This is an offshoot of @Master-Frog 's thread regarding games as a story telling medium. The subject was suggested by @TonyLi and since this is an important subject to me, I decided to go ahead and start the thread.
User-created content has become a big part of games, as witnessed by the the increase in games that can be modded and by the number of players who enjoy modding games. While most mods are code and model based, there have been a number of mods that have been more story driven.
I clearly remember adding such mods to my Morrowind game. The ones I enjoyed the most were stories more than they were quests. They often introduced an NPC who became an important part of the game and led you through a series of events. The stories were written by other players of the game and then downloaded into your game. So…user created, but outside the game and not really your story. Still, they added to the enjoyment of the game and lengthened the game play. For me, they added elements not in the original game content.
In multiplayer and MMO’s games, stories are naturally a huge part of the user generated content, and in many cases the only user generated content in the game. I have played a few games in the past that did this quite well but most simply leave it to the player’s own devices, with little mechanics involved.
How can we create our games to better enable players to add stories as user content in single player and multiplayer/MMO games? What kinds of tools can we provide and how can we make it work with our game design?
Any ideas or suggestions? I have a few ideas but am eager to hear yours.
It strikes me as considerably harder to do this well in multiplayer games — or at least, to do it convincingly — because of the need for the whole story to reset somehow so another player can experience it. How do you have a character arc, or resolve a crisis, or whatever, when everything has to end up right where it began for the next player?
In a single-player game, though, this is more straightforward. Mods are one good way to do it; a good mod system will let people add characters, dialog, items, etc., and weave those together into an interesting story (that only has to play out once).
The trouble of course is that writing such a mod amounts to programming, and that may be hard for some players who would otherwise be able to contribute some great stories. So I wonder how it could be made easier. This is where I guess some built-in, menu-driven authoring tools could work, especially for things like branching dialogs. Authors still have to understand logic, but at least we can free them from syntax. At the same time, though, such tools tend to be limiting.
And in multiplayer games, you have the advantage that players can actually act out stories, without having to program them. As you said, this is the traditional and often only user-created content in many MMOs. I’ve played on servers where this was done very well, because there was very little in the way of “rules” the players had to adhere to; it was a basically a consensual imagination space. And it was greatly helped by the fact that all you had to do was describe a thing, in words (because this was the era of text-based games). Nowadays you’re much more limited to what the graphics of the system can present. So, I suppose some way to import custom models and textures would help.
OK, I’ll admit it, I don’t have any good ideas here. But such a great thread starter demanded a reply, so I’ve done my best. Anybody else?
Yes, acting out stories, or role playing, is a way to tell stories without any input from the developer. Many players in MMO take part in this. However, how does one encourage this sort of behavior in a game?
Once upon a time, I played a text game where players acted out planned stories. In text games, these were called mini-plots and they usually brought some sort of conflict or drama into the game. All players were able to participate by interacting with the actors, sort of like one of those mystery dinner theaters, except the stories could go on for a long time, weeks or even months.
This is still a very successful text game and for people who like this sort of thing, it was a way to draw them into an evolving story.
I remember another, a Simutronics game that did a similar thing, although usually used GM’s instead of other players to create the plots and as the actors. While the base plot was not actually user created, the players were allowed to be drawn into the story and even became main characters. It was very hard not to log in every night though…never wanted to miss a clue in the plot.
Is it possible to move this to graphical games? Emotes that can be triggered by the player through a text command might help, as well as animation emotes. SWG did this well. You could set your mood which would change your idle animation as well as your facial expressions.
Today, AI is much more sophisticated. Tony’s Love and Hate asset will allow you to create a community of NPCs who react to the player and each other based on behaviors. Could something like this be used to inspire stories?
I wonder, Joe, do we need rules?
Would custom models and textures make a difference? They add an entire new complexity to an MMO especially.
Interesting topic! I had been thinking more about how to make sandbox games interesting – in that players create their own stories by doing what they want to do in a reactive world, rather than being shuffled through a script on rails – like the crazy things players dream up in GTA that are more fun than following the scripted story. I’ve heard of some players killing all the traveling merchants in Fallout 3 and then taking up their trade routes themselves. Totally not part of the script, but fun for them.
But I think this topic resonates even more with us game developers, since we’re also in the business of creating worlds.
I was going to mention Landmark, and City of Heroes before that, and Second Life and MUDs and MUSHes before that of course. These have a big focus on user-generated content.
Instead, here are two relevant experiences that come to mind:
First, my ex-wife would spend hours hanging out in Star Wars Galaxies cantinas chatting with tailors and shopping for player-made dresses. (Before you think I’m stereotyping, know that her normal gear was battle armor so heavy that her character had to stim up to her eyeballs just to be able to walk. ;)) The neat thing about player-made stuff in Galaxies, if I remember correctly, was that it was all created with in-game tools, and it wasn’t prone to the kinds of scripting and spelling errors that you see in mods. So it really felt like part of the world. I think this is the way to go with multiplayer content: provide in-game tools that work with in-game materials. Anyone want to counter that?
Second, when Diablo 1 first came out and my friends and I had a decent amount of gold, one of us would occasionally go into multiplayer instances and pose as an NPC quest giver. We’d offer a big gold reward for some quest that we fabricated – kill The Butcher to avenge the NPC’s family, etc – sort of like acting out planned stories like Teila wrote about. Diablo clearly wasn’t designed with this kind of player-created content in mind, but other people seemed to get a kick out of it. And it happened in-game without any kind of special scripting or modding. Tools like Love/Hate can help provide a system that does this without having to dig into coding. I think the ability to set up stories this way would be cool in a multiplayer environment.
Ahh, another SWG player! I was the stereotype though, in my skimpy dancing outfits.
The player-made stuff in SWG was not really player-created. Everyone made the same stuff, but you could customize the color and in some cases, you could add custom attachments to the items. You could also add a text message, which was sort of special and cool. I owned every clothing item in the game! Yes, they were created with in-game tools, but again, everyone made the same stuff, but with small customizations.
What made SWG special and prone to more stories than many games was the way the game not only encourage interactions, but they almost required them. If one wanted to be healed, they went to the doctor and to the cantina to watch the entertainers. During this healing time, many of the players would interact.
The other thing that helped is the player economy. This meant haggling and bargaining and finding your favorite tailor would save you money. I had a number of tailors who gave me clothing as long as I told everyone where I got them. lol
Also, the profession system did a great job as well, since it was, like the cantinas, created to encourage participation and cooperation.
So with a way to customize items, a player economy that allowed you to actually run a business and gather clients, and a profession system that encouraged interaction, SWG was the perfect place to find stories. It also had a very strong “lore” that people recognized, making it easy for role players.
Love your Diablo stories! Encouraging and aiding players to create their own missions, such as paying other players to deliver messages or to transport goods or even to carry them somewhere in their ship is, in my opinion, very conducive to story creation. Even those macho types who think stories are for girls end up engaging each other and participating in the “event”.
I remember meeting those macho types in SWG and teaching them to role play. lol They fought it, but I was amazed at how many came to me later and told me how much fun they had.
Not quite what you guys are currently focusing on, but a friend of mine is working on this project (still extremely rough) to better enable the revival of “choose your own adventure” text heavy story games. http://adventurecow.com/
It’s extremely rough still, but the idea is to enable a wider audience to sit down and write more without any real knowledge of game design, code, art, etc. Noble intent at the very least. In theory it will be a lot more flexible than Choice of Games system and easier to use than Twine or RenPy.
Oh, but it is what we are talking about! These are games, even if more not what some folks would consider a game. They look fabulous! I am going to try one later.
Another sort of side way to encourage stories in games is to encourage interactive fiction on your game forums. We once had hundreds of stories created by thousands of players. It not only kept people coming back, but they developed their character even before the game started. They also learned the lore and through their storytelling, they exposed others. The stories were very popular in the community and if there was a lapse in posting, someone would ask them to post soon!
There’s nothing that special about that sort of user generated content. In most cases it’s just giving the playerbase the same tools the developers have. It’s just that this content rarely does anything to change the underlying conflicts the player faces or how the player goes about confronting those conflicts. They just offer more of the same with a noticeable change in voice. It ends up as one more thing out in the wasteland that adds another item on a to do list.
What’s more interesting is creating emergent gameplay. Look at Eve which is full of stories where full scale wars having been fought, along with hostile takeovers of guilds among a slew of others, that had no impetus from the game directly. This requires the game world to have enough dynamics in place where conflicts arise between players/corporations, and also the tools to solve these conflicts within the players’ hands.
There’s a whole series of choose your own adventure games for iPad done by Tinman Games that are good.
Watching my son play games on the Xbox, he will worry about the story a bit but not overly much but when his time is up & he turns it off he will go & dress up & get out his guns, swords etc & run around the house making his own stories up, set in the work of whatever game he just played, as he goes (sometimes with very convoluted plots). In minecraft he makes his own stories & is dying to be allowed to play on other servers on the PC so he can play in some of the user designed worlds with quests etc.
So ideally he, & I’m guessing a lot of other players, would probably drool over a game with minecraft’s expansive crafting combined with the ability to set up npc love/hate stuff plus quests etc.
What about a mobile mmo that only uses static images to minimise data costs where players pick & customise their character, define relationships & then interact via preset text option lists (based on the relationship scales as modified by in game events & selections/choices) with other players. There could be an overarching plot line that the responses fit within but the players are free to interact as they see fit when they meet the other players & npc’s without knowing who is real & who isn’t. I’m guessing something like this would have the forums flooded with theories & people updating as they see a comment or something else that they think might be a clue & all those theories will influence a players choices depending on what theory they may believe is real at that time.
Of course, this would require a lot of scripting responses & weighting but could be updated over time as the games evolve. If the plot is left vague & loose so it evolves over time players will be engaged as long as some small progress is being made but without them knowing what the whole story is they won’t know if they are close or not. Also, if it is left open like the real world there’s no reason why multiple plots couldn’t be run at The same time so players also need to sort out what things fit in where.
If there is nothing special about it, then why does it rarely exist in graphical games but does in text games and why do many players clamor for it? We are not talking about the underlying game conflict. We are talking about the players creating their own stories, their own relationships with other players and NPCs.
The underlying conflict should be the developer’s job and an event system is the perfect way to do this, like Eve. It does create emergent game play through the lore and the game’s events triggered by the game, or more likely by the developers whose job it is to do this.
However, there is the macro “stories/conflict” and the micro. The micro happens on a smaller scale, usually among a group of friends, a settlement of players, a town, a guild, any group of players. It can spill out and effect players not in the group as well through relationships and friendships.
I realize that full scale wars are exciting, but for some of us, it is the personal relationships we have made with people that make us come back as well as the character development. And I don’t mean character development as in leveling or gaining skills, I mean as in the growth of the character, how he or she reacts to situations differently as time goes by, the affects of experiences, which can also occur based on the macro events.
A player character goes to war and comes back changed. A player character joins one of those big corporations which challenges his ethics or threatens his relationships. Those trigger the player stories, the story of the man who suddenly kills a bunch of people in the market, but has never done that before…but the war has changed him. The fella who sells out his friends because the Corporation requires he do so.
What tools do we need other than emotes, a chatbox, and maybe a way to change appearance?
I would like to come up with a tool that helps players organize or record their own micro stories, so they can share them with others through their role play. Maybe a way to create their own NPCs as supporting characters in their story or a way to recruit other players. A way to communicate out of character to plan such an event, a micro event of course.
I guess I need to think on this for a bit. To do list? Do you mean ours as developers? Trust me, half the things on your to do list would not be on mine. We are not all making the same game.
In my perspective, the only character that matters is the player’s. The player can have many characters to choose from, but ultimately will role play as one of them and relate strongly to one of them more than the others. In this regard, you can let the player experience the story, but the player cannot occupy the job of creating a story while simultaneously experiencing it. That would be weird.
Thing is, this doesn’t have to be a made up story. This could actually happen, and not just to a character, but to a flesh and blood player. To do that requires a lot more than the ability to stand around and chat though.
This might not have come across well, but the stuff that happens in Eve is almost all player driven. The stuff like wars has all been built up and triggered by players. In effect, the players created history and fundamentally shaped the world themselves.
If you want the player to have a say in his experience, look at Pokemon. You get to choose your companions and raise them from babies. They become powerful allies and even friends. You are making your adventure as you go along. In Pokemon White, I was defeated for the first time by the final boss… and I decided that meant my character failed to save the world. So, I quit the game and haven’t ever gone back.
All it takes is designing the game to give the players more choice, and to let those choices impact the game in a meaningful way, while paying attention to add enough structure to keep it from melting into a confuddled mess.
Role playing is not just standing around chatting. I completely get that you don’t get it, but you don’t have to demean those that do. I realize that you mostly likely didn’t mean to do that, but instead simply don’t understand. Try to be a bit more open minded, even if it is something you don’t like, others might.
So the players actually create the events? Do they have tools to do this? I can imagine the developers creating the events and then having the players trigger them so that is what I thought it was. I will do some research on Eve’s event system.
If this is player created events, then great. That is what we want. However, not every event has to be epic. Like I said, some of us like the micro events as well.
You must realize that many people play games and we don’t all play the same way or play the same games. By reducing everything to the kind of games you play, you miss out on understanding that there are other ways. It is okay that you don’t like to play that way or build games that way, but it is good to respect others that do.
I don’t like war games or games for the sake of violence, but I respect that others do and I don’t want them banned nor do I insult people who make them. It is really important that we understand that there are all sorts of markets out there. We choose the one that works for us.
I am sure you meant no harm…just that sometimes we need to be aware of what we say.
Watched the video and I think I get it now. It is more a bunch of player’s who gathered together, went on a raid, and were joined by others, turned into a big massive story. Very very cool.
All I can say is that I have seen this in other games too, including SWG. I remember several similar situations. I also remember big raids in text games, where the town gathered together to protect people and the fighters went off to defend them. Once I played a healer who due to her personal ethics healed an enemy and was thrown in jail for breaking the King’s law. A bunch of players decided, without any prompting from me, btw, to protest my punishment and started a riot in the city. I ended up leaving the game for other reasons, and my character became part of the world’s story, a statue erected of her in the town square.
So yeah, those kinds of stories are great and they require little other than the lore and the motivation. In the case of Eve, it was competition for resources. Lots of things could create a an event like that as long as you have the type of player base that will do such things…and the motivation, again.
BTW, Eve was started by role players and they still have a very large population of role players in the game. Role players like conflict, it gives them fodder for role play and it gives them epic stories like the one in Eve.
I wonder if a sufficiently advanced companion (think: sidekick) AI could help here. Suppose you have a companion who travels with you and assists in your adventures, but more importantly (for our purposes), participates in your stories, in much the same way that Watson participates with Holmes — that is, mainly as an observer and commentator. And then the NPC remembers what happens, and can retell the story to others with only a little prompting.
It could be especially interesting if the NPCs also talk amongst themselves, and then bring up relevant bits of lore at appropriate times. For example, facing a blob in the town square, your companion might say something like:
Companion: “I fear this blob is too tough for us! I’ve rarely heard of anyone defeating it.”
You: “Rarely?”
Companion: “Aye… I heard one story, long ago, of a group that managed to slay a blob. But it was at night, poring rain, and the wizard of the group called lightning from the skies. The warrior too was mighty — perhaps you’ve heard of him? Joelor was his name.”
You: “What weapons and armor did Joelor use?”
Companion: “Armor, I know not; but I heard he wielded a sword that burned with a blue fire.”
…and, in case I wasn’t clear, all of the facts so presented reflect something actual players did at some point, rather than something programmed into the game by the moderators.
And yeah, this would be Hard. But just maybe doable.
