Storytelling — The many forms it takes and how I can utilize it

Zachary Croslow
Aug 24, 2017 · 5 min read

Storytelling takes many forms, it doesn’t have to solely be shown through text. You can have story be told through visuals and through audio. Story telling is different in games, rather than being an observer like patron in a movie theater, games put you IN the story. You are the force that drives the story. Your actions and choices are the factors that drive the story.

So lets take a minute and talk about the many forms storytelling can hold. The first of which and one of the more known forms of storytelling is through text, this is storytelling at its most basic level. This form is less popular today than it was a couple years ago, way before AAA games were born and before the days of DOOM. Games were played simply through text which relies on the player to read through the text and make a decision based on what is presented to them. This form allows the player to create their own unique scene with the only limitation being their imagination. However, text based storytelling has dropped significantly in popularity and in engagement. With the advancements of the modern day video game, cut scenes and actual dialogue has become the standard, and text based storytelling has become somewhat of a hassle for today's gamer.

This isn't to say that text based storytelling should be avoided at all costs, its just that large bodies of text or repeated text runs the risk of boring the payer and results in immersion breaking. Text boxes can still be used in short simple games that either don’t have the budget or capabilities of presenting story. Take Twine games and some instances of tell tale games, they largely rely on the players retention and comprehension to tell their story and many of the games are regarded as great games.

In my most latest project “At a cafe with your best friend”, a game that utilities Fungus to deliver over 30+ text conversation topics, we received numerous forms of feedback from playtesters who say that the text is too long or is too boring to get in to and read, and as a result, led them to move elsewhere in the game and avoid the text as much as possible. To combat this, we decided to chop up any conversation that went longer than two sentences and shortened as much as possible while still outlining the substance of the story we wanted to tell.


Another form of storytelling is through the environment. This is probably the rarest kind of storytelling, yet has potential to be one of the greatest. This is where, rather than hitting you over the head with story, the game instead places clues around the world for you to find and unravel the story for yourself. It relies on visual indicators and points of interest to tell the story to the player.

Take the game Bioshock for example. You can easily just pow through the game, shooting up spliced up mental patients and bringing down hulking big daddies to rescue the little girls and make it to the end without much thought, but if you take the time to look around and observe the environment, a richer and more deeper story can be told here. You can find evidence of a lovers quarrel that led to a murder, or the tragic realization that the slier you just shot up was an involuntary victim of a doctors mad experiments as evidence in the doctors journal and the claw marks ripped through the patients operating chair.

For the Cafe game, I wanted the players to immediately understand that they are in safe and comfortable cafe. I placed the character in the center of the room alongside the back wall so that they are facing a pun board immediately when they start the game to give a sense of humor and enjoyment. The patrons and staff members of the cafe have a happy disposition and demeanor as evident by their smiles and lay back posture. Nothing in the cafes decor and art should indicate a threat or hazard for the player.

The shapes of objects also hold more importance to storytelling than one may think. In a recent boo I read. “Storytelling, How to break through in games”, there are three primary shapes that are used repeatedly to convey specific emotions within players. These shapes are the circle, square and triangle.

A circular model usually wants to convey that the object is friendly, safe,soft, happy and fluid. Take Mario for example, he is charismatic, friendly, lovable and is the hero of the story. He is animated and bubbly. We usually round off hard and pointy edges to make them safe and to make them enjoyable to touch.

Now take a look at the square shape. Square objects want to convey a sense of rigidness, strength, stubborn, basic and unwavering. Luigi is a good example of this, he remains as Mario’s faithful companion, his true nature is never questioned and he is always ready to defend his brother. He stands tall and is more rigid in his animations than is red counterpart.

And now lets talk about the triangle. It usually depicts a sense of danger and is a complete opposite of what the circle stands for. Its sharp edges convey predatory characteristics and is usually associate with pain, unease, danger and harm. Bowsers model represents this accurately, the entirety of his model can be shaped with triangles and is fitting because he is the protagonist to Mario.


So to wrap this up, storytelling holds many form in games. Its the interactivity element that allows games to utilize many of the forms which is something no other medium can pull off successfully. Storytelling is an important element to any game and s something that can be used in many forms to suit the designers need.

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade