilize them to create more relatable worlds,
characters, and plot structures.
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For instance, we consider Catherine a compelling narrative experience because we
identify ourselves to the internal struggles of Vincent, a young man who is afraid of growing up
and taking responsibilities. His conflicts are what most people can relate to in their lifetime
(marriage, having a child, etc). Another example is found in Heavy Rain. Its story unfolds around a
man who is searching for his missing child kidnapped by a serial killer; his quest provokes
emotions in us as we culturally and socially understand the father’s desire to save his offspring.
Construct the Narrative Layers

One could say that when the player presses “start” of a game, she gets thrown into an
unfamiliar world. She does not have prior knowledge about this world, nor has formed any
attachment to it. What she is probably going to do, is to interact with the surrounding world,
deliberately chosen and designed by the designer, in order to form an understanding of what this
world is and what her relationship is to it.
As discussed with the examples of Train, Gray Ranks, and the Walking Dead in Chapter I-
IV, constructing layers of narrative contexts to lead the player to reach an understanding is a
powerful design methodology for provoking emotional feedback. In traditional story writing, the
writer is often advised to develop the plot structure (most notably, the three-act structure in
modern drama writing), characters with depth, and quality dialog and prose. There is a strong
logic behind artistic and thematic decisions the writer makes, often manifested in the forms of
symbolism and other representations. However, in interactive narrative design, where the
designer constructs the layers of narrative information for the player to build up an
understanding, she must also place herself in the position of the player with a blank state.
Successful interactive experience relies on the player’s making sense of the world, over being told
what the world is; it is a new world that he has no prior knowledge of or attachment to, and the
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designer’s job is to feed this necessary information that builds the concept of the world in the
player’s mind through a variety of storytelling feedback from text to music to visual design.
In other words, the design needs to ask the following questions constantly as a part of the
design framework:
Questions Examples (using Catherine)
What happens in this particular moment? Vincent is stressed after learning that his
girlfriend is pregnant.
What is the intended experience? The player relates to the conflict Vincent is
going through.
What does the player need to know? Vincent is not ready for a big commitment. His
girlfriend is pregnant. She wants him to meet
her parents.
How does the interaction/level design inform
the player of the aforementioned
information?
Animated Cutscene/dialog tree: it establishes
the exposition (narrative reasons over why
Vincent is feeling stressed; then Vincent goes to
sleep).
Puzzle level: the player wakes up in a dream
world. The player must run to get away from a
grotesque, monstrous baby (a visual
representation of how Vincent sees the issue).
In order to escape, the player must think and
act quickly to create the right combination of
tiles to jump and move to the exit on the top as
the baby monster is swinging its arm to kill
Vincent (an analogy for Vincent’s desire to get
away from the issue/wake up from the
nightmare).
Figure 3: Narrative Design Questions

Test the Player’s Understanding of the Narrative

Even after designing and implementing for the story experience/designer’s intention, the
designer must understand that each player interacts with the narrative context differently, and
may not have formed the desired understanding of what is happening. In order to ensure the
overall understanding of the narrative based on the design (both representational and
experiential), the designer needs to incorporate rapid user tests into the design production cycle.
Narrative user tests can come in early or later in the production. Textual information can be
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easily tested with a paper prototype or a simple hypertext prototype, to discover any missing
information, consistency and equal weight in player choices, tone, and nuisances.
Representational information can be tested with a paper prototype as well (storyboards, board
game style prototype to establish contexts), but its effectiveness is limited as it does not test the
digital input interaction/feedback accurately. Testing a near-completion build provides most
information, but delaying the user tests until the last minute is costly.
II-II. Interaction Design Guidelines

Building an interactive system to tell stories can be expensive, especially within the
existing production pipelines. Particularly in the video game industry where games are defined
by their gameplay mechanics (point-and-click adventure, puzzle, shooters, etc), designing for
narrative interactions meets many obstacles and problems, as noted in Chapter I-II. However,
despite the reality of limited resources and high production costs, to create an emotional
narrative experience, the designer must determine the core narrative experience he wants the
player to experience in order to choose the proper interactions/gameplay mechanics.
Choosing the right interaction may sound too obvious, but a heavy emphasis on gameplay
mechanic often distracts the designers from thinking about the right interaction in favour of
perfecting their preferred interactions while keeping the story on the side. This is one legitimate
way of designing, as demonstrated in Nintendo’s design philosophy for the famed Super Mario
Bros. franchise (“we develop these new types of play structures and new types of games”).
However, in the case of designing an emotional narrative experience, where the player
interaction is part of the process of “making sense of things,” entirely focusing on the mechanic
alone is likely to cause a disconnect between the system and the narrative.
There are a few questions the designer needs to ask while designing for narrative
interaction:
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What is the core narrative experience/goal?

Similar to the process of creating narrative layers discussed earlier (“what and how does
the player know?”), the designer needs to determine the experience the player encounters based
on the narrative contents. The designer should be able to articulate in one or two sentences, such
as “the player grows to care for the little girl Clementine (The Walking Dead)”.
What interaction(s) would deliver the core narrative experience to the player?

Once the core narrative experience is determined, then the designer needs to brainstorm
the suitable interactions. While it is easy to think in terms of traditional user stories/gameplay
mechanics (“what interactions the player can do for a purpose/fun?”), the designer needs to
understand that interactions should also inform the player of the narrative through her
participation. The player’s actions in the narrative in turn provide narrative information, which
affects the player’s emotional engagement by drawing a certain understanding. In some sense,
this kind of interaction design is similar to creating trauma.
Here is an example: as I discussed in Chapter I-IV, in the first episode of the Walking Dead,
the player has to obtain the keys from the protagonist’s zombified brother. Killing one’s brother
is a serious, ethically charged action that cannot be taken lightly. However, based on the types of
interactions used for the act of killing, its emotional impact could vary dramatically as the
following.
Possible Interaction 1 Possible Interaction 2 Possible Interaction 3 What’s in the game
The player has a gun
and shoots the
zombified brother
from afar.
The player
encounters a turn-
based RPG style
combat against the
zombified brother.
The player
approaches the
zombified brother
and swings an axe to
kill him at once.
The player
approaches the
zombified brother
and swings an axe
multiple times until
he’s dead.
Embedded narrative:
the player identifies
the brother as a
target and kills him.
Embedded narrative:
the player’s goal is
met by defeating the
brother.
Embedded narrative:
the player kills the
brother successfully
by swinging the axe
Embedded narrative:
the player has to
commit the act of
fratricide over and
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at the right moment. over.
Emotional
Engagement: Low
Emotional
Engagement: Low
Emotional
Engagement: Medium
Emotional
Engagement: High
Figure 2: Hypothetical Alternative Design Choices for the killing of Lee's brother in The Walking Dead

As seen the above table, the choice of interaction can change the overall narrative
experience significantly. It is evident that there is a merit in designing proper interactions to
create specific narrative experiences.
Is this interaction within the scope? (pre-implementation)

However, tailoring interactions to different narrative instances is expensive and at times
not accomplishable due to the inherent limitations of the tools, or the amount of programming
required. The designer could also easily fall into the trap of brainstorming every possible
interaction to ensure the most realistic experience, despite the lack of the production resources
or the necessity of high fidelity interactions.
In fact, designing for the most realistic or fanciful interactions does not necessarily lead to
the player’s emotional engagement. Players are capable of filling in the gaps and construct an
understanding based on the contexts. Abstract interactions could work as a strong metaphor for
a complex narrative, as exemplified by Catherine in the previous section where the interactions of
climbing up to complete the puzzle level represents the societal pressures on the Japanese men
regarding sex, social standing, and other adult responsibilities.
The important question the designer should ask here is whether he has the very essential
structure of meaningful interactions suitable to the narrative experience that communicate with
the player. Once this is established, based on the scope of the production, the designer can add
additional interactions to improve the experience.
Is this interaction creating the desired experience? (post-implementation)

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There are times when the designer realizes that the initial design is not creating the
intended experience especially after the first round of user testing. When this happens, the
designer needs to revisit the prior design steps (both narrative and interaction design-wise), and
comes up with alternative solutions.
Does this interaction support a good storytelling experience?

Another important question to ask on a constant basis is whether the interaction serves
the narrative experience or not. The desire to tell good stories and the desire to create innovative
interactions can be in conflict with one another. Like when editing a film, sometimes the best
looking footage has to go in favour of overall consistency. In creating emotional narrative
experience, sometimes the designer needs to accept that using the more conventional
storytelling methods is perfectly logical to create a better narrative experience.
II-III. Platform/Interface Specific Design Guidelines

The final design guideline belongs to the choice of the platform and its input interface
systems. Previously I discussed the guidelines for narrative and interaction design based on the
assumption that the player actively makes sense of the experience through representational and
experiential contexts. However, without the inclusion of an interface that connects the system
and the player in the physical world, the designer’s quest of creating an emotional narrative
experience will remain incomplete as our bodily interactions also play a significant role in our
cognitive construction of narrative understanding. For instance, HCI researchers Kenny K. N.
Chow and Fox Harrel argue for motion input as an indicator of user intention:
[M]otion-based signals can be applied to computer interaction as well, such as
circling on the touchpad to browse through a huge image database. Therefore, we
call for a specific kind of motor input, called motive input, in which motion
embodies the intentional arc in space and time with meaning and information. In
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other words, many types of bodily motion, with repeated use and practice, will be
spatiotemporal embodiment of intention.
17

As for the designer, it is important to acknowledge and understand different platforms
and their interface heuristics when designing for narrative interaction. Creating an emotional
moment for the user holding onto an Xbox controller requires different design thinking from
creating an iPhone experience. Traditional console games such as the Silent Hill and the Resident
Evil series generally rely on the invisible interface to maximize a long term immersive
experience: the player is less likely to look down at the physical controller to maneuver; she
would simply hold down a button to trigger a GUI. Meanwhile, touch-based tablet games assume
the player’s hand to be visible on screen all times, which opens up new possible narrative
interactions. In NyxQuest, set in an Ancient Greek world filled with gods and mythical creatures,
the player is occasionally granted the god’s power, which allows her to move objects and
manipulate the scenery with her fingers; these actions, while not necessarily diegetic, make sense
within the given narrative context. For other gestural interfaces like Kinect, the designer will
want to pay close attention to everyday body language to design meaningful interactions.
In addition, regardless of the designer’s choice of platform and input interface, the
designer also needs to think about the interaction flow to ensure the player’s immersion and
usability. Two conflicting interactions could negate the effectiveness of the design, or even break
the player away from his engagement.

17
Chow, Kenny K. N., and D. Fox Harrell. “Enduring Interaction: An Approach to Analysis and Design of Animated
Gestural Interfaces in Creative Computing Systems.” C&C’11 (November 2011).
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Chapter III. The Return as a Case Study

In Chapter I, I established the notion that players would yield emotional response based
on what they make sense of through their knowledge. With that hypothesis, in Chapter II, I
created a set of design guidelines in the three categories of narrative, interaction design, and
platform specific heuristics. In this chapter, I will use my thesis project, The Return, as a case
study to demonstrate the practical application of the design guideline.
III-I. Building a Relatable World

Story Concept

The subject of The Return is twenty-something Juliet’s struggle to cope with the trauma of
a layoff, a topic which has become part of our everyday discussion in the past years. This story
was chosen based on the foundational level, there was the designer’s strong personal
relationship to the subject. When the idea for The Return was conceived, I identified myself as a
part of what the New York Times called “Generation Limbo,” a demographic of young people who
live off of low-wage jobs and internships with no hope to match up the baby boomer’s success. As
this collective experience of unemployment, depression, and uncertainty was permeating society
deeply, I felt that many would find Juliet’s struggle compelling and relatable.
Plot

Two popular narrative tropes were used to create the overall plot structure of Juliet’s
journey. The first trope was the coming-of-age drama element. The coming-of-age structure
where the protagonist goes through the process of re-examining internal and external conflicts
during the journey in order to come to a resolution was thematically appropriate for the game,
and also reflected the designer’s desire to give the players a moment of emotional fulfilment who
are in fact struggling against the same reality in life. This was also a familiar narrative device in
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video games as a large number of RPG titles feature a young, inexperienced protagonist of
humble background who grows into a mature hero (The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Legend of
the Heroes, Suikoden series, etc).
The second trope chosen was the road trip narrative. While widely prevalent in popular
culture (to name a few: Thelma & Louise, Easy Rider, Sideways, Harold & Kumar Go To White
Castle), the road trip theme has been underexplored in video games, perhaps due to the nature of
video game where the player’s travel is often guided by goals and the process of traveling is
considered an unnecessary hindrance. However, for The Return, with the idea that Juliet without
direction in her life and put in limbo, presented a perfect opportunity to explore the road trip
device, within the urban spaces of Downtown Los Angeles.
Production & Design Process

In order to increase the relatability of the narrative experience, I, as the project lead, held
design meetings where every team member, regardless of their background, could participate in
brainstorming the story. In the design meeting, the team shared their personal experiences with
questions such as:
- How did you feel when you returned to your home town after graduating from college?
- What is it like running into people you used to know?
- How did your current station affect your relationship with people at high school reunion?
- What kind of things would Juliet go through after coming home?
- What kind of things were important back in high school, which are no longer important?
- What was your relationship to your parents’ divorce?
- How do you cope with tough situations? What would help Juliet to get out of this limbo?
- In what part of Los Angeles do you live? What’s your experience with Downtown LA?
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Not only did this practice help to approach the topic with multiple perspectives, it also
allowed the team to bond and to communicate to reach towards a shared goal to create the
intended core narrative experience. From these design meetings, the team came up with many
narrative event ideas, including:
- Juliet revisits her old high school, and recalls her high school memories. These memories
serve to reveal part of Juliet’s character and her relationship to others.
- Juliet runs into Melissa, a high school beauty queen who seemed to lead a perfect life.
Married soon after high school graduation, Melissa is going through a quarter-life crisis.
- Part of what made Juliet leave Los Angeles after high school was her parents’ divorce.
- As Juliet is withdrawn into her inner world, an external event has to happen to pull her
out of her shell and make her realise she needs to move on.
Character Development

As the team was brainstorming for the narrative event ideas, naturally the process also
required the development of characters. For The Return, there were two conceptual goals
regarding the creation of characters. First, it was important to create characters that are realistic
and compelling to the players, given the serious subject matter. Second, the characters also need
to help construct the player’s perception of the Los Angeles landscape.
The pre-production phase of The Return began when the City of Los Angeles was also
commemorating the 20
th
anniversary of Los Angeles Riots, a historic moment that defined racial
tension in the 1990s. In April 2012, local media such as Los Angeles Magazine ran coverage on
the changes in Los Angeles’ socio-cultural landscape since the riots and the contemporary ethnic
demographic of the city.
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Figure 4: Los Angeles Magazine April 2013 Covers

The multi-ethnic/cultural aspect of Los Angeles has been explored in popular media, from
John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust (1939) to the Academy Award winner Crash (Haggis, 2004).
However, the realistic representation of multi-ethnicity has been largely absent in video games
whose protagonists have been predominantly white males. Part of the underexplored multi-
ethnicity can be blamed on the video game publishers’ long belief of the core audience being 18-
35 white males. Fortunately, The Return was not bound by commercial viability, and the team
was able to take the freedom to create what we considered real and compelling.
The team approached characters with two different philosophies. For creating the
protagonist Juliet we chose not to include too specific an ethnic/cultural background as we
wanted her to be the character/agent that players from different backgrounds could relate to.
Outside of her appearance as a woman of mixed heritage (White/Asian), Juliet’s character was
mostly drawn from common life experiences (high school, interpersonal relationships, family,
job) to maximise the player’s emotional engagement. On the other hand, we focused on the side
cast on embodying the realistic ethnography of Los Angeles. With Juliet as the core, these side
characters were designed to form a larger picture of Generation Limbo.
Character Name Ethnicity Details
Abraham Black American Juliet’s high school best friend. A law student with a
massive student loan debt.
Martin European A European ex-pat works in the Tech industry.
Navid Persian Works multiple Starbucks shifts despite having a
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American Master’s in English Literature.
Elena Mexican
American
Enrolled in a Nursing program to support her family.
Kevin Indian American An engineer who aspires to become a YouTube star.
Figure 5: Side Characters

Representing Los Angeles

With the goal to create a relatable space, the team at first worked on creating an actual
location-based, realist space in the game. The pre-production research included field trips, taking
photos, and researching detailed streets on Google Map. However, over time, the team discovered
that there is a tension between the desire to create a realistic space and the desire to immerse
the player in Juliet’s emotional journey. The design team had to return to the Design Guidelines
and discussed whether the realist representation of Los Angeles is the core narrative experience
for the project. In the end, the team chose to remove the element of realistic representation of
Los Angeles from the game world, and focused on creating an emotional, abstract representation
of the city.

Figure 6: Initial Strategy to Create a Realist LA

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Figure 7: Changes in Environmental Art Style

Changes in Narrative Structure

Figure 8: Initial Narrative Structure

Reflecting the Constructing the Narrative Layers guideline, The Return’s narrative
structure was designed to provide the player bits of information to form her own understanding
of Juliet’s journey. As seen in the above chart, the beginning and the ending are linear. Instead of
giving the player the ability to reach multiple endings, the narrative design of The Return was
focused on allowing the player to interpret the ending differently based on what they understood
through the interactive choices they made.
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Figure 9: Final Narrative Structure

However, later in the production, due to an overreaching scope and other production
issues, the team was forced to cut the initial content by half. Acknowledging that only the first
half of the story would be made into the game, the team restructured the narrative to maintain
the core experiences (the player’s interaction yields different narrative information; the player
experiences a sort of closure from the conflict).
Music & Art Direction

The musical score and sound effects of The Return are designed to give the player the
needed narrative feedback, on both a thematic level (music represents the part of the story the
player is on) and an interactive level (sound effects to assure the player after she made an input).
Narrative Juliet is psychologically
withdrawn and depressed.
Juliet takes a journey
on memory lane.
Juliet is coming
terms with her life.
Music Disharmony/Noise to indicate
her mental state. The music is
only an unwanted stimulus to
Juliet.
Neutral, nostalgic
melody to mark the
timeline
(past/present events)
Upbeat, alternative
rock music that
progresses with
multiple loop
points.
Sound
Design
Location sounds establish the
sense of physical space in the
city.
Signals the transition
between the present
and the past. Gives
audio feedback to the
player after the player
makes a choice.
Bicycle sounds to
add more dynamics.
Figure 10: Music & Sound
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In addition to what I discussed earlier on the representation of Los Angeles, the colour
scheme of The Return is also designed to correspond to the narrative.

Figure 11: Different colour palettes used for different emotional spaces. The space of overwhelming stimuli
(left), the space of depressing reality (center), the space of memory where a past-related event occurs (right)
III-II. Designing Narrative Interactions in The Return

Disclaimer: this section will cover the design specifics, problems encountered, and solutions
made to solve the problems. Due to the timeline of the MFA thesis paper submission, this section will
only cover the design decisions made by mid-March 2013, with the inconclusive outcomes.
After the World Building phase where different narrative elements were chosen based on
the Design Guideline, the design team followed with the actual narrative event design and
implementation. The first task was to break down the narrative into three parts and determine
the broad core experience goals.

Intro Middle End
Juliet arrives at LAX. In the
morning, she wakes up to
remember the layoff which
took place a few days ago.

Juliet wanders around
Downtown Los Angeles
alone, visits old and new
locations of her memories.
At night Juliet meets other
young people, and ends up
searching Abe’s missing dog.
As the search ends, the sun
rises, and Juliet & Co ride out
into the morning.
Core Experience Goal: The
player understands Juliet is
depressed and
withdrawn/learns of what
happened to Juliet (layoff).
Core Experience Goal: The
Player plays five narrative
events in no given order to
form an understanding of
Juliet’s character, feelings,
and background.
Core Experience Goal: The
player feels accomplished
after finding the dog. The
player feels a sense of
resolution during the
morning ride.
Figure 12: Core User Experience Chart

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With the user experience goals defined, the designers settled with three gameplay
interactions to create the overall narrative experience. Each designer was assigned one
individual event and one major gameplay mechanic. They then detailed the relevant variables on
separate design documents for implementation and user testing.
Interaction 1: Alternative Point-and-Click Narrative Adventure Event

Five of nine events in The Return use this event type, a common storytelling module in
point-and-click adventure games. In this module, most narrative information is delivered
through visual design and dialog (textual). In the case of The Return, however, the biggest
difference is found in the design of the player’s dialog choices.
Conventional player choices in video games generally come with a measurable outcome
that affects the game world. Morality scale is a common device used in games such as Mass Effect,
Bioshock, and Fallout, where the player’s choice of action could alter the way NPCs react to the
player character. Another common device is to tie different item rewards to the player choice
(The Witcher). While these systems are devised to give weight to player choices, it also distracts
the player from actually making a meaningful choice in the given situation as the player is
consciously calculating what choice would yield the most beneficial outcome.
For The Return, instead of giving the player the power to impact the game world, the
dialog options and player interactions are designed to embed emotional undertones that the
player would draw certain understandings from. As this type of interaction heavily relies on the
textual information, dialog texts were carefully chosen to influence the player’s assessment of the
situation and feelings that will lead to his making a choice.
For an example, in the “overhearing the conversation” event, the player walks back into
Abraham’s apartment where Juliet spent the night before. Upon entering, the player immediately
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sees the dialog bubbles coming from the far side of the room out of the frame. These dialog
bubbles contain Abraham and his fiancée Lisa’s argument.

Lisa “Abe, don’t tell me you said she could stay here.”
Abraham(Abe) “Well, yeah.”
Lisa “Really, Abe? Another one? For how long? I hope it’s only temporary.”
Figure 13: Dialog Sample from the "Overhearing the Conversation" Event

The couple’s argument is created to make the player feel uncomfortable and unwanted,
followed by the options to leave without their noticing or to approach the argument. If the player
chooses to leave, then the player’s understanding of the situation would be that Juliet is imposing
on Abe’s household and making his fiancée unhappy. However, if the player chooses to walk into
the apartment and therefore hearing the rest of the argument, it will be revealed that their
argument is not really about Juliet; they are arguing because Lisa is overworked as a nurse to pay
off her and Abe’s heavy student loan debt, and often feels underappreciated by her fiancée.
Similar to the “overhearing the conversation” event, the “running into Melissa” event also
places the player in a complicated situation. When the player enters the Grand Central Market,
she is met with the former high school beauty queen Melissa and her parents. After a bragging
speech on how successful Melissa’s husband Trent has become in investment banking, Melissa’s
parents bluntly ask about Juliet’s career. If the player is to choose telling them the truth (she’s
laid off), then an awkward silence will follow and they will leave Juliet alone. Then, Melissa runs
back to Juliet and confesses her unhappy marriage and that she admires Juliet’s courage to
confront the truth. However, if the player chooses to lie about Juliet’s employment, she has to
support a stressful series of lies that makes her look better, but she never learns the truth about
Melissa.
Design Challenges in Text-based Interactions

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The most obvious challenge found in the text-based interaction is ensuring the player
actually reads the text. The frequency and the amount of the text played a factor during the user
tests, as some testers bypassed or skipped long dialogues without acquiring the needed
contextual information, and found themselves making a random choice. To solve this problem,
the designers were put to task on trimming down the dialog or replacing it with another
representation method.

Figure 14: A screenshot from the first Speech event build

Another challenge was found when the testers intentionally chose a wrong dialog option
to see what happens, or chose based on the language logics, without having the intended
experience. In the “revisiting high school” event, the player visits Juliet’s old high school and
enters the memory of graduation day where she has to deliver the graduation speech as
valedictorian. The initial core experience for this event was to simulate the tension and anxiety
Juliet was feeling upon delivering the speech. The level designer came up with the interaction
system of dialog choices where the player gets kicked out of the speech after making three wrong
choices. In order to differentiate the wrong answer from the right answer, the designer used
puns. Unfortunately, it resulted in two unwanted outcomes. First, some testers wanted to see
what happens when choosing the obviously wrong answer. Others chose the right answer, but
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not because it’s something they liked; they chose it because it grammatically made sense. None of
these test results were relevant to what the designer initially wanted.
To resolve this situation, the designer returned to the Design Guideline and discussed
with other designers to re-define the core narrative experience of the event. The designer needed
to make a decision between whether he wanted to design a new interaction to create the anxious
speech delivery experience, or accepting that his initial prediction (“this is what the player would
feel in this situation”) was wrong and reconsider the overall narrative to create a more befitting
interactive experience.
In the end, the designer chose to focus on the player’s personal participation in the speech
delivery, and redesigned the dialog with three equal value choices, rather than having a
right/wrong dichotomy, to increase the player’s emotional engagement: 1) what high school
student Juliet would say (appropriate to Juliet’s given situation), 2) what the player would say
reflecting his own high school memories and knowing Juliet’s current station in life (possibly
appropriate to the player’s situation), 3) a third choice that is situated between 1) and 2).
Interaction 2: Simple Touch-Based Narrative Interaction Event

Similar to the point-and-click adventure type I discussed earlier, a Touch-based Simple
Narrative Event is where the player’s physical involvement through a simple touch gesture input
impacts the outcome of the event. This event uses the same logic that the player choice influences
the knowledge the player obtains by making a choice.
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Figure 15: A screenshot from the racing event

One notable example of this type of event in The Return is the “Juliet’s memory of learning
how to ride a bike” event. In this event, the player is sent to the memory space where young Juliet
and her sister Olivia compete against each other on a bicycle race to win their father’s approval.
In the beginning of the race, Olivia makes a snarky remark that shows her overconfidence in
winning the race, which is likely to influence the player’s motivation to win. As the frequency of
the swiping gesture speeds up the bicycle, the player needs to be physically involved by swiping
fast in order to win the race. However, in the middle of the race, Olivia falls, and the player is left
to either choose to return to tend the fallen sister or continue by swiping in different directions.
By making this choice, the player determines the way this particular memory is remembered. If
the player chooses to go check on Olivia, it is revealed that she faked the fall to stop the player
from going ahead. The player and Olivia are put back in the race. If the player wins, then Olivia
will complain that she can never impress her parents because Juliet excels at everything. If the
player loses, Olivia will make fun of Juliet. In the case of the player choosing to ignore Olivia’s fall,
Juliet will face the angry dad who rushes out to help the fallen Olivia.
Design Challenges in Simple Touch-Based Narrative Interaction Event

There were two major challenges with using a simple touch interaction as a core
mechanic. The first challenge is in providing the player narrative information without interfering
with the interaction the player is already engaged in. During the playtest of the “racing” event,
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multiple testers accidentally skipped the dialog UI that informs of Olivia’s fall because they were
too engaged in the swiping action. So far the design team proposed to reinforce the player to take
notice of the dialog: setting a longer timer for the dialog box, and adding visual/audio cues to
inform the player.
On the other hand, the testers who did understand the narrative showed a range of
emotional feedback from verbalising a strong dislike towards the sister to experiencing a late
realisation that something bad could’ve happened to the sister because the player ignored her
falling. Such reactions despite the lack of playing time to develop an attachment indicated that
the hypothesis was positive: that the players tend to develop emotional responses toward
something they have first-hand experience with, and the integration between the interaction and
the narrative context was successful.
Despite the success, however, it also indicated a fundamental problem. Competitive play is
a proven interaction in games that has been widely used. In the case of the “racing” event, the
swipe-to-race interaction was appropriate and effective as the core experience was to
demonstrate young Juliet’s sibling rivalry with her sister Olivia. However, outside of the “racing”
event, the designers couldn’t use the same interaction without distorting the narrative
experience. Devising new touch interactions would’ve been one way to answer to this problem,
but given the limited production resources (refer to the Design Guideline: “is this interaction
within the scope?”) and usability issues stemming from introducing multiple interactions, my
conclusion is that this is something that needs further investigation.
Interaction 3: Complex Touch-Based Narrative Interaction Event

This is the event type that requires most complex interaction design as the player
interaction directly engages the narrative context. Hypothetically, any player touch interaction
with the game world creates a meaning/builds a secondary context.
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Figure 16: A concept art for the divorce event

The “divorce” event is being experimented with as a case study for this type of event. The
original idea was to have player navigate in a platformer level made of blocks with abstract
words describing Juliet’s parents’ arguments leading to the divorce. The decision to abstract the
narrative was made to avoid vilifying a particular parent and focus on Juliet’s dealing with the
divorce. We also chose to use the platformer setting since we wanted to maximise the physical
contact via touch interface to increase the player’s involvement in overcoming the obstacles (as
in contrast to using gyroscope/accelerator) in the journey. The event was designed to have two
routes, easy and difficult on the level of touch gameplay. Based on the route the player chooses to
go, it changes Juliet’s emotional response to the divorce: the easy route will leave Juliet resentful,
while the difficult route will relieve Juliet with a realisation that it is finally over.
Design Challenges in Complex Touch-Based Narrative Interaction Event

Playtest revealed many problems in the divorce event. First of all, the players lost interest
as the narrative was too abstract. During one user test session, three out of four testers began the
event with trying to connect the first 4-5 words into a coherent sentence. Once they realised
these word blocks don’t form a sentence, they gave up and focused on the navigation. Some
testers were also too interested in the inherent logic of the platformer (“move to the right until
the end of the level) to pay attention to the word blocks. Another critical issue was the usability.
What the designers assumed as the foundation of the core experience (the requirement of
Oh 42

complicated touch manoeuvring would represent the difficulty of the situation Juliet is in) only
frustrated the testers and made the game almost unplayable.
The design team had to step back and return to the Design Guideline, and discussed if the
complicated input gesture was appropriate to the narrative context. The team agreed that
complicated controller interaction conflicts with the player’s engagement with the story element,
and chose to request that the engineering team simplify it. Other proposed design solutions
include: adding short animated sequences to help the player’s understanding of the abstract
narrative, and allowing the player multiple simple interactions over complicated ones.
Besides the problems, there was also an interesting discovery: Several testers reported
that they accepted that the reason why the gameplay is difficult was because of the
contextualisation. One tester mentioned in the interview that “I am going over a block that says
[unhappy], it make sense that I am having difficulty,” feedback shared by two other testers. All
three were non-hardcore gamers, and women. Their feedback suggested that the players do
make associations between the narrative and their actions, and presented a further challenge:
can designing for narrative interactions overcome the inherent logic of the platformer mechanic
that leads the players to behave in a specific way?
Additional Challenges with Tactile Interface

One last design challenge I want to address is the platform specific heuristics regarding
tactile interface design. During the production of The Return, it was noted that switching from
one gestural interaction to another could disrupt the player’s immersion. For instance, initially
we mapped The Return’s main navigation and the passing of the dialog to different gestures
(swipe and tap) because it was conventional reasoning with other input interfaces. However, as
the swipe gesture was chosen to simulate the feeling of cruising down the street on the bicycle,
having to tap in the middle of swipe gestures broke the flow and became problematic. To resolve
Oh 43

this problem, the design team removed the tapping from the dialog and mapped the dialog UI to
pop up 3 seconds after any touch input. It solved some of the problems, but also resulted in
cranky transitions between different events. This on-going problem affirms that tactile
interaction requires design thinking beyond conventional UI design.
Oh 44

Chapter IV . Interim Results & Conclusions

Despite the limited evidence discovered during the production of The Return as a case
study, I argue that there is enough potential and value found in the user-centric narrative design
methodology for creating emotional narrative experiences. By embracing the idea that emotional
responses come from the player’s constructing an understanding after interpreting the contexts
based on her knowledge, the designer can vigorously respond to the challenges of designing
narrative interactions from multiple perspectives instead of being bound by one governing
gameplay mechanic. Even in its early development stage, I believe the design framework based
on this hypothesis guided the design team to create appropriate interactions for Juliet’s
emotional journey in The Return, and helped the designers to diagnose the problems and find
solutions in the pre- and post-implementation stages.
My interim findings suggest a few other key points: firstly, user-centric narrative design is
fluid. The narrative information the players cognitively understand is not necessarily structured
in linear ways, and can be achieved through different types of information and interaction design.
Secondly, as the designer cannot assume the player’s reception of the narrative information,
rapid user testing needs to be performed as soon as possible, and should be included as part of
the design practice. Thirdly, utilising tactile interface as a storytelling device requires negotiation
amongst game mechanics, narrative, and level design as the designer needs to consider the flow
and the usability of tactile interaction.
This research ended up bringing up more questions than answers, but many questions
and problems The Return team encountered should easily be analysed and used to improve the
design framework for further design research.

Oh 45

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This paper consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I will discuss the traditional conflicts between storytelling and agency afforded to players who experience a narrative through an interactive system, followed by examining the potential of user-centric design for the construction of a complex, emotional interactive narrative experience, and constituting a hypothesis on narrative interaction design. Next, I will establish an alternative design framework based on the hypothesis in chapter II. In the final chapter, I will use my MFA thesis project, The Return, as a case study using the proposed design framework. This case study will illustrate the methodology and process used in both the design/development and production, assisted by user research methods. At last, I will conclude this paper with the interim result to discuss applicability towards other projects in the future.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Oh, Sanghee (author)

Core Title The return: a case study in narrative interaction design

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 05/06/2013

Defense Date 03/08/2013

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

Tag hci,interaction design,interactive fiction,narrative design,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anderson, Steven F. (committee chair), Avellone, Chris (committee member), Kratky, Andreas (committee member)

Creator Email appliqed@gmail.com,mail@sangheeoh.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-250043

Unique identifier UC11288224

Identifier etd-OhSanghee-1652.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-250043 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-OhSanghee-1652.pdf

Dmrecord 250043

Document Type Thesis

Rights Oh, Sanghee

Type texts

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

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA