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The first talk I attended at GDC this year was Ken Levine’s talk, Storytelling in Bioshock: Empowering Players to Care About Your Stupid Story. It was perhaps not the best idea since I still haven’t managed to find the time to play Bioshock, though I’m very eager to do so. There’s always another game in the pile, and I just keep forgetting about it for one reason or another.

The game won a lot of acclaim - it’s Metacritic rating is insane, 96/100! And take a look at some of these reviews - I don’t know that I’ve ever read something so glowing - IGN says

This game is a beacon. It’s one of those monumental experiences you’ll never forget, and the benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured…BioShock stands as a monolithic example of the convergence of entertaining gameplay and an irresistibly sinister, engrossing storyline that encompasses a host of multifaceted characters. This is an essential gaming experience.

Now I’m wondering why I’m not playing it and playing it now! Well, regardless, I hadn’t played yet but went to this talk since I knew it had been so well received. I figured there’d be general things I can learn about story without knowing the specific examples. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure some major plot mysteries were revealed in the talk. I’m sure it isn’t ruined for me or anything, but I’m going to try to avoid telling anything about the story in this write up so you guys can experience the game as intended.

Ken’s talk was really well done. He’s a good speaker and he moved things along. I was focused on him the whole time and the hour just flew by (not something I can say for all the speakers I saw today). But enough meta, on to the talk.

Ken talked in various ways about how we should do what we are good at and avoid what we aren’t. Technology advances have led us to be able to build incredible, beautiful environments. He talked about looking around at his hotel room and thinking “We could build this.” We’re not yet past the uncanny valley in regards to creating truly human characters, but we can build believable worlds. Rather than forcing the player to watch your cutscene, let them do what is natural and look at the world to reveal the story. This is where their attention is most of the time anyways, so put the story there for them to find.

Players are predisposed to not care about your story, no matter how much detail you put into it. Ken put it as “more details suck more.” As time went out, they made their story simpler. They started out with dozens of characters, the story took place over 50+ years. There were love triangles, it was way too complicated. Ken quipped: maybe it would have worked as a bad novel, but never as a game. Then followed “The Great Character Massacre of 2006″ where they combined and wiped out major characters all over the place. They ended up with the idea that each character was a representation of a theme. Whenever one character showed up, it was to explain the civil war that had occurred. Another was to detail the impact of events on the little people. Rather than expand these people’s roles, they had a very specific focused position.

Push Vs. Pull
Cutscenes push the story at the player. They have no control over them, they happen when they happen. Games have the ability to make the player pull the story to them. The issue with this is that this means players could miss some of it. But this is actual a powerful way to make your game accessible to different people. You let people opt out of the story, and for those who choose to pursue the story it will be that much more powerful because they did choose it.

He talked about there being three levels of story. The basic level is just what do I need to do, where do I go? People that just want to come in and blow stuff up and don’t care about anything more can absolutely do that. Ken talked about how making this work made the game work for the casual gamers, the Madden fans. You need to attract these people or you end up with critically acclaimed games that sell 150K units (referring to past Irrational titles without specifics). The next level of story is “Oh yeah, gotta kills this guy, he runs this place, etc”. Actually knowing a bit more about the why. The final level is for the hardcore fan who wants a novelistic level of detail. They look at every poster and find every nook and cranny. All these details are there for everyone, but they can’t get in the way of the experience of people from the first group.

Audio was a huge part of conveying the story. They tried to fill the audio space as much as possible. They had some PSAs that you’d notice if you were paying attention. Large portions of the story were told through audio. An interesting point was that crucial characters are talked about for quiet some time before you meet them. He mentioned the character Steinman, who when you meet him is just an AI running around with a machine gun. But you’ve gotten so hyped up by what you heard up to that point that he’s so much more than that in your mind. During the Q&A section, one audience member spoke of how he had to put the game down for 2 days before encountering the character to psych himself up for the experience.

Bioshock is essentially a mystery. Telling the player what’s going on in your world isn’t always a good idea. Mystery and ambiguity are powerful. Asking questions is more interesting than answering them. He cited Lost and Cloverfield - “It’s Godzilla with less information.” The audience wants some questions answered, but it’s like trying to keep a balloon up in the air. You keep tapping it up, and if it gets too high (too many unanswered questions) you lose your audience. If it gets too low (not enough mysteries left) you lose them as well.

Apparently the last act of the game had too many of the mysteries solved. The player knew too much and so it solved. He felt that the levels were some of the best in the game, but without that driving narrative question the player experience was diminished.

Ken claimed he pissed off some people on the project because his story came in very very late. But he went on to defend that lateness. He feels it is important that a writer be open to the game and let the game tell him what the story should be. By looking at what the level artists and designers were doing he would get inspired to go back and create new things. Opportunities come up if you’re open to engaging with the development. The story gelled 8 months before ship. This had a cost on production, as a lot of things depend on the story. But he spoke disdainfully of a game writer who expects to finish their script a year in advance and throw it over the fence, done.

His closing slide told us to:

Respect your audience
Trust mystery
Empower the gamer

Ken did talk a lot about specifics from the game but I’m going to hold off on commenting on any of that until I actually play the game. I think his big points about letting the environment tell the story and letting the player opt in to the story are understandable without having played the game. I really have to go play this game.