The Poetics of Narrative Design in Video Games
How to make the fictional worlds of video games more immersive and convincing
If video games have the power to make players feel like they’re inside a fictional story, then video games also have the power to make stories feel real.
In his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel called Aristotle an “art-doctor” as a way of criticizing the way he tried to “cure” and “teach” the poets and dramatists of his time, and not just analyze their works and the nature of art as an art philosopher.
Aristotle, in Poetics (1451b), defends that poetry, unlike historiography, does not talk about what happened, but about what could have happened or could yet happen, but the poet must write in such a way the search for verisimilitude, making the myth look real.
This can also be applied to video games, but it should also consider the layers of sensory experience and interactivity that are characteristic of this medium.
Nowadays, Aristotle’s philosophical stance in Poetics is certainly not suitable for a philosopher, but today I will commit some of this Aristotelian sin. Not so much because I think there’s something wrong with the way some game stories are written, but because I think some video game writers might like to use some of Aristotle’s teachings. I’m here to mediate the application of these teachings to the peculiarities of video games.
More specifically, in this essay, I will show premises and examples of
- how to build non-dualistic worlds;
- how to design ecosystems and characters that interact in a more organic, coherent, and realistic way;
- and how to write performances that are, at the same time, sensitive, interactive and plausible.
Building non-dualistic worlds
In Poetics (1453a), Aristotle argued that the most tragic plot thrusts a good character into undeserved misfortune because of a “mistake” or “flaw” (hamartia). Plots that revolve around such a mistake are more tragic than plots with two sides and an opposite outcome for good and bad.
In the realm of the arts today — including video games — this question needs to be taken further back. Greek tragedies are generally based on a common plot (mythos) around Greek mythology, mainly dating back to Homer’s works such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. On the other hand, video games often create their own mythology and the central rules of his fiction, except for historical fiction franchises-like Crusader Kings or those based on pre-established mythologies like Hades.
Thus, video games, cinema, modern literature, etc. can create a dualistic context of good vs. evil to support the plot of the story, and this simplistic premise can result in a predictable and superficial experience.
There are exceptions, and some works can use this duality precisely to criticize and reflect on it. This is the case with The Seventh Seal (1957), directed by Ingmar Bergman; The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991), by José Saramago; and Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne (2003), directed by Katsura Hashino.
As Nicolas Turcev wrote in his book The Strange Works of Taro Yoko: From Drakengard to NieR: Automata (2018):
“Incidentally, games, like any other medium, are valuable indicators of how we try to represent our interaction with the world and define its value system”.
However, if a video game writer is interested in building a narrative and characters with more convincing, sensitive, and complex traits, in general, it is preferable that he avoid creating the fictional world with a dualistic foundation.
This is what happens, for example, in Final Fantasy III (1990), written by Kenji Terada (scene writer) and Hironobu Sakaguchi. It is the idea that there are, from time to time, warriors of the light chosen to fight against evil. This premise, if executed directly, will assure the player that he is always on the side of the good and that the evil he faces is something clear and distinct.
Something analogous, but taken to a historical context, is what happens with Michael Schiffer’s script for Call of Duty (2003). The game makes the player see war only from the point of view of American soldiers and a little of the Russians. There is no empathy or understanding for the German fighters, many of whom are not soldiers of their own free will and, historically speaking, own lives, families, etc. that are invisible to the player.
Of course, the authors of Final Fantasy III and Call of Duty were not intending to create a script that was more sensitive, plausible, and complex in a broad/global way. Choosing to immerse the player in a single side of the story and make it dichotomous in a simple way is a valid alternative, and can deliver interesting experiences in some cases. The fact is that if the writer starts with a markedly dualistic worldview, he will hardly be able to build characters and plots that show greater complexity.
In a world where it’s easy to find where the good side is and where the bad side is, characters are usually nothing more than pieces on either side of the board.
There are two main alternatives for a worldview that is conducive to more sensitive and complex plots. The first of these is a polyvalent conception of world forces; the second alternative is a naturalistic worldview. A world ruled by different opposing forces is founded on a polyvalent premise (of many values), as I call it.
In Dark Souls (2009), for example, the main characters have their own independent interests in a tragic mythology for everyone. Another example is Hades, where each deity has a self-interest in the plot; the “good” and “evil” sides are not clear, and at first the protagonist is driven only by a very personal and familiar motivation.
On the other hand, a naturalistic fictional worldview involves avoiding supernatural assumptions and strong metaphysical assumptions for characters’ motivation.
In the world of the Fallout series, for example, there are different villages in a post-apocalyptic setting that try to form cultural habits and rules of conduct in different regions. There are different forces (allies and enemies) responsible for the world that is presented to the player. Another example is Disco Elysium (2019), written by Robert Kurvitz, where there is a variety of extremist political and moral ideologies (communist, fascist, ultraliberalism, etc.).
Both a world governed by different natural and moral forces and a world constructed in a naturalistic way generally lead to a broader moral conception.
Thus, while in Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic (2003) the player is either on the side of light or on the dark side of strength, in Dark Souls or in Hades the player is never faced with “right and wrong”, but with choices (pre-determined or not) that can be judged “right” or “wrong” depending on the character he interacts with in the plot.
Ecosystem and Character Concepts
Another important factor to consider for a narrative to become more believable is its cast of characters. In Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ernest Hemingway wrote that
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”
In this topic I will cover three important characteristics to give life or “personality” to characters:
- Ecosystem
- Sensitivity
- Motivation
It is traditionally customary to separate, in fictional worlds, the mere “creatures” from the main and secondary “characters”.
Creatures as merely functional beings within a group of the same species of little or no relevance to the plot. On the other hand, characters (main or minor) are individuals and have a role in the plot, not just a mechanical function in the world.
In many games this is even true: the fact that there are 100 types of enemies instead of 99 would make no difference to the course of events or the lines of dialogue in many RPGs. But this creature-character difference is not a given, and it may be subtle or even non-existent in some fictional worlds.
Papers, Please (2013), by Lucas Pope, is a game case that only has characters, there is no creature-character distinction. And in Undertale, for example, although not all beings you meet are of great relevance to the story, each type gives a unique dialogue experience and has its own motivations and emotions, in addition to the fact that you kill them or you won’t.
In any case, even if the developer opts for a clear separation between creature and character, it’s still convenient that at least the creatures are in an ecosystem, so that they integrate better in the game context. And creating an ecosystem means creating relationships between these creatures and their habitat.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), directed by Hidemaro Fujibayashi and produced by Eiji Aonuma, is a good example of a game with an ecosystem that establishes good routines for the creatures in its world both in relation to other creatures (of the same species or not) and with the scenery around it.
The stealth game Hitman (2016), directed by Christian Elverdam, is an example of a game that establishes a good ecosystem between characters, with complex routines and interactivity between them.
The more creatures and/or characters interact with each other and with the environment in a more organic way, the more the fictional world becomes believable for the player.
In the NieR series, directed by Yoko Taro, several beings also have emotions, memories, dreams, sometimes motivation (not always, because they also happen to be manipulated), and even religiosity.
This greater complexity of the creatures not only makes their action in the fictional world more believable, but also allows the player to empathize and understand them, in addition to blurring the difference between the “good” and the “evil” side.
The next step is to create a credible plot that takes advantage of the performance of these characters and their potential to explore emotions and reflections in the player.
How to make plot and performances more convincing
In Poetics (1449b), Aristotle states that in a perfect tragedy, the character will support the plot, which means personal motivations and traits will somehow connect parts of the cause-and-effect chain of actions producing pity and fear.
Here I will highlight three points that contribute to the verisimilitude of a plot and the use of characters to do so:
- fictional rules;
- animation realism;
- and good persuasion.
With exceptions, as in a play of the absurd by Samuel Beckett, like Waiting for Godot (1952), a fiction must be governed by certain rules, even when it comes to fantasy. It is because there are certain rules (explicit or not) that a reader of The Lord of the Rings (1954), by J. R. R. Tolkien, would find it strange if Frodo did not suddenly die if he was stabbed in the chest or if he suddenly managed to teleport to Mordor.
This is true for the narrative, and it also applies to the overall sensory (audiovisual) experience of the video game and the mechanics and interface that allow its interaction with the player.
As the puzzle game designer Jonathan Blow has stated (2008), this concept of fictional order can be placed as follows:
[…] in a game, you have to create a simulated universe that works according to some rules. […] It has to be intact as a place that has laws, and consistency. […]. I can’t write down any old bullshit that I want. I can’t make any puzzle that I want that has any arbitrary answer, because it won’t work in the context of the rest of the game.
The first step for video games to be believable is to have clear fictional rules so that it is possible to discern the plausible from the implausible and what matches and what doesn't in the action and script of the characters. The next step is not as fundamental as the first one, but it can help a lot, and this one is realistic animations.
Games can vary in artistic styles without prejudice to immersion and have simple graphics, or possibly none at all. But when opting for more elaborate graphics (especially in 3D), more realistic animation of the characters is something that contributes to making them seem more alive.
Realistic animation ranges from facial expressions of a character’s emotions and bodily gestures of his fatigue to the way he balances after a jump, stumbles while climbing a mountain, or stops short after a run.
This type of animation style is advocated, for example, by Fumito Ueda, creator of the Design by Subtraction. But Dark Souls series director Hidetaka Miyazaki countered this trend:
“It needs to play well, feel good as a game, and I’m willing to sacrifice the feeling of reality in order to achieve that stronger, tighter gameplay. From my perspective, being able to do attacks or defence, those sort of animations need to feel really tight.”
In fact, too much emphasis on the fluidity and inaccuracy of animation can sometimes detract from action-challenging gameplay that purports to be more precise and controlled. On the other hand, a character with very accurate and responsive actions can become less “alive” and more like a combat machine. So that will depend on the game’s proposal.
Last but not least comes the factor of how persuasive the characters’ actions, speech, and thoughts are in the plot given the role they play in it. Ian Bogost, in Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2007), calls it procedural rhetoric,
“the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures.”
A computer can be used to process a painting. In this way, it was generated by a process. But, different from that, a video game is a computational artifact; that is to say, it is not generated by a process, it is a set of processes.
Just like colors in pictures, words in books, and performances in theatre, so processes in video games can persuade someone to change or reinforce their beliefs.
Inspired by the Aristotelian philosophy, Bogost distinguishes for the media of computational artifacts (videogames) three types of persuasion (originally described by Aristotle):
- politics;
- advertising;
- and learning.
It is worth noting that these categories apply both inside and outside fiction. That is, characters not only try to persuade other characters in a video game, but the video game as a whole can persuade the player of certain worldviews, even if the developers aren’t very aware of which.
The difference is that, while outside the game the player can actually be persuaded or not by the game’s proposal, within the world of work, there is only an “emulated persuasion”: a fictional character pretends to convince another one who pretends to be convinced or not.
From a metafictional point of view, these characters’ acting may or may not be convincing or plausible for the player. And it is desirable that it be so that the course of events is believable and the player feels that he is in front of or in a “real” world. To take an extreme example: it is not plausible that a character characterized as brave and fearless without any justification would suddenly run in fear of a harmless creature.
Each interaction with a fictional world or with other characters needs to be convincing in the role it plays to persuade the player in such a way that he feels transformed after experiencing, in an immersive way, a set of processes in video game.
Verisimilitude in video games
In this article, I have given some narrative design suggestions in video games for creating believable fictional worlds. They would create “living”, immersive and coherent worlds in which it is possible to live an interactive narrative with convincing and persuasive reactions.
Several theoretical aspects mentioned here can be further developed in later gaming essays. But for now, my intention is to provide an overview of the poetic potential of video games from the classical, Aristotelian point of view.
In addition to the inexhaustible entertainment potential of video games, I wish that the fictional worlds of this medium become more and more livable by gamers as if these worlds served as a second home.
