Storytelling and Video Games.

Emergent storytelling.

by

Lorenzo Tomassini
INTRODUCTION

The essay the reader is going to read is about storytelling and

video games. The first chapter is aimed at laying the foundations
of a debate over how stories are told in video games. Books,
movies and games will be put into comparison in order to
establish and outline the role of the user and to point out the
crucial part interactivity plays in video-game storytelling. The
chapter ends with a brief list of all the main structures used today
in the art of storytelling. The core of this essay – namely, the
concept of emergent storytelling - will be explained by analysing
two video games. Crusader King 2, a war strategy game
developed by Paradox Interactive in 2012 and The Witness, a
masterpiece designed by one of the most skillful indie developers,
that is to say Jonathan Blow. Both games will undergo a thorough
examination that is going to show their unique gameplay. This
analysis will offer all the necessary tools to understand what
Emergent storytelling is and how this way of telling stories is
directly linked to the player's experience. The last chapter will be
dedicated to a quick overview of video games and their future.
Chapter 1

Any kind of debate over video gaming and, especially, the art of
storytelling in games the first thing should begin with a thorough
analysis and clarification of the key role played by interactivity.
Yet such an analysis can't be done without a clear knowledge of
the way the two main media of our age (namely books and
movies) have shaped and developed storytelling.

Let’s start by looking at how books work.

In literature words are the main tool in the hand of a writer who
wants to express personal ideas, convey emotions, reveal
personalities and, more generally, shape a particular world.
Writers use sentences and paragraphs and chapters to organize the
events of a story in the most effective way. They use dialogues to
delve into characters and reveal their secret thoughts, unusual
words to enhance the uniqueness of their moods and punctuation
to dictate the pace.
These are the main instruments a novelist can use to make
storytelling work at its finest.

When it comes to movies, instead, words are only partially

important: their role becomes secondary. A movie is first and
foremost a visual medium.

From the script, where words are used to describe places and
actions and develop the plot, to the use of the body language of
actors. From the unique set-up of a director to the use of lights and
cameras of a DOP. Every aspect of a movie is designed to enhance
the possibility of telling a story through images.
The audiovisual experience offered by a movie is indeed a brand
new dimension of artistic expression, especially when compared
to the experience provided by a book.
In fact, it is clear that literature is characterized by the use of
words to “express ideas over time”, therefore it is a mono-
dimensional medium; whereas films present this same feature with
the addition of a second element: a “ sensory experience “, a new
input that defines this medium as bi-dimensional.

Now, after this brief overview of what defines the art of

storytelling in literature and films, it is now possible to move on
and analyse the trait that characterizes video-games as a three-
dimensional medium: that is to say, interactivity. Interactivity is
actually the most fundamental aspect of game design. Video-
games not only offer the magic of classical linear story-telling,
where a series of events are linked over time and space, but also
add to this experience the possibility to live the story firsthand
thanks to interactivity. Anyone who plays a video-game can
actually take on the role of the main character of the story. This
way, the player can feel what the character feels and make all the
decisions, and not only because of some brain’s inner workings ad
mirror neurons. During gameplay you are the lead and the
director, you are not guided by someone else and you don't have to
follow someone else's adventures as it happens in films or books.
Your identity is intimately linked to the game's main character.
Interactivity is the main tool in video-game story-telling, as words
are for books and images are for movies.

These three different ways of story-telling can also be put into

contrast by analysing the different points of view they represent.
Books could be described as a form of “third-person storytelling”:
there is an author who, as a third party, tells you the events while
you, as a reader, are entrusted with the task of interpreting the
words on your own.
Whereas films could be classified as a form of “second-person
storytelling”: the role of the camera that directs your eyes towards
what needs attention gives viewers the possibility to see things as
they really are, thus using their imagination in a totally different
way from that of readers.
Lastly, video games are a form of “first-person storytelling”: in
games there is no filter between the character and the player, the
latter is actually experiencing the story. That’s why we can say
that games use a totally different form of storytelling. While
movies offer a visual narration, video-games, thanks to their
interactivity feature, offer an experiential narration.
Now that the crucial role played by interactivity in game design
has been clarified, let's see what storytelling is and how it works
in video-gaming.

When does story-telling actually refer to?

Let’s start by saying that stories and story-telling are two different
things. Sometimes there can be a great story but really bad story-
telling. While the opposite is rarely true.
This happens because the same story can be told in many different
ways. This can be easily noticed in movies. Every director has a
trademark, a specific way of telling stories. But not only directors,
also writers and screenwriters have their personal touch: just think
of Aaron Sorkin or Woody Allen or Lubitsch.
Lubitsch himself was known for his story-telling ability, so unique
it gained the definition of “Lubitsch touch”. No one was better
than Lubitsch.
All in all, storytelling is the way a story is told. For the sake of
precision, storytelling is the ability of giving sense to a series of
events by way of all the resources a medium offers the author to
enhance and elevate the discussion and analysis of a particular
topic.
At this point, it is important to analyse the nature and
characteristics of the various structures we can use to tell a story.
Linear narrative is the most common. In this kind of story
structure, used in all kinds of media (from books to movies and
video games), the story is written chronologically, without any
sort of time shift. This kind of story does not usually include any
type of flashback, flash forward or any dream sequence, but tells
the story as it happens and unravels, focusing on the present
events.
Another story structure is the antithesis of the Linear narrative and
is known as Non-linear. Non-linear narrative is sometimes used in
literature but more frequently in movies and, as the word suggests,
in this structure the events are narrated in non-chronological order.
Usually, the narration does not follow the causality model of the
events. In this type of narrative side plot lines add up to the main
plot line, flashbacks and dream sequences are frequently used to
blend many stories in a single one, with the aim of overlapping
present, past and future.
In addition to this, other structures are possible. Framed narrative
or Circular narrative are just two examples. Branching narrative is
another example: it is very rare to see it used in movies because of
the need of interactivity, yet some books have made use of this
particular structure, for example one of Julio Cortazar's most
successful books – Rayuela - or some old game-books.
Although all these narrative styles are different from each other,
they all have some characteristics in common. They feature a
three-act structure, a hero with a quest, plot twists and key
situations, and side characters as the antagonist or the mentor, but
what they share most is that they are all used by authors, writers,
screenwriters, directors and games writers to make fixed stories.
All authors choose the narrative structures that better suit their
ideas and the stories they want to tell.
Video-games, thanks to their main feature, that is to say
interactivity, offer the possibility of using a different story
structure: Emergent storytelling.
Chapter 2

The debate over the conflict between interactivity and storytelling

in video-games is in full swing. Designers and writers and critics
have been arguing for a while now about the possible ideal
storytelling structures to be used in video-games. Yet this is not
the objective of this essay. As a writer who likes stories and
storytelling, I’m genuinely intrigued by the possibility of finding
new ways of telling stories: that’s why I find “Emergent
Storytelling” obscenely attractive.
In order to give a clear explanation of what Emergent Storytelling
is, I have decided to put under the microscope two video-games.
Two video-games that use this type of storytelling in two different
ways.
The first one is seen as one of the finest examples of Emergent
Storytelling and has received a lot of praise and earned a high
reputation among gamers. It is an RPG
(Role playing game), in the wake of the grand strategy war-games
set in the Middle Ages.
This game was released for the first time in 2012 by Paradox
Interactive for Microsoft Windows.
The game is Crusader King 2.
The second one is a more recent game, developed by one of the
most influential indie game developers in the world. The game is a
single player 3D puzzle set in an open world island. The designer
is Jonathan Blow and the game is called The Witness.

Let’s start with Crusader King 2.

Crusader King 2 is a dynasty simulator. In Crusader King the
player assumes the role of a Christian feudal lord who lives over
an arc of time of almost 400 years, from 1066 to 1453. As time
goes by, the character ages and when he dies the player needs to
have raised an heir to keep playing.
The goal of the player is to attain success for the lord's dynasty;
moving on from generation to generation, from heir to heir until
the very end.
Therefore, due to the fact that the goal is to look after your house,
secure the future of your people, rejoice from time to time and get
more power and land, the player has to be cunning and able to
plan many different strategies in order to succeed: which involve
killing, going to war, marrying the right woman and maintaining
diplomatic relationships. The only target of the game is to get
prestige and piety points in order to move up in a fictional ranking
that features all the most relevant European dynasties. The game
ends only when the player dies without an heir of the same
dynasty, when all the lands are lost or when the year is 1453.
Crusader King 2 is essentially a character-based video-game.
Every character of every dynasty all across Europe has a
biography. A biography made of basic skills, personality traits,
family relations, opinions and conflicts. And the AI, the software
programmed to run the video game, must act in accordance to
what these character traits are.
In addition to this, even secondary characters - for example,
landless courtiers - have an agenda, and goals and aspirations they
strive to achieve.
And finally, there are some table-turning random events. The AI
has a range of accidents it can launch at any time during the game.
All these details, all these opposing features create stories. Let’s
read some of them. These stories were posted on the Paradox
Interactivity’s forum.

The first one is a story of a player called: MrWeRD.

“ This is from an old playthrough.

So I was the Emperor of Britannia. I have just conquered France and
was well on my way to take over the western part of the map. But I
have a problem. I had a lot of sons.
My eldest and my heir was born an imbecile. One of my younger sons
had the attractive trait. So I decided that my attractive son shall inherit
me, whilst I did my best to kill off my eldest in a dignified manner.
In my wars with Castile(the king of which also previously owned
France), I sent him repeatedly against their doomstacks with a
hundred or so soldiers. Oh, he was rendered incapable in one of the
battles, of course, but he didn't die. Eventually, he was captured. By
now, I was certain that my incapable, imprisoned imbecile of a son
will die in a coma sooner or later.
So the war ended and I've won... BUT THAT SON OF A GOAT
STILL WON'T DIE! No! My other, more capable sons went and died
honored deaths in the war, but not him! The king of Castile sent him
back to me, alive and well... ish.
I thought it was only a matter of time before my eldest kicked the
bucket, so I didn't fret... until an event popped up where two of my
courtiers had ran off and eloped. I decided to forgive them, rather than
imprison them... Only to realize later on that one of the courtiers was
my imbecile of son! My eldest was bloody determined for life it
seems, and more determined to be married.
So, now my imbecile and incapable son, the one with the WORST
traits in my empire, is now married, with a bastard son(fathered
through the maid event shortly after he reached adulthood).
At this point, a quote flashes across my mind. You reap what you sow.
But rather than biting the bullet, I gave up and just started a new
game.
That day, I learned a valuable lesson. If you want someone dead, you
should probably just stick to assassination. “

And here is another one. By: NealTS

“I'm a Duke in Wales, right? I'm getting older, my wife's getting older,
and I have no sons.
So my useless half-brother is my heir. I'm beginning to fret about the
whole situation, exploring options, thinking about getting a divorce.
Assassinating the missus is out of the question- she's my Spymaster,
after all, and a good one. She'd see it coming from a mile away.
Anyway, I get the chance to have an affair with my useless half-
brother's wife. I take the game up on the offer. A few months later, my
wife still isn't pregnant, but the in-law is!
My useless half-brother, discovering his wife's condition, decides to
try to kill me. My wife, being the Spymaster, brings the plot to my
attention. I decline to fill her in on the whys and wherefores. I try to
lock the cuckold up, but he flees to another court, leaving his very
pregnant wife behind. It turns out to be a boy! Still without a son from
my own blushing bride, I legitimize the bastard, naming him my heir.
My wife, finally piecing together the whole sordid business, throws up
her hands in despair and takes off for a nunnery. “

Another one by : war1machine

“ In my game I was having a good time as the Empire of Scandinavia

and decided to reflect on how far I had come by viewing the world
map for the first time in many in game years. Here's what I found, The
Iberian peninsular dominated by Muslim forces, not surprising, The
Byzantine Empire doing well against various Muslim factions. The
Jorvik Vikings dominate England and have now formed the Kingdom
of England and the Scots have all of Ireland. India is a war-zone of
rival nations locked in constant war. All is relatively normal... I
thought. That's when I took a closer look at the Alexandria region and
noticed it had been conquered by Slavic Pagans led by some dude
with the rightful title of 'The Conqueror'. The force of Islam failed in a
Jihad to retake the land and Slavic paganism is all the new rage in the
hardcore Muslim region, yes they happily converted to the backwater
religion of Slavic paganism. He also drags his whole army from
Alexandria over to northern Russia to help out his ally whom I happen
to be destroying in a Great Norse Holy War. Unfortunately his son
ruined all his hard work and converted to Sunni (but he probably
saved his fathers Kingdom of Alexandria, I mean the Muslims weren't
going to tolerate the mighty Alexandria being owned by a Pagan). All
Hail King Hrane of Alexandria “

And a very short one, by: tonkatoy5

“ I once had a homosexual relationship with the pope and contracted

syphilis and died 6 years later. “

These are just some examples of what happens to players of

Crusader King 2. But I have to correct myself, I said that all those
personality traits and opposing features create stories. I was
wrong. The only thing all those elements do is creating something
essential for every story: that is to say conflict.
Crusader King 2 is intentionally designed to create strife and
conflict. Every aspect of the game is aimed at raising the level of
conflict between the lord and his goal. And not by increasing the
difficulty from medium to hard or increasing the speed or
performance of the bullets of your enemies but by displaying an
incredible variety of human traits: hundreds of thousands of
human traits for hundred of thousands of characters.
Actually not only human traits. Let’s analyse carefully what the
game mechanisms to create conflict in Crusader King 2 are.

The first mechanism has to do with “Quantity”. In the video game

there are hundreds of thousands of characters who have
interactions and fight to get hold of important resources.
The second one concerns “Quality”. As I said earlier, every
character has unique qualities and opinions on the rest of the cast
and the AI must obey to those qualities.
The next mechanism are the “Limited Resources”. In the game,
every character fights to get more power and, because it is a game
set in the Middle Ages, they try to get lands and build empires.
One more mechanism are the “Changing conditions”. The game
has variable factors, a sort of dynamism. Such changes affect the
age of the characters or their opinions on the other characters.
Everything is subject to constant change.
Then there are “Multiple courses of action". All characters have
more than one way to get what they want.
If a character is a coward it is probably a good idea not to make
him leader of a big empire with a huge army, otherwise winning
the game might become rather hard. At the same time, he could be
clever or very well-educated, which means the player would have
more than one skill to rely on in the quest for power. Every quality
is a course of action.
The next one concerns “Repercussions". The characters controlled
by the AI react to the player's actions. If the character does
something bad as a murder or an incest, the other characters will
have a specific reaction: they might abandon your court or plan to
kill you.
The last one is the “Morality” factor. Being the game set in the
Middle Ages, one of the most ferocious and misogynous times in
the history of mankind, the level of morality of the characters
offers a perfect opportunity to create drama.

These are all the mechanisms that are at work in Crusader King 2.
And what they all do is, essentially, putting the player at the heart
of the game. Not only by giving a pre-determined story to be
played as the lead character, but by offering a world that creates
the chances for interaction. A world with its own rules and
mechanisms where, thanks to the gameplay, every player can write
a unique and personal story. And the way the game does so is by
using in a very interesting way all the mechanisms typical of the
act of story-telling, yet without telling any story but simply
generating conflict.

In brief: the game doesn’t tell a story, it creates conflict. This is the
gist of it.
Now let's take a look at the other game - The Witness - to try and
understand what the other main qualities of Emergent storytelling
are.

The Witness is a completely different game from Crusader King 2.

It is a “first person” interactive game totally set on a island. The
game starts straight after loading, with no instructions. There is no
menu. The game starts fading from black inside a dark tunnel;
there is a light at the end of it. You don’t know who you are or
why you are there or what your goal is. On the door at the end of
the tunnel there is a yellow square featuring a cryptic image. It
seems like a symbol: it is a horizontal line with a circle at the left
end. You understand intuitively what to do. Press X to make the
cursor appear on the screen and move that cursor to the circle at
the left end of the horizontal line and drag it toward the right end.
This was the first maze. A line. The door opens: another puzzle in
a yellow square, this time an angle: 90°. Same process. From the
circle to the end of the line to an angle. Another door opens. It is
still dark. A door at the end of what seems to be a staircase. You
reach the door, open and walk through it. A wow moment. A
beautiful garden, grass lit by the sun, violet and blue flowers
everywhere. Ruins of walls. A table with perfectly disposed chairs.
Another maze in a yellow square nearby a “laser” door. There is
no explicit explanation, the hows and whys remain unanswered.
That’s how The Witness begins. Those two mazes are just the first
two of more than 500 mazes spread on what is a big island made
of few smaller islands. The mazes gradually become harder and
harder. Some of them are truly difficult, mind-boggling. But what
is great about the game is the fact that it teaches you step by step -
or, we may say, maze by maze - how to solve each puzzle and
move on to the next stage. There are no written instructions, only a
gradual process that leads the player to the solution of each maze
as the game teaches you how to progress.
The Witness challenges the player not only in the finding of
solutions to mazes but also because it actually has no story.
As it happens in Crusader King 2, this game too doesn’t tell any
story; and in addition to this you have many more questions - the
main one probably is “What is going on?” - and the answers are
very hard to find.
Throughout the gameplay, the player finds audio samples of
people who talk about things not connected to anything, the sense
of which is mostly unknown and unknowable. Towards the end
there are also videos of a person, who seems to be a professor,
who literally asks you “So, you must be wondering what all of this
is about?“ and then begins talking about art and philosophy.
The game doesn’t clearly answer any of the player's questions.
Internet is obviously full of mixed reactions to this game.
Now, we don’t really need to know what The Witness is about in
terms of story. But what is interesting about the game is how it
moves you throughout the whole gameplay. It makes you see
patterns. Maze after maze, puzzle after puzzle and secret after
secret The Witness helps you put the pieces together just for the
sake of it. Step by step it makes you link events and bits of
information to help you solve the next puzzle and reach the end.
This is one more resource of Emergent Storytelling. The innate
human inclination to see patterns.

This is what The Witness is all about. And this is what every
player does when playing The Witness. The player tries to give a
meaning to a game which is about our innate process of looking
for meaning in what is just chaos.

This tendency is even clearer in Crusader King 2. As I said earlier,

Crusader King 2 doesn’t tell any story at all, it just creates conflict
through its mechanisms. The stories come from the players. Game
designers and writers know this and take advantage of it, making
games so immersive for the player that the desire to give meaning
to things reaches its peak. The players have to put the pieces
together to write their own stories and then give meaning to them.

Chapter 3

As we have seen, video-game writing is leading storytelling to

new unexplored territories. The debate is in full swing. The game
industry sees a constant growth all around the world. There are
more and more platforms and possibilities to make games. But
most of all, the medium is evolving. Designers and writers are
always at work, always trying to do something new, to create the
next groundbreaking game, pushing the medium, and the audience
too, towards new directions and dimensions.
Some designers consider this age of video games as the age of
black and white silent movies. With technologies as VR and
augmented reality constantly improving and with theories as
Emergent Storytelling or Procedural Storytelling, video games are
going through a phase of great development. We are
just at the beginning of what might be the future leader in the field
of entertainment.
The great challenge video games are facing right now concerns
stories and storytelling. Basically, video games are trying to get
their independence from movies. We can say that, today, most of
the video games are playable movies. Great pre-determined
stories, great characters and endings, mostly very successful
products but often seen more like a movie than a video game. This
kind of narrative is not the best way video games could to tell
stories.This is probably the biggest challenge games have to face
at the moment. Games should abandon the classical narrative
schemes so amazingly exploited in movies and books and find
their own way of telling stories. And Emergent Storytelling might
be just the right start.
Conclusion

With this essay I wanted to analyse video games and, especially,

storytelling in video games. I decided to start from the way
storytelling works in movies and books. I went through their
characteristics in order to establish and show their differences
from games. It should be now clear that interactivity is the main
resource video games have to tell stories. As words for books or
images for movies. The gameplay itself is the best way for a video
game to tell a story. Which is why we can define the way video
games tell stories as experiential.
Interactivity redefines not only the way games tell stories but also
the role of the user. The role of a gamer compared to that of a
reader or a viewer is
completely different. First of all, the gamer is the main character,
and not only for a matter of empathy but because there is a real
overlap between the gamer and the lead character, and most of all
due to the fact that, as he plays, a gamer becomes a creator of a
new virtual story. Some games give gamers the opportunity to
customize the main character the way they like. Others give them
the possibility to make choices in order to change the story. Other
games give users the freedom to make their own story.
Having established what the role of gamers is and what the
bedrock of every game is, I took under examination two games as
examples of what the main subject of the essay is: Emergent
Storytelling. Crusader King 2 and The Witness were taken as
proofs to show the two main qualities of Emergent storytelling.
The first one is conflict: Crusader King 2 shows how all the
mechanisms present in the game are designed to create conflict.
There are hundreds of thousands of characters, random events
launched by the AI and repercussions for his choices between the
player and the goals that have to be achieved. The whole game is a
conflict machine. Or to be more specific, an antagonist, an
opposer. The player plays against the game and Crusader King 2 is
designed to be the player's worst enemy.
The second resource of Emergent Storytelling is the innate ability
of the human being to see patterns where there aren't any. I chose
The Witness as an example of this quality because it is exactly
what the game is all about. This video-game forces you to put
things together in order to reach the end and give a meaning to it.
And this is what the game is really about. The innate intention to
make order out of chaos and find meaning where there is none.
This quality can be seen in Crusader King 2 as well. What both
games do is create conflict, The Witness does it through puzzles
while Crusader King 2 through characters yet the result is the
same. Stories emerge from players and more specifically from the
will of every player to give meaning where there is none.
In the last chapter I tried to say how Emergent storytelling is
playing its role in video games. As a new way of telling stories
Emergent storytelling is making possible what appears to be a
slow detachment from movies and games. Furthermore, if today
there are still a lot of games that look like movies something is
happening. New theories and technologies are moving video
games toward a new era. Video games are a very young medium
with exciting potential, mostly still to be discovered.
Articles and videos.

Chapter 1

- Designing game narrative: How to create a great story.

By Terrence Lee ( https://www.mcvuk.com/

development/designing-game-narrative-how-to-create-

a-great-story )

- The different kinds of narrative structures in short

stories. By Emily Layfield. ( https://penandthepad.com/

different-kinds-narrative-structure-short-

stories-22387.html )

Chapter 2

- Emergent stories in Crusader King 2 ( https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Sc6segX_Q )
- Stories - ( https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/

index.php?threads/tell-your-funny-stories.
636767/ )

- The witness Noclip Documentary ( https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdSdvIRkkDY&t=3s )

- Chapter 3

- Designing game narrative: How to create a great story. By

Terrence Lee ( https://www.mcvuk.com/development/
designing-game-narrative-how-to-create-a-great-story )