Tackling Logic, and the Challenge of coding in "choice"

How does Story relate to Coding?

For pretext first we should discuss Ludonarrative, or simple the narrative elements inherent in the mechanics of a game. It's been discussed before on this blog, but refresher is always good. In the manner that all mechanical actions possible to the player are framed within a narrative act, the play is the story. Interacting with a game, in itself, adds to the game's narrative. This is most easily recognizable when there are different manners in which a player can interact within the world. This can be something so simple as changing which class your character is, or having player action lead to different outcomes for the endgame scenario; to the more vague and small moments of,  did Peach or Bowser win at the flower cup, or did Mastercheif favor the pistol or battle-rifle while saving the earth.

The point being that the mechanics of a game and the narrative of a game are inherently intertwined and cannot be accurately discussed separately, this implications of this as this article will explore, is that if the ludonarrative or playstory (story that's within the actions allowed to the player) has a poor narrative it leads to unsatisfying gameplay.

This isn't limited to the previous discussion of having each action lead to the broader arch as previously discussed; actions not for the hallow sake of themselves but for the overarching theme of the narrative. the previous point is what leads to the distinction of the "annoying mini game" vs side quests or moments of interaction that seem integral to the feel of the game. While Wind Waker is a story about a young islander fighting off monsters in island castles and dungeons, you can't imagine it without being able to sailing between islands. The sailing is an integral part as it's part of exploration.

There's the pretext, this discussion will be about instance to instance puzzles, and the problematic narrative of "choice" existing in what is ultimately a deterministic world. As always, the really hard problems turned out to be philosophy ones; and as always, philosophy has the answer... kinda. 

First we'll discuss a number of approaches to the problem and then discus the divergent instances that compound what appears to be the essence of the problem/solution. 

Que Sera Sera

Determinism is the belief that nothing that happens in the world could in any scenario, not happen. That whatever sequence of events is inescapable and unavoidable. This situation mirrors the reality of created worlds. In any movie or book, the events of the story will unfold exactly as they have before and always will. Similarly in coded worlds, they are integrally tied to the succinct and defined moment of the creator. While in philosophy this challenges most notions of freewill or purpose, in games it's more so an underlying challenge of purpose, but more on that later. In created or coded worlds the experience of the viewer or participant mirrors what the Stoics termed Eternal Reoccurrence. That everything that will happen, not only will happen and is inescapable, but has likely already happened before this instance, and will happen again in the exact same way in the future. Unlike most they did not believe that the inability to change the future would undermined freedom or freewill, because the event and the will linked to the event are separate things. According to the Stoics, if I'm destined to take a nap or not before I go to work, does not have any bearing on if I have the will to take a nap. This is known as soft Determinism. We see this in games in that no matter how many times you play the game the same events will be triggered as they are coded, and after no number of playthroughs can you avoid the hardwired series of events. Of course, this doesn't necessarily undermined hos satisfying the gameplay is, there are plenty of instances of games where there is no way to vary from the set path and yet the game still feels satisfying. Possibly the most famous and revolutionary exploration of this, is of course, The Stanley Parable.

Or, for a more 'on the nose' experience... 

If you haven't yet, play the game.

  The Stanley Parable as it's central gameplay gimmick, is the narrator dictating your movements throughout the game. This is first dictating your movements before they are enacted, playing with the notion of linear progression where the player is completely passive and has their will aligned with whatever appears to be the narrative, but then.. as the level design subtly tempts the player to walk off the directed path or investigate other corners, the narrator dictates the players rebellion. The resulting back and forth, which is really something that has to be experienced, is an exploration of the player's limitation within a determined medium and the very game's limitations within presenting choice. The game is a tongue in cheek in tongue in cheek in-.. spiral into oblivion. Yet while it directly plays with the ideas of player choice, and possibly undermining player choice, at no point in-playing does that choice feel cheapened. Let that sink in, in a self-aware determined 

environment, that makes it's determined nature blatantly clear, at no point does the player feel their actions are pointless.. in a game about showing you how your actions don't lead to anything "special".     

Divergence

All games have in a sense been tackling this problem, where what feels like a lack of player agency is in fact not conveying a sense of meaning behind actions. No player wants to do something "just because" they want to do it because of what it means in the game they're playing. The designer makes choices in gameplay valuable by making them meaningful within the context the game provides. When the choice is meaningful in terms of gameplay (powerup new ability) but not in terms of the story ( person dying = no change on the part of the player's mo) then we have that infamous diagnoses of Ludonarrative Dissonance, or in layman terms, "this part or acting in the game feels cheep, contrived, and just doesn't make sense". 

 Divergent options that viably allow the game to be played differently allow the player to control, have a sense of agency with, and give meaning to the emergent narrative their participation in the game creates. It can be something so small as jumping on top of a koopa instead of jumping past or as complicated as using a +8 great sword with knockback and larger area of effect instead of a +9 dagger with higher dps. Choices become memorable when they stop being the automatic no-thinking-required kind, when they become personal. This is what creates memorable gameplay, this is what makes experiences that stick with us. This element of participation in the emergent narrative of games is what makes video games such a uniquely compelling and personal media to its fans. It's why people end up relating so personally to video games, because their actions and will become a part of the experience-

Gahhh, yeah okay.

So, in the most clear instance of this, we have divergent stories. 

Divergent stories as I'm referring to them are the kind where a primary aspect of the gameplay and theme of the game is a value on specific player choices. This covers everything from the recent AAA's exploration of dialogue options that lead to multiple endings or multiple romance options, to open worlds where there is no specific order to complete mission before the end game, to the choose your own adventure novels of yesteryear. All of these explore the same effect of divergent path in play. The challenge and deciding factor of this effect is its logical presentation within the context. The presentation of the divergent options must be logical, they must follow from the situation of the world as a both sound and necessity to the story as an overarching experience.To break this down to it's simplest components, in a choose your own adventure book, imagine how the writer would create the stream of events. After you've gone the route of the wizard, how would it feel to have the character bludgeon a guard to death rather than petrify him or shoot lightning bolts? No, a thief must be allowed to try to steal, a barbarian to fight, and a wizard to spellcast. There's a necessity for all player actions for the game to present some sort of foreshadowing, something that builds the internal logic that leads up to each moment of player action overcoming the obstacle. When there has been little to no buildup, either because the internal logic is just assumed and taken for granted or because the developers simply couldn't be bothered, we have coined the term "game logic" or more specifically within the point and click community "Sierra logic". There are plenty of fantastical scenarios that occur in games without the blink of an eye, this isn't because we rationally assume we could do the fantastic in real life, but because the game has presented the fantastic in slow building manner that allowed our suspension of disbelieve to keep up with the internal logic of the scene. I do not believe it makes any sense to be able to control my momentum mid-air during a jump, but when I experience this in a game and then experience being able to jump off a wall, the realization of wall jumping is natural. And overcoming that puzzle feels satisfying. 

The same way that building any rich internal lore for stories takes a slow and complex build of internal logic, the emergent story the player creates through actions takes a similarly slow and nuanced build. Without this built suspension of belief at worst case we end up with sierra logic where the game is almost unplayable or at best where what happens on screen doesn't translate to the player as actions that are there own. As game critic and internet personality Arin Hanson "Egoraptor" put in his video essay comparing Zelda titles

"A puzzle is something you have all the information for, the only thing standing between you and the solution is your own ability to put the pieces together in the right way, the satisfaction you attain from solving a puzzle is from the A-HA moment. When the pieces fit and you only have yourself to blame for it. If you're missing a piece, how are you suppose to get to a conclusion a solution?

The satisfaction doesn't come from the door opening, it comes from the puzzle itself...

It's daunting, it's interesting, it engages you, and it's really easy to understand, and because of all this it's satisfying..."

Having all the information in this sense leads to the logistics problem of what amounts to the design equivalent of foreshadowing. Which, might sound impossible. How can a story in an emergent narrative seemingly foreshadow the end at the beginning when the end hasn't been "created" yet? Well, because it's already determined. Back a the example of the choose your own adventure, the key feature is that the story starts out extremely vague, which is perfect for establishing the first Blue Moon, the thing which is unbelievable but form which the player has their first step  into simultaneously believing, building, and being part of a fantastical world. the one crazy thing which all internal logic stems from. my personal favorite from fiction. 

In The Stanley Parable the game regularly plays with what is assumed to be a "reset" state, commenting on the last play through or braking the forth wall mentioning how everything will start over again and again until the player does as the narrator wants. It strings together what would otherwise appear to be alternate endings, separate stories, into a single cohesive narrative. What appears to be an impossible number of divergent paths all basically leading to the same "ending". How is this accomplished? This write up took much longer than I wished and I still have to get some sleep in before work. We'll take a closer look at different instances of gameplay that handle divergent paths next time. Until then; feel free to write about your favorite game that has alternate endings, romance, or dialogue options and why you like it or think it works in the comments. 

Pt 2

Design Sense

TALKING ABOUT DESIGN. WHY DESIGN?

At one point in time, while talking about game making, someone told me the only safe career pursuit was coding. That the coding was any game's live blood and without programmers you wouldn't have any games. This was brought up because I mentioned I do the writing for a group making games and that I consider myself a game designer, and occasionally artist, who has little to no understanding of coding. Which is why I've had such trouble physically finishing any designs. The chap I was discussing with called writing and design the easiest part. I don't know about that. Now I might be wrong, some things come easier to others so for him they might be the easiest part. He could have his coding down, and a natural grasp of story and the design talent to back it and make functional beautifully thought out interactive experience. But for the most part when people say writing is stupid easy or think that coming up with a game that sells million copies first week is just stupid obvious, are the kind of people that have never done those things. Like, they think writing a best selling novel is really easy because they haven't written much so they don't really know much about writing, and chock up the art as a simple task. They misinterpret the aesthetics, the visible content, for the craft of putting the content together.

Say we're talking about a novel. What makes the novel great is not if it has robots or werewolves in it, or even the grammar. It's the way those things are presented that makes it work, it's the pacing and use of story devises. Understanding how the reader will feel reading the work, what and how they'll think while you introduce characters and elements. It's not solely the characters or elements but the significance in their use. Everyone has read a good book (I hope), and everyone has read a boring or dull book from the same genre. Even if the grammar in both was perfectly fine, if both books had gunslinger good guy, a hot distressed victim, an evil as sin bad guy, with a three act structure, and a hero sacrificed conclusion; the good book would never be compared to the bad. No one who had given either any consideration would confuse the two. When asked what's different, you might hear "This one's just got an awesome hero, he's super cool, and killed like thirty badguys. The other killed a bunch of guys too but he's just kinda lame." We've all had those experiences where a book or film just kinda "tell" us we're suppose to like hero X or think they're the coolest but we're just not into it. You can have as many special effects and good actors in a movie, but if the story is terrible and the character's are compellingly written, the movie will be rated poorly. Now that has nothing to do with someone's sense of grammar or including cool stuff, that's the result of design. Great stories are great by their merits in design and execution. Those two things just cannot be divorced. You can't make a classic book out of great storytelling but bad grammar just like you can't make one out of good grammar but bad storytelling. Personally I feel the great storytelling will help a book/movie more then good technical execution. Poor special effects and filming is something you see everywhere in cult classics, but if the story is soulless and poorly shown you're going to have a harder pressed time finding fans. Look at the 5 dollar bin at your local Walmart.

Bringing this back to games, I'm comparing grammar to coding, and storytelling to design. I agree with the individual that coding is the lifeblood of games, but if that's true then the art is the skin and outside, the story is the animal's temperament, and the design is design of the actual animal. The design is how the internal organs work, the system of how the animal moves, what the animal does. How it frightens it's predators, finds it's food, survives. Think about animals in a design sense. Animals that were well adapted and had a design that was well suited for the environment keep living, others died out because their design wasn't suited for the environment. Sharks are really, really old, they're still around because to today's standards they still do what they need to. Like how classic old games still stand up to today's standards as engaging and fun. 

What's Going On?

I think what's happening typically when consumers or starting up game developers misunderstand and dismiss the term design, it's because they haven't been given a context to really see design as what it is. Like learning English someone points at an apple, says apple, and you think apple just means red fruit. It's more than it's surface material. There's more to writing than just put words on paper and more to drawing than just lines on paper. That's not to say they can't design. It's just they're not as aware of what they're doing. Like people who can sit down and play something ridiculously complex off the top of their head, completely impromptu on the piano without ever taking a lesson. That doesn't prove that musical theory is bunk, it proves that it's something innately appreciated. You don't need to know a think about music to appreciate Queen. You don't need to understand or acknowledge all the little bits of brilliant in a Miyazaki film to be drawn in. None of that's important because design is an invisible art, a soft science even. You enjoy and are drawn to a well designed advertisement without ever knowing it. We're bombarded with thousands of logos and graphic art a day but will still notice a well designed image dispute ourselves. We'll categorize that image and remember it for years to come without giving it a second thought, not because we tried to remember it, but because the designer knew what he was doing. Design is a thing you enjoy effortlessly, good design is something you barely notice. You might internalize a general understanding and design sense by being exposed to a medium, but then might not be able to explain later why something is bad. You'll know it's bad, but you might not be able to exactly articulate why. 

"How was the movie?"

"It was boring."

"Why?"

"Just was."

Everyone who makes anything is practicing a level of design. Anything creative is designed and could have it's merits judged by it's design. Everyone who makes games is at worst and amateur designer. I'm not saying this to make a point about designers being the most important people in game production. No, I'm just saying that what being a designer means isn't what people always think it is. Design isn't an idea, it's the execution of an idea. It's not "Game with werewolves and guns!", at it's simplest it's "tower defense, werewolves", and that's the basic idea you start with. But throughout the production you're making more and more design choices. Level design, deciding what to include or exclude to balance complexity curve, gameplay, the interface, the guns work, the way the enemies work. Yes without coding you wouldn't be able to translate that into a functioning game, but from start to finish design is implemented throughout the game and has direct effects on the game. That theory I have with storytelling and grammar in books is the same with games, how many times do you pick up that great old game you love that has the occasional glitch over the brand new one with the uninteresting gameplay? You never pick up that last one because you traded it in at Gamestop or where-ever. 

Design isn't just 'idea guy', and if you're getting into game making thinking it is, you're in for a sad disappointment. Design is something that every contributor implements in their part aspect of the production, game design means the gameplay and the level design. To me design is all I really care about in a game. If a game has a fantastic story or art but cannot draw me in with it's gameplay I won't care to continue playing. If then the art and story are created perfectly to fit with the gameplay and paced well within the levels, then there's a game I love. 

When I'm working on a game when I feel the most alive is when I have the squares and pre-art bits moving around onscreen in the way I want them too. Transitions, puzzles, effects, controls. In the back of my head I have all the art assets, but those are just the skin, what's really happening in a game happens by design. Of course none of that happens without the rest of production. Squares are nice, but can't always convey a meaningful experience like art and sound can. Think of how iconic game music is, think of how popular sprite art is in gaming culture. Think of well written stories and how that contextualized fight scenes into an epic experience you'd come back to again and again. Then think about how none of that would be possible without lines of code.. complex.. computer language. You can't expect to divorce these elements from each other and weigh one or the other as more important.. well.. actually you can have a game with no sound. And then they have made that one mobile phone game where it's pitch black and you use alone to figure out where you are in the digital world... that's such a cool design. 

OKAY.

You can't dismiss the design side of games any more then you can dismiss the technical side. It'd be like removing the rules of chess from the physical board and pieces, or taking the physical construction and pieces out of the equation and just leaving the idea.. it's just not possible. Either way, you wouldn't have chess. Even if you were to try to image a game of chess you'd need to imagine physical properties to conduct the game. The aesthetics are a softer element of production, but just as vital. Dwarf Fortress depends on it's graphics as much as Minecraft or Super Meat Boy, without their individual aesthetic sense the games wouldn't be as iconic or convey the same experience they do. If you thought Mario, Zelda, or Pokemon could be the same without their musical numbers then you're wrong.  

I know they're old videos and everyone's seen them, but a great study of design in the way it effects game experience is Egorapter's Sequelitis series.