World 7

Story

How games tell stories that films and books cannot: agency, structure and the things only play can say.

A film can decide everything. A game hands part of the story to someone who may ignore it, break it or walk off in the wrong direction, and every extra choice you offer has to be written, tested and paid for. These words let you say what kind of story you are building and what it costs, so you can ask for "a foldback after every second choice, with three flags" instead of "more branching".

AgencyThe player's power to change what happens in a way that matters to them. It is measured by what is different afterwards, not by how many buttons were offered.
Ludonarrative dissonanceWhat the rules make you do contradicts what the story says is going on. Clint Hocking named it in 2007 in a blog post about BioShock.
Ludonarrative harmonyThe rules and the story say the same thing, so playing the game is itself the telling of the story.
Emergent narrativeEmbedded narrative is written in advance and waits to be found, as a cutscene or an audio log. Emergent narrative comes out of the rules running, so players end up telling stories nobody wrote. Henry Jenkins set out both in a 2004 essay.
Show, don't tellLet the audience see a thing happen instead of being informed of it. Games have a stronger form: let the player do it.
Environmental storytellingArranging a place so that the player works out what happened there. Don Carson brought the idea to games in a 2000 article, borrowing it from theme park design.
Branching narrativeThe story splits at each choice into separately written paths. Pure branching never rejoins, so every decision really does send you somewhere else.
Branching explosionEach extra layer of choices multiplies the writing. Two options per scene, ten choices deep, is 2,047 scenes, and one playthrough reads eleven of them.
FoldbackBranches rejoin at a shared scene, so the writing stays affordable. Flags carry what you did through the join. Chris Crawford named it, and he thought it cheated.
Illusion of choiceThe player picks between options that all lead to the same thing, with the difference limited to a line or two. It feels like a decision until someone replays it.
String of pearlsA fixed sequence of open areas. Inside each pearl you can roam and do things in any order. The string between them is the plot, always in the same order.
Hub and spoke narrativeA central place the player keeps returning to, with separate stories leading off it that can be taken in any order.
State trackingThe game keeps a list of what has happened: did you pay, who did you lie to, how many times have you died. Scenes then read that list to decide what to say.
Dialogue treeA conversation laid out as lines and replies: you pick what to say, the character answers, and new options open or close depending on what has been said.
BarksShort lines characters say by themselves in response to what is happening: "Reloading!", "That was close." The trigger comes from game state, not from a script.
CutsceneA stretch of the game that takes control away and plays like a film. It gives you exact framing and timing, at the cost of the player doing nothing.
Quick time eventA button prompt pops up during a scene, and you have a moment to press it. The name comes from the "quick timer events" in Shenmue's manual, though Dragon's Lair played this way back in 1983.
DiegeticSomething that exists inside the story's world, so the characters could see or hear it. A radio playing in the room is diegetic. The film score is not.
Avatar versus characterAn avatar is a blank the player fills: they are the hero. A character is someone else with their own past and voice, whom the player steers. A silent protagonist is the usual way to keep the blank blank.
Narrative designDeciding how the story works as a game: what the player learns when, what a choice can change, which systems carry which beats. Game writing is producing the words themselves.
QuestA unit of story with a goal, some obstacle and an outcome, tracked by the game. A side quest is one the main plot does not require.
Fetch questA quest whose whole content is going somewhere, getting a thing and bringing it back.
Three-act structureA story in three parts: set up a normal life until an inciting incident breaks it, struggle with the consequences, then resolve them. Syd Field made the shape standard in screenwriting.
Hero's journeyA plot pattern set out by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949): a call to adventure, a crossing into the unknown, an ordeal, and a return home changed.
Kishotenketsu as a story formA four-part form from Chinese and Japanese writing: introduce, develop, twist, reconcile. The drama comes from a turn that changes how you see the earlier parts, so it needs no conflict at all.
In media resStarting the story partway through the action and explaining how you got there later. The Latin means "into the middle of things" and comes from Horace.
StakesWhat will be lost if the hero fails, and what makes that matter to this particular player. Small and personal usually beats vast and abstract.
Chekhov's gunIf something is made prominent early, it should matter later. It comes from Anton Chekhov's advice that a loaded rifle on stage has to go off.
MacGuffinAn object that everyone in the story is chasing, whose actual nature hardly matters. Alfred Hitchcock made the word famous.
Dramatic ironyThe audience knows something the characters do not. Alfred Hitchcock's example: a bomb under a table is fifteen seconds of shock if it is a surprise, and fifteen minutes of suspense if you have seen it.
Unreliable narratorThe one telling you the story is wrong, biased or lying, and you are meant to catch them at it.
Morality systemThe game scores your actions on a good-and-evil scale, then changes how the world treats you. It turns ethics into a number, and players treat numbers as things to win.
Multiple endingsThe story can finish in more than one way, depending on what the player did. The choice may be made in the final minute or built up over the whole game.
New Game PlusAfter finishing the game, you start over and keep something from the first run, such as your levels, items or knowledge.