Narrative Theory Series

Designing Games & Interactive Stories

The concept of the fourth wall refers to the invisible barrier between the characters and the audience in a play, film, or other performance. The fourth wall is typically associated with the idea that the characters in the performance are unaware of the audience, and that they are able to act and speak as if they are in their own private world.

Some examples of a fourth wall are:

In theaters, whether plays or films, the audience sits in chairs arranged in aisles and rows, while the narrative occurs on a stage or a screen.

In a classroom, the stage and screen is replaced by a lecturer with a Powerpoint presentation which is also on a screen.

In religious traditions, you will often have the priestly folks doing their thing up on a raised platform of some kind, while everyone else is sitting, kneeling or bowing etc.

While the 4th wall is a spatial imaginary default of presenting narrative, there are also some established ways of breaking or violating the 4th wall:

Audience participation
Interfaces and controllers
Direct address

A well-known example of audience participation is in the Peter Pan (live musical) scene where the audience is asked to yell out ,“I believe in fairies!” (in some versions) in order to save Tinker Bell’s life. In other versions, the audience just has to clap.

Screen-based interfaces often violate the fourth wall, because literally one’s thumbs have to be placed all over the visual world in order to interact with it (on a touchscreen device) or there are UI elements embedded in the visual presentation. And game controllers take our attention off the screen in order to manipulate visualized interactive outcomes.

With the UIs of a digital narrative environment, the fourth wall becomes tangible in a way that is not typically associated with the concept. Instead of an imaginary or invisible barrier, we have something more like a window to click on that is also a general source of visual information display. The glass of the media display screen (e.g. phone, tablet or tv), so like a fourth wall in its transparency, is a materialized surface for hand-eye coordination and mental parsing of key strategic and narrative knowledge.

In linear media, such as films or television shows, the fourth wall is typically maintained throughout the performance, with the characters remaining unaware of the audience. For example, in a film, the characters might talk directly to the camera or to each other, but they will not acknowledge the presence of the audience.

In interactive media, such as video games or virtual reality experiences, the concept of the fourth wall becomes more complex. In these types of media, the audience is often directly involved in the action, and the characters may be aware of their presence or even interact with them directly. For example, in a video game, the player may control a character and make decisions that affect the course of the story, and the characters in the game may react to the player’s actions or even address them directly.

The concept of the fourth establishes the relationship between the characters and the audience and determines the level of immersion and involvement in the story.

Breaking the fourth wall refers to the act of a character in a performance acknowledging the presence of the audience or the fact that they are in a performance. This can be done intentionally in order to create a specific effect or to challenge the conventions of storytelling. Here are some specific examples of how the fourth wall has been broken or violated intentionally in both linear and interactive media:

Linear media: In linear media, such as films or television shows, the fourth wall is typically maintained throughout the performance, with the characters remaining unaware of the audience. However, there have been many examples of the fourth wall being broken or violated intentionally in these types of media. For example, in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the main character, Ferris, frequently breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly, commenting on the action and providing insight into his thoughts and motivations.

Interactive media: In interactive media, such as video games or virtual reality experiences, the fourth wall is often more fluid, with the characters being aware of the presence of the audience or even interacting with them directly. There have been many examples of the fourth wall being broken or violated intentionally in these types of media as well. For example, in The Stanley Parable, the narrator frequently breaks the fourth wall and comments on the actions of the player, challenging the conventions of traditional storytelling and creating a sense of meta-awareness.

Breaking the fourth wall and the literary device of direct address are closely related in that both involve a character in a performance addressing the audience directly.

Breaking the fourth wall refers to the act of a character in a performance acknowledging the presence of the audience or the fact that they are in a performance. This can be done intentionally in order to create a specific effect or to challenge the conventions of storytelling.

Direct address, on the other hand, is a literary device in which a character speaks directly to the reader or audience, often using the pronoun “you.” This can be done to create a sense of intimacy or to directly involve the reader or audience in the story. The opening scene of John Boorman’s Zardoz is a fabulous example of direct address (plus the whole film features Sean Connery running around in a loincloth, which is pretty trippy, too) where a floating head in a void speaks directly to the viewer:

I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue — rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred, but they may. Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation and a magician by inclination. Merlin is my hero. I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events that you see. But I am invented, too, for your entertainment and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? [chuckles] Is God in show business, too?

Both breaking the fourth wall and direct address are techniques that can be used to modulate the sense of direct communication between the characters and the audience.

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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.

The Fourth Wall & Direct Address was originally published in Sound & Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.