StarGate Worlds info
Stargate Worlds Diary #1Cheyenne Mountain's Chris Klug discusses storytelling in massively multiplayer games and the writer's primary job
November 08, 2007 - Stargates are portals that allow people and objects to be transported instantly across the vastness of space through stable artificial wormholes. It was originally thought they had been built by the Goa'uld, who used them to conquer much of the universe and to move humans to many places throughout the galaxy. However, it turned out they were created by a race known as the Ancients, who once had surprising connections with Earth. They were allied with the Nox, the Furlings and the Asgard, but according to the last of these, they have moved on to another part of the cosmos.
Based on MGM's hugely popular science fiction universe that has entertained an entire generation of TV watchers, Stargate Worlds takes place within the early portion of the Stargate SG-1 timeline. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing title will allow players to explore alien worlds, encounter ancient civilizations and battle a variety of formidable enemies. Although the available races haven't been officially announced, it appears that we'll be able to adventure as humans, Jaffa, Goa'uld and Asgard. In addition, it's expected that the team will place a considerable degree of emphasis on the telling of stories as a distinguishing element.Includes two exclusive concept images
Storytelling in MMOs
Storytelling in MMOs is entirely about establishing the structure of the player's game experience, and it is this structure delivers the emotional experience to the player.
I know for certain that structure - not dialogue - is the most important job the writer has as well as his or her primary responsibility, and this job is so important that it eclipses almost every other thing the individual has to do."That's a pretty bold statement there, Chris. We thought this article was going to tell us about storytelling in MMOs, not this thing you call 'structure.'"
Ah, I see then. Well, I'd like to start our discussion by asking you the following question: What do you consider to be a story?
Battle ring concept
"A story? Well a story is a series of... wait a minute, why are we even discussing story when we talk about an MMO? Isn't, by definition, an MMO a game without a story?"
Hmm, well, that depends on what you define as a story.
Just for the record, I define story as change due to conflict. Well, change in an MMO is an easy thing to effect; characters level up, they get more stuff, they grow more powerful. They change. Check that item off. However, it is the nature of the conflict within the universe in which they level up that is the core of the MMO's story. The players must feel as if the world in which they adventure is coherent, logical and fantastical - all at the same time. The story in an MMO is a dramatic one, having more in common with film or TV than novels or short stories. The heart of all successful drama is structure. Let me explain what I mean by structure.
Structure is "the arrangement of and relationship between elements in a complex whole". That's a dictionary definition, but it's one that we can use to anchor our discussion. But, I hear you saying "Why structure? If MMOs are a medium where, by definition, you can't control what the player does, how can you talk about structure? How does a writer make use of structure to do her job? Don't writers use words? Are you supposed to write the game's dialogue?"
Market concept
That's an interesting question. What do writers do? Well, most people assume they write stories using tools like words, sentence structure and grammar. That seems kind of obvious, right? Writers do things like write dialogue. Well, that's true, but it is only part of the job, and in many respects, especially in drama, the least important part. I know that it's easy to see the dialogue as an audience member because it sits on the surface of all drama... and actors are often charismatic, so they are easy to watch while they do their job, talking away like mad.
However, I know for certain that structure - not dialogue - is the most important job the writer has as well as his or her primary responsibility, and this job is so important that it eclipses almost every other thing the individual has to do. I know this statement is probably even bolder than the one I led off with, so let me explain this a little further.
"The only thing they really pay you for is structure." William Goldman made that statement about screenwriting. Arguably the best screenwriter of the last 40 years (his famous films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, Princess Bride, Good Will Hunting - yes, he really did the re-write on GWH that he denies doing) he is also the author of some of most well-known dialogue ever to grace celluloid ("My name is Inigo Montoya, prepare to die"; "Follow the money") is essentially claiming that his main job as a writer is to create the structure of a film.
What does this mean, exactly? We'll dive into that question in the next installment.
Stargates are portals that allow people and objects to be transported instantly across the vastness of space through stable artificial wormholes. It was originally thought they had been built by the Goa'uld, who used them to conquer much of the universe and to move humans to many places throughout the galaxy. However, it turned out they were created by a race known as the Ancients, who once had surprising connections with Earth. They were allied with the Nox, the Furlings and the Asgard, but according to the last of these, they have moved on to another part of the cosmos.
Based on MGM's hugely popular science fiction universe that has entertained an entire generation of TV watchers, Stargate Worlds takes place within the early portion of the Stargate SG-1 timeline. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing title will allow players to explore alien worlds, encounter ancient civilizations and battle a variety of formidable enemies. Although the available races haven't been officially announced, it appears that we'll be able to adventure as humans, Jaffa, Goa'uld and Asgard. In addition, it's expected that the team will place a considerable degree of emphasis on the telling of stories as a distinguishing element.
Includes an exclusive concept image and an exclusive render
Scenes
In our last entry on storytelling in an MMO, we left off with a note from William Goldman where he says, "The only thing they really pay you for is structure."
What does Bill mean when he says that, exactly?
Having every scene in a story deliver the same emotion yields a very boring story overall. You need to intersperse the funny with the sad, the thoughtful with the action-packed.Any discussion about dramatic structure must begin with the old chestnut from Aristotle about three Acts - every dramatic story has a Beginning, a Middle and an End. "Well, that's pretty obvious," you say. "Big deal." Well, yes, it sorta is a big deal because the majority of the artfulness of writing drama comes through the juxtaposition, ordering and choosing of smaller elements within those three acts.
Castle throne room concept
These smaller elements are called scenes. A typical three-act, two-hour film contains approximately 40. Each of them, to be effective, must serve multiple masters. They must, in no particular order
a) be entertaining,
b) advance the plot,
c) reveal something new about the characters, and
d) evoke an emotional response in the audience.
Most of time taken when writing a screenplay is spent on choosing which scenes to include and which scenes to exclude, and creating the order in which those scenes appear. In fact, many screenwriters first work in an outline form with index cards, positioning them on a wall using thumbtacks, arranging and re-arranging these scenes, adding and subtracting as they try out different combinations.
In the MMO business, of course, we don't write scenes. Ee create encounters, missions and tasks for the player to do. We call these small sequences of events 'beats'. We spend a great deal of time constructing the order within them. We can't always control the order in which the player chooses to do each beat, the order within any one, and what the beats are... and we worry about this quite a bit.
Why would we spend so much time doing this? For an answer, let's take a closer look at the last master item scenes must do above, "evoke an emotional response in the audience." Dramatic structure is the artful sequencing of scenes; the order is designed to evoke the most intense emotional reactions from the audience. When the progression is correct, audiences are like puppets. They will do what you want them to do - laugh, cry, get an adrenalin rush, scream in fright, etc. All these emotions are evoked in an audience because of the sequencing of the events.
While having the audience empathize with the characters and writing creditable entertaining dialogue both help, these are but modifiers that aid the basic creative effort, which is to arrange the scenes in your work in order to evoke the most powerful emotions possible. The reason this is your goal as a writer is simple. People come to feel something; they don't come to THINK. In essence, they come to be emotionally manipulated, and the writer is the architect of that manipulation.
Jaffa building render
Think about telling a joke. There are people who have trouble doing this. Most often, their difficulty comes from not understanding the way the joke is structured (setup, reversal, punch line). Both the timing and selection of all the elements must be in place for the joke to be funny. It is the same with the structure of stories.
On the surface, this all seems like a simple task, right? If the film is a comedy, you want each scene to be funny. If the film is a tragedy, you want each scene to be sad, right? What did you just say? You, in the back row. Stand up, now. I can't hear you. What? You're saying that if every scene in the movie was sad or they were all funny the movie might get boring. Really? Wow. That's pretty smart of you. Did you take a playwrighting ****in college or something?
The young man in the back row is right. Having every scene in a story deliver the same emotion yields a very boring story overall. You need to intersperse the funny with the sad, the thoughtful with the action-packed. You need variety when you figure out the scenes. This diversity can't be random; it has to be chosen so that each scene augments and reflects on each other. And, to make this all even more complex, Eisenstein's work on 'montage' (en.wikipedia.org Soviet montage theory) proves that three identical images, each with a different emotion, viewed in different orders will evoke multiple different emotions in the audience. So, to make sure your story 'feels' right, you need to get the sequence absolutely correct.
What our writing staff does is build this artful story structure into our MMO. They build the sequence of beats for our game. As I mentioned above, what this means in our terminology is a combination of missions, tasks and conversations the character might have.
How do we do this? That's the topic of the next installment.
Chris Klug
Creative Director, Stargate Worlds
Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment
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