-From the Desk of Glenn Seidel, Game Designer-
Missed Part 1? Read it here.
This week, I’m going to talk about story in games, or the “flour” in our game cake. Story can fill your game out and bring together the other key elements (characters and game play), or it can really get in the way. Too little story, and everything seems to be disconnected and random. Too much, and you can sit through long conversations between characters to move the colossal plot along. There are many elements to a story in games, but I’m going to focus on these three key elements: a familiar story, adventuring in a fantastic world and, most importantly, “breadcrumbing.”
For our audience, a story that is familiar and recognizable is great. Lots of kids enjoy knowing what is going to happen next. Shows like Dora the Explorer, Thomas the Tank Engine and even Pokémon have consistent characters and story structures. The characters don’t change, and the story always ends up pretty much where it started, except that a mystery has been solved, a wrong has been righted or a badge has been earned. In JumpStart World, the players went on little missions that led them to a bigger quest that had something to do with the final story or goal. That main goal never changed, no matter what they were doing. The objective might have been solving the mystery of Grizzly McGuffin or returning color to JumpStart World. In our new online adventures, we are trying to focus even more on simpler stories while still allowing players to go on an adventure.
Taking players on an adventure in a place they’ve never seen is also effective. Hogwarts doesn’t exist, but it is fantastic, with giant clocks, ever-changing staircases and living pictures. Setting adventures in an amazing new setting can instantly engage players. They want to explore every nook and cranny to find all of the new things that are there. This can not only entertain, but also help guide players to where you want them to go. In one of our upcoming games, players explore an ancient sunken city where a broken statue literally points them in the direction they need to go. It’s a great way that a world can help guide game play without the necessity of a lot of dialogue to tell players where to go.
Where to go?
We’ve learned through testing that players can easily be overwhelmed with too much information. It’s important to “breadcrumb,” or string along, both the game play and the story. Providing too much story in a single scene can disengage the players or simply bore them. All games struggle with this; a large percentage of most games’ stories are skipped over completely. So it’s important to give players just enough to get them to the next crumb of story until they finally find their way to the end of their adventure.
Story can do so many great things for a game, but if there is too much of it, you end up with a game, or “cake,” that’s nothing but filler. Next time, we’ll take a look at how game play fits into our game cake. Is it the frosting, or something more?
Like this:
Filed under: Behind the Scenes Tagged: | game design, MarineLand
