Story Before or After the Gameplay

In short, I thought a lot about this in the past. I would come up with a story and then when starting to create actual gameplay I would change it and keep up with the story so something simple would actually take a lot longer to code/model because of the story that I wanted to tell.

However, a couple of months ago I got advice to make gameplay (of course have some idea what story will look like ie. Horror, Adventure etc.) and after the gameplay (or at least a part of it) add a story that will be able to correspond to the current gameplay that I have.

Now I have a different problem. I have gameplay but the story doesn't feel very good. Perhaps I misstook the advice I got for games that are not heavily story-driven. But in my creation of current game (FPS Horror), I made most of the things that I wanted. Inventory system, mechanics, monster and furniture (models and animations) even the actual map and some more extras like puzzles.

So the gameplay is pretty much all set. I just lack the story. It's not that I didn't have any idea how the story will go but I still need to tweak the gameplay to match the story once again.

Now my question is what do you guys think about this? Should we create more then just a concept before creating a game, leave full story after the gameplay. Create full story/storyline and then start creating gameplay?

Either way I would like to discuss about this more, and if anyone has any advice it would be most welcome.

-Axternaly

 

Create the synopsis of the game, then document and flesh out gameplay prototypes. Do a lot of them. If none of the prototypes are any good, you will only make a bad game, and no amount of story will fix that.

TLDR:
Brief Plot + prototypes.

Most likely if you've not released many or any games, ignore plot. Just see what you can make first.

 

It probably varies for everyone. For example, I've noticed on here that very, very few people care about making story-focused games. So you probably won't get very many responses promoting story.

You will get mine, though. While I do occasionally get gameplay ideas separate from story (recently I've been working on a Sonic Adventure Chao Garden-style animal sim), most frequently I'm interested in telling a story.

So I come up with the story first, and then frame the gameplay around that.

Additionally...you can fit story into gameplay of many different types. I have an idea that I've worked on for a puzzle / walking sim type game. However, in an attempt to prove to myself I could make a complete MVP, I built something of a 2D platformer. I based the level design around the ideas for this other story, so it works as something of a teaser which offers some aspects of the same story (just different approaches to the same thing). Additionally, I recently made something which uses PCG tools, and the "story" is basically a simplistic retelling of a different idea I have (one I plan to span over three games, with three different types of play).

So I do story first. And I feel you can fit story into multiple arrangements, based on what type of gameplay you need. That's just me though.

 

Very often the problem is that the the game designer wants to tell his or her story rather than the player's story. If you want to tell your story, write a book. In a game, the player's story comes first.

 

The interactive medium has benefits which cannot be replicated in novel (though I think it's rather novel ) or movie form.

Consider Mass Effect. The story is so impactful (and for many, such a slap in the face at the end) because of the choices you've made. That would not have worked as a book. Reading about Shepard going on loyalty missions would be nothing special, but those characters living or dying at the end of ME2 based on my actions is huge. The ending to ME1--whether Saren is perceived as an unrepentant tool of the enemy or a misguided and fallen hero is based on the player's actions. That's huge.

So I think it's more than possible to create a dev-driven story, but it needs to involve the player in medium-appropriate ways. Collaborative stories, rather than designer or player stories.

 

Sure, dev-driven (I prefer to think dev-facilitated) story but player agency. Events can happen around the PC that are outside the PC's control, but the game has to accommodate the player's control of the PC itself. Static fiction writers often come into interactive fiction and mistakenly try control the PC's decisions or, worse, the PC's emotions.

 

But it wouldn't be indie without having cringeworthy monologues with slow walking bits.

 

But some of the best moments in games are monologues.

 

Lol, weird and cool.

As for the rest I thank you all for the advises. The stories themself are told in a different way in games. Yes you can write down a story in which you open a door and scary monster jumps at you and you run and escape or perhaps go on a quest to save a damsel in distress and other things yes. But I feel that interactions, steps that you have to take to reach that goal are much more interesting if you are making the choices. If story differs based on your actions. In most cases what I find at least is that anyone (gamer or not) will get, for horror stories at least, more scared if they have same story given to them as a game than as a novel or even a movie. Not to say that there is no point in making movies or novels but that games accomplish certain emotions better than those two. One of which of course being the fear.

As for my question, perhaps different games deserve different time invested in their stories.

-Axternaly

 

The short answer is that does it matter to your game and experience?

The design answer is:
Game and "story" share a fundamental structure, they are about some agent acting toward a goal and have obstacle along the way. Both derive values of the agent's actions and events consequences based on an overall "stake". So if you find the stakes, you could easily bridge interactivity and story.

In practical reality, game tend to rely on "repetition of action" (you have a finite set of main action you will need to use again and again, like shooting) and story on "variation of action" (there is shooting, talking, emoting, anything can happen). This is more or less true, for example action movie will have a lot of explosion and gunning down that advance the plot, a movie can generally change the action at any moment. Game can't change the action on the fly because the player must be taught how to interact first, that why it's hard to go from shooting to a complex emotional talking challenge, not having sudden change of gameplay to accommodate player tend to make harder to write any story, especially when you want a sense of consequence. Game tend to cheat by simply having those sequence told in a traditional format.

From the game perspective, story are traditionally use in 2 way:

1 - The puzzle, ie you must actually gathered clues to know what to do (generally in quest structure), walking sim and adventure game do that (and why I don't consider them separate genre). It's worth noting that adventure game don't rely on repetition of challenge, they use an abstract set of action to emulate contextually different set of interaction (point and click).
2 - The lead in goal, Basically the story is a succession of goal marker where you get to move the plot after doing a bunch of repetitive action.

They are not so different from each other, what gate the progression is the main change between them. Puzzle gates with information, lead in gates with action, ie the obstacle is where the gameplay is. Puzzle allow you to engage with the story by forcing you to understand it, lead in force you to engage in the story by participating in it.

Mass effect is a great example of the combination of these two progression, you start a mission generally by participating in the action, each lead in give you some piece of information, at the end you have a choice based on what you learnt along the way, with a stake that forewarn consequences (mordin might die but the genophage might be cure, will this lead to krogan to find peace with others thanks to the strong female krogan, or will they return to their bellicose way and be a threat to the galaxy? Are you making the right choice? How this will impact your relation with opposing faction to krogan?).

In the hand the dichotomy only point at the weakness of game as a medium and some of its potential, ie how do you encode activity that aren't shooting or killing enemy? How do you teach it to the player and present it with adequate interface? Game like Paper please (the main gameplay is a blur between choice and execution and works because the stakes are very clear), Cart life (multiple gameplay vignette, instead of repetition of the same gameplay, with clear interface you don't have to learn, each vignette have a local stake that convey the goal, choices and consequences very smarly) and Undertale (moving the traditional battle interface as a character interaction system, that work as a characterization and narrative tool) point at new progression systems that marry narration with gameplay seamlessly, such as there is no more difference between interaction with the story and participating to the gameplay, they might become one and the same.

I would look at your gameplay loop, action and main goal, and ask what is the best stakes to use and what type of progression I'm allowed. Story should be derivable from that.

 

Gameplay generally trumps story; see Doom for example. But even a story focused game should have its game play locked down tight before polishing the story. Half-Life as an example was probably the original first person shooter that really developed the story. I would think though that they got the mechanics down before they got the story polished (modding the quake engine instead of rolling their own probably helped with that).

One thing with indie development though is the most important thing isn't actually gameplay or story, it is keeping you the developer interested enough in your game to continue developing it to completion. If that story development is what is holding your interest, then yeah go ahead and keep working on it first. The worst thing you can do is get halfway done with the game and then lose interest (I've got at least 10 games like that unfortunately, and only 1 game on Steam).

 

Extremely biased opinion incoming:

If you want to tell a story, write a book. Film a movie. Games excel at being games. I do believe video games will one day be the apex culmination of all the arts, but right now, I mean, look at the millions of dollars AAA companies put into games and still you get cringe-worthy dialogue, painfully cliched storylines, characters that are obvious adolescent power-fantasies, etc. Even the golden standard of video game story-telling (The Last of Us) would only pass as a forgettable B-rate in the film industry. The Witcher 3, which is about as good as story central video games get IMO, was so embarrassing I would always pause it whenever my wife walked by.

All that said, I would like to see some properly told stories in video games, but I think the average geek who wants to make games probably isn't the same person who can tell a story worth hearing. When AAA companies start investing in real, professional writers for their games, and we get used to video game stories not being satisfactory only to twelve year olds, maybe I'll change my mind. Right now, games like Dark Souls that tell their story by only supplying minor hints so that those players so inclined to imagine their own story can do so, I think, is the way to go. Me -- I thoroughly enjoyed the game and appreciated the fact that I didn't need to give a damn about the story.



One piece of advice -- when it comes to writing, write about what you know about. If you are 19 years old, never held a job for more than a year, lived in a major city your whole life, don't bother trying to wax poetic about the mental stresses of life in a post-apocalyptic world. If you're an overweight career procrastinator living in mom's basement, don't write about the love lives of mercenaries in galaxy X9-3Q.
A lot of people think because they are just ordinary persons that they don't have anything of value to say. But I don't think that is true. Everything doesn't have to be over-the-top with drama and action. I recently played a twenty minute little game somebody here on the forum made called Get Up -- just a tiny little interactive story about depression -- and while it wasn't the most brilliant thing I've ever seen, it was the first video game story I've experienced in a long time that I actually cared about getting to the end of. Reason being? It was relatable, honest, and not overflowing with neon-orange cheese.

 

I challenge you to not do the same with any summer blockbuster, which is the storytelling model that most games try to emulate.

 

In my opinion it really depends on what you want to make. Some games have no story at all but fun or challenging gameplay keeps players engaged anyway. Some other games can be very story driven and might not need a complicated gameplay, could be as simple as making a few choices now and then which affects how the story evolves and nothing more (an example would be The Walking Dead).

Though I would say the latter is more rare it's certainly possible to make a game that's mainly story driven with minimal gameplay and players can enjoy it in the same way they can enjoy a movie, just with a little more interactivity. How you want to balance story and gameplay is up to you really. As long as you can manage to keep your players engaged.

 

Cart life, paper please, a war of mine, 1979 revolution .... stop playing block buster game, you are missing out the gems.

 

Yes.

In most games the story and the game play are tightly coupled. So they should be designed together. The story and the game play should feed back into each other.

There plenty of exceptions. If your story stands up well without any game play at all, then you should consider not putting in game play and making it a book/movie/screenplay/etc. If your game play stands up without the story, then make it abstract and don't bother putting in a story.

But if you need both, then you are best served by designing them together.

 

It depends on the game and the genre. I certainly like to know about the plot of the game before I start. I can't create all my items as sci-fi goodness then change plot direction to make it set in medieval times. Sometimes the plot flows from the basic gameplay, sometimes the gameplay comes directly from the plot.

I have a space rail shooter project. The basic story for that was written way after I'd actually made any gameplay. Whereas my main, big going-for-years-but-also-nowhere RPG project relies on the story existing before I create the content for the game.

 

I remember when I was small, alot of the bigger kids/people, played alot of fighting games in the arcades. Especially a game called Street Fighter 2.
Most people who played it, only cared about the fighting in the game and didn't
even care about the story. Some would beat the game and walk off, not caring
about looking at the character endings.

Then as months passed, after they beat the game like over 20 plus times, then they decided, to learn about each characters story, back story and history.
And one way they did that, was by beating the game with any character
to see each characters endings.

Who would believe, that simple pic/animated short endings, in a fighting game
filled with cool characters, could tell such a big story.

Ryu's ending, showed that he was a hero fighter, who didn't care about fame or money. And whose belief was "the fight was all that mattered."
And then he walks through a sunset filled path, with trees on both sides
Looking for his next challenger. (Heroes ending. Lol.)

Ken gets married.

Guile wanted to get revenge on stinky Bison. And his wife and family stops him
from destroying Bison.

Chun Li's ending showed, that she went after Bison, because her dad was destroyed by him. And after she helps defeat bison, then she starts living her life as a single young girl.

Victor Sagat wants to get revenge on Ryu, for beating him, in the 1st world warrior tournament.

Blanka, believe it or not, is actually a young human boy, whose real name is Jimmy. Who was unfortunately, changed into a Mutant.
And his mom found him again, after many years, helping him and us as gamers
realise that Blanka, is actually a human and her son Jimmy.

Cammy, poor Cammy realised, in Thailand, that she was at one time a brainwashed little girl, who eekily served stinky ol' Bison.
And her friends, from a special agent unit, came to help her recover herself
and bring her back home, in their cool army helicopter.

It's interesting how, the short endings for each character, told us so much about
each character. And had such a huge impact on all of us and showed us, that there was more to this 1 on 1 fighting game, called Street Fighter 2.

And even though, most people, probably only cared about the 1 on 1 battles.
The character endings, melded together with the characters, artstyle and
gameplay, really leaves us, with alot to think about too.

 

Neither. The game play is part of the story. The more seamlessly the two are wed, the more harmoniously they balance with each the other and work together to create an enjoyable experience for the player, the better and more memorable your game will be.