{"id":107759,"date":"2020-01-21T21:22:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T21:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/356972"},"modified":"2020-01-21T21:22:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T21:22:00","slug":"dont-miss-inside-the-narrative-design-and-multiple-middles-of-mutazione","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/01\/21\/dont-miss-inside-the-narrative-design-and-multiple-middles-of-mutazione\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Miss: Inside the narrative design and ‘multiple middles’ of Mutazione"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Gamasutra Deep Dives are an ongoing series<\/a> with the goal of shedding light on specific design, art, or technical features within a video game, in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren’t really that simple at all.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Check out earlier installments<\/a>, including building an adaptive tech tree in <\/a><\/em>Dawn of Man<\/a>,<\/em> creating comfortable UI for VR strategy game <\/a><\/em>Skyworld<\/a>, and creating the intricate level design of <\/em>Dishonored 2<\/a>‘s Clockwork Mansion.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Who: Hannah Nicklin, of Die Gute Fabrik<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Hi, I\u2019m Hannah Nicklin from Die Gute Fabrik.<\/a> I am the narrative designer and writer for Mutazione<\/a><\/em> \u2013 a mutant soap opera where small-town gossip meets the supernatural \u2013which was released in September 2019 on Apple Arcade, PS4 and PC. I\u2019m now CEO and studio lead of Die Gute Fabrik.<\/p>\n

Before transitioning to video games as a main practice, I also worked as a playwright and theater-maker, and I have a PhD in the spaces between games and theater, and their uses as anti-capitalist practice.<\/p>\n

My training is in theater-writing, and I correlate the role of narrative design very strongly to that of \u2018dramaturg\u2019 in theater. A dramaturg\u2019s job is to look at the structure of the storytelling, and storytelling through the structure; it\u2019s a systemic look at narrative which I find doubly satisfying as a practice in games, where player choice becomes a new factor, and narrative design tools a new limitation.<\/p>\n

My early career practice as a theater-maker very much revolved around form-led design \u2013 finding the story you wanted to tell and then finding the best medium to tell it in, and also working tightly to brief. My theater-writing training focused on complex characterization, elegant exposition, and knowing when to break the rules usefully. This all equips me well for writing in games, as I can enter a project halfway through (as writers often have to) and be tools-focused: what are the affordances of existing tools in telling a story? What additional tool or feature would shape this storytelling most usefully? Alongside dramaturgical instincts about time, structure, and giving themes room to emerge naturally.<\/p>\n

Parenthetically, I strongly recommend game designers seek out non-traditional theater and performance events near them as part of the work in other media that influences them, I think the perspective is really valuable for people working in games.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Vocabulary<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think specialist vocabulary around writing is sometimes thrown around a little interchangeably, so from my own perspective and learning, this is what I mean by these specific words (some of it is Aristotle by way of E. M. Forster,<\/a> some of it is my own):<\/p>\n

Story:<\/strong> the total thing you will communicate (you might call it the lived experience of the characters).<\/p>\n

Story-world<\/strong>: relevant when the game is set somewhere other than our world\/reality.<\/p>\n

Plot:<\/strong> the events that you choose to show in their specific time-linear order.<\/p>\n

Narrative:<\/strong> The entire design of the telling of the story \u2013 for example, a narrative can contain several intertwining plots (in TV you might have an A plot, a B plot, and a season-long Ur plot \u2013 a narrative might also tell plot elements out of sequence.)<\/p>\n

Narrative design:<\/strong> The specific discipline in game-writing which encompasses the design choices around: player interaction, choice and consequence, space, embodiment, game feel, mechanics and time in order to tell the story.<\/p>\n

As a working example: in an episode of Star Trek DS9<\/em>, the story-world <\/strong>is that of the Star Trek universe. The story<\/strong> is one of a group of Starfleet employees attempting to mediate in a border-town space station between a community recently freed from occupation, and their occupiers. The plots<\/strong> may be \u2018the barman has a comedy scheme\u2019, \u2018the previous insurgent has to tackle some of the moral grey areas of her previous activism\u2019 and \u2018the Captain has to keep the fragile peace whilst also being a good father to his son\u2019.  The narrative<\/strong> is the order of scenes, what they depict, who is in them, and how they interact throughout an episode.<\/p>\n

What: Shaping the narrative of Mutazione<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

When I came to Mutazione<\/em> (pronounced as it is in Italian [muh-taht-zee-own-ay] \/mutat\u02c8\u02a6jo\u02d0ne\/) the game had been in development for around 6 years (though not all full time). As part of my brief I was presented with a fully formed story-world<\/strong> and set of characters, and a plot<\/strong> for the overall game. There was a system for writing dialogue which wasn\u2019t yet connected to the game, and a majority of the animations were already made — meaning I had a limited palette of emotional expression.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I was initially brought on to triage the writing. It quickly became clear, however, that there wasn\u2019t yet a plan for the structure of the storytelling, how time worked, nor any clear logic systems for progression. This kind of systemic thinking suits me and as I began to collaborate (with permission) beyond my initial brief I was soon offered the lead on shaping the means and the telling of the story at the heart of this story-driven game.<\/p>\n

At that point the brief became to implement Nils Deneken\u2019s artistic vision to produce a game which was:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Driven by an ensemble cast of characters.<\/li>\n
  2. A soap opera.<\/li>\n
  3. Centered around a theme of looking at a community aligned differently with nature.<\/li>\n
  4. Built on a clearly defined and pre-existing story-world and plot.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    How & Why<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    It\u2019s important to admit, I think, that as many decisions are made in game development by process as by intent. Some processes you design, some you do not. My position on the team wasn\u2019t one where I had full license to redesign the structure of the narrative and elements of the plot until the final year of development.<\/p>\n

    My involvement with the narrative design grew as:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The Creative Lead built confidence in my abilities to tell his story and change them positively without his oversight (it is a lot to hand over your story to someone else!)<\/li>\n
    2. I built my knowledge of the tools and systems in place to tell the story with, and was able to ask for refinements.<\/li>\n
    3. I was able to put in place systems for overview (many spreadsheets and filter functions).<\/li>\n
    4. We made some cuts. I love cuts. A single cut can allow you to see all of the lines of intent connected to it, and understand if it all<\/em> needs to come apart, to serve the story best.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      This is a quality of joining a project mid-way through and is at the base of many decisions and choices present in the game, which are still effectively first draft. My writing pals in other forms would be appalled at how much first-draft makes it into the \u2018finished\u2019 game. <\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      A mutant soap opera: genre<\/strong><\/h2>\n

      One of the things that was presented to me early on was that this was a soap opera.<\/em> As a form-led practitioner I made careful note of the genre I was being asked to write within, and aimed to therefore make design decisions to serve this.<\/p>\n

      A few reactions to the game have focused on the \u2018soap opera\u2019 label as \u2018wrong\u2019 because they think it\u2019s a \u2018good\u2019 game (um, thanks, though!) Genre is fairly neutral to me, on the whole, but I can understand that to non-writers, it is not. Nor is that reaction unique to games. In books, film and TV, \u2018literature\u2019 and \u2018drama\u2019 are often seen as the only place for quality. The masterful romantic comedy Pride & Prejudice<\/em> is often placed in the \u2018literature\u2019 category, rather than in the reams of pink-covered rom-coms (give me a historical romcom section! File A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream there!) Rom-coms and soap operas share that they are typically seen as \u2018feminine\u2019 forms of storytelling (they often center female characters\/experience), and therefore somehow \u2018lower quality\u2019. I would wager there are as many bad action movies as there are rom-coms, but while we might expect an action film to be trashy, far fewer people sneer.<\/p>\n

      So I\u2019d like to stake ownership of the soap opera form \u2013 soap operas are not \u2018low quality television\u2019 they are (to my mind) defined by being long-running, character-driven, ensemble-cast, slices of life. They share a lot of their qualities with situational comedies, except they tend to be drama- rather than gag-driven. And to my mind a soap opera is an excellent form to work with in video game storytelling.<\/p>\n

      I feel strongly that the hero\u2019s tale is a format best suited to a play or film-length story. Perhaps 5-6 hours max. After that point you will find yourself generating false jeopardy for the central character, and those around them who enable their journey will begin to feel thin. (Of course, there are examples that are successful, all good writers can work against the grain of a form as well as with it \u2013 but the key is to do so consciously).<\/p>\n

      A soap opera on the other hand \u2013 in games, and in a game with exploration rather than linear \u2018corridor\u2019 gameplay such as Mutazione<\/em> \u2013 the ensemble cast allows you to fill a world, to help it feel like it exists beyond the tip of the iceberg you encounter through your gameplay. It can offer A, B and C plots; intrigue, comedy and drama; through different characters, no longer demanding one character hold it all.<\/p>\n

      The genre \u2018soap opera\u2019, and the form of the gameplay (exploration plus conversation) made me convinced that I would need to make narrative design decisions that built a world that felt like it was full, that it existed before you arrived, and would continue to exist after you left.<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      A place and time for everyone, for everyone a time and place<\/strong><\/h2>\n

      When I started on the project there was no system for managing time<\/em>. There was a clear idea that there were different days in the story, but it was just imagined that time would slowly move forward, and the conversations you had would unlock \u2018later\u2019 ones in the plotline.<\/p>\n

      For the purposes of the brief, however, I felt this needed to change.<\/p>\n

      Creating routines<\/em> among the characters by using specific times of day would enable a sense of a world which could be independent of the player\u2019s journey. It would also allow us to impose pacing<\/em> \u2013 to develop character journeys as well as plot lines. Time is a vital part of any story, because it affords us the ability to show change. A key principle for me in writing an ensemble-cast narrative was to have all of the characters in some way changed by the events of the story.<\/p>\n

      I worked with the excellent narrative system design team (Christoffer Holmg\u00e5rd and Morten Mygind) and Nils, along with some incredibly valuable work from our intern Sarah Josefsen, to create a more formal system for time in the game.<\/p>\n

      This is how the story is told in place and time:<\/p>\n