TLFeBOOK TLFeBOOK ©2004 by Thomson Course Technology PTR. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, elec- tronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informa- tion storage or retrieval system without written permission from Thomson Course Technology PTR, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. The Thomson Course Technology PTR logo and related trade dress are trademarks of Thomson Course Technology PTR and may not be used without written permission. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Important: Thomson Course Technology PTR cannot provide software sup- port. Please contact the appropriate software manufacturer’s technical support line or Web site for assistance. Thomson Course Technology PTR and the author have attempted throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trademarks from descriptive terms by fol- lowing the capitalization style used by the manufacturer. Information contained in this book has been obtained by Thomson Course Technology PTR from sources believed to be reliable. However, because of the possibility of human or mechanical error by our sources, Thomson Course Technology PTR, or others, the Publisher does not guarantee the accuracy, ade- quacy, or completeness of any information and is not responsible for any errors or omissions or the results obtained from use of such information. Readers should be particularly aware of the fact that the Internet is an ever-changing entity. Some facts may have changed since this book went to press. Educational facilities, companies, and organizations interested in multiple copies or licensing of this book should contact the publisher for quantity dis- count information. Training manuals, CD-ROMs, and portions of this book are also available individually or can be tailored for specific needs. ISBN: 1-59200-353-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003115725 Printed in the United States of America 04 05 06 07 08 BH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Thomson Course Technology PTR, a division of Thomson Course Technology 25 Thomson Place Boston, MA 02210 http://www.courseptr.com SVP, Thomson Course Technology PTR: Andy Shafran Publisher: Stacy L. Hiquet Senior Marketing Manager: Sarah O’Donnell Marketing Manager: Heather Hurley Manager of Editorial Services: Heather Talbot Acquisitions Editor: Mitzi Koontz Senior Editor: Mark Garvey Associate Marketing Managers: Kristin Eisenzopf and Sarah Dubois Project Editor: Sandy Doell Thomson Course Technology PTR Market Coordinator: Amanda Weaver Interior Layout Tech: Marian Hartsough Cover Designer and Interior Illustrator: Mike Tanamachi Indexer: Katherine Stimson Proofreader: Sara Gullion TLFeBOOK This book is dedicated to my parents Helen and Harold; to my grandmother Elsie King (a promise kept at last); and to Dolores Brown, my sophomore high school English teacher, who first introduced me to theatre. Thank you all for helping to give me the life I love today. TLFeBOOK M any people helped make this book possible. I’d like to thank my contributing writers, both official and unofficial: Mark Barrett, Hal Barwood, Bob Bates, Jim Buchanan, Noah Falstein, Nate Fox, Chris L’Etoile, Bill Link, Steve Meretzky, Matt Mihaly, Ken Rolston, John Szeder, and Mark Terrano. Those who performed above and beyond the call of duty by reading the manuscript and offering insight and critiques were Bob Bates, Mark Barrett, Hal Barwood, Noah Falstein, Steve Meretzky and Mark Terrano. Thanks are also due James Ohlen at Bioware; Jennifer Hicks and Scott Jennings at Mythic; Alex Bradley; Chris Foster at Turbine; Jurie Horneman at Rockstar; Chris Klug; Dorian Newcomb; Graham Sheldon; and the Game Design Workshop. My appreciation goes out to all of the members of the workshop list for putting up with my book questions for the past seven months. More general acknowledgments are owed Chris Abbott, Ron Austin, Sandy Bianco, Eddie Bowen, Glen Dahlgren, Steve de Souza, Mike Dornbrook, Elonka Dunin, Phil Fehrle, Eric Goldberg, Brian Green, Hope Hickli, Geoff Howland, Amy Jo Kim, Raph Koster, Peter Lefcourt, Niki Marvin, Di Meredith, Andrew Nelson, Nick Nicholson, Otto Penzler, Jeff Perkinson, François Robillard, Liz Robinson, Jeri Taylor, Jeff Tyeryar, John Valente, Doug Walker, Steve Wartofsky, Johnny Wilson, and Gary Winnick. Some of you will know why. The others will just have to take my word for it that you belong here. And last, but not least, from Course Technology I’d like to thank Mitzi Koontz and my superb editor Sandy Doell. I’m sure I’ve missed a few. My sincere apologies! To all named and unnamed go my deepest thanks. iv Acknowledgments TLFeBOOK LEE SHELDON was a writer/producer for 20 years on TV shows such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Charlie’s Angels, Quincy, and many more. Over 200 of his original scripts were filmed, and he has pro- duced and edited hundreds more. Lee was twice nominated for awards by the Mystery Writers of America. He was also nominated by the Writers Guild of America for the daytime serial Edge of Night. Since 1994, he has been writing and designing games. His titles include solo games such as the award-winning The Riddle of Master Lu, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin.He has worked on massively multiplayer worlds for companies including Cyan (URU: Ages Beyond Myst) and Disney (Disney’s Virtual Kingdom). Lee is known as one of the leading experts on storytelling and character development in games. For seven years, he ran a full-day tutorial on these and related issues at the Game Developer’s Conference and has appeared on panels and given talks elsewhere. He is a charter member of the Game Design Workshop, which includes most of the major game designers in the industry. He is the author of the mystery novel Impossible Bliss (Mystery & Suspense Press, Mystery Writers of America Imprint for iUniverse, ISBN: 0595194818). v About the Author TLFeBOOK Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Part I Background. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1 Myths and Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Why Make Games? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Why Tell Stories in Games? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 One Last Equation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Chapter 2 The Story Remains the Same . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Aristotle and Those Other Greeks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Jung’s Collective Unconscious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Primary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 From The Great Train Robbery to Birth of a Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The Language of Drama and Film. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Part II Creating Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Chapter 3 Respecting Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Character Progression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 The Pivotal Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 The Player-Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Chapter 4 Character Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The Character’s Role in Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Populating the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Commentary and Gossip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Living Useful Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 The Player-Character Revisited (Protagonist) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Death of a Player-Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 vi Contents TLFeBOOK Villains (Antagonists). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Mentors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Sidekicks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Servants and Pets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Merchants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Trainers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Quest Givers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Chapter 5 Character Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Physical Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Professions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Character Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Characters in Opposition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Revealing Character Through Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Chapter 6 Character Encounters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Perspective (First Person Versus Third Person) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Dialogue Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Entrances and Exits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Return Visits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Part III Telling the Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Chapter 7 Once Upon a Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Building a Home for Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Story or Game: Which Comes First? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Original Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Adaptations from Other Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Sequels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Finding a Style That Fits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Linear Versus Non-Linear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Avoiding Clichés . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Contents vii TLFeBOOK Chapter 8 Respecting Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Willing Suspension of Disbelief. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 The Fourth Wall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 The Trap of Cut Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 The Trap of Too Much Backstory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 The Trap of Letting Players “Discover” the Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 Verisimilitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Expressionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Symbolism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Consistency of the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 Weather. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Scope and Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Chapter 9 Bringing the Story to Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Foreshadowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Point of Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 The Obligatory Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Reversals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Arcs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Exposition in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Chapter 10 Games: Charting New Territory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Characters Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Puzzling Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 Quests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 Types of Quests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 Rewards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 The Story Up Till Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Chapter 11 Story Chiropractics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Heart: Player Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Mind: Sharing the Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Funny Bone: ROFLMAO! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Chapter 12 Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Collaboration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Adapting to the Engine You End Up With . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Stopping the Bleeding When You Cut Levels and Areas . . . . . . . . . 263 Polishing Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Copy Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 Contentsviii TLFeBOOK Chapter 13 The Roots of a New Storytelling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 The Odyssey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 The Canterbury Tales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 Don Quixote de la Mancha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Charles Dickens and Publishing in Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 Saturday Morning at the Movies (Movie Serials) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 Dennis Wheatley’s Crime Dossiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Daytime Soap Operas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Episodic Television . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 Chapter 14 Modular Storytelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 The Yoke of Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Nesting Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Structuring Chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 Adventures in a Non-Linear World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 Part IV Games People Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Chapter 15 Game Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Adventure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Role-Playing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 Simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Multiplayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 Chapter 16 Game Genres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 Fantasy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Science Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Espionage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Mystery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 Horror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 Western . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Chapter 17 Console Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 Push the Button, Get the Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374 Contents ix TLFeBOOK [...]... fluttering off a calendar And the tighter the time, the more tension can be created This is perfect for computer games From the intimate, squad-level firefights of the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series to the real-time battles of Command and Conquer and Age of Mythology, the action plays sequentially While the levels of these games, as well as FirstPerson Shooters and action games can be connected in... Finally, there is the bewildering alphabet soup surrounding our most recent type of game: massively multiplayer Virtual worlds, persistent worlds, massive persistent worlds, and tongue-torturing acronyms such as MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game) , MMO (Massively-Multiplayer Online) and MMP (Massively-Multi-Player) are only sort of synonymous I prefer the term virtual worlds used by... While the word game is often taken to mean a competitive activity, the most general definition is simply “a way of amusing oneself.” In fact, games that encourage active participation in storytelling are as old as games themselves Children learn through playing games They act out stories, play characters, and mold their stories and characters in reaction to their friends’ actions Adults role-playing at... specifically say so, assume I mean the same thing as video game or computer game The distinction becomes important only when discussing hardware Then computer games are played on personal computers and video games are played on consoles In game development, the word genre is often mistakenly used when talking about action, role-playing, adventure games, and so forth In this book, I reserve the word genre... important: character and story And like unity of time, it helps us to create the necessary tension and suspense Die Hard (and all its clones), Nick of Time, and of course, James Cameron’s Titanic all benefit from observing the unities of time and place and the third one as well: action Unity of Action This unity is interesting because it encompasses both stories limited in time and place and epics such... opportunities for games and stories to coincide is in the still relatively new form of entertainment called computer games And that is the focus of this book Before we get down to the nuts and bolts of manufacturing stories and constructing characters, there are two fundamental questions we should think about, a few myths that need to be dispelled, and an acknowledgement made that since games are an interactive... rough-looking face in the corner of the interface who got more battered and bruised as he took hits Later games have added more character: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider or Sam Fisher in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell note FPS: stands for first person shooter, a standard type of action game These characters rarely change through the course of the game story, and they have little depth This is one of the reasons attempts... watch, and to play In Chapter 3, “Respecting Characters,” we’ll explore the voyage of discovery players can take to learn about the character they are guiding through the story There are also heroes in strategy games like Heroes of Might and Magic who function more as celebrity walk-ons, just special characters with unique powers at the disposal of the player In Age of Empires and similar strategy games,... of television and film, or simply reach the true mass market, it’s time we accorded the writing of computer games respect and professionalism at least equal to that we currently reserve for graphics and sound and programming Myth #1: Interactive storytelling first appeared in computer games Some of us who make games have a tendency to believe that our civilization came to interactive storytelling late... out all the old “outdated” rules of storytelling, and find some completely new paradigm like Artificial Intelligence to drive non-player characters in games, or force the players to do all the work and create any necessary story Both actually have a place in games, but not as replacements to imaginatively drawn characters or carefully crafted stories Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee’s play Inherit the . Myst) and Disney (Disney’s Virtual Kingdom). Lee is known as one of the leading experts on storytelling and character development in games. For seven years, he ran a full-day tutorial on these and. 461 Contentsx TLFeBOOK C haracter Development and Storytelling for Games is meant to be a resource for writers and designers and those who must work with us and who may want to talk intelligently. as video game or computer game. The distinction becomes important only when discussing hardware. Then computer games are played on personal computers and video games are played on consoles. In game development,