November 13, 1988

How can I be so up on screenplay story structure, and so blind when it comes to my own game?

A story doesn’t move forward until a character wants something. So – a game doesn’t move forward until the player wants something. Five seconds after you press start, you’d better know the answer to the question: “What do I want to happen?”

There always has to be a range of possible outcomes, some better than others, so you’re constantly thinking: “Good… Bad… Terrible.” Every event has to move you closer or further away from your goal, or it’s not an event, it’s just window dressing.

The overall goal of POP is to get the girl. But that’s not a strong enough magnet to pull the player through all that distance. It needs sub-goals.

Beating a guard in Karateka buys you time to gain distance. You want to get closer to the palace because the princess is there; every guard you beat brings you closer. It’s simple, but it works. In psychological terms, it even follows the classic addictive pattern of diminishing rewards: each subsequent guard is harder to kill, and gives you a smaller reward for your pains, until you reach the intermediate goal (the end of the level), at which point there’s a bigger reward, and things get easier again…. for a while.

Getting through a dungeon in Prince of Persia doesn’t give that satisfying feeling of getting closer to the goal. Partly because it all looks pretty much the same. That, I can fix.

But there’s another key element in story stucture that also applies to games, and is missing from this one: The Opponent. Someone competing for the same goal as the hero, or trying to stop him from attaining it.  The more human, the better. (The days of Asteroids and Pinball are over.)

In this case (we’re short on time, so let’s use the opponent we’ve already got), it’s Shadow Man.

Some games boast a whole series of different opponents. (According to Truby, this is characteristic of Myth, and it weakens the story.) We’ll make the shadow man your opponent for the entire game. You’re competing for hit points. Each blow you deal him weakens him. Each power dot you eat makes you stronger. But if he gets there first and he eats it, he gets stronger. So when you face each other with crossed swords, the balance of power is not predetermined (as in Karateka), but is the result of your own actions thus far in the game.

It links the combat with the running-around. It’s brilliant. I love it!

(Forget the boring damn keys.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 1988 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Old Journals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.