Storytelling

Over 50% of active gamers regularly play games over six years old. For narrative teams that creates new problems around consistency and content longevity.

So, I went back to basics to find (yes, steal) ideas to help, or at least make me least feel less alone, choosing two seminal sources. The Odyssey, because it underpins much narrative practice (and is everywhere!) and Asimov’s Foundation Series, because it has hugely influenced sci-fi/fantasy writing and me personally.

Can these classics help create narrative in games that may persist for years or decades? Yes. And both cheat to get that consistency. I’ll explain. But first, the relevance to games.

Success in games is now as much about building a lasting community locked into your narrative world as unit sales at launch. Players returning because of emotional ties to that world is now a clear measure of narrative ROI.

So how to maintain that story world, possibly over decades? Yes to lore masters, bibles, librarians and systemic design. But that doesn’t write the stories, design mechanics or create the characters that remain coherent over time.

Starting with the Odyssey. It has a clear theme. To ‘get home’. This answers the ‘why I am doing this’ that good games establish from the start. The story can then range for years with that premise. Everything else adds colour and human values. Loyalty, hospitality, brains over brawn and human frailty.

Alongside this the capricious Gods upset the hero’s progress. So, a clear purpose, strong values to uphold or challenge, and God-imposed mayhem so things don’t always have to make sense. Erratic gods as a handy writers’ cheat mode. Perfect.

Asimov had to align multiple books written over decades (between 1942 and 1993). The original Foundation trilogy, written in the 1940s, told a huge epoch-spanning future history. Later books brought in themes and events that retconned much of the initial content so narrative and plot inconsistencies could align with the new stories. He even drew on his robot book series to help. Clever stuff. And it works. But you can see it wasn’t planned.

The last and maybe most important aspect is that when I read the original trilogy, many years ago, I didn’t care about narrative consistency. I spent most of my time a little confused by who was who and what was what. Yet that was fine because it felt real. I was swept up in the grandeur of it all. I loved being in that universe. Clarity, transparency and logic can be overrated.
So please plan. Have consistency. But you don’t need to telegraph everything to the player. Ambiguity and systems that create mayhem can deliver needed tension and conflict. They also provide a handy get-out-of-jail-free card when managing huge amounts of content.

We do need solid systems and tools to manage what we create. But now and again we need to stop and think like the great authors when we write and deliver that content to players.