Arc 2 - Game Design Basics

Character Arc

A character arc represents the core physical and emotional changes a character goes through in the course of pursuing their quest. Looking at it in another way, they are fundamentally different personalities at the end of the quest than they were when it began. Many games are not concerned with character arcs. In most first-person shooter games, the player interacts with the world always in the same mindset: kill anything that moves. In these games, developing finger skills takes precedence over character development. It doesn't matter how you got into the arena of death, it only matters that you start shooting things. Some shooters, such as Halo, tag on a storyline that you can follow or not while honing your skills killing aliens. The story, and any character arcs (however cool they may be), are merely extras, to be taken or discarded as the player sees fit.

Embedded Narratives

A game designer can avoid most of the issues of a player's play-style conflicting with the Intended Story by eliminating options that alter the story. When this is done it is called an Embedded Story. There is nothing the player can do to alter the story, no actions they can take to not make the game progress as designed except failure in moving down a set linear path. In this case, the player might have only one unavoidable path leading to that village which triggers a cutscene the player must watch. In addition, the NPCs could approach the PC and automatically tell them the information the designers want them to have. Finally, with information in hand, the only path from there leads directly to the cave and the encounter that fuels the story from here.

Linear Paths

A linear narrative means that the story will be told from start to finish, and it will never vary in its delivery of plot points. Typically games with linear narratives will also have linear game design. For these types of games the story is meant to accentuate the gameplay not be a part of it. The story helps fill in the details to push some level of immersion but the goals of the player are not affected by knowing the story. Whether they follow the story or not, they will still play the game in the same way. They may enjoy the game less (or more if the story is bad) but it doesn't matter in terms of completing the game. This does not mean the story must be trivial or small. Linear narratives can create amazing stories within games, they just don't affect gameplay. Halo, for example, has a fairly detailed and engaging story, but it is entirely optional for the player to follow along. Not following the story does not stop the player from moving through the game just fine.

Breadcrumbs

A term taken from the popular fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, breadcrumbs in video games are simply marked paths for players to navigate. They don't have to be literal breadcrumbs; they can be footprints, string, magical aura trails, or just about anything that is generally fixed and unalterable by the player. Sometimes breadcrumbs are optional. A game might offer a button or in-game spell to turn breadcrumbs on or off. In any regard, breadcrumbs are used to keep players from getting lost or taking wrong paths.

Character Types in Games

Archetype, Stereotype, 3-Dimensional

Archetype

Archetypes are broad categories of character types. Often their characteristics are drawn from mythology or the more modern concept of "The journey of the Hero" as illustrated by the likes of Joseph Campbell and others. In film, perhaps no other movie better exemplifies the journey of the hero than Star Wars. Here, each character is an archetype that fits into the hero's journey. See if you can identify from Star Wars: The Hero; The Sword Master; the trickster; and others.

Story

As mentioned in Characters, it can be quite surprising how much story even simple games have. There is a story in Pac-Man. There is a story in Angry Birds and there is certainly a story in Halo. Some games will obviously have more story than others. Here we will detail our plot, any scripted sequences, and any cinematics or cut-scenes that will be in the game. Again, when we reach the Story Topic in the Section, we will return to this section with greater detail and understanding of what to put here. For now, let's continue with our Tempered Steel example.

Visuals as Narrative Context

Because video games are now such a visual medium of storytelling, we can use that to our advantage in laying out a story to the audience. This is because the old cliché is true: a picture tells a thousand words. Let's examine how that is so and how we can utilize visuals in storytelling. Consider a location in a game. What story does it tell without saying a word? First, think of who lives there. A brightly colored town with doe-eyed, winged pixies as its inhabitants tells an immediate story to the player and implies certain expectations. In this example, the story the visuals imply might cause a player to suspect this is a world of magic and fantasy creatures. Now, what if the color in the center of town was dull gray and muted? What if some of the pixies looked sad and dirty while other were bright and happy? The player now starts to smell a mystery in the works. What has caused this split in the town? Why are some pixies sad and others happy? Because a story is being established, the player might now start thinking into the future. What might happen if I start investigating the town? Will the bright pixies start to become mean if I help the sad pixies? This is all set up without a word of dialog. From here, a game designer might start to use dialog trees or dialog one-offs to further tell the tale of this town's troubles and immerse the player in exploring it. It is important to remember, no matter what methods or techniques a game designer chooses, consistent tone and mood are crucial to creating dramatic themes. There should be a limit in how many tonal changes a game is willing to go through. If pixies are illustrated as cute, lovable, fantasy creatures, then perhaps caution is called for if the next step is to give them laser beam eyes that turn people into robots.

Design Tricks

Breadcrumbs Power-Ups and Collectables

Storytelling Techniques in Video Games

Creating story in a video game is a slightly different process than writing a novel or a movie script. For one, the story must be interactive or else the game is little more than a movie on a computer monitor. To accomplish the feat of storytelling, the video game author has many storytelling techniques in their toolkit to use to deliver the plot points throughout the game.

Cutscenes

Cutscenes are fully animated mini-movies that appear to the player, typically, at key points of the game's story or at major points of the player character's development. Cutscenes allow the player to play and focus on the game and still pause once in a while to be filled in on story points. When done correctly, cutscenes are a terrific way of telling story in a game. There are issues with cutscenes, however, that should be considered. First and foremost, they can be time consuming and costly to create. This is the difference between text and visuals and audio: a book is cheaper to produce than a television show. Adding cutscenes is going to be an added expense in time and money to make. Cutscenes can also be overused. When a player is focused on their character development by raising their skills and power levels through playing the game, being forced to stop and watch a cutscene can become frustrating. Cutscenes work best if they are well placed at major story arcs and used only when they best advance the story and not distract the player. This requires the writer to be very shrewd in making cutscenes that excite and advance the story; yet still not feel like a pause in the game to clumsily toss out plot points. The rules for writing great cutscenes are the same as writing a great scene in a movie: it starts with tight structure, razor-sharp dialog, and burying the exposition.

Constraints as Flow Control

For a game to have flow, players need a goal or destination, an intriguing and somewhat obvious path to get there, and some indication of what to do when they arrive. A proper and well-planned game environment is the best way for designers to achieve these goals. The most obvious tool in our flow control bag of tricks is the physical limitations we can apply to the environment. For example, let's say we want a player to take his or her character from Point A to Point B. We are immediately faced with some questions. How do they know they are supposed to go to Point B in the first place? Also, what if they go in the wrong direction, say to some player imagined Point C? The easy answer is: don't let them. That is to say, we create obvious or highly suggested paths to initiate the player's movement in the right direction.

GDD (Game Design Document) Elements

Game Concept Target Audience Platform Genre Core Gameplay Visual Style Characters Story

Branching Narratives

Games that utilize branching narratives offer a little more to players in terms of story variation. Branching narratives means that players are offered some choices that will change some aspects of the story. This is done through creating multiple separate paths for the character to take that moves them from one story to another. It is a digital fork in the road where one direction is a completely different story than the other. Sometimes when a "road" is chosen, it is irreversible. The other path becomes blocked off permanently unless the player starts over and chooses the other path when they reach that point in the game again. This cut-off is often done for story reasons. To allow both paths would create story contradictions. For example, the player may be offered the chance to save a town from a wizard or join the wizard in turning everyone into frogs. Once the player chooses one, the other one is no longer an option. There is still some obvious game engineering going on in the player's head as they witness these branching narratives. They can imagine where each choice leads and make some conscious decision on how to play the game. However, this implies that they care. If the choices and decisions seem forced, clichéd, or uninteresting, then they have failed as a feature of the game. They must also be balanced. If one path leads to an immediate game over situation and the other leads to hours of fun and engagement, then there is a serious problem with the branching narratives in that game. Once again, storytelling in games needs to be more than great plot and structure; it needs to work within the game itself. Finally, branching narratives are going to take much more time and planning in the game design stage of pre-production than a linear narrative, because there is so much complexity in design and material to be utilized.

Genre

Here we will decide on our genre (see Section One: Arc One: Module: History of the Video Game Industry for a full discussion on Genres). This is just a brief sentence in our GDD, but it is important to list as it will create a tone and methodology on our approach to that particular genre.

Characters

Here we will delve into the characters in the game. Although it is not always intuitive, almost all games have characters. Even a game as simple as Pac-Man has amazingly detailed characters when we think about it. Each ghost has a distinctive personality and habit when in the maze. Even Pac-Man himself seems to have a personality (So reckless with those cherries!). In general, this section will have detailed descriptions of all the game's characters, including personality, quirks and physical descriptions. Later in this Section, we will take a detailed look at how to formulate exciting and original characters for video games, but for now, we can examine our example from Tempered Steel.

Visual style

Here we will describe what the game will look like. If we are not yet sure what it will look like, we can begin to breakdown our concept's most obvious environments to get us started. For instance, what the world looks like is already contained in our chosen level environments. Some possible environment choices might be: - A post-apocalyptic wasteland - A 2D neon maze filled with "breadcrumb" dots - The ruins of a lost magical civilization - An asteroid field in the middle of deep space - A deep, dark dungeon We can also consider environmental effects as a way of brainstorming our game's look. Consider these environmental effects or weather patterns as visual clues to the game: - Constant storms cause unnatural red lightning to - crash to the earth - Volcanoes erupt in the background - Torch light illuminates the dark cave

Non-Player Characters (NPCs)

In many video games, players take on the role of a character that then interacts with other characters in the world. Every single character (whether human, monster or something else) not under the control of a player is a Non-Player Character, otherwise known as a NPC.

Core Gameplay

In this section of the GDD we will describe how the game is played and list all of the core mechanics. Different GDDs will present this information in different ways. One way is to write level abstractions. Level abstractions are snippets of full level designs. It could be a detailed description of the first minute of playing the game or a broad summery of actual gameplay elements. As we fill out these sections, more detail can be added as we go through the Section. For the purpose of the example GDD we are constructing, we stay broad with our description of gameplay. For a complete GDD, all gameplay elements will eventually have to be formulated and documented here. We can, however, begin to break our broad elements into smaller "aspects" such as combat, puzzles, exploration, etc.

Stereotype

It can be hard to separate an archetype from a stereotype. In fact, archetypes become stereotypes when the broad personality trait of the archetype becomes the entirety of their character. That is to say, the writer stopped developing the character beyond filling in the expected traits. This creates flat characters that are predictable, unoriginal and boring. Stereotypes fail because of clichés. Clichés are the building blocks for stereotypes and they happen when lazy writers fail to attempt fully developed 3-Dimensional characters.

Target Audience

It cannot be stressed enough that if there is no audience for a game, it will not be successful no matter how new and innovative it is. Entire studios can fall when they fail to target a particular demographic that is thriving and able to consume the products being created for them. Market researcher should be utilized to identify an audience and create a desire for the product through marketing to that audience. Finally, in the Target Audience section of our GDD, we will also announce the ESRB rating the game is targeting.

Game Concept

Let's start filling in our GDD with the most crucial first question: What is the game? Before a game can be made, we have to decide what the game is (and is not). First and foremost, the game concept must connect to an audience. Right now, this audience is not legions of dedicated fans, but instead our own development team: we must write a concept that intrigues and captures the imagination of the team. Typically this information will be placed in a very early section of a GDD, perhaps even on the first page. Our GDD template we selected for our exercises calls this section "Game Concept". This section does not have to lay out much in the way of gameplay or mechanics. That will come later. For now, the idea is to create excitement over the general theme and concept of the game. Let's build an example game so that we can see a demonstration on how this information might fit into the GDD.

Power-Ups and Collectables

Like breadcrumbs, power-ups and collectables are tools to lead players through the game in a controlled manner that, optimally, will create fun and flow. Collectables are things players must find in the game to give them clues for going forward. At its most basic level, a collectable gives the player a short term goal that, once achieved, open a new short term goal. These goals then stack to create a bigger, more epic, quest. For example, say we are making a mystery game. We want to encourage players to explore the world and find clues, but it is a little too big of a world to just let them find their own way. We might use collectables this way: The player must find a series of clues in the form of lost books in the world. Each book is contained in a smaller part of the overall world, cutting down on the player being lost or frustrated. As one book is found, it gives clues (or perhaps just opens new areas to explore) on the location of the next book. Power-ups work in a similar fashion, but instead of giving the player information or unlocking clues, they make the player's character in the game more powerful. In doing so, the player can now take on bigger challenges. In our canyon example from earlier, we could use this concept very neatly. Once the player reaches Point B, they could receive a power-up that makes them jump faster or higher. Now they have the ability to take on the much harder path to Point C. The player feels they are steadily improving (in character power or player skill) and doing so at a pace that keeps the game fun. It is has potential for being meaningful and keeps the gameplay themes.

Linear Environments

Linear designed games have the same issues as open world games, only in reverse. On the positive side, linear design allows the authors to control the narrative and create a more dramatic and directed experience. With a linear design it is easier to lay out clear goals for the player. In addition, players are less likely to miss plot points and player skill mastery can be planned on at set stages of the game. In fact, overall, designers can focus the player on a more limited scope and as such make that limited view much richer and detailed than they can for an open world model. In turn, this decreases the feeling a player has that they are in control and that their choices matter. The biggest complaint about linear games is that they don't really offer any choice. In fact, in many linear games, choice is an illusion. Although good design will hide this fact, linear games are much more of a hand-holding experience. Players are told directly to go here and do this. For many, this feels like a pointless exercise, in particular if the story is weak.

Using NPCs

Most NPCs will interact with a player in one or more of these ways: - As Informants - As Obstacles - As Background - All In One

Sound

Much like the visual elements, we should be able to instantly conceive some of the sounds of our game world. Some indicators we might put into our GDD upfront, depending on the game itself, might include: - Silence; no birds sing, no wind blows - Storm sounds - Sounds of a living village

Obstacles

Obstacles are just what they sound like: they are challenges the player must overcome to progress in the game. Obstacles allow game designers to open up the linear path restrictions some to provide opportunities for fun and to use and learn in-game skills. They also allow us to begin to control the pace of the game. For example, we could now create multiple paths but still heavily entice the player to go the direction we want them to initially. The player at Point A could see an option to go to Point C, but be discouraged to do so with difficult obstacles. An obstacle can be anything we want it to be, as long as it fits the context of the environment. Let's say our Point A is at a starting point on the mountainside. We want the player to go first to Point B, but we want to hide this intention from the player to give them a bigger sense of the world and their perceived options working within that world. So we make going from Point A to Point B the easiest and most rewarding at this stage of the game. The obstacles in going from A to B will be designed according to our theories on creating skill loops. Let's pretend that the player will have to jump to avoid falling rocks to get to Point B. Now we can start to control pacing with how many rocks we want to throw at the player in a given space. We can carefully control skill improvement and we can also insert some needed fun into the game. Finally, we will reward the player for making the choice to go to Point B. At the same time we encourage certain player behavior (go this way), we can also discourage the player from choosing any other behavior. We can do this by making obstacles that strongly hint to the player to try a different behavior. For example, we could create a rock slide that is extremely difficult to navigate without advanced skill mastery of our jumping mechanic. We can increase the likelihood of the player going the route the designer intended by increasing the difficulty level of going any other route. The trick is making sure the players can actually pick up on the environmental clues enough to understand that they need to acquire the basic jump skills first, before taking on the rockslide.

Creating Items as Characters

Often it will be required to describe or write about inanimate objects or items found within a game. There is no good reason why items cannot have the same rich backgrounds and stories that characters do.

Open World Environments

Open world environments offer players a sense of control and realism. Without a forced linear path, the game creates a desire to slow down and explore. That can lead to problems however. First, the world will need lots of content choices for the player. If they decide to bypass a part of the game to explore something else, then that something else needs to be accessible and balanced to the player going there in terms of player skill mastery requirements or character power. Another issue with open world games is in integrating story elements. Non-linear storytelling is more difficult to make work in open world games. If the authors do not know where a player will go and in what order quests will be taken, it becomes tricky to seed plot points that require linear events to activate. That problem can be handled with meticulous planning and allowing for some flexibility in the story. Here is the real trick with story in open world games: the story the authors want to tell about the characters is not always reflected in the actions of the player. For example, imagine an open world game that wants to tell the story of a man seeking redemption from his past in a modern urban landscape. We can conceive how the main quest and mini-quests can support this thematic goal fairly easily. However, in allowing the player to ignore these quests and simply explore and play in the world on their own, they may not pick up on the redemption themes. In fact, they may go the opposite route and just see what causing havoc all over the city is like. Now the author's story themes and plot are in contradiction to the "hero's" actions.

Variations on the GDD structure

Platform Considerations Genre Considerations Mechanical Considerations

The Damsel in Distress Archetype

Representing the best the world has to offer, the Precious will be the target of evil and the driving motivation for the Hero. Example: Zelda from Legend of Zelda.

Character Arc as Game Mechanics

Role-Playing Games take their story, and in turn, their characters much deeper into the play experience. For most RPGs the entirety of the game is one gigantic character arc for the player. Often this is accompanied by statistics that demonstrate the long-term growth of the character thought out the game. Levels, Ability Stats and Growth of Strength and Power are examples of this.

The 3-Dimensional Damsel in Distress

She carries the burden of the kingdom on her narrow shoulders. Growing up in the royal family, she has seen firsthand the moral and intellectual laziness of her kin. Casting away childish dreams of handsome princes and fancy ballroom galas she has dedicated herself to being a just ruler. However, her rejection of cultural superstitions as ostracized from the common people, even as her focus on reason and logic pulls them out of the dark ages of the past.

The Damsel in Distress Stereotype

She is the key to a bright future but no one knows why. It might just be because the artist made her so beautiful. In any regard, her purpose is to be a victim for the hero to save and nothing more. Example: Princess Peach from Mario Bros.

Elements of a TDD (Technical Design Document)

Software Hardware Programming Language Engine Data Sharing Sound Software

Implied Narratives

Some games do not have a structured narrative, but instead offer an implied narrative. This means that the game simply presents a world to explore without any story elements beyond interacting with the world. What makes this kind of game work, typically, is that it is built to be a massive multiplayer online game (MMO). When lots of people share a world with an implied narrative, the players themselves create the stories in the game.

Story Arcs

Story is often a large part of RPGs and so allows for other kinds of character arcs than just a rise in power and stats. Often this returns to the Hero's Journey in some way and involves epic trials and tribulations for the hero that can alter his outlook of his quest many times before achieving victory and resolution.

Gameplay Story

The Gameplay Story is the story that actually plays out for the player as they play the game. It is the story that surfaces through how the player chooses to play the game. Now, imagine if the player doesn't approach the village as intended. First, they skip the cutscene. Perhaps they are tired of breaks in the action. Perhaps the game has too many cutscenes that are dull. For whatever they choose to ignore it, they have now started to alter the in-game experience the authors intended. Next, let's pretend the player decides not to talk to anyone but instead wants to cast his 'fear spell' on random villagers. As the player walks around the village scaring people with his or her magic ability, they discover the dark cave the NPCs would have directed them to. They enter it and defeat the monster.

Intended Story

The Intended Story is the sum of cutscenes, dialog, dialog trees, visual clues and all of the story elements the authors put into the game to tell the story they created for the game. For example, the designers may have a quest that brings the player to a village in need of the player's help. In this village are NPCs who will talk to the PC and direct him or her to the problem the designers have programmed for the PC to fix. Perhaps there is even a cutscene to introduce the village and give the player a sense of what heroic deed needs to be done. If the player approaches this area of the world as intended, they will enter the village aware that a problem exists. Their time in this village is paced out nicely by having the PC talk to villagers and find clues to the "monster". We achieve flow as each sequence of actions the player does takes them closer to their goal, trains them in meaningful skills, and motivates them to continue forward.

Linear Paths

The most common physical limitation in environment design is a linear path. A linear path only gives one option for the player's direction. Returning to our dilemma of encouraging our player to go from Point A to Point B, we can use linear paths to direct the player by removing all other direction options. The player will quickly realize he or she only has one option which fulfills our need for instantly informing the player of what to do (go to Point A, it is the only choice). Of course, the problem with this solution is it just removes player options. It does not, in itself, create flow, in the sense it could be very boring just navigating one direction. It also does not yet require any skills to be learned or provide any motivation to play the game. We also cannot control pacing unless we plan for a very short game. What we need are obstacles.

Burying the Exposition

The most crucial, and often overlooked, aspect of relating information to the audience through dialog is burying the exposition. Exposition is all the details your audience needs to know to understand character motivation and how the plot is advancing. All too often, this information is simply blurting out the moment the player needs to know it. It may be a functional way of telling a story but it not a very clever or immersive way to do it. In fact, it can rip your audience right out of the story you are telling. It starts when characters start speaking of things they already know as if they are saying them for the very first time just for the sake of the audience hearing it. The crucial points are laid out on the surface of the conversation as if the characters are having the conversation exclusively for the benefit of the audience. A better way is to "bury" the information within what appears to be a natural conversation between characters. This can take some practice but what you want to achieve is informing the audience of what you want to know without them realizing that was the intent all along. Instead, what they experienced was a captivating scene of authentic character dialog that held them emotionally while at the same time, informed them of how the scene advances the story.

Platform

There are many different platforms we can develop our game to be played on. Gaming platforms include: home gaming consoles (Xbox One, Playstation 4, etc.); the Personal Computer (PC) market; phone and tablet Apps; Web browser-based games; and more. We can also decide to develop the game for multiple platforms if that is technologically and financially viable for our release plans. There are a lot of considerations when choosing a platform. What is our target audience? What ESRB (or similar system if distributing outside North America) rating are we aiming for? What platform best utilizes the core gameplay? Still, this section is little more than a couple sentences.

Character Dialog

There are three ways to express character in a video game: how they look: what they do; and what they say. Expressing character through visuals is the job of the game artist. Their clothing, posture, and physical appearance are all indications of character. Demonstrating what they do often results in determining their motivations (they want to kill you) in obvious ways. However, for story development and insight into personality, dialog is the tool of the trade.

Open World Endings

There is also the issue of an ending to the game in an open world design. Executing an exciting climax to an open ended world design can wind up feeling unfulfilling if the player has not followed the plot and feels the ending is abrupt. If an ending cuts off their ability to continue playing in the world, players will be unhappy they cannot continue on. If completing the main quest ends the game, even if the player has unfinished side quests, players will be unhappy. These issues bring into consideration the idea of not having a closed ending that is based on plot completion. This allows us to not have to close off playing the game just because we have run out of author generated plot. It also allows the player to determine their own sense of when the game is over and play the game with their own private narrative. On the negative side, without a closed ending, the player's interest may drift to the point that they just stop playing the game because they become bored. Without an exciting conclusion to cap the experience, players have little reason to play any sequels or expansions to the title.

Text and Narration

Use of text and narration are the most obvious and time tested storytelling techniques. They are the building blocks of most traditional storytelling mediums such as books and movies. Video games tell their stories in this method, as well, only with some major differences. In a book or a movie, the audience expects the story to just come out and be told in one medium of delivery: either by reading it or by watching it. Video games add other options but do not ignore the use of text and narration. Many games will simply tell their backstory through text, just like a book. It used to be common for a game's instruction manual to tell a backstory in plain text (often due to the lack of opportunity to tell it anywhere else). Other games have taken the Star Wars method of scrolling text at the beginning of the game to get the backstory into the players' minds. Anyway it is done; text still relies on someone reading it. In games it is best to be brief when using text. Remember, the player has chosen to play a game, not read a book, so long periods of reading text in a user interface is not going to cut it. Narration is a way of delivering story through spoken word. Instead of reading text, the story is orally presented (like a voice over in a movie). This cuts down on the player having to read small text on a computer monitor and allows for some tone of voice from the narrator to accentuate the mood and theme of the story. Once again, however, the audience has chosen to play a game, not see a movie. Narration is fine to start things off, but a constant voice explaining plot is going to get annoying. Text and narration are best used sparingly or integrated into other techniques. They still require basic writing rules and methods in their structure and delivery, but they work just as well in video games as books and film, when used correctly.

Categories of Game Narratives

Video games are unique as a storytelling medium in that they do not have to tell just one story. That is to say, a book or a movie never changes from one viewing to the next. We as the audience may change and find new insight or criticism in the story, but the story itself plays out exactly the same every time. This is not necessarily true or even desirable in a video game. Because of the depth and variety a game can offer over another medium, games have many other narrative options. These include games that have more than one narrative, games that change the story based on player actions or decisions and games that allow players to make up their own stories.

The 3-Dimensional Stoic Hero

Viewed by most as a hero of the people, he does what must be done to save humanity. Taking on himself to commit the violence necessary to save the world, he makes the sacrifices needed so that others can hold to their innocence. However, he must constantly face the real truth of his actions: that he is slipping into the very madness he defends against. Fortunately for our hero, the voices in his head aren't entirely humorless.

Purpose of Dialog

When it comes down to it, each piece of dialog should have a purpose. This purpose can include: - Character development - Story Development - World Development - Comic Relief

The Stoic Hero Stereotype

With a heartless exterior, he kills without care and without depth of conscious. The one-liner is his true calling card, not the deeds he accomplishes. What at first seems cool, quickly becomes crass. Example: Marcus Fenix from Gears of War.

Environmental Clues

With good visual planning, we can seed concepts to the player without saying a word. Continuing with our mountain climbing game example, we might have a level design where the player must climb a simple rock wall. First, they might see their character dressed in climbing gear, perhaps with ropes and hooks. They might start at the base of the mountain with some initial hanging ropes to get started. This tells the player that physical actions will probably be required. Next, the player might see unstable rocks around their avatar. This tells them that they should look out for rocks and that dodging these rocks might very well be a challenge they will have to face. This, in turn, makes the player start playing with their control of their character to see what they can do. Behold! The character can jump to the side when a button is pushed. In doing so, we have seeded a goal: get good at jumping away from falling rocks.

The Stoic Warrior Archetype

With grim determination, the stoic warrior faces impossible odds with a quip and a full metal jacket. Cold and emotionless on the surface, he is actually deeply invested in good winning out over evil. Example: Master Chief in Halo.

3-Dimensional Characters

Writers should be wary of shortcuts in character creation. Simply checking off archetype character traits is a fast way to making a stereotype. What the goal really is: is to make an original, compelling character no one has quite seen before. That doesn't mean archetype traits need to be thrown out. It simply means that something new needs to be added. Something that either plays off expected clichés in a unique way or creates some contradictions of the archetype itself. In general, for every character, think of one thing that contradicts or redefines the stereotype and make that a feature trait of the character.

Characters and Dialog

elling a story through characters and dialog is a great method to use in video games. Not only does it immerse the audience without breaking the so-called fourth wall (the barrier between the game and player's worlds), it offers many opportunities for the player to interact with the game (an absolute necessity for the game medium the story is told in). The real trick is in finding the right places in a game to put the dialog. Luckily, there are a number of options. Dialog trees are often utilized in role-playing games or games with role-playing features. They present to the player an in-game conversation between a player character and a non-player character (NPC) from which the player can choose responses. This allows the authors an opportunity to subtly give plot information, develop characters, and create player immersion by making the world seem alive and real. At their worse, however, dialog trees can be tedious exercises of game stretching and poorly executed dialog. They can also be tricky things to deal with in that they offer choices to the player, which should, in theory, change the story for the player when chosen. This creates the need to implement the game in such a way that multiple storylines are possible and equally desirable. Dialog "one-offs" is another, simpler, way to improve character and story elements within a game. This is where the player hears either triggered or un-triggered burst of dialog from a character on screen (sometimes even off screen). For example, the character the player is controlling might just start talking to themselves or others at random or keyed locations. There is no choice to be made for the player, the dialog just happens. What this allows is a tiny bit of character development and story exposition to be given in a non-intrusive manner that does not stop the game or require the player to make choices that can change the story. The game Left4Dead utilized this method to near perfection. Each player character had dozens of random and keyed lines of dialog that the characters would speak outside of the player's control or actions. This created personalities for the characters that would otherwise be nearly non-existent. This, in turn, gave the game humor, character distinction (even though they all had the same abilities) and a good dose of filling out a story that adds to the overall game experience.