DoctorFinger
07-06-2009, 07:08 AM
Bioware's GM Ray Muzyka and COO Greg Zeschuk (aka - The Doctors) sat down to talk about the narrative in games. I know for some that's a pretty dry concept, but personally I'm fascinated by how developers approach of the issue. At what point do you give gamers so much freedom that the story suffers? Why do certain genres just not work in games? How can games tell a story other mediums couldn't?
Do you think a good, meaningful story is possible in an ever-changing world that all users can change?
Ray Muzyka: I think a great story is possible, because if you think about it, the narrative is actually possible in multiple directions. There's a social narrative between players, there's the external narrative outside of the game with social networking. And then there's the internal narrative of the choices you make, and then there's the internal narrative of the story arch being created and kind of evolving over time, both on the player's user-generated content and the way they make choices and their impact on the world, but also the developers actually create a story arch that has some kind of purpose or overarching goal to it. So you can look at it almost like an onion with multiple layers of narrative, and that's one of the reasons why I think interactive fiction is so exciting, because it has those multiple layers that aren't really possible or as achievable in a more passive, linear medium. They can have good stories as well, but I think there are different kinds of narratives that are deeply exciting, in some ways more exciting, in non-linear fiction.
Source - Games Industry (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/doctors-on-call)
Do you think a good, meaningful story is possible in an ever-changing world that all users can change?
Ray Muzyka: I think a great story is possible, because if you think about it, the narrative is actually possible in multiple directions. There's a social narrative between players, there's the external narrative outside of the game with social networking. And then there's the internal narrative of the choices you make, and then there's the internal narrative of the story arch being created and kind of evolving over time, both on the player's user-generated content and the way they make choices and their impact on the world, but also the developers actually create a story arch that has some kind of purpose or overarching goal to it. So you can look at it almost like an onion with multiple layers of narrative, and that's one of the reasons why I think interactive fiction is so exciting, because it has those multiple layers that aren't really possible or as achievable in a more passive, linear medium. They can have good stories as well, but I think there are different kinds of narratives that are deeply exciting, in some ways more exciting, in non-linear fiction.
Source - Games Industry (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/doctors-on-call)