A somewhat edited version of this piece was published by Game Career Guide, under the title “Rock in His Pocket: Reading Shadow of the Colossus“; here is the article as originally intended. This version is also available, largely intact, in The Gamer’s Quarter.
Going by his two big brain dumps – Ico and Shadow of the Colossus – Fumito Ueda is a complicated guy to put in charge of a videogame: an ivory tower idealist, with only a passive understanding of practical architecture. As a dreamer, his ideas are too organic, too personal to fit the cliches that most of us take as the building blocks of game design. Knowing that, he sidesteps convention whenever it gets in his way – which is often. The problem is in those conventions which, though they mean nothing to Ueda as narrator, just as frequently get in the player’s way.
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(August 30th, 2007 @ 10:15am)
So it occurs to me that storytelling, in a videogame, is best guided and measured by discrete character or scenario goals. The player is clued in (directly or otherwise) on certain things that need to happen, then his progress toward resolving those core conflicts is recorded. Certain actions might bring some conflicts closer to resolution while broadening other conflicts. Different events might weigh more or less. Resolving one or more conflicts, depending on the weight given to those conflicts, ends the scenario.
If this sounds awfully generic — like on one level or another it could describe any videogame ever made — then we’re on the right track. If it sounds an awful lot like Silent Hill 2 or Civilization, then even better. The thing is, in something like Super Mario Bros., any storytelling — outside of a scenario sketch — is entirely a facet of the game design itself. Of the play narrative — which is, of course, the entire point of a videogame. Granted, with greater technology comes greater complication, yet the same basic principle should still apply to contemporary design. To put it another way: with greater power should come greater causality.
So what does this mean for modern design?
(August 6th, 2007 @ 11:19am)
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