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开发者以案例入手分享游戏叙事设计的7个步骤

发布时间:2019-12-18 08:47:54 Tags:,

开发者以案例入手分享游戏叙事设计的7个步骤

原作者:Elizabeth Goins 译者:Vivian Xue

正在阅读本文章的你很可能早已熟悉“环境叙事”(environmental storytelling)这个概念,它通过四种叙事模式打造沉浸式体验:嵌入、激发、演绎和涌现。这些定义有助于我们认识不同类型的环境叙事,但在实际的游戏剧情创作中,可能派不上什么用场。对我来说,为我带来更多启迪的是列菲弗尔的著作。亨利·列菲弗尔(Henri LeFebvre)是一名哲学家,撰写过关于社会力量如何塑造社会空间的文章。其核心观点为空间体验是设计、行动和意义三者共同影响下的产物。由此推断,电子游戏中环境叙事的基本前提,即环境叙事“为沉浸式叙事体验创造先决条件”的观点是存在瑕疵的。因此,让我们暂且忘掉环境叙事。让我们来思考游戏叙事(ludic storytelling),它基于更传统的叙事方式,为电子游戏创造了一种独特体验。

游戏叙事是视觉叙事、电影化叙事、戏剧性叙事和环境叙事在其框架下的交互融合。这意味着在游戏叙事设计中,你必须同时协调三大因素:

-游戏框架的组成结构:如关卡、地图、过渡和用户界面。
-游戏内容:包括道具、角色、声效、主题和所有戏剧性事物。
-行动:游戏机制、交互和移动。

Demon School(from gamasutra)

Demon School(from gamasutra)

下面是该过程的一个快速入门指南,它基于我的个人理解。游戏叙事设计是一门高深的课题,像这样的快速入门指南不过是一点皮毛而已。注意,这只是一种理解方式,它毫无疑问会随着时间进化。我知道其中肯定存在许多误解和考虑不周之处。

快速入门指南:游戏叙事

步骤1:

如果你从未接触过艺术史,最好去了解一下。

说真的。

电子游戏是一种视觉媒体,如果你想发挥创造性,你应该对其它视觉媒体的发展历史有所了解,如绘画和电影。以及,观赏一些戏剧。

步骤2

构思一个故事。首先,故事应包含情节和一些角色。然而,除情节外,你必须对你的故事有一个更深刻的理解。也就是你必须分析故事,构思它的主题、象征和母题(motif,指不断复现的结构、意象、场面、动作、符号或文学手法,用于强化主题,游戏邦注)。

步骤3a:

确定你是否希望实现涌现性叙事(emergent narrative)。如果你的回答是肯定的,请停止阅读。我认为,涌现性叙事有它自己的特点。请思考,你真的想为玩家提供工具,让他们谱写自己的故事吗?这种模式在《废土挽歌》和《工作模拟器》(或任何模拟器游戏)中效果不错,但这些成功案例大多存在于小众市场。此外,它实现起来非常困难,如果你想讲述一个明确的故事,它大概不适合你的游戏。

如果你的回答是否定的,请继续步骤3b。

步骤3b:

请你想象自己是一名舞台剧导演。你将如何把剧情分割成不同体验或场景?主要场景和过渡是什么样的?时间和地点是什么?由此及彼,在游戏关卡创作中你会怎样构建框架?

同时,思考如何将机制和框架结合在一起。你的玩家会如何行动?你将如何“引导”他们?

此外,同时思考故事的主题。该主题和框架以及机制如何互相融合?

记住你所拥有的工具。你拥有道具/角色、声音、事件、用户界面、光效、特效,你还有关卡/地图。你的玩家既是演员又是观众。你可以建立一个庞大的开放世界,让玩家在其中自由移动,或者建立一系列小地图,就像电影的一幕幕场景一样,而地图加载就像电影里的转场。你所创造的世界不一定要遵循现实世界的运转规则。

Biendo Games在游戏《三十航班之恋》中创造性地运用跳接剪辑(jump cut),使玩家在当前和过往之间来回穿梭。

步骤4:

你想略过什么剧情?是否一定要让玩家体验完整的剧情呢?留白是否能让剧情更有感染力呢?如果让玩家自由地移动、体验剧情,比如提供“快速旅行”(fast travel)功能,他们可能会错过一些剧情。因此你要斟酌这对玩家的体验造成的影响。同时思考如何过渡,把游戏机制和内容结合起来。

步骤5:

动用世界中的各个元素。记住在你创造的虚拟世界中,一切事物都是有意义的,因此尽可能利用快速旅行、保存或任何功能实现这些元素的交互,从而传达含义。游戏《黑客特攻》(Quadrilateral Cowboy)巧妙地通过“隐蔽据点”实现了这个目标,玩家在据点内与物品互动,完成任务、保存和解锁其它功能。

记住复现某些元素、母题和符号来呈现你的主题。

这基本就是嵌入叙事的步骤。然而我想指出,通过客体表象传达含义的做法有着悠久历史,早在壁画时期就已存在。这是艺术家们的工作。再次强调我们应当回溯艺术史,观察以往的艺术家是如何传达含义的。斯科特·麦克劳德(Scott McCloud)的《制作漫画》(Making Comics)是一本很好的启蒙书——特别是书中讨论“用图像写作”、“人类故事”和“构建世界”的章节。

步骤5a:

元素并置。当两样事物被并置时,就产生了解读的可能性。可以是物品或图像的并列排布,也可以是场景与场景之间的递进。并且由于电子游戏具备交互性和机制,因此玩家行为、道具或角色引发的交互都能产生意义。

想想普多夫金(Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin)确立的5个电影剪辑技巧:对比、平行、象征、交叉、主旋律——同样与激发情感有关。

步骤5b:

象征

框架、行动和内容如何结合在一起传达故事的主题呢?

步骤6:

激发(情感):当你按照不同的时间和地点把故事编排成一幕幕场景后,思考如何激发玩家的情感。你想要激发玩家怎样的情感,如何通过各个场景激发这种情感?如何安排节奏?声音、交互性和特效能够如何影响情绪?

更进一步,你能够唤起玩家脑海中已存在的文化知识吗?你做的是一款恐怖游戏吗?如果是,那就参考别的恐怖题材作品。大多数恐怖游戏都以鬼魂萦绕的宅邸作为背景,从而让玩家回想起他们曾经体验过的恐怖电影和游戏。从名著和神话中借鉴元素是另外一种有效方式。唤起玩家的文化记忆是一种丰富游戏内容的简单方式——这些文化记忆已经存在,等待玩家释放它们。

然而,这种方法必须慎用。如果玩家不了解这些文化隐喻,他们将直接忽视这些内容。

步骤7:

尽量减少剧情动画、配音或文本的使用。试着不使用它们。如果你要让玩家进入旁观者模式,你最好有一个充分的理由。有时在《迷人的残酷》(Sexy Brutale)或者《看不见的时间》(The Invisible Hours)这类文字冒险游戏中非常有效。但在大多数情况下,避免过度使用它们。回到步骤3b,思考如何编排剧情,从而让玩家参与其中。让动画、配音和文本支撑你的故事,不要颠倒了主次。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

If you are reading this, there’s a pretty good chance you are familiar with environmental storytelling and it’s four E’s: embedded, evoked, enacted and emergent modes of narrative. These are handy definitions to help identify broad categories but they are not much help when it comes to creating narrative in an actual game. For me, what was more inspirational was the source material of LeFebvre. Henri LeFebvre was a philosopher who wrote about how social forces produce social space. The core idea is that of a triad where design, action, and meaning work together to build spatial experience. Extrapolating all this and applying to video games means that the basic premise of environmental storytelling, that it “creates preconditions for an immersive narrative experience,” is flawed. So, forget about environmental storytelling. Instead, think about ludic storytelling as something that builds on older narrative methods to create an experience unique to video games.

Ludic storytelling incorporates visual, cinematic, theatric and environmental storytelling within its interactive framework. What this means is that as you design your ludic narrative, you must juggle three things simultaneously:

The structural chunks of the game framework: like levels, maps, transitions and user interface (UI)
The content: this includes props, actors, audio, themes and all the stuff of the dramatic sphere
Action: the game mechanics, interaction and movement
Below is a quick start for the process as I understand it. This is a huge subject and a quick start like this barely scratches the surface. Note that this is a working understanding which will undoubtedly evolve over time. I’m sure that there is much I have not thought of or have misunderstood.

Quick Start: Ludic Storytelling

Step 1:

If you haven’t already, learn some art history.

Seriously.

Video games are a visual medium and if you want to be creative, then you should have some grounding in the history of other visual media like art and film. Also, see some plays.

Step 2

Have a story. First this means you have a plot and some characters. However, you need to understand your story at a level deeper than the plot. This means you have to analyze it and have themes, symbols and motifs.

Step 3a

Decide if you care about emergent narrative. If you do, stop right here. Do not read any further. Emergent narrative is its own special beast, I think. Consider, do you really want to focus on giving the player the tools to make their own narratives? This was a nice approach in Elegy to a Dead World or Job Simulator (or any simulator) but I think these cases are in their own specific niche, for the most part. Also, can be tricky to pull off and is probably not the thing if you have a story you want to tell.

If you answered no to emergent narrative, then continue on to Step 3b.

Step 3b:

Imagine that you are a stage director. How can you break your story down into a sequence of small experiences or scenes? What are the main scenes and transitions? What are the times and places? How will you structure this in relation to your levels?

At the same time, figure out how the mechanics will combine with your structure. How will your player act? How will you “direct” them?

Also, at the same time, think about the themes of your story. How will that mesh with the structure and mechanics?

Remember your tools. You have props/actors on your stage, sound, events, user interfaces (UI), lighting, effects, AND you have levels/maps. Your player here is both actor and audience. You can have a vast open world that the player moves over OR you can have a sequence of short maps that act in a way analogous to film scenes where map loading is analogous to a filmic cut. Who says your world has to function like the real world?

Blendo Games does a nice job of creatively using the scenes in 30 Flights of Lovin’ where they use jump cuts to move the player from the present to the past and back again.

Step 4

Elision.What do you leave out? Is it important that the player be able to experience the entire time line of the story? Or will it have more impact if you cut things out? If you give the player the power to act as an editor and to cut things out by, say fast travel, think carefully about how that will impact their experience. Also consider what the transition will be, take the opportunity to combine mechanics+content (referential meaning).

Step 5:

Put things in your world. Remember that everything in your virtual world has meaning so don’t waste the opportunity to use the interaction with the game state by fast travel, or saving or whatever to convey meaning. Quadrilateral Cowboy does a nice job of this with their “hideout” where interacting with objects in the room connects to mission selection, saving and other functions.

Remember to repeat things, motifs and symbols, that represent your themes.

This is basically the “embedded” narrative step. However, I would like to point out that communicating ideas with representations of objects has a very long history, all the way back to cave painting. It is what artists do. Again, look to art history to see how past artists have figured out how to convey and arrange things. A great book to get started is Scott McCloud’s Making Comics – particularly the chapters on Writing with Pictures, Stories for Humans, and World Building.

Step 5a:

Juxtaposition. When things are next to one another, people interpret them. This can be objects or images placed together. It can be the progression from scene to scene. AND in video games we have interactivity and mechanics – so what the player does and what prop or actor triggers that interaction means something.

Consider the principles defined for film by Pudovkin: contrast, parallelism, symbolism, simultaneity, leit-motif (see the Ludic Storytelling post for details) -also linked to evoking emotion.

Step 5b:

Symbolism

How will structure, action and content together convey the themes of the story?

Step 6

Evoke. Once you get the drama of your story mapped out into scenes that take place in different times and places, then think about evoked narrative. What emotions do you need to create in the player and how can you do that for each scene? How about pacing? What audio, interactivity and effects can you use to influence that?

Even better, can you evoke connections to cultural knowledge already in the player’s brain? Is it a horror game? Then bring in references to other horror media – most horror games do this already by using the haunted mansion trope, which allows players to bring in a bunch of horror movies and games they’ve already experienced. Playing off of famous books and fairytales is another great way to do this. Evoking cultural information external to your game is a great shorthand way of getting extra content in without having to do much – it’s already there and waiting in the player for you to unleash.

However, be careful with this. If the player doesn’t know the cultural reference, then they will almost certainly miss the point.

Step 7

Minimize cinematics, voice over and text exposition. As in, try not to use them. If you have to resort to putting the player into spectator mode, you better have a very good reason. Sometimes this works really well for entire games like The Sexy Brutale or The Invisible Hours. But mostly, avoid like the plague. Instead, go back to Step 3b and imagine how to stage it so the player takes part. Try to set up the scene so that cinematics, VO and text support your story, not carry it.(source:Gamasutra

 

 


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