Music to my ears

Chris Dahlen has made a startlingly good point about games, video games especially, being like music. In a particularly apt comparison, he mentions the importance of technical expertise, subtle emotional effects, and the thrill of listening or playing that games and music have in common, not to mention the spectacular successes that result when the two media are combined. It is a remarkable insight and I hope everybody who's even a little bit important in games takes it to heart. But I disagree with his conclusion about the synergy between games and story. He's right that a game need not have a story any more than a song does, and to expect one is silly. But I think it is worth mentioning that the conjunction of music and storytelling is a prehistoric practice.

The clearest demonstration of this is in the form of the ballad: a narrative poem set to music. A simple, iconic story that resonates with some fundamental component of human nature can remain in the public consciousness for decades, or longer if special effort is taken to preserve it. A well-developed and catchy melody, exemplifying an emotion, has a similar lifespan. The only ones that last longer are those that are really good. If the two are combined, however, they'll last a lot longer, with less effort, even if neither is as masterful. Music being inherently emotional, the tune helps to reinforce the emotional theme of the story. Stories being inherently memorable, the narrative helps to form a mnemonic for the melody. The final effect is that by using these two media in a complementary fashion, the threshold of artistic immortality is lowered considerably.

Music and story have been combined to great effect in other ways. The one that is most applicable to the field of video games in particular is the opera. Opera has been regarded for some time as the single art form which most thoroughly showcases the extremes of human emotion. Their stories and music alike are awash with pathos, and typically focus on love so deep that any real person would be lucky (or unlucky!) to experience, concluding with perfect happiness or ultimate despair. Operatic narratives are rarely more than a straightforward (if occasionally convoluted) love story, and the most memorable music is always found in the dances, overtures, and arias, when the story is not developing. But, especially to a connoisseur of the high arts, the combined effect is breathtaking.

Operas and folk ballads alike have been suppressed by various tyrants throughout the ages, because the power of music to inspire and compel in conjunction with stories is known well. Powerful ideas - perhaps not subtle ideas, but powerful ones - can be made at home in music, although it's quite true that these songs tend to be about something, whereas music and story can both exist in isolation as a testament to their creators' talent. If the combination of music and narrative possesses such potential, and music is comparable to games, then surely there is room for a powerful combination of games and narrative.

However, it's not enough to simply say that it can happen. As game creators we already believe that games can do anything. We need direction. And that direction, I believe, can be found by an examination of how, specifically, musically narrative media is complemented by its components.

Music is an inherently emotional medium. This seems to be a genetic trait shared by all humans, even if disagreements abound as to which music in particular kindles the intended emotions and which just annoys the listener with its droning, grating noise. The stories which have most benefited from attachment to music are, thus, the very highly emotional ones: epics, tragedies, classical comedies, inspiring tales of heroism and love and great deeds, stories that awaken us to the breadth of the human heart, cause us to empathize with the protagonists, and otherwise inspire strong feeling.

A game, on the other hand, is not an inherently emotional medium. Our primal connection with games is not as an emotional device, and emotional exuberance of any sort than intense concentration or Zen-like disconnection tend to be detrimental to our connection with the game or our performance therein. A number of conclusions might be drawn from this: it is, perhaps, an intellectual medium (in that a game engages the intellect), or a systemic medium (in that a game is a representation of a system), or an educational medium (in that a game teaches us something beyond its own scope).

Not only the stories told by games, but also the way in which they are told, need to be told with consideration to the fundamental nature of the medium of games. Thus far, video games have indeed remained closest to film, which, as a descendant of the combination of theater and opera, tends to be either emotional or philosophical in its narrative, and this sort of narrative may not be appropriate for games. I do not think that further meditation on my part will be of much use to answering this question; instead, we should look to games which have attempted different types of story, as well as make more games with that particular intention, and examine which are effective.

Strategies for Game Narratives

Here are a few examples of the ways that game narratives can be constructed. They are not mutually exclusive.

• Game as Narrator: The events of the game are the literal events of the story, with leeway given to accommodate the player's competence (if, for example, a part of the game must be repeated altogether, not just revisited, the previous attempt is dismissed as inaccurate). In this strategy, players' actions in the past must be acknowledged by the state of the game.
  
• Game as Reader: The events of the narrative are set in stone, and the events of the game take place as a loose imagining of how the unspoken details may have been the same. This is similar to the Game as Storyteller strategy, except that the players' actions may be disregarded by the narrative, the state, or both if they contradict the narrative.
• Player as Author: The major direction (rather than the minute details) of the narrative are determined in response to the players' actions.
  
• Game as Author: The narrative is determined as a consequence of the interaction of game mechanics with each other, in a manner perhaps influenced but not controlled by player actions.
• Player as Character: Player controls or directly influences the actions of a single entity in the narrative, and all other entities are beyond that player's control.
• Player as Narrator: Player controls the context in which several narrative entities interact, but may not directly control the actions of any.
  

Narratives

Any game with a metaphor creates a narrative, as the changing state of the game represents change over the relationship between its metaphoric components. A designer who takes this a step further, and creates a specific story which is told by playing a game, rather than merely a scenario described by it, is employing a narrative metaphor. Storytelling conventions such as plot, characterization, theme, mood, et cetera can be used to improve the entertainment value of a game and to more distinctly establish its own theme.

A game master is often useful to heighten the dramatic impact of a game's narrative, since storytelling often employs characters' limited knowledge, and the presentation of this narrative can be further enhanced by the use of a computer for multimedia effects.

There are two widely practiced ways for a narrative to be a part of a game, and they are by no means mutually exclusive. The first is by creating a different scenario for each event in the story, typically represented as a challenge, and allowing the player to progress through the story by winning each scenario sequentially. The second is by establishing more open-ended, toy-like scenarios, in which the player's actions toward winning the scenario take the form of a story "written" by the player. The first approach may be called linear, while the second may be called interactive.

The essential elements of a narratively-driven game are largely the same as those of a narrative: some acting force with certain abilities, or a character; a motivation for that character; an obstacle which limits the character's choices, or conflict; and events transpiring which alter the situation, or plot.

The most common solution for corresponding the elements of stories and games is to give each player a role, or a single character with known motivation, the fulfillment of which creates a story by interacting with the other game elements. These elements are organized into patterns which require the role to overcome them, and the amount of influence which the player possesses over the specific method used to overcome them roughly corresponds to the extent to which the game's narrative is linear or interactive.

There are, naturally, other approaches. Games have been made in which the players are less characters and more narrators, and the characters and plot are the game elements with which players interact. Since a game is fundamentally the manipulation of a system, any way that a story can be written is grounds for the structure of a game.