Jagabanta Ningthoujam

Instructor: Alex Mitchell

UAR 2205
Word Count: 2038
27 November 2007
Wall Scribbling: The Idea of In-game Story Telling

Narration in a game can be classified into three chronological category namely pre-game, in-
game and post-game narrative. Pre-game narrative is the designer’s world and builds the motive
behind the game. It is structured, linear, coherent and represents the classical story telling process.
Post-game narrative is the culmination of the designer’s story and the player’s experience. Although
it is also a product of the game, it is nonetheless linear, structured and ‘static’ - simply our own rec-
ollection of what story the game was relating. However it is the in-game narrative which consti-
tutes the dynamic part of story telling in a game. The real time unfolding of events and the interac-
tive framework makes the experience of certain games, a story creation process in addition to being
a story telling mechanism. In-game experience builds upon the pre-game story and forms the basis
for the post game story.

In his essay ‘ Narrative, Interactivity, Play and Games: Four Naughty Concepts in Need of Dis-
cipline’, Eric Zimmerman raised the question, “What if dynamic play procedures were used as the
basic building blocks of storytelling?”1 . In my essay I would like to ask and answer the question
“What if dynamic game procedures were used as the basic building block of the story?”. This essay
will introduce a real life multiplayer game experiment conducted within a controlled classroom en-
vironment and show that spatial content and the process-intensiveness of a game, forms the crux
around which in-game stories are related and created.

The Project

The project was a multiplayer, non-computer, enacted game titled The Last Stop before Ausch-
witz and as the name suggests, the players in this games are meant to be prisoners in a Nazi Jewish
concentration camp. The objective for them is to escape in 4 days - each lasting 10 minutes in real

1 Eric Zimmerman, "Narrative, Interactivity, Play and Games: Four Naughty Concepts in Need of Disci-
pline", in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat
Harrigan. (MIT Press, 2004). p. 154
time - as the prisoners are going to be transfered to Auschwitz where a sure and painful death awaits
them. In-order to insure healthy player interaction, we devised a trading and scoring mechanism
using the cigarettes as the currency and the rations as the health meter. A person unable to fulfill the
health requirement during the daily medical check-up are to be executed. There are 5 NPC’s in total,
namely the Warden, the two guards, the Medical Officer and an inmate.There are two ways in
which they can carry out the escape. One way is to trade and earn enough cigarettes or win a game
of poker against the warden and earn the cigarettes to bribe the medical officer for a drink which
can later be used to bribe the guards. Another way is to finish digging a tunnel - replicated as a jig-
saw puzzle - while escaping the guard’s attention.

Spatially, the game was structured within the classroom, where prisoners were divided into
three adjacent cells. In addition there was the warden’s room and an infirmary where the medical
check-ups were going to take place. There was a courtyard where construction was taking place and
the prisoners were supposed to work there. A game of Sudoku was used to replicate the construction
work. Trading between the cells were going to be possible only during the ‘day time’ when they
were supposed to be working. ‘Night time’ was reserved for activities such as tunnel digging (solv-
ing the jigsaw) and the poker game with the guards. Since each day-night sequence was timed down
to 10 minutes, quick thinking, planning and collaboration became crucial. Rules were relayed
through the Warden’s Speech at the beginning of their incarceration. But the more interesting as-
pects such as those relating to the escape were informed via the wall scribbling in the 3 cells which
carried cryptic and seemingly unconnected information on a previous escape attempt, and also the
inmate NPC - who initiates the chain of events leading to the digging of tunnel in his cell.

Since it is a real life game, players had relatively more freedom of action, but with this came a
decrease in the designer’s control and the complexity of the rules. However, as we shall find out,
the ease of interaction became the underlying factor leading to the formation of powerful narrative
through player’s action and interaction with each other and the fictional world of the prison.

Spatial Content

When we began designing our game/project, we were faced with the problem of how to make
the game an interactive narration rather than a simple game of trading and surviving in prison. To
solve this we turned to an embedded narrative architecture where the space of the game became our
canvas. Each of the cells in the prison had wall scribbling - analogous to the cut scenes in conven-
tional video games - which on the surface seemed random and unrelated, but when read as a whole
told the tale of an earlier escape attempt much in consonance with the objective of the game. This
also served as means to convey the way in which they could plan their escape.

Here, the game space has been transformed into a platform for spatial narrative where objects
within the game world told the story. Designers in such a process, have a great deal of control over
when, where and how much information is conveyed to the players. Embedded narrative thus be-
comes ideal for a multi-player experience where interactivity is heightened. In addition since bits
and pieces of the narratives are distributed across the game space, it also becomes an unstated chal-
lenge within the gameplay, to piece together the narratives. And as Henry Jenkins mentions, em-
bedded narrative can and often does occur within contested spaces 2, players often have to overcome
some enemy or acquire new skills or complete a micro-mission to gain access to further embedded
stories. In our project, players had to engage in conversation with fellow inmates from other cell in-
order to gain access to what was written on their walls during the short short duration of construc-
tion work they had to do during the day. Jenkins uses the example of Half Life and says that

Such a mixture of enacted and embedded narrative elements can allow for a balance be-
tween the flexibility of interactivity and the coherence of a pre-authored narrative.3

Embedded narrative thus makes story-telling in a game an interactive experience of challenges and
discovery. However in an ideal interactive environment simulating real life, rules becomes the only
constriction to what can be done and what cannot be. In such a scenario, the designer’s feed of in-
formation becomes inadequate and the role of emergence narrative and games as story creation en-
gine takes over.

Procedurality and Emergent Narrative

Since our project was a ‘real life’ simulation of real life condition during the war, it was in a sort
a perfect interactive game save the physical believability of the environment and constricting rules.
Rules , however constricting, streamlines the ways in which players can interact and in a way con-
trol the chaos of real life in the game and present the possibility of creation of coherent emergent

2Henry Jenkins, “Game design as Narrative Architecture”, in First Person: New Media as Story, Perform-
ance and Game, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. (MIT Press, 2004)
3 Ibid,
narrative within its framework. It is when rules combines with game objects that emergent architec-
ture is reinforced.

Jesper Juul defines emergence as ‘the primordial game structure where a game is specified as a
small number of rules that combine and yield a large game tree, that is, a large number of game
variations that players deal with by designing strategies’. Although progression games are tradition-
ally regarded as games with cinematic and story-telling ambitions, for a player playing the game,
interlaced emergence structure provides a conducive environment for a self generating story which
not only enhances the replayability of the game, but also provides avenue to add on to the pre-
existing narrative and make the story richer every time the game is played.

When specifically refereed to our project , the players were given some basic rules on what they
were allowed to do and they were not. Also, they were informed of possible premise on which the
escape could be carried out. But they were never given enough information on what they could to
do to carry out the escape and nor was there any dominant strategy of escape. The void that was left
was filed with carefully constructed emergence gameplay characterized by group formation, strate-
gies, deceit, pooling in of resources etc. Consequently player’s actions became decisive in the direc-
tion the game took. It was very surprising when instead of an individual escaping, a group managed
to escape through collaborative play. Although we as game designers were anticipating surprise, the
degree to which emergence gameplay evolved was unanticipated.

Juul mentions that emergence gameplay is usually taken to be situations where a game is played
in a way that the game designers did not predict.4 In contrary I would like to state that emergent
gameplay can be an anticipated feature of a game design and a process intensive architecture further
strengthens and possibly handles unanticipated emergent play. For a traditional computer game,
there is a lot of reliance on static assets even in the most procedural of games. However, in our real
life simulation of the prison camp, we could easily avoid the limitations of coded behaviours since
we as humans are in sort perfect ‘artificial intelligence’. We as game designers and participating
Non Playable Characters were able to mimic an almost ideal process intensive architecture. As an
example, during the course of the poker game with the warden, the warden seeing that the prisoners
were not winning the game, tweaked the game to make them win. Because of the emergent nature
of the game, this simple win snowballed into an escape later in the game. This does not imply the

4Jesper Juul, "Game of emergence and games of progression". In Half-Real: Video Games between Real
Rules and Fictional Worlds, Jesper Juul. (MIT Press, 2006). p. 76.
lack of rule in the game but rather the coexistence of procedural architecture and delimiting rules
in-order to prevent chaotic action. It was an unanticipated move, but the very nature of the proce-
durality and process intensive architecture validated the action of the warden. This not only ac-
counts for a richer interaction but also provides the avenue for a different and unpredicted experi-
ence for the players when interacting with the NPC’s.

For a multiplayer game, each player has his own experience of the game which can be partially
or wholly distinct from one another. Here the variation of experience that emergence gameplay pro-
vides ensures that players can recount a different tale each time they play the game. The enforced
replayability further means that the features unexplored in an initially attempt and the multiple end-
ing can yield a different experience and add to the preconceived story that the players have from
their initial tryst with the game.

Even in a multiplayer game telling a story, progression is a necessity and ensures a certain degree
of coherence in the story and control of the designer over the players. Progressive gameplay be-
comes the premise on which emergent narrative are constructed. The presence of an objective
which justifies the pre-game narrative makes the construction of an emergent, in-game narrative an
interesting and motivating experience.

Conclusion

Our project was ideally conceived for a computer system, but due to technical limitations, was
translated into a real life interactive drama of escape. Although, the computer would have been ide-
ally suited for creation of an immersive virtual space, the real life implementation had its pros as we
were able to mimic an ideal artificial intelligent system based on a process intensive architecture.
Consequently baring the variable of an immersive virtual environment our conclusions are what can
be expected from ideal process intensive multiplayer game with a rich, thematic background. Thus
as stated the importance of a spatial content and process intensive architecture was revealed through
the 40 minutes of experimental game of escape.

The idea of in-game narration is interesting and forms the crux of the debate on whether games
are successful story-telling platform. However, the transmedial nature of games implies that the tra-
ditional criteria for a successful story does not apply. Stories, in the context of games, requires to be
dynamic, variable and possibly with multiple climax and non-linear structure. Since the audience
are also characters within the story, the game needs to be devised in-order to accommodate and
take into account, the players actions.

REFERENCES:

1. Zimmerman, Eric "Narrative, Interactivity, Play and Games: Four Naughty Concepts in Need of
Discipline", in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Edited by Wardrip-
Fruin, Noah and Harrigan, Pat., MIT Press, 2004., p. 154

<http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/ludican-do> cited November 27, 2007.

2. Jenkins, Henry, “Game design as Narrative Architecture”, in First Person: New Media as Story,
Performance and Game. Edited by Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Harrigan, Pat., MIT Press, 2004.

<http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/lazzi-fair> cited November 27, 2007.

3. Juul, Jesper "Game of emergence and games of progression". In Half-Real: Video Games be-
tween Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, Juul, Jesper, MIT Press, 2006, p. 67-92.

4. Mateas, Michael and Stern Andrew “Procedural Authorship: A Case-Study Of the Interactive
Drama Façade”, Digital Arts and Culture (DAC), Copenhagen, November 2005,
<http://www.interactivestory.net/papers/MateasSternDAC05.pdf> cited November 27, 2007.