Leave the player changed by your game.
This chapter focuses
on ways to induce a player to personally experience emotional growth and change during the course of a game.
In Chapter 2.9, “NPC Character Arc Techniques,” we looked at ways to create emotional growth in an NPC. A Character Arc, as we discussed on Chapter 2.9, is the character's difficult path of growth through an emotional fear, limitation, block, or wound.
note
Refresher example: If a character grows from being and feeling like a nobody (his fear, limitation, block, or wound) into feeling like and being a leader, that's his Character Arc.
To create the experience of the player himself or herself undergoing personal change, however, requires quite different techniques—techniques that have no parallel in film or television.
If you succeed in creating a game that leads the player through personal growth, the game can be quite emotionally gripping. But how can you honestly lead a player through emotional change?
I think it's safe to say that if therapists struggle for years to transform people, we're not going to succeed in helping players expunge deep-seated emotional dysfunctions during the course of a game.
However, if we narrow the scope of our goals, there's a lot we can do. After all, on some level, don't we vicariously experience the emotional growth of those characters in films with whom we identify? And haven't all of us been affected, if not changed, by one of those experiences?
After experiencing films with characters who go through change and identifying with those characters, are we ourselves actually changed? For instance:
Are we inspired to be more honest by watching Fletcher Reede (Jim Carrey) in Liar Liar?
Are we galvanized to leave the safe and familiar and instead strike out to find our own path by watching Neo (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix?
Do we learn to be appreciative of the people around us by watching Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in Groundhog Day?
Are we inspired to make decisions based on the greater good instead of our own selfish desires because of Rick Blaine's (Humphrey Bogart's) changes in Casablanca?
Are we made more willing to courageously do the right thing by watching Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) take on the impossible in Lord of the Rings?
Well, hopefully, we're changed at least a bit. If these films don't encourage us or even motivate us to change, even a little, then a lot of screenwriters, directors, actors, and other talent have spent great amounts of effort in vain.
If our goal in games is no more or less ambitious than those of filmmakers, I think we can succeed.
Of course, we already have available to us the tools filmmakers use. We can create empathy for one or more characters (see Chapter 2.10, “NPC Rooting Interest Techniques”), and we can then have these characters undergo a Character Arc (see Chapter 2.9, “NPC Character Arc Techniques”).
But we want to do more. We want the player himself or herself to undergo change directly—not just by empathizing with an NPC who changes.
Some games have taken on the challenge of having the player experience emotional growth of some sort (a Character Arc) by trying to give the player the most obvious Arc: to become courageous.
Assuming you're the player, this is done (or emulated) by your acquiring enhanced military skills or weapons as the game goes on. By the end, you can accomplish acts of daring-do that you couldn't accomplish at the start of the game. You're thus supposed to feel more powerful and courageous.
Does this work? Probably a little bit—and that's not bad. After all, as we've seen from this book, to create emotional experiences in games we should grab every tool and technique we've got, and use them whenever they're appropriate.
The game Ico tried another method to encourage the feeling that you've become powerful: by having the smoky demons who are such a threat in the beginning becoming afraid of you by the end, as if you've become quite intimidating to them.
Whereas early in the game these smoky demons are very aggressive, by the end, after you've gone through and triumphed over countless ordeals, these same demons practically flee every time you thrust out your weapon to kill them.
Does this method work? Sure, a bit. When I played the game, watching those smoke phantoms cower, I did feel somewhat smug and tough.
The player spends much of that game protecting a young and innocent girl. Did this leave me more willing to take responsibility for innocent people in real life? Yes, a bit—although perhaps someone else would have a different response.
To reprise the earlier idea, I think a game can change us about as much as a good film can change us. But films have traditionally been much more successful in this arena than have games.
I applaud every game that tries to take on the difficult challenge of creating a First-Person Character Arc. Hopefully, we'll see many interesting experiments in the future.
Still, there's a lot more that can be done…
The problems with past efforts are several-fold:
To always have the player's First-Person Character Arc be “going from cowardly to courageous” is boring. What about other kinds of Character Arcs?
The male character in Ico became powerful at the expense of making the girl weak. In doing so, Ico alienated a potential demographic. Many of the women I know didn't like the game because the female character was so helpless. Even some guys I know found this to be an objectionably retro view of women.
When you have the player go on a journey from being cowardly or weak to being courageous, what if the player feels pretty courageous and powerful right from the start? Then the player won't identify with the character he or she is playing, and this actually diminishes the player's emotional engagement in the game.
There have to be other techniques to create a First-Person Character Arc than the limited ones used in the past. What are they?
Perhaps we designers should take the Character Arc of a person becoming more courageous and put it on a back shelf. That's because not only is it the obvious Arc, but, as in most games, if the player can die infinite times, it's hard to make a player afraid (cowardly), at least by the threat of death.
To see how to create change in a player, it's helpful to see what forces cause a person to change in real life.
In the course of your life, have you changed? I'll bet you're not the same person you were ten years ago. Sometimes what changes us is simply our ongoing observation of ourselves, of others, and of life. We study life and we grow.
More often then not, however, we're changed by a system of rewards and punishments. And this is just how you might do it in a game. What kinds of rewards and punishments are viable?
Let's say that we want the player's Arc to be to learn to take responsibility for others. In the film Schindler's List, Liam Neeson's character, Oskar Schindler, went through such an Arc. He started off selfishly, but eventually grew. By the end, the most important value he held was to try and use his power to protect Jews who otherwise would be killed in a German concentration camp.
But would something like this work in a game? No. Schindler began the film from a point of being selfish, but we can't cause a gamer to begin a game as anything but how he or she actually is in life.
So let's start with that as a given: The player begins the game with the personality he or she has at that moment. We won't try to convince him or her to have some kind of personality flaw or limitation that he or she doesn't really have.
In the beginning of our hypothetical game, there'd be no benefits and no punishments for the player acting selfishly.
As the game progresses, however, there would be steadily increasing rewards if the player starts taking responsibility for others—and steadily increasing punishments if he or she doesn't.
We've seen the drawing on the preceding two pages before, in Chapter 2.15, “Emotionally Complex Moments and Situations Techniques.”
There we discussed the powerlessness of the sentient trees to help the forest creatures that are being killed by the beast.
Let's expand upon the story. Let's say that, in the beginning of the game, the forest nymphs played impish tricks on you. They stole your weapons, mocked you, and, in general, annoyed the hell out of you, at least some of the time.
You probably wanted to kill a few yourself, and perhaps you did.
As the game progresses, however, you start to empathize with these characters. They are helpless before the beast (the one you're attacking in the preceding drawing) who kills them regularly.
During the game, you get to know them and see the emotional devastation they feel when one of their own is killed. You also come to learn they have a beautiful, though simple, culture—one that is quite endearing.
So, bonding with them would be one incentive to start to take responsibility for them. (The bonding would be caused by the use of the NPC Rooting Interest Techniques, discussed in Chapter 2.10.)
As mentioned earlier, however, there could also be some very concrete rewards for taking responsibility for them:
Perhaps, once they begin to trust you, they start showing you shortcuts through the dense forest.
Maybe they give you a magical implement or power that can help you traverse through the dense undergrowth at incredible speed.
Perhaps they teach you how to extend your “sentient net” through the forest, so you can feel and locate any living creature walking though the forest—including your enemies. In short, you can feel and know everything that, collectively, the creatures and trees of the forest feel and know.
Maybe they come to your aid and fight to protect you when you're faced with enemies.
In other words, the more responsibility you take for them, the more rewards you gradually receive.
Punishments are also an option, if you don't go through your Arc. For instance, if you don't start helping the forest nymphs or if you start killing them, they could punish you:
They steal your weapons.
They whistle and alert your enemies when you're trying to sneak through the forest.
They could even attack you in great numbers and injure you. Or, if you've been particularly vicious to some of them, they might kill you.
You would be induced to take responsibility for the nymphs by:
Having empathy for the forest nymphs due to NPC Rooting Interest Techniques (see Chapter 2.10).
Increasingly being offered rewards and punishments that guide your behavior.
Of course, had the beings for which you were taking responsibility been human and not forest nymphs, or if we made them more human-like, we could employ yet another Emotioneering tool: You could have chemistry with one or two of the people, using techniques explored in Chapter 2.11, “Player Toward NPC Chemistry Techniques.”
Would you exit the game really having come to feel more responsible?
I think the answer is yes—you'd be changed at least as much as a film could create a change in you. After all, what we've done in the game is exactly emulate life and induce change the way life does.
You could debate this question back and forth, and undoubtedly score valid points for each point of view.
There's no right answer, just preferences. My preference would be that you should still be able to have a lot of fun and win the game even if you don't go through the intended First-Person Character Arc.
That is, even if you don't help the forest nymphs, you could still win the game. It would just be lot tougher and not as fun.
Perhaps we'd draw the line at murder. If you killed more than three of them, you couldn't win the game.
Again, these are just preferences. The game could be designed in many other ways.
Life doles out all sorts of rewards and punishments, and games can too.
Consider a small list of some of the types of rewards a player could receive for moving through a First-Person Character Arc. To create a punishment, just deny the player these things, or make the player lose them (or diminish them) if he or she already has them.
The first type of rewards are those that help you win the game. For example, you could be rewarded with allies, people who join your side or who work harder to help you. With enough allies behind you, you may even become their leader.
Another common reward is increased abilities. These could be more speed, accuracy, power, or other forms of effectiveness at skills that you already possess, such as:
Fighting (by hand or by weapon)
Stealth
Thieving
Manipulating objects
Ways you can traverse the landscape or buildings
Summoning spirits
Various magical abilities
Defensive abilities, such as protective spells
You could also gain:
Extra lives
Extra time on your mission
The ability to unlock new content
The ability to read people's minds
The ability to change your face, body, or clothes
The ability to slow, speed up, or change time
This list could go on forever, but you get the idea.
Items vital to your mission make good rewards. For example, you could receive:
New weapons, armor, or spells, offensive or defensive
Money (to buy weapons, etc.)
Other items you can trade for weapons, spells, etc.
A better vehicle
Finally, various types of power-ups are rewards that can also help you win the game.
There are other rewards that are great to receive but that don't directly assist you in winning the game. For example, you could receive:
Furnishings for your house/cave/castle/lodging, if you have one
Access to special events or rituals
Admiration from those around you or those who you meet who've heard of your reputation
This list is far from comprehensive. It's simply to suggest the range of possible ways to reward a player.
Rewards can direct a player along a Character Arc, but how do we start off that player's First-Person Character Arc?
In a film, a character who undergoes an Arc usually begins from the opposite end of the spectrum. Thus, someone who will end up being responsible will usually start off by being selfish. As I mentioned earlier, Liam Neeson's character, Schindler, undergoes such a Character Arc in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. But, you can't do this in games. You can't make the person playing the game any more or less selfish than they actually are at the start of the game.
I've seen games where the player is supposed to identify with a character who has a fear, limitation, block, or wound that he or she doesn't have in real life (such as being a coward, for instance), and it doesn't work. In fact, instead of encouraging emotional immersion, it distances the player from the game, for the player won't identify with the role. It would be the opposite of a Role Induction Technique. (For more on Role Induction Techniques, see Chapter 2.19.)
But there are some workarounds. For example, although you don't possess a particular flaw (let's say you're not particularly selfish), others could still see you with this flaw because of a misconception. By the end of the game, other characters would no longer see you as selfish. Of course, this isn't a genuine First-Person Character Arc, because it's more about changing the view of other characters about you, rather than about you yourself changing.
Still, this kind of solution has uses in certain scenarios.
The subject of exactly which Character Arcs are possible in a game is one of those vast topics that goes beyond the scope of this book. There are many viable and interesting ones. We've already discussed two:
To become courageous
To become responsible for another or others
Here are few more.
For instance, your character could start out as a grunt, a no-account, and get rewarded for each act of decisiveness. A leader needs followers, and so you'd acquire followers as you move through your Character Arc.
You start out hated. Your father had been ruthless, but your acts of heroism and goodness are rewarded to the point where you become the most beloved person in the land.
You probably can't try for a more challenging First-Person Character Arc than this. After all, do we dare suppose that you can give a spiritual experience to a player?
Yet it must be possible, for it occurs in films like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and The Karate Kid. Some people might even put the films of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in that camp or the film Phenomenon.
Here are few potential approaches. In all of them, you start out just as you are. You are rewarded, however, for:
Noticing minute variations in nature
Mastering your sword in an increasingly aesthetic way
Making tough choices wisely
Gaining increasingly rigorous ethics
Doing anything else we consider spiritual
The rewards themselves would have to have a spiritual quality to them, such as:
The ability to see the life force pulsing inside of people and trees
The ability to hear the voice of your loved one on the wind, from a hundred miles away
Of course, some might argue that these abilities and rewards might seem interesting (or magical) but not have a spiritual quality at all. It's all in the execution. For example, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon could have been completely lacking in spiritual overtones in the hands of a lesser writer and director.
Also, the spiritual overtones in the game wouldn't just come from the experiences that lead to spirituality or in the particular rewards, but in the linking of these two.
Is it critical that every game with a story try and create a First-Person Character Arc? Of course not.
It does, however, represent one of the forward edges of Emotioneering. The rewards for succeeding in making a First-Person Character Arc work are great, but the risks for failing can be serious. You could create a Character Arc that the player doesn't go along with in his or her heart. If that's the case, the player will feel emotionally distanced from the game instead of feeling more involved.
But, if you want to be part of the cutting edge of game design, step right up and take your best shot.