How video games can tell better stories

As someone who treasures story-driven games, it slightly annoys me when I hear:

“If I want a good story, I’ll just watch a movie or read a book”

A few of my gamer friends share this viewpoint, and most of you probably know somebody who does.

There are so many good movies, TV shows, anime, and books, but so few good story-driven games (although that’s slowly been changing over the past few years). Why are games lacking so much in the story department? And what can developers do to change this?

Two main reasons:

1. A lack of understanding on how to write good stories, especially in indie front. How many story-driven indie titles do you know that were a massive success? On the top of my head, I can only count two: To the Moon and Undertale. But there’s plenty of indie hits due to fun gameplay.
2. A lack of knowledge on how gameplay intertwines with story: We’re often left with games that stuff gameplay in between cutscenes. Gameplay can often be a detriment to a story’s pacing, so make sure to take that into account when writing the script. It’s also a great benefit if you’re able to weave exposition into gameplay.

How can games do a better job at telling stories?

First of all, if becoming a gaming writer is what you aspire to be, then the best source for learning material is screenwriting books. Screenwriters often have the strongest understanding of stories and if you don’t read their books, you’ll be at a severe disadvantage to people who have.

The Four Main Ingredients For Success

Understand what makes a story good and bad. Weak stories lack in the four main ingredients for success: suspense, mystery, drama and humor. Great stories tend to excel in at least one of these.

It’s better to really nail one of these core elements rather than divide your efforts among all four and have it be mediocre.

The Art of Suspense

It’s impossible to include everything about suspense in one post. Suspense alone deserves at least a whole book towards it, but I’ll try cover the important points.

Technique #1 — Add layers of complications

They say complications are the essence of story, but one problem isn’t enough to make it interesting. You need to pile complication on top of complication (multiple times) to create suspenseful moments.

The Walking Dead demonstrates exactly this: First they hear screaming, then they find a man with his leg caught in a bear trap. Then to make matters worse, zombies start showing up, cutting them short for time. Finally, in a desperate attempt to save the man, they cut off his leg.

Good stories do this. By adding more complications, the audience finds themselves short on time and must take drastic measures to resolve the situation. Not every complication gets resolved happily. The best ones don’t.

Technique #2 — Manipulate Time and Create a Sense of Urgency

Game mechanics can manipulate the player’s sense of time. In the above scene, there are three things done to create urgency:

1. Timed dialogue — only having seconds to reply instead of unlimited time.
2. Multiple failed attempts to rescue the man —with each failed attempt comes an increased sense of urgency.
3. Background sounds: gunshots and screams to accompany the failed attempts e.g. Kenny screams things like “Fuck, I’m sorry, but we have to go. Now!” Finally, a cut to Kenny’s character about to leave and saying “Fuck I’m just wasting ammo. We gotta go.” the player is finally forced to make a decision: leave the man behind or cut his leg off.

A few other ways to manipulate time are:

1. Making the player’s health bar drop at an extremely fast pace to simulate the heat of battle. If used at the right moments (i.e. before the player enters a really fierce battle), it can make the player think twice before leaving cover even for a split second.
2. Giving the player invulnerability instead of taking the last point of damage to simulate “last moment” survival (Bioshock does this). Sometimes it’s better to slow down time for dramatic effect.
3. “Stun mechanics.” Ever feel like when you’re stunning someone for two seconds, it feels very quick, but when someone stuns you, it feels like an eternity? It’s because the feeling of danger fastens your perception of time.
4. “The Oddball Effect” — by showing a series of related images and including an unrelated image, you can slow down time when you show the oddball image. Here’s a demonstration.

Technique #3 — Create Isolation

Nothing creates more distress than being in isolation. Imagine two settings:

1. It is midnight and you’re a bouncer working at a nightclub. Out of nowhere, a large man sucker punches you and knocks you to the floor. He proceeds to mount you and continue punching you. Scary? How about this:
2. It is midnight and you’re a nurse working at a hospital. You find yourself walking down a dark corridor when suddenly you hear someone sobbing from one of the patients room. You slowly approach the room and reach for the door handle… only to realize it’s covered in blood.

Even though nightclubs are a way more dangerous place than hospitals, hospitals are much scarier for two reasons. Firstly, you can be isolated from everyone else, and secondly, it’s a very quiet place. Silence is a great tool for creating suspense, especially when combined with isolation.

Using simply these two techniques led to one of the scariest scenes in the history of film:

I just watched this again and holy shit, it wasn’t any less scary than the first time I watched it.

When writing plot, try forcing your characters into isolated environments. A few ideas are: solitary confinement in prison, locked in a basement, lost in a cave, being left behind in war. Use silence to enhance the tension.

Alternatively, making everyone instantly disappear can also achieve suspense. Imagine being on the titanic with thousands of people, falling asleep, then waking up and realizing everybody disappeared. That would be distressing.

Now that you understand the power of isolation, try to incorporate it into your gameplay mechanics. Perhaps if you want to punish a player for making the a bad decision, you can force them into an environment of isolation. Or perhaps you can reward a player for choosing the right choice and put them out of isolation. The choice is yours.

After setting the right atmosphere, use technique #1 to start piling on complications. This will keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

Hope that was useful! I’ll try writing a post for drama, mystery and fun/humor in the future.