Joshua Foss – Discourse on Game Development

Video games present one of the most unique entertainment mediums available. What was once thought to be nothing more than a fad has taken the world by storm, producing billions of dollars annually. Since the days of Pong through the phenomena that is World of Warcraft, game developers have sought to produce games that bridge cultural barriers to achieve unprecedented levels of success. Often times the resulting success from such a title is inexplicable. Defining “fun” and being able to consistently replicate it, has been the never ending quest of game developers world-wide and as one, I toss my hat into the ring.

I have always been an ardent supporter of video games as a serious medium for higher modes of thought. Games like Xenosaga, Metal Gear Solid, The Final Fantasy series and more recently Mass Effect, have brought a great deal of existential questions to the forefront, challenging our moral fabric with sweeping dialogue and extended cut-scenes. And while, as previously stated, I am a fan of such content, the average gamer looks for entertainment in much more concise forms. So the question remains, how can we create games that do not settle for the status quo, yet appeal to millions of gamers worldwide?

I call this concept Immersion Control, a process by which you allow the player to have as much control as possible over areas of storytelling, game world customization, and interface. By giving the player the reins in determining how rich their experiences are, we can uniquely craft an independent gameplay experience for each of our players. So, how is this all applied? In this first section, I will talk about how Immersion Control is applied to the art of storytelling.

There has long been a catch 22 in trying to create novel game stories. Creating a story not based on any previous subject matter can be extremely complex, and usually results in a give and take relationship. On one hand, you have players that find themselves completely enthralled in a game’s universe, wanting to know the most intricate details of their virtual worlds, while on the other you have those who would much rather get to the heart of what the game lets you do. By attempting to serve one of these parties, you often create a disservice to the other. While it is crucial that a game’s story engage its audience, there must be a careful balance between story and gameplay to satiate crowds favoring either. Let’s take a look at how some modern games have tackled this complex problem.

• The Lord of The Rings : Battle For Middle Earth  – LOTR:BfME employed a unique take on cut-scenes. Though they understood the importance of relaying such content to their players, they did not force the gameplay experience to be interrupted, choosing to display them in a small portion of the Heads-Up Display or HUD. For those that wished to get the full effect, clicking on the cut-scene would then bring it to full-scale, thus allowing players to experience the story in a much more intimate way.
• Mass Effect- By creating entirely interactive storytelling sequences, Mass Effect provided players with a feeling that they were always in the driver’s seat. Additionally, Mass Effect allowed players to venture as deep into the “rabbit hole” as they wished, engaging Non-Player Characters or NPC’s with a seemingly endless amount of dialogue while still allowing the option to end almost any conversation in a few short moments.
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter -Similarly to LOTR:BfME, GRAW utilized the concept of displaying video inside the HUD, using it to create a video link to their commander, fellow soldiers, and logistical information, such as maps and video feeds of other areas of the game world. Unlike LOTR however, GRAW used cinematic content in real-time, creating scripted events that would impact the player as they played the game. To go a step further, all loading screens were replaced with interactive travel sequences where players could move around in a variety of vehicles as they received their next set of orders. 
• Resident Evil 4 -Using a concept that I first discovered in Legend of Dragoon, Resident Evil 4 presented players with cinematic camera angles during combat, creating the sensation of an interactive film. By allowing players to time a button press in certain scenarios, the developers created a beautiful, yet immersive way to deliver a cinematic experience to their audience. While they were certainly not the first to use this technique, they utilized it to great success.

As you can see, I am hardly the first person to think about these design considerations, and these are but a few examples of ways that developers have managed incorporate story and cinematics to serve a broad audience. With an ever increasing market and more competition than ever before, delivering high-quality stories in an accesible manner proves to be a challenge for aspiring game developers.