Narrative Theory Series

Designing Games & Interactive Stories

As a thought experiment, let’s create a three-sentence story, which will be a kind of textual triptych:

A boy is with his mother and he sees some ice cream. He indicates that he wants some ice cream, and the mother buys it for him. He enjoys the ice cream.

Here we have: space and time, characters, causality, and a medium (text), which are key components of the Narrative matrix discussed previously, but something important for narrative is lacking. The story is boring, but the missing ingredient is not ‘interestingness’ of course, but conflict.

With conflict, the universe of smooth spacetime and causal flows experiences a ripple of disturbance. The Russian narrative theorist Todorov called this Disruption or Disturbance of the Equilibrium.

Conflict for the Protagonist doesn’t have to always come from Antagonists, though. It can come from natural forces (illness, bad weather), or from other characters who are not so much Enemies as much as they are simply Adversarial. Like, some cop gives you a parking ticket — that’s definitely adversarial! The cop is probably not your enemy though….

We can step back and ask a basic question: why is there conflict? Or to put the question another way: what are the sources of conflict? Abstracting from our everyday experiences, usual sources of conflict might be:

Any difference, great or mild: e.g. bow ties vs. neckties, differences in complexion, gender, economic status, etc.

Scarcity: there’s only so much to go around, whether it’s limited space on highway lanes causing road rage at the merge, or two rivals competing over the same love interest.

Different definitions of reality: e.g. there really is no way for secular Western leaders to sit down and through nice friendly dialogue negotiate with the so-called Islamic State or ISIS. The respective versions of reality are just too different to even have a conversation most of the time.

You can’t always get what you want (a Rolling Stones song)

The playwright and filmmaker David Mamet once wrote that all drama only has to answer three questions:

Who wants what from whom?

What happens when they don’t get it?

Why now?

Desire

What’s especially nice about these three questions is that it points directly to our opening story (baby, mommy, ice cream) -> usually, life doesn’t give you what you want when you want it (despite the best efforts of user experience designers!). If life gives you what you want, there is literally no story to tell. Things only get interesting when Desire is frustrated. Come to think of it, a good narrative understood this way is the exact opposite of good interface design! Hmmmmm.

Some theorists argue that it is really desire which is the main driver of narrative, since stories can often be described as being about people who want stuff. Robbers want money, families want justice, cops want donuts, aliens want Earth, boy wants boy, girl wants boy who wants boy, talking toys want to be played with, soldiers want to kill the enemy, politician wants to be elected, drug kingpin wants more power and money, actor wants fame, dying person wants to live, killer wants to kill, monster wants to be left alone from encroaching humans, etc.

Desire plays out not just within the motivations of characters to drive their actions, but also plays out in us, the audience. Audiences want to be entertained, they want closure and happy endings, they want the price of their ticket to be worth it, they want 3D effects and the popcorn to be cheaper and less fattening even with full liquified butter pump dousing.

In psychoanalysis, a key point about desire is that it can never be fulfilled. As soon as a desire is satiated, a new desire emerges. We desire to desire, and there is no end to desire. In narrative, we can become addicted to wanting to know what comes next, and following the plot can become a compulsion. Narratives can also feed our desire to find out about ‘forbidden’ desires, i.e. to transgress social taboos about what is allowed to be desired.

Difference

The French philosopher-playwright Sartre had a famous line in his play No Exit, which imagines Hell as being stuck in a room forever with two other people: “Hell is other people!” Because this line is well-known, here’s a bigger chunk of the play showing the surrounding context of the famous quote:

GARCIN: Will night never come?

INEZ: Never.

GARCIN: You will always see me?

INEZ: Always.

GARCIN: This bronze. Yes, now’s the moment; I’m looking at this thing on the mantelpiece, and I understand that I’m in hell. I tell you, everything’s been thought out beforehand. They knew I’d stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS-OTHER PEOPLE!

ESTELLE: My darling! Please-

GARCIN: No, let me be. She is between us. I cannot love you when she’s watching.

ESTELLE: Right! In that case, I’ll stop her watching. (She picks up the PAPER knife and stabs Inez several times.)

INEZ: But, you crazy creature, what do you think you’re doing? You know quite well I’m dead.

ESTELLE: Dead?

INEZ: Dead! Dead! Dead! Knives, poison, ropes — useless. It has happened already, do you understand? Once and for all. SO here we are, forever.

ESTELLE: Forever. My God, how funny! Forever.

GARCIN: For ever, and ever, and ever. (A long silence.)

GARCIN: Well, well, let’s get on with it…

While many of us will never get to test this hypothesis — that there is a Hell and it involves being stuck with other people forever in a room — there are other more everyday situations that are not too dissimilar, such as being stuck in an elevator suddenly for a long time with strangers, which is also the premise of an Archer episode, which in tv parlance is called a ‘bottle episode’ because the whole story is set in one location.

Try this for a narrative exercise, to warm up your Character and Conflict juices: imagine some characters stuck in an elevator, and over time conflict emerges out of their differences and their confinement. To use more conceptual language, in this example Difference and Confinement are two parameters of the ensuing conflict.

Goal Seeking

Much interactive narrative borrows from gaming conventions, chief amongst which is the idea of having goals. This applies to linear narratives of course, since characters in novels, comics and films also have goals (motivations, desires, etc. and obstacles to them). Having an antagonist for the protagonist — in game speak, a player-vs-player dynamic — can also be effective. Goals and motivations typically have clear emotional (passion-related) and intellectual (more rational or logic-oriented) aspects. A balancing act is often required, where ‘just enough’ narrative is provided even though the main context may be more game-like.

Games also have psychological underpinnings, but because ancient humans didn’t have the field of Psychology, we talk about the mythical background instead because that’s basically where we find the psychological aspects of these earlier cultures that didn’t have psychologists : ) The main authoritative reference in this area is usually going to be anything by Joseph Campbell (the hero’s journey, etc.). The journey of the hero doesn’t always have to be followed literally, taken as a template telling you what should happen in the narrative. Rather, intuitively you may find yourself rather naturally creating variations of the hero’s journey, just because you’ve been exposed to thousands of them over your lifetime.

The Deus Ex Machina — a too-handy device that gets characters out of trouble just when it’s needed — has been derided ever since Aristotle, and yet it continues to be an ever-present force in narrative. How many times have you seen a character fall out of a window or off a rooftop, only to land on nice big fluffy soft garbage bags in a truck below? But alas, this gimmicky device is there of course because it helps characters realize their goals in a narrative.

Related Articles

Bibliography & Further Reading

• A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark
• A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
• Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach by Michael Sellers
• An Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mayra
• Basics of Game Design by Michael Moore
• Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
• Board Game Design Advice: From the Best in the World vol 1 by Gabe Barrett
• Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: an Encyclopedia Of Mechanisms by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev
• Character Development and Storytelling for Games by Lee Sheldon
• Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford
• Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun
• Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek
• Film Art by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
• Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams
• Fundamentals of Puzzle and Casual Game Design by Ernest Adams
• Game Design Foundations by Brenda Romero
• Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton
• Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans
• Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames edited by Chris Bateman
• Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp
• Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling, by Kelly McErlean
• Introduction to Game Systems Design by Dax Gazaway
• Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker, David Howell, et al
• Kobold’s Guide to Worldbuilding edited by Janna Silverstein
• Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Edition by Scott Rogers
• Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, et al.
• Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction by Kent Puckett
• Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates by David Herman, James Phelan, et al.
• Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Fourth Edition by Mieke Bal
• Practical Game Design by Adam Kramarzewski and Ennio De Nucci
• Procedural Storytelling in Game Design by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams
• Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing by Wendy Despain
• Rules of Play by Salen and Zimmerman
• Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology (Frontiers of Narrative) by Marie-Laure Ryan, Jan-Noël Thon, et al
• Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers by Ethan Ham
• The Art of Game Design, 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
• The Board Game Designer’s Guide: The Easy 4 Step Process to Create Amazing Games That People Can’t Stop Playing by Joe Slack
• The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative by H. Porter Abbott
• The Grasshopper, by Bernard Suits
• The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, by by Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson and Benjamin J. Robertson
• The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies by Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf
• The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory by David Herman
• The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille & John Zuur Platten
• Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja
• Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques by Evan Skolnick
• Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG edited by Wendy Despain
• Writing for Video Games by Steve Ince
• 100 Principles of Game Design by DESPAIN

Acknowledgement

This online courseware was co-authored with OpenAI technology in order to produce a clear, succinct writing style that will be accessible to the widest range of readers from a variety of backgrounds.

Conflict in Narrative was originally published in Sound & Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.