[History & Theory of New Media] History of Narrative Video Games
Storytelling in video games started with the early text adventures - Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork being the biggest examples. These games were based in the science fiction and fantasy lore of well known analog classics, like Dungeons and Dragons. Then graphics and sound were able to be added, though these were still a far cry from... well, Far Cry.
Though as technology continued to grow, these games became even easier to navigate - point-and-click games made for more intuitive gameplay, and LucasArts (created in the 1980s as Lucasfilms Games division) started making "adventure" games that fell outside of the common science fiction/fantasy tropes.
Nintendo's Metroid, from 1986, used only:
Then in 1994 Blizzard's Warcraft came out - and was one of the early games to utilize world-building as a justification for combat, instead of combat for its own sake. (Considering the series still exists today as World of Warcraft, this was probably a smart call.) However, it was the earlier invention of real-time strategy games - that is, games which allowed the players to move around and act in real time, as opposed to the point-and-click predecessors - which allowed Warcraft to be made in the first place.
BioShock, which came out in 2007, was the game which prompted game designer Clint Hocking to create a blog post which would lead to the evolution of the "ludonarrative" debate; that is:
However, while this may continue to be an issue in combat oriented games, developers have recently started making interactive games which do not involve combat but allow for the same exploratory narrative.
In fact, a game called Gone Home was made by a team which worked on BioShock and utilizes some of the same elements to tell a story (mainly voice recordings). More first person exploration games which use notes, narration, and visuals to tell a story have been emerging, which keeps from breaking the ludonarrative contract Hocking discussed. (That Dragon, Cancer is a game which tells the story of a father who's child has terminal cancer.)
There was also the TellTale game company, founding in 2004, which produced games focused solely on story-telling. They allow the player to make choices which effect the outcome of the game, but do not allow for the real-time combat found in other game series.
While I have been unable to locate which game was the first to allow character customization, this too have evolved from simply being able to chose skills or a generic race and class to now being able to fully design your character. Weight, height, eye color, facial structure, etc - all of these are now available thanks to advances in 3D modeling. (3D technology was first attempted by Ivan Sutherland with his Sword of Damocles virtual reality (VR) system in 1968, depicted below.)
VR was first used for video games in the Nintendo Virtual Boy system, which unfortunately showed games in only black and white (although they were 3D).
Despite this rocky start, new VR technology and video games are beginning to take off - and are likely to continue to do so. Modern narrative games allow for a huge amount of options their predecessors did not have the technology for - character customization, VR, multiple story endings dependent upon player choice, and vast open world gaming. (SEGA's Jet Rocket arcade game from the 1960s was the first open world game.)
In fact, there are so many new technologies and options that it's difficult to trace them all. However, narrative games do have one common trend - building a more immersive experience for players. Some of the techniques seen in Metroid are still used today, while new technologies and smarter programming allow for different kinds of storytelling across the board. Perhaps one day video games will be similar to the holodecks featured on Star Trek, and allow players to literally enter the world of the game.
For a timeline including these innovation and more, click here.
Byrne, S. (2016 December 2) Play me a story: How video game storytelling has evolved:
CNET Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/video-game-storytelling-evolution-bushnell-schafer-morhaime/
Camayak. (2014 June 6) The Evolution Of Storytelling In Video Games. Parade. Retrieved from https://parade.com/301954/camayak/the-evolution-of-storytelling-in-video-games/
Healy, P. (2018 August 28) Ludonarrative Dissonance: What it Meant and What it Means. games-edu. Retrieved from https://www.games.pitt.edu/ludonarrative-dissonance-what-it-meant-and-what-it-means/
Virtual Reality Society. (n.d.) History of Virtual Reality. VRS. Retrieved from https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html
 |
| The cover for the first Far Cry game. |
Though as technology continued to grow, these games became even easier to navigate - point-and-click games made for more intuitive gameplay, and LucasArts (created in the 1980s as Lucasfilms Games division) started making "adventure" games that fell outside of the common science fiction/fantasy tropes.
Nintendo's Metroid, from 1986, used only:
a sole blurb, accompanied by creepy and isolating music... as the plot’s only explanation. Press start and Metroid placed the player in the world leaving them to explore, alone. The game itself had almost no words or explanation. Instead Nintendo used mysterious and foreboding music, exploratory gameplay and a masked protagonist to fully flesh out their story; proving that it was not the blurb, but the game that wrote the story for the players. (Camayak, 2014)Other techniques used to enhance immersion by allowing a player to project onto the protagonist - such as covering the face of the protagonist and making them mute - were used by it and other games, and some series continue to do so.
Then in 1994 Blizzard's Warcraft came out - and was one of the early games to utilize world-building as a justification for combat, instead of combat for its own sake. (Considering the series still exists today as World of Warcraft, this was probably a smart call.) However, it was the earlier invention of real-time strategy games - that is, games which allowed the players to move around and act in real time, as opposed to the point-and-click predecessors - which allowed Warcraft to be made in the first place.
BioShock, which came out in 2007, was the game which prompted game designer Clint Hocking to create a blog post which would lead to the evolution of the "ludonarrative" debate; that is:
Hocking finds that the ludic contract of the game (“seek power and you will progress”) supports this goal, while the narrative contract (“help Atlus and you will progress”) does not; the narrative contract, by forcing a path through the game world, apparently forces us to reject the doctrine of rational self-interest, interrupting our potentially visceral ludic experience of objectivism’s flaws. During the player’s rise to power by means of child murder, the infamous “would you kindly” plot-twist reveals that the player themselves had been used as means for another actor’s power, giving firm narrative justification for the dissonance between ludic and narrative contracts in a way Hocking found utterly insulting. (Healy, 2018)
However, while this may continue to be an issue in combat oriented games, developers have recently started making interactive games which do not involve combat but allow for the same exploratory narrative.
In fact, a game called Gone Home was made by a team which worked on BioShock and utilizes some of the same elements to tell a story (mainly voice recordings). More first person exploration games which use notes, narration, and visuals to tell a story have been emerging, which keeps from breaking the ludonarrative contract Hocking discussed. (That Dragon, Cancer is a game which tells the story of a father who's child has terminal cancer.)
There was also the TellTale game company, founding in 2004, which produced games focused solely on story-telling. They allow the player to make choices which effect the outcome of the game, but do not allow for the real-time combat found in other game series.
While I have been unable to locate which game was the first to allow character customization, this too have evolved from simply being able to chose skills or a generic race and class to now being able to fully design your character. Weight, height, eye color, facial structure, etc - all of these are now available thanks to advances in 3D modeling. (3D technology was first attempted by Ivan Sutherland with his Sword of Damocles virtual reality (VR) system in 1968, depicted below.)
VR was first used for video games in the Nintendo Virtual Boy system, which unfortunately showed games in only black and white (although they were 3D).
Despite this rocky start, new VR technology and video games are beginning to take off - and are likely to continue to do so. Modern narrative games allow for a huge amount of options their predecessors did not have the technology for - character customization, VR, multiple story endings dependent upon player choice, and vast open world gaming. (SEGA's Jet Rocket arcade game from the 1960s was the first open world game.)
In fact, there are so many new technologies and options that it's difficult to trace them all. However, narrative games do have one common trend - building a more immersive experience for players. Some of the techniques seen in Metroid are still used today, while new technologies and smarter programming allow for different kinds of storytelling across the board. Perhaps one day video games will be similar to the holodecks featured on Star Trek, and allow players to literally enter the world of the game.
For a timeline including these innovation and more, click here.
Byrne, S. (2016 December 2) Play me a story: How video game storytelling has evolved:
CNET Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/video-game-storytelling-evolution-bushnell-schafer-morhaime/
Camayak. (2014 June 6) The Evolution Of Storytelling In Video Games. Parade. Retrieved from https://parade.com/301954/camayak/the-evolution-of-storytelling-in-video-games/
Healy, P. (2018 August 28) Ludonarrative Dissonance: What it Meant and What it Means. games-edu. Retrieved from https://www.games.pitt.edu/ludonarrative-dissonance-what-it-meant-and-what-it-means/
Virtual Reality Society. (n.d.) History of Virtual Reality. VRS. Retrieved from https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html
Comments
Post a Comment