Linear and Nonlinear Plot Structures
The question we’re asking in this course is: how does our idea of story and narrative need to change and adapt to other forms?
As Hudson and Zimmerman remind us, “Projects unfold across different platforms (e.g. computer screens, mobile screens, gallery spaces, open streets, public squares, private malls, social media, narrowcasting) and in different iterations (e.g. websites, downloads, videos, images, video games, performances) to convene critically engaged media users” (2015, p. 2), and that, therefore, “Digital technologies challenge us to redefine media and conventions based on analogue technologies” (2015, p. 4)
As an introduction to ways to start thinking about this, read the Prologue to The Art of Immersion: how the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories (2011), p. 1-8.
This week we will be looking at the structural complexity of some digital narratives. In particular we will look at how the modularity and variability of digital narratives can appear in a variety of different structures.
Modules, in the context of digital narrative, can also be called units, chunks, narremes, modules, clips or scenes. Structuring narrative modules can also be called recombining, ordering, linking, tagging, branching, scoring, and designing navigation or paths.
The structure we are all most familiar with is a linear order, in which each module is linked to the next one and the only choice is backwards and forwards.
But today we’re exploring branching, multilinear, and emergent narratives.
We are looking at these structures so that you can consider options for your proposed project.
LINEAR NARRATIVES IN VIDEOGAMES
Let’s think about how games are structured for a moment. Whether or not you plan to develop a game for your digital narrative proposal, thinking about their structures might help us expand our thinking beyond the traditional, linear narratives that we unpacked in the first flipped lecture.
Linear narratives are ones that move from the beginning to the end in the following fashion:
In games, linear narratives often serve as a backstory to the main activity.
Just like in traditional drama or film, the backstory establishes historical events that are relevant to the action of the game. In doing so, the backstory introduces us to the period, setting, and characters of the game. The backstory often concludes with an event that upsets the status quo and creates the conflict or the problem for the player to solve (Fullerton 2008, p. 90). This problem provides the motivation for the player to act. It also provides the objective, in other words, what the player must do to solve the problem or conflict. On the way to solving this problem the player will encounter a number of obstacles.
NONLINEAR STORIES
Some games, however, allow the player to make choices that alter the story. According to Jesse Schell, a Professor and formerly a Creative Director of the Walt Disney Imagineering VR Studio, games are not the only medium that invites the audience to make decisions. Whether we are reading a book, watching a film, or playing a video game, we are constantly making decisions: “’What will happen next?’ ‘What should the hero do?’ ‘Where did that rabbit go?’ ‘Don’t open that door!’ The difference only comes in the participant’s ability to take action” (quoted in Fullerton 2008, p.102). In a game, the decisions, choices and actions of the player can affect the events and/or the ending of the story.
Adams notes that there are three ways in which the player’s choices can affect the story or plot structure of a game:
- The player can make a choice, or perform an action, that has an immediate impact on story events. For instance, the player can choose to either fight or flee from an enemy.
- The player can make a choice, or perform an action, that has a deferred influence on story story. For instance, the player might choose to spare the life of a character who then comes back to attack them in a later scene.
- The player can make a whole series of decisions that cumulatively affect the story. For instance, many role-playing games (RPGs) use cumulative influence to build up a ‘reputation’ (based on a scoring system) for the player. The player’s reputation will cause non-player characters (NPCs) to treat them differently. (Adams 2010, p.170)
NONLINEAR STORY STRUCTURES
There are three main nonlinear story structures in games: branching, multilinear, and emergent.
Branching stories
At certain points in the branching story, the player can make a choice about what happens next. Each choice leads to more choices, so that the story expands to look like a tree branch.
Branching narratives are difficult to produce on a large scale. They can quickly become enormous, which poses a problem for developers. They require a lot more content than linear stories and thus developing a branching narrative takes longer and costs more. Branching narratives may also require more complex storytelling engines to keep track of all the player’s decisions. As Schell puts it:
“It seems so simple to propose: I’ll give the player three choices in this scene, and three in the next, and so on. But let’s say your story is 10 choices deep — if each choice leads to a unique event, and three new choices, you will need to write 88,573 different outcomes to the choices the player will make.” (Schell 2009, p.267)
Branching stories are also difficult to write. They are prone to continuity errors (inconsistencies between past and present events), and they trade the emotional power of a linear story for the player’s freedom to choose. It is very difficult to write multiple plot lines that are all equally engaging and dramatic.
Even multiple endings can be problematic. Players want to know if the ending they experienced was the ‘real’ ending and whether they have to play the entire game again to see the other endings.
Multilinear Stories
A multilinear or foldback story is a compromise between a linear and a branching story structure. In this story, the player can make some decisions, but he or she cannot avoid certain important story events. On replaying the game, the player may notice that the apparent control she had on the first play through was an illusion (Adams 2010, p.174).
Schell, calls this a string of pearls structure:
“The idea is that a completely non-interactive narrative (the string) is presented in the form of text, a slideshow, or an animated sequence and then the player is given a period of free movement and control (the pearl) with a fixed goal in mind. When the goal is achieved, the player travels down the string via another non-interactive sequence, to the next pearl, etc. In other words, cut scene, game level, cut scene, game level…” (Schell 2009, p. 265)
Nevertheless, this model provides the player with both a certain degree of freedom and a satisfying dramatic structure. For this reason, the multilinear narrative is the most commonly used, and the most commercially successful, of the nonlinear narrative structures (Adams 2010, p.174).
Emergent stories
The final nonlinear narrative structure is the emergent story. We can define an emergent story as one where the story is generated by the interaction of the player.
This kind of story does not have predefined story sequences – the game is more like an authoring environment and stories emerge as we play with it. In games like The Sims (2000 – 2015), for instance, players can use the characters and settings provided to create their own stories. This game provides an environment that is ripe with narrative possibilities. Objects perform clear narrative functions, for instance, “newspapers communicate job information”. The characters have distinct personalities and their conflicting desires can produce interesting dramas (Jenkins 2004, p.120-122). Schell calls games such as The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon (2003) story machines because they produce new stories.
Back in 2006, two PhD students (Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern) developed Facade. It is an artificial intelligence based interactive story. In this game the player is a close friend of a couple, Grace and Trip, who are having relationship issues. The player is invited to Grace and Trip’s home for cocktails. The player can type sentences to ‘speak’ with the couple and thus determine the outcome of their conflict. Watch the trailer and/or download the game for an early example of developing an emergent narrative.
Even in an emergent narrative, however, the player is not entirely free. The player can only do what the core mechanics of the game allow him or her to do. In addition, some argue, these games do not reliably produce stories that are believable, coherent, or dramatic (Adams 2010, p.170).
Next week (week 4) we will look at another, less game-specific, non-linear structures from film, television and online, including database narratives and rhizome narratives. You will be asked to bring an example of a non-linear narrative to the tutorial next week – so start looking out for them now 🙂
References
Adams, E & Rollings, A 2010, Fundamentals of Game Design, New Riders, Berkeley, CA.
Facade, 2005, video game, Michael Mateas & Andrew Stern, Pittsburgh, PA.
Fullerton, T 2008, Game Design Workshop, Second Edition: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (Gama Network Series), Morgan Kaufmann, Massachusetts.
Hudson D and Patricia R. Zimmerman 2015. Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Jenkins, H 2004, ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’, [in] First Person : New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, (Eds, Wardrip-Fruin, N & Harrigan, P) MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 118 – 128.
Rose, F 2011, The Art of Immersion: how the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London
Schell, J 2009, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, Amsterdam, Boston.
Rollercoaster Tycoon, 2003, video game, Chris Sawyer Productions, Dunblane.
The Sims, 2000-2015, video game, Electronic Arts, California.