development and storytelling: a many-to-many relationship - polsinelli

ROME 11-12 april 2014

Development

and storytelling:

a many-to-many

relationship http://bit.ly/devstory

Pietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli

Why care?

You, developer (in some sense):

as you can learn anything,

you should allocate a % of your

energy to improving

your work / product / service / (life)

looking at it as a story.

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Storytelling can give

more value to your

game than more FPS!

1.Getting it in

the hands of

users

2.People want

to use it

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I’ll break the

news for you:

you

are

a

writer

Hidden thesis:

you can learn

anything

The Genius in All

of Us: New

Insights into

Genetics, Talent,

and IQ

This should be a life belief of any geek.

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"We will encourage

you to develop the

three great virtues

of a programmer:

laziness,

impatience,

and hubris."

Larry Wall, Programming Perl

Competitve advantage of the software developer: everything else is simpler – so you can learn it.

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Writing code

& good writing

http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-write-without-writing

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“ The difference between a tolerable programmer and a great

programmer is not how many programming languages they know, and it's

not whether they prefer Python or Java. It's whether they can communicate

their ideas.

By persuading other people, they get leverage.

By writing clear comments and technical specs, they let other

programmers understand their code, which means other programmers

can use and work with their code instead of rewriting it.

Absent this, their code is worthless. ”

Dev side.

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“In defense of my fellow

programmers,

communication with other human

beings is not exactly what we

signed up for”

Not signed up for.

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Give me an example

of stories useful in

development

Ideas ->

Drawings ->

Requirements ->

Mockups ->

Functional mockups ->

Linked mockups ->

Conditionally linked mockups ->

Javascript browser prototype ->

Javascript model ported to a

Unity quick prototype ->

Unity for web / desktop demo ->

Multi platform deploy

}

GLUE?

Could hardly be simpler: a match-3 game, Bust the Dust.

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10000000 addictive, linear story.

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Not alone in developing awareness.

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Maybe getting to

the point

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Learn to write

How I learned to write: it is a

skill, a real craftmanship.

Made many discoveries.

My story.

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Its a craft.

Quality resists means.

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For sale:

baby shoes,

never worn.

Practical tips:

- brevity- Twitter is a great master

- break common places

-use a third eye

- use white space, no wall-of-text 24

Tip. Self-contained

posts.

People can join any time.

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The most important point I’m

making is to

WRITE WITH THE DOOR OPEN.

What I am saying is simply: write a dev log?

Learn to detect the story

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http://www

.shiningroc

ksoftware.c

om/

There are videos, and quick ways to do them. If you have a narrative defined, you can do them quickly.

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No way to learn more, experiment, get feedback, attention, ideas than passing the damn door: I am a

novice in games, but I am keeping the door open…

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No way to learn more, experiment, get feedback, attention, ideas than passing the damn door: I am a

novice in games, but I am keeping the door open…

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No way to learn more, experiment, get feedback, attention, ideas than passing the damn door: I am a

novice in games, but I am keeping the door open…

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Stories express

meaningful work

So one day you begin to write.

Thinking of your work, your new enterprise as a story can help in multiple dimensions.

If it begins to make sense to you, it can make sense to others. At least its possible.

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The incredibly important day of

your game being published.

Nothing happens, a boring day

like any other.

Hooks can only come from your narrative. Repubblica 24h ...

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Back to writing for

games

Stories, loops,

interactivity

One idea:

progression

vs.

emergence

Emergence is the primordial game structure, where a game is specified as a small number of rules that combine and yield large numbers of game

variations, which the players then design strategies for dealing with. This is found in card and board games and in most action and all strategy games. Emergence games tend to be

replayable and tend to foster tournaments and strategy guides.

Progression is the historically newer structure that entered the computer game

through the adventure genre. In progression games, the player has to perform a predefined set of actions in order to complete the game. One feature of

the progression game is that it yields strong control to the game designer: Since the designer controls the sequence of events, this is also where we find the games with cinematic or

storytelling ambitions. This leads to the infamous experience of playing a game "on a rail", i.e. where the work of the player is simply to perform the correct pre-defined moves in

order to advance the game. Progression games have walkthroughs, specifying all the actions needed to complete the game.

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Emergence / Progression

Sim City, Braid.

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Narrative

for / in / from / out

games

The Magic Circle: Huizinga, Johan. 1971. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston:

Beacon Press.

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Which story?

- user gameplay story

- learning story

- author scripted story

- game generated story

- describing the game (story as ux tool)

Distinguish: emergent narrative vs. embedded narrative.

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Classical media is not interactive: depends how you look at it. There is a

branching reality, and videogames are rarely truly interactive.

http://gamamoto.com/2011/11/08/storytelling-and-video-games/ 44

“If one understands that storytelling for games has little or nothing to do with interactive storytelling one has already saved oneself a lot of trouble.”

It goes in many directions.

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http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Adventure-Design-Ernest-Adams-ebook/dp/B00IE950C2

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Relationship with

mechanics

Game are made of loops

To analyze the mechanics of a game, you got to find the loops.

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Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Author)

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Koster – Deterding definition of fun.

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“Fun is

about

learning in

a context

where there

is no

pressure”

But in school there is, and there has to be, pressure. There is here a dynamic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x5YtkTw4wn4#!

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http://codingconduct.cc/Pawned

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Fun is learning - but

learning is not always

fun.

“Fun is a feedback we

get in the mind when

absorbing patterns for

learning purposes” -

Koster

From “Theory of Fun”

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The dark side

No narrative ideal, no purpose beyond monetization. Lenses in a skeleton: The Sims Social.

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Measure, measure, measure.

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Addiction by Design Natascha Schull

http://gelconference.com/videos/2008/natasha_schull

97% is given by the slot machine – study IT

Applications

Problem:

RAI Cinema -> people love

movies, people don’t go to

movies.

Make them play “movie writer”.

Melt-a-Plot: UI design includes motivation.

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Problem:

Integrating social tools in the

enterprise (like anything else)

is conceptually complex and

practically hard.

Social Business Toolkit

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Meet this “thing”. Reactions?

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We have a complex theme, a friendly approach. We basically have this problem: the cards are on the

surface. And the alternative is not very friendly. It is a learning problem.

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(See mockup.)

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Turning into a strategy game

activates a feedback loop – only

the digital game can give this is a

practical, feasible way.

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Engine core is the action / task relationship.

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Non played games.

Dear Esther, Proteus, Journey

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Games for change

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Games for change

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Oh how nice it is to work as a

slave for this multinational

http://unmanned.molleindustria.org/

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Playfied solutions

“Gamification”. Bottle bank arcade. Somemtimes, unhealthy psychological consequences.

Techniology of “fitting better”: technology for control (Foucault).

Game play is instrumental to an external goal. 74

http://thegamebible.com/

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Finale

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Persuasive UIs

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Sebastian Deterding

Jesse Schell

Chris DeLeon “Hobby game Dev”

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https://twitter.com/ppolsinelli/lists/game-designers

https://twitter.com/ppolsinelli/lists/game-magazines-studies

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My twitter stream is mostly dedicated to game design:

http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli

A blog on game design http://designagame.eu

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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hobbit-desolation-smaug-48-

frames-655444

http://strangesounds.org/2013/09/new-us-mysterious-booms-reports-

from-virginia-kentucky-ohio-california-florida-new-york.html

https://www.heidisongs.com/blog/2012/02/teaching-kindergartners-to-

write.html

Image sources.