“Dr. Richard Wilson, TIGA CEO, explains the rationale for the new service:

TIGA research shows that UK games businesses spend on average 6.6 per cent of turnover on training and 91 per cent of UK games businesses provide training for their employees.

…

Our preferred training suppliers have a range of skills including leadership and management development, interactive narrative design, 3D technology, art and anatomical design, VFX, presenting and conflict management.

Trainers include: The Leadership Factory, Scott Eaton, Escape Studios, Elizabeth Rivers and Creating Interactive Narratives.”

Read the whole newsletter here.

Michael Thomsen recently published an article in The Escapist about spoilers in games that we think are an interesting piece.

“It’s hard to know the exact the origin of the term “spoiler.” The idea that learning some plot points in advance can ruin a work seems at least somewhat absurd. The Godfather is no less rich for knowing Michael will eventually take his father’s place. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is no less charming and puzzling when you know Gannon will arrive at the end.”

Our colleague Peter Zackariasson has made a minor contribution.

“Resident Evil – afterlife” is the latest example of a game made into a film. The story is about a woman (played by Milla Jovovich) who has to evacuate humans so they won’t get infected by a virus, and turned into zombies. The problem with Resident Evil is that the director wants to please two different kinds of audiences – gamers and movie lovers – making him create something in-between.

The different scenes in the film are developed like cut-scenes in a game, they forwards the story. When a scene is over the only thing that differentiates it from a game is that you simply watch Milla defeat the enemies instead of doing it yourself. On top of this, the characters in the film are extremely shallow, and the actors act as they were animated. Not even the 3D glasses on your nose can cover this badly written story (and its weird that someone would believe that).

The reviews of the film were poor, and in an article someone said that games adapt catastrophically bad to make films out of. But that is not true, IT IS possible to make good films out of games. One just has to understand that the narrative is non-media specific. Narratives are used independent of media, but depending on the media, you apply the narrative differently. If you like to make a book out of a film, for example, the film is characterized as audiovisual and the book is text; the film is streamlined storytelling where you show what is happening, whilst in the book you need to write down all that is seen, heard or smelled, etc. You simply apply the narrative differently.

So when making a film out of a game you simply has to think what is specific with games, and what is specific with film. One significant attribute that differ the game media from the film media is the character, and especially the main character/player’s character. When making film one has to flesh out the characters and get them “dressed”.  To “dress”, or flesh out a character, doesn’t mean you have to write and forward a heavy background story. It can be as simple as in “Indiana Jones” where the character has one line in the beginning saying: ”I hate snakes”, and then the whole audience know when he faces snakes it is his weak point and the audience will associate with him. Another example from the film “Independence day” is the network operator David who says he hates flying. Take a wild guess what he’s doing this in the end of the film? Yes, flying! There is of course an entertaining dialogue in Independence day, between David and the pilot flying an alien aircraft, but it’s still based on this simply characterisation that David doesn’t like to fly and the audience feels with him.

In games you have the possibility to use elaborate environments, but in film you need to work more on the character. There are of course several things that had to be adjusted in the film Resident Evil, but a lot could have been gained by just letting Milla say: “I hate zombies”.

The same applies to narrative and game mechanics when designing a video game. Like a fork, the narrative grabs the player in order for the mechanics to do its job. But if you create game mechanics and afterwards try to create a narrative that will fit these mechanics, then you will face problems.

Game mechanics are something most game developers happily spend time and energy creating. For example, building large squads of soldiers that behave in a natural way as in World in Conflict series (Massive Entertainment), or creating a character that can jump and move in an interesting way like in Mirror’s Edge (DICE).

Two problems could occur when applying the narrative to game mechanics: one could end up creating stereotypes to fit the systems, or one could spend a large amount of time to adapt the already built system to the narrative and if it fails one can end up with not fully integrated story. The fork simply has to come first.

For example, if anyone would want to create some crazy characters to inhabit a game world were the mechanics are already set to a building system, then it might not be so sure that the characters want to mine, and refine, ores, as was planned, or build houses as it was thought. These crazy characters might want to build their own kind of buildings, and this will take time to adjust if the mechanics has preceded the narrative.

Two examples where you can feel that the fork has come first and helped the knife doing its job are the games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus (SCEI). In the games you can feel that the narrative has guided the development of the mechanics to form a unique game play. In Ico there is a little girl that the hero has to save by holding her hand through the whole game. In Shadow of the Colossus you have to defeat foes in order to wake up a girl from the death. The foes are poetically and emotionally formed by the story and to fight every foe feels as a pang every time you kill a foe.

So what we can learn from this is if one put the fork into work before letting the knife join, by creating the narrative as a base for creation, one might find new mechanics that will form a unique game play that has never been seen in previous games. By having the supporting systems be derived from a narrative foundation. No time will be wasted and the fork and knife would remain best buddies ever after!

Within film there is an expression among scriptwriters saying: ”Don’t tell, show”. This means that you should avoid telling what a character is feeling; instead you should find ways to express it by showing the feelings, not to make the audience disassociate with the film. Within video games there are no such advices, but it certainly would need to develop its own version of this expression.

The video games Red Dead Redemption and Assassin’s Creed II are both games with extensive background stories that has to be communicated to the player, and while playing the game these stories unfolds and clues are exposed to the player. In Red Dead Redemption you are playing a cowboy that is a troublemaker that search retribution, while Assassin’s Creed has a guy that travels through some kind of time machine to search for his ancestors in Florence, and later on search revenge as an assassin. And for some reason I associated better with the assassin than the cowboy and why was that?

Sitting down in front of Red Dead Redemption for the first time I was excited to become a cowboy. But first I had to sit through a cut-scene where I was taken on a train to a city. As soon the control was given to me a text was chucked up my face saying: “Go to the saloon”. Why on earth did I want to go to the saloon? I wanted to explore the city. When I came to the saloon there was a man with the name Jake saying: “Are you mister Marston?” and my character replied “Yes” and then Jake told me that he had the horses ready and we ran out in to the desert. In that moment Red Dead Redemption just became one of these games with a story that forced me to do things in a certain way to be able to complete it. No matter how big the world was I felt trapped! So what went wrong?

In Assassin’s Creed it was the same thing, a story had to be triggered by my interactions in a certain (linear) order. Both Red Dead Redemption and Assassin’s Creed had a similar start on their adventures but, unlike Red Dead Redemption, I did not feel trapped in Assassin’s Creed! Why was that? The biggest difference was that there were no signs chucked up in my face telling me what to do. Instead I was lead into the story by a non-static cut-scene where I could interact with other characters that explained to me why I was interesting for them and why they needed me. There were several clues surrounded my character but these were, unlikely to Red Dead Redemption, not planned on top of my head by my own character.

There are several examples of this in games where developers succeed or not to present clues and unfold stories in a video game but the most important is to involve the player otherwise the game will only become a matter of handling the controls. So the advice is “Don’t show, involve”.

For quality assurance we can offer a free short sample review on your manuscript. Please contact us for more information.

MiGS has just announced that Narrative Bridging: A CIN workshop will be taking place immediately after the Montreal International Game Summit. The two day workshop takes place November 10 and 11 at the Hilton Bonaventure Hotel and will focus on developing advanced interactive narratives using Narrative Bridging. This will give the participants tools for designing interactive narratives for video games and show the mechanisms that motivate the player to action in the game world. The focus will be on Narrative Bridging and model and control design. After the workshop the participants will understand how the narrative creates incentives for the players to form strategies in the game world and how to accommodate for that in the narrative design.

In this workshop, participants will learn how to develop advanced interactive narratives using Narrative Bridging. This will give the participants tools for designing interactive narratives for video games and show the mechanisms that motivate the player to action in the game world. The focus will be on Narrative Bridging and model and control design. After the workshop the participants will understand how the narrative creates incentives for the players to form strategies in the game world and how to accommodate for that in the narrative design.

“TIGA exists to represent and to serve the interests of games developers and associated businesses. TIGA’s vision is to make the UK the best place in the world to do games business. We focus on three sets of operational activities: political representation, generating media coverage and developing services that enhance the competitiveness of our members.”