FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN

1. AFT710 FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN

2. Story in games
Storytelling is a feature of daily experience.
We do it without thinking about it when we recount some
experience we have had, whether it is the story of how the golf
match went with our friends, or a fiction made up for story time
with children.
Video games often include fictional stories that go beyond the
events of the games themselves.
Game designers add stories to enhance a game’s entertainment
value, to keep the player interested in a long game, and to help sell
the game to prospective customers.

3. Why Put Stories in Games?
Stories can add significantly to the entertainment that a game
offers.
Without a story, a game is a competition: exciting, but artificial.
A story gives the competition a context, and it facilitates the
essential act of pretending that all games require.
A story provides greater emotional satisfaction by providing a
sense
of progress toward a dramatically meaningful, rather than an
abstract, goal.

4. Why Put Stories in Games?
Stories attract a wider audience.
To motivate them to play; if the game offers only challenges and
no story, they won’t buy it.
Although adding a story makes development of the game cost
more, it also makes the game appeal to more people.

5. Why Put Stories in Games?
Stories attract a wider audience.
To motivate them to play; if the game offers only challenges and
no story, they won’t buy it.
Although adding a story makes development of the game cost
more, it also makes the game appeal to more people.
Stories help keep players interested in long games.
BUT Simple, quick games such as Candy Rush don’t need a story.
Stories help to sell the game

6. The following factors affect how much of a story a game
1. Length
2. Characters
3. Degree of realism
4. Emotional richness

7. The following factors affect how much of a story a game
1. Length
the longer a game, the more it benefits from a story.
A story can tie the disparate events of a longer game into a single
continuous experience and keep the player’s interest.

8. The following factors affect how much of a story a game
1. Length
2. Characters
If the game focuses on individual people (or at least, characters
the player can identify with, whether human or not) then it can
benefit from a story.
If the game revolves around large numbers of fairly anonymous
people
such as the visitors in Theme Park then adding a story won’t be easy

9. The following factors affect how much of a story a game
1. Length
2. Characters
3. Degree of realism
Abstract games don’t lend themselves to storytelling;
representational ones often do.
It is difficult to write a compelling story about a purely artificial set
of relationships and problems, while a realistic game can often
benefit from a story.
Highly realistic vehicle simulators and sports games usually don’t
include stories because the premise of the game doesn’t require one

10. The following factors affect how much of a story a game
4. Emotional richness
Ordinary single-player game play seldom inspires any but a few
emotions: pleasure in success; frustration at failure; determination
to do , perhaps; and occasionally an aha! moment when the player
figures out a puzzle
Deeper emotions can come only when the player identifies with
characters and their problems, which happens within a well-written
story.

11. Let’s watch a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8VIlfTtypg

12. HOW TO STRUCTURE A STORY: THE EIGHT-POINT ARC
1.Stasis
2.Trigger
3.The quest
4.Surprise
5.Critical choice
6.Climax
7.Reversal
8.Resolution

13. THE EIGHT-POINT ARC
1. Stasis
This is the “every day life” in which the story is set.
Think of Cinderella sweeping the ashes, Jack (of Beanstalk fame) living in poverty
with his mum and a cow, or Harry Potter living with the Dursley’s.
2.Trigger
Something beyond the control of the protagonist (hero/heroine) is the trigger
which sparks off the story.
A fairy godmother appears, someone pays in magic beans not gold, a mysterious
letter arrives … you get the picture.

14. THE EIGHT-POINT ARC
3.The quest (Mission)
The trigger results in a quest –an unpleasant trigger means a quest to maintain or
increase the new pleasant state.
4. Surprise
This stage involves not one but several elements, and takes up most of the middle
part of the story. “Surprise” includes pleasant events, but more often means
obstacles, complications, conflict and trouble for the protagonist.

15. THE EIGHT-POINT ARC
5. Critical choice
At some stage, your protagonist needs to make a crucial decision; a critical choice. This is
often when we find out exactly who a character is, as real personalities are revealed at
moments of high stress.
In many classic stories, the “critical choice” involves choosing between a good, but hard,
path and a bad, but easy, one.
6.Climax
The critical choice(s) made by your protagonist need to result in the climax, the highest
peak of tension, in your story.
For some stories, this could be the firing squad leveling their guns to shoot, a battle
commencing, a high-speed chase or something equally dramatic. In other stories, the
climax could be a huge argument between a husband and wife, or a playground fight
between children, or Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters trying on the glass slipper.

16. THE EIGHT-POINT ARC
7.Reversal
The reversal should be the consequence of the critical choice and the climax, and
it should change the status of the characters –especially your protagonist. For
example, a downtrodden wife might leave her husband after a row; a bullied child
might stand up for a fellow victim and realize that the bully no longer has any
power over him; Cinderella might be recognized by the prince.
8.Resolution
The resolution is a return to a fresh stasis –one where the characters should be
changed, wiser and enlightened, but where the story being told is complete.

17. Let’s watch videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ontNUxSLhb8