Narrative skill of game content development

AFT 715
NARRATIVE SKILL OF GAME
DEVELOPMENT

COURSEDESCRIPTION:
• “AFT715- Narrative Skill of Game Development” is a basic
course of
quest design in game with design theory
principles.
• This course provide an opportunity to put our theoretical
understanding of the subject in perspective, as well as
give us a sense of what makes both classic and
contemporary games compelling from a user’s vantage
point.

COURSEOBJECTIVE
To provide the student with
1. - a broad sense of the history of video games as an art form and an industry
2. - a sense of the social impact of video games
3. -an understanding of the organization and culture of the video game industry
4. -enough information about video games to decide whether they would like to work in the
industry,
5. and to identify potential roles they would play in it
6. -enough basic knowledge to qualify for an entry-level job in the video games industry,
should they choose to pursue one

COURSEOUTCOME
Through this course students should be able to
• develop the understanding of the vocabulary which relates to each of
the major elements of game design, game theory, and its rules and
its principle
• By applying the fundamental basic ,will be able to execute GDD
document .
• To developfull understanding of game development pipeline and will be
able understand structure of game development.

COURSECONTENT
• INTRODUCTION TO GAME CULTURE PIPELINE AND GAME DESIGNER
RESPONSIBILITY,DOK LEVEL OF GAME DESIGN
• GAME HISTORY AND ITS DOCUMENTATION
• PLAY GROUND GAME DESIGN AND TRADITIONAL GAME
• GAME CONTENT DEVELOPMENT AND GAME THEORY
• PRINCIPLE OF GAME DESIGN
• DESIGN PROTOTYPE AND PLAYTESTING AND FINISHING AND RELEASING BORAD
GAME
• 2d GAME DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT CODING LIKE FLAPPY BIRD USING GAME MAKER
OR STYNCL etc

METHODSOFEVALUATION
• Attendance and Participation
• The best way to demonstrate what you have been learning as well
as fine tune your ideas in dialogue with your classmates.
• This means regular and prompt attendance, coming to class having
done the work.
• Speaking when you have something to say, and listening respectfully.
• An excess of two absences over the course of the semester will
negatively impact your grade

CLASSBLOG
• Once a week, you are expected to post 1-2 paragraphs to the
class blog (http://nyugames.blogspot.com).
• You will write a minimum of 10 posts during the semester, asking
questions or making observations about the readings and/or class
discussions, or alerting us to some new and interesting development in
video game industry, culture or design.
• Can cover anything up to and including other’s class. They will be used
frequently to guide our discussions. These assignments are not graded
individually, and you cannot make them up. Each post isworth 10 points
towards your grade for this segment.

GAMEPRESENTATION
• Once during the course you will be responsible for researching and playing a game on your own time, and then
presenting it to the rest of the class during “lab” time.
• We will assign games and dates during the first class. While this should be fun, it should also be scholarly:
discuss the game from a critical perspective, bringing our class readings and discussions to light, as well as
your own experiences and interpretations. I
• We will look for the following three characteristics in your evaluation.
• Organization.
• You must send me a digital copy of the presentation via email, before class starts.
To minimize technical difficulties and delays everyone will use the personal or respective issued computer ,
which will be waiting for you in the classroom.

CONTAI
NT
You are free to pick any game you want. In presenting your game, please answer the
following questions:
who is the developer?
Who is the publisher?
When did it come out?
On what platforms is it available?
What is the estimated number of sales (units sold/shipped)?
What does the game play look like? What is the main demographic for this game?
What do you think is noteworthy about the game (and why)?

Forma
t.
You will also be evaluated based on your ability to present in a
cogent manner. This
means:
1. You address the whole group and not face away.
2. Your presentation is no longer than 20 minutes.
3. You speak in a relaxed, clear manner.
4. You do not read of a piece of paper or from a slide.

Plagiarism
Academic plagiarism is a serious offense. If you do it, in any form, you will fail
the entire course. Just to be clear, this includes every unacknowledged use of
materials written by others (even sentences or obvious paraphrases without
quotes).
Late Assignments
Late assignments will be marked down one letter grade for every day they are
overdue. If you think you are going to be late with an assignment, you must
notify me before the assignment is due (and this does not mean an email an
hour before class).
Please respect yourself and me.
Lame excuses and lying will not be tolerated.

Texts and
Supplies
Readings will be made available digitally. In addition, students are encouraged to
immerse themselves in
the business and culture of games, by reading web sites such as the ones listed
below:
>Joystiq: http://www.joystiq.com/
• Kotaku: http://www.kotaku.com/
• Wonderland: http://www.wonderlandblog.com/
• Terra Nova: http://terranova.blogs.com/
• Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/
• Slashdot: http://games.slashdot.org/
• ChrisM: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/ChrisM/
• 1up: http://www.1up.com/
• Magic Box: http://www.themagicbox.
com/gaming.htm

• Game Industry Biz:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
• GameSpy: http://www.gamespy.com
• Gama Sutra: http://www.gamasutra.com
• Blue’s News: http://www.bluesnews.com/
• Water Cooler Games:
http://watercoolergames.org/
• Serious Games: http://www.seriousgames.org/
• Greg Costikyan: http://www.costik.com/
• Avant Game: http://avantgame.blogspot.com/
• Raph Koster’s blog: http://RaphKoster.com
• Re-Mission: http://www.re-mission.net/
• Select Parks: http://www.selectparks.net/
• Eddo Stern: http://www.eddostern.com/
• Speed Demos Archive:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/
• Addicting Games:
http://www.addictinggames.com/
• Game Girl Advance:
http://www.gamegirladvance.com/
• Int’l Game Dev Assoc: http://www.igda.org/
• International Hobo: http://www.ihobo.com
• Video Game Museum:

Storytelling is a feature of daily experience.
We do it without thinking about it when we recount some
experience we have had, whether it is the story of how the golf
match went with our friends, or a fiction made up for story time
with our children.
Video games often include fictional stories that go beyond the
events of the games themselves.
Game designers add stories to enhance a game’s entertainment
value,
to keep the player interested in a long game, and to help sell the
game to prospective customers.

For the topic of episodic storytelling in games, the Internet has helped to make
possible.
Why Put Stories in
Games?
Stories can add significantly to the entertainment that a game
offers.
Without a story, a game is a competition: exciting, but artificial.
A story gives the competition a context, and it facilitates the essential
act of pretending that all games require.
A story provides greater emotional satisfaction by providing a sense
of progress toward a dramatically meaningful, rather than an abstract,
goal.

Why Put Stories in
Games?
Stories attract a wider audience.
To motivate them to play; if the game offers only challenges and no
story,
they won’t buy it.
Although adding a story makes development of the game cost
more, it also makes the game appeal to more people.
Stories help keep players interested in long games.
Simple, quick games such as Bejeweled Candy Rush don’t

Why Put Stories in
Games?
Stories help to sell the game
A simple game such as Space Invaders requires only a one-line
backstory
and nothing else: “Aliens are invading Earth, and only you can stop
them.”
Indeed, such a game should not include any more story than that;
a story only distracts the player from the frenetic gameplay

GREAT DEBATE ABOUT
THEORTICALARGUMENTS.
The game industry doesn’t even know what to call
it. Interactive storytelling, interactive narrative,
interactive drama, interactive fiction, and story-
playing have all been proposed.
The narratologists (people who study narrative)
conducted fierce and often impenetrable arguments
with the ludologists (people who study games and
play)

The following factors affect how much of a story
a game
1)Length, 2)Characters , 3)Degree of realism ,4) Emotional
richness.
Length:
As the previous section said, the longer a game, the more it benefits from a
story.
A story can tie the disparate events of a longer game into a single continuous
experience and keep the player’s interest.
Characters:
If the game focuses on individual people (or at least, characters the
player can identify with, whether human or not) then it can benefit from a
story.

The following factors affect how much of a story
a game
1)Length, 2)Characters , 3)Degree of realism ,4) Emotional
richness.
Degree of realism :
Abstract games don’t lend themselves to storytelling; representational ones
often do.
It is difficult to write a compelling story about a purely artificial set of
relationships and problems, while a realistic game can often benefit from a
story.
Highly realistic vehicle simulators and sports games usually don’t include
stories because the premise of the game doesn’t require one
Emotional richness :
Ordinary single-player game play seldom inspires any but a few
emotions: pleasure in success; frustration at failure; determination to
do , perhaps; and occasionally an aha! moment when the player

S
TORY
 In the loosest definition, a story is an account of a series of events, either historical or
fictitious.
 For the purpose of putting good stories into games, we need to expand the original
 definition beyond “an account of a series of events.” A minimally acceptable story,
 then, must be credible, coherent, and dramatically meaningful.
• Credible simply means that people can believe the story, although in the case of fiction,
they may have to suspend some disbelief to make belief possible
• Coherent means that the events in a story must not be irrelevant or arbitrary but must
harmonize
to create a pleasing whole.
• Dramatically meaningful, the story’s events have to involve something, or preferably
someone, the listener cares about. The story must be constructed in such a way as to
encourage the listener to take an interest in, and preferably identify with, one or more of

INTERACTIVESTORIES
• An interactive story is a story that the player interacts with by
contributing actions to it. A story may be interactive even if the
player’s actions cannot change the direction of the plot.
• Normally written using the past tense. An interactive story, on the other
hand, takes place now, with the player in the middle of the series of
events, moving forward through those events.
• Furthermore, the player’s actions form part of the story itself, which
makes an
interactive story very different from a story presented to a passive
audience

INTERACTIVESTORIES
• An interactive story includes three kinds of events:
• Player events (are actions performed directly by the player. In addition to giving
the player actions to perform as part of game play to overcome atomic
challenges without talking to createdramatic action)
• In-game events (are events initiated by the core mechanics of the game. These
events may be responses to the player’s action (such as a trap that snaps when
the player steps on a particular stone) or independent of the player’s actions
(such as a simulated guard character checking to see that the castle doors are
locked.
• Narrative events (are events whose content the player cannot change, although
he may be able to change whether they occur or not. A narrative event narrates
some action to the player; he does not interact with it )

INTERACTIVESTORIES
• if the player’s actions do not change the direction of the plot (that is, the plot is
linear)
the story is not interactive.
• The power to change the direction of the plot—the story’s future events—is
called
agency.
• Some designers feel that if a game with a story does not offer the player agency,
it can’t
be said to be a truly interactive story.)
• If his decision does not actually affect the future events of the story, he has no
agency. But his decision about how to get through contributes to the plot; his
own actions are part of his experience of the game. This is how a story can be

NARRATIVE
• The term narrative refers to story events that are narrated—that
is, told or shown—by the game to the player. Narrative consists
of the non- interactive, presentational part of the story.
• Narrative consists of the text or the discourse produced by the
act of narration

WHATISNARRATIVETEXT?
• Narrative text is a kind of text to retell the story that
past tense. The purpose of the text is to entertain
or to amuse the readers or listeners about the
story.
• The generic structure of Narrative text :
• Orientation :
It set the scene and introduce the participants (it answers the
question : who, when, what, and where).
• Complication :
Tells the problems of the story and how the main characters solve
them.
• Resolution :
The crisis is revolved, for better or worse.
• Re-orientation :
The ending of the story. Maybe, happy ending or sad ending.
• Evaluation :
The stepping back to evaluate the story or the moral message of the
Linguistic features :
1. Use active verbs.
2. Use past tense.
3.Use conjunction (and, then, after that, next,
etc) Also Temporal conjunction, like: once
upon a time, one day, long time ago, …
4.The first person (I or We) or the third
person (He, She, or They).
5. Use specific nouns.
6. Use adjective and adverbs

THEELEMENTSANDSTRUCTUREOFNARRATIVE
• Narrative writing is not just a writing style. As much as narrative demands creativity, it also
demands discipline. Much of that discipline falls into the three categories examined here:
• Development of the elements or ingredients of a story.
• Development of the narrative structure.
• Knowing what not to use in the story itself and how to use supplementary “layers” to enhance
the story
presentation and to tell the story using multi-media

• Exampl
e-
The Legend of
Toba Lake
• Once upon a time, there was a man who was living in north Sumatra. He lived in a simple hut in a farming
field. The did some gardening and fishing for his daily life.
One day, while the man was do fishing, he caught a big golden fish in his trap. It was the biggest catch which he
ever had in his life. Surprisingly, this fish turned into a beautiful princess. He felt in love with her and proposed
her to be his wife. She said; "Yes, but you have to promise not to tell anyone about the secret that I was once a
fish, otherwise there will be a huge disaster". The man made the deal and they got married, lived happily and
had a son.
Few years later, this son would help bringing lunch to his father out in the fields. One day, his son was so hungry
and he ate his father’s lunch. Unfortunately, he found out and got furious, and shouted; “You damned son of a
fish”. The son ran home and asked his mother. The mother started crying, felt sad that her husband had broke
his promise.
Then she told her son to run up the hills because a huge disaster was about to come. When her son left, she
prayed. Soon there was a big earthquake followed by non-stop pouring rain. The whole area got flooded and
became Toba Lake. She turned into a fish again. Finaly it became a lake. People then call it LAKE TOBA

THEROLEOFNARRATIVE
• The primary function of narrative in a video game is to present
events over which the player has no control.
• Typically these events consist of things that happen to the avatar
that the player cannot prevent and events that happen when the
avatar is not present, but we still want the player to see or to know
about them.
• Scenes depicting success or failure are usually narrative events
• Narrative also lets you show the player a prolog to the game or the
current level if you want to. It not only introduces the player to the
situation in the game—the game’s main challenge—but also to the

THEROLEOFNARRATIVE
• If you don’t design that culture and history, the game world will feel
like a theme park: all false fronts and a thin veneer over the game’s
mechanics.
• To establish a feeling of richness and depth, you must create a
background, and you can reveal some of that through narration.]
• Narrative very often serves as a reward when the player achieves a
major goal of the game—he gets to see a movie or read more of
the story he’s playing through.
• Players who don’t like stories in games usually ignore these narrative
moments, but many players enjoy them a great deal.

NARRATIVEBLOCKS
• Many video games use blocks of narrative material—brief episodes of non interactive content—to tell parts of the
story.
• Designers commonly use a narrative block as an opening sequence,
 to introduce the story at the beginning of the game; as an ending sequence,
 to wrap up the story when the player completes the game; as an inter evel sequence that often takes the form of a
briefing about what the player will encounter in the next level (or chapter or mission);
 or in the form of cut-scenes, that is, short non-interactive sequences presented during play that interrupt it momentarily.
• Narrative blocks presented between levels tend to last from 30 seconds to 4 or 5 minutes.
• Players of slower-moving games such as adventure games or role-playing games tolerate long cut-scenes better.
• Players who like fast-moving genres such as real-time strategy games or action-adventures are annoyed if you
keep them listening or watching for too long without giving them something to do.
All narrative material must be interruptible by the player. Provide a button that allows players to
skip the sequence and go on to whatever follows, even if the sequence contains important
information that players need to know to win the game. A player who has played the game
before already knows what the narrative contains.

BALANCINGNARRATIVEANDGAMEPLAYBY
DRAMATICTENSIONANDGAMEPLAYTENSION
• Because playing games is an active process and watching a narrative is a passive one, the
player notices the difference between them.
• The more narrative you include, the more the player sits doing nothing, simply observing your
story.
• Too much narrative also tends to make the game feel as if it’s on rails, the player’s actions
serving only
to move the game toward a predestined conclusion.
• When the designer takes over too much of the telling, the player feels as if he’s being led by the
nose. He doesn’t have the freedom to play the game in his own way, to create his own
experience for himself.

DRAMATICTENSIONANDGAMEPLAYTENSION
• When a reader reads (or a viewer watches) a story, she feels dramatic tension, the sense that
something important is at stake coupled with a desire to know what happens next.
(Screenwriters call this conflict, but game developers use conflict to refer to the opposition of
hostile forces in a game and prefer dramatic tension
• When a player plays a game, he feels game-play tension, also a sense that something
important is at stake and a desire to know what happens next. But game-play tension arises
from a different source than dramatic tension does; it comes from the player’s desire to
overcome a challenge and his
uncertainty about whether he will succeed or fail. In multiplayer games, the player’s uncertainty
about
what his opponents will do next also creates game-play tension
• A key difference between dramatic tension and gameplay tension lies in the differing abilities
of these feelings to persist in the face of randomness and repetition.
• Randomness means unpredictable and arbitrary changes in the course of events.
• Repetition refers to identical (or extremely similar) events occurring at different times in the progress of

THE STORYTELLING ENGINE AND COREMECHANICS
Weaving events as third component of video game along with the core mechanics and the user interface
refers as
Story telling engine.
Core mechanics generate the game-play and the storytelling engine manage the interweaving of
narrative events into the game.
The core mechanics oversee the player’s progress through the game’s challenges and the storytelling engine
oversees the player’s progress through the game’s story.
The storytelling engine and core mechanics must work together to create a single, seamless experience.
Lets understand the relationship between story telling engine , core mechanics and user interface
http://aesopstoryengine.com/

PLAY
ER
USER
INTERFACE
Narrative
Events
In Game
Events Player
Events
Outpu
t
Outpu
t
Triggers
STORY TELLING ENGINE CORE MECHANICS
Relationship between story telling engine , core mechanics and user interface
Normally, the level designers do the work that actually implements such events in the game. Among the level designer’s tools
for level- building will be a mechanism The relationship between storytelling engine, core mechanics, and user interface
STORYTELLING ENGINE CORE MECHANICS USER INTERFACE PLAYER Outputs Narrative Events In-Game Events
Triggers Player Events Inputs for detecting the avatar’s position and for triggering both the cut-scene and the transfer of the
avatar’s property.

HOWTOSTRUCTUREASTORY:THEEIGHT-
POINTARC
• You’re a short story writer or flash fiction writer rather than a novelist, this structure still applies, so don’t be
put off by
the title of Watts’ book.
The eight points which Watts lists are, in order:
1. Stasis
2. Trigger
3. The quest
4. Surprise
5. Critical choice
6. Climax
7. Reversal
8. Resolution

• 1. Stasis
This is the “every day life” in which the story is set. Think of Cinderella sweeping the ashes, Jack (of
Beanstalk
fame) living in poverty with his mum and a cow, or Harry Potter living with the Dursley’s.
• 2.Trigger
Something beyond the control of the protagonist (hero/heroine) is the trigger which sparks off the story.
A fairy
godmother appears, someone pays in magic beans not gold, a mysterious letter arrives … you get the
picture.
• 3.The quest
The trigger results in a quest – an unpleasant trigger (e.g. a protagonist losing his job) might involve a
quest to return to the status quo; a pleasant trigger (e.g. finding a treasure map) means a quest to
maintain or increase the new pleasant state.
• 4. Surprise
This stage involves not one but several elements, and takes up most of the middle part of the story.
“Surprise” includes pleasant events, but more often means obstacles, complications, conflict and
trouble for the protagonist.
Watts emphasizes that surprises shouldn’t be too random or too predictable – they need to be
unexpected, but
Structure of A
STORY

• 5. Critical choice
At some stage, your protagonist needs to make a crucial decision; a critical choice. This is
often when we find out exactly who a character is, as real personalities are revealed at
moments of high stress. Watts stresses that this has to be a decision by the character to
take a particular path – not just something that happens by chance.
In many classic stories, the “critical choice” involves choosing between a good, but hard,
path and
a bad, but easy, one.
In tragedies, the unhappy ending often stems from a character making the wrong choice
at this point – Romeo poisoning himself on seeing Juliet supposedly dead, for
example.

• 6.Clima
x
The critical choice(s) made by your protagonist need to result in the climax, the highest peak of tension, in
your story.
For some stories, this could be the firing squad leveling their guns to shoot, a battle commencing, a high-speed
chase or something equally dramatic. In other stories, the climax could be a huge argument between a
husband and wife, or a playground fight between children, or Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters trying on the
glass slipper.
• 7.Reversal
The reversal should be the consequence of the critical choice and the climax, and it should change the
status of the characters – especially your protagonist. For example, a downtrodden wife might leave her
husband after a row; a bullied child might stand up for a fellow victim and realize that the bully no longer has
any power over him; Cinderella might be recognized by the prince.
Your story reversals should be inevitable and probable. Nothing should happen for no reason, changes in
status should not fall out of the sky. The story should unfold as life unfolds: relentlessly, implacably, and
plausibly.
• 8.Resolution
 The resolution is a return to a fresh stasis – one where the characters should be changed, wiser and enlightened, but
where the story being told is complete.
 (You can always start off a new story, a sequel, with another trigger…)
 I’ve only covered Watts’ eight-point arc in brief here. In the book, he gives several examples of how the eight-point arc
applies to various stories. He also explains how a longer story (such as a novel) should include arcs-within-arcs –
subplots and scenes where the same eight-point structure is followed, but at a more minor level than for the arc of the

Tone – creepy, light-hearted, sentimental, etc. – what will the audience feel?
Main Character – what does a viewer think about your main character?
Subject Matter – is the film set in the world of nuclear physics or beauty
pageants?
Hooks – outside of plot and approach, what unique elements are there?
Special Interests – does the film encroach on a world outside of itself?
Source Material – is the film based on a book, short film or YouTube
channel?

GAMESTORYIN GAME
A linear story in a video game looks similar to a
linear story in any other medium, in that the
player cannot change the plot or the ending of
the story.
Linear stories require less content than
nonlinear ones.
The storytelling engine is simpler.
Linear stories are less prone to bugs and
absurdities.
Linear stories deny the player agency
Linear stories are capable of greater
emotional power
Nonlinear Story
If you allow the player to influence future events
and change the direction of the story, then the
story is nonlinear.
Structures for nonlinear Story
a) Branching stories
b) Fold back stories
Granularity in the context of games that tell a
story, refers to the frequency with which the
game presents elements of the narrative to the
player.
Emergent narrative refers to storytelling produced entirely by player actions and in-game events
(LeBlanc, 2000). Emergent narrative storytelling does not contain narrative blocks (which he calls
embedded narrative) created by a writer.
The story emerges from the act of playing. There is no separate storytelling engine and no preplanned
story structure, either linear or branching; in principle, anything can happen at any time so long as the
core mechanics permit it.

BRANCHINGSTORY
• The branching story mechanism is the classic
method for creating interactive stories that give
players lots of agency.
• The branch points don’t always have the same
number of branches leading away from them. A
story can branch in any number of directions at
any given point.
• The branches go down or sideways, but they
never go back up again. The diagram depicts the
possible progress of a story, and stories always
move forward in time, never backward.
• The diagram shows only one start point, but in
fact a story could have several start points if the
player made a key decision before the story
actually began.
• Storytelling engine could choose from among
several designated start points at random just to
make the beginning different each time the
player plays the game.

DISADVANTAGESOFTHEBRANCHINGSTORY
• Branching stories are extremely expensive to implement because each branch and each
branch point
require their own content.
• Suppose 21 branch points and 35 different branches, each of which requires its own story
content: game-play and narrative material. If none of the branches merged again, there
would be even more. This rapid growth in the number of branches is called the
combinatorial explosion
• Combinatorics is the field of mathematics that studies the number of possible combinations of
a set of things—in this case, a set of branch points in a branching story.
• Every critical event (those that affect the entire remainder of the plot) has to branch into
its own unique section of the tree.
• The player must play the game repeatedly if he wants to see all the content.

FOLD-BACKSTORIES
• These are also sometimes called multi-linear stories. This may happen
several times before the end of the story.
• Most foldback stories have one ending, as shown in the figure.
• The foldback story is the standard structure used by modern games to
allow the
player some agency without the cost and complexity of a branching story.
• Developers routinely construct the interactive stories in adventure
games and role-playing games as foldback stories.
• It is the easiest to devise and the most commercially successful.

Emergent
Narrative
Emergent narrative, a term introduced by designer Marc
LeBlanc in his Lecture “Formal Design Tools” at the 2000 Game
Developers’ Conference, refers to storytelling produced entirely
by player actions and in-game events (LeBlanc, 2000).
Emergent narrative storytelling does not contain narrative
blocks (which he calls embedded narrative) created by a
writer.
The story emerges from the act of playing.
There is no separate storytelling engine and no preplanned story
structure, either linear or branching; in principle, anything can
happen at any time so long as the core mechanics permit it.

ENDING
• The different possible endings reflect the
player’s dramatic choices—critical decisions
the player made in the course of the
interactive story— rather than her ability to
overcome challenges, then the player will
definitely expect her choices to affect the
outcome of the story. then the player will
definitely expect her choices to affect the
outcome of the story.
• Games that include a lot of decision-
making— especially moral choices, which
feel dramatically important—should be
nonlinear and offer multiple endings.
WHEN TO USE MULTIPLE
ENDINGS
•Devise multiple endings for your story if—and
only if—each one will wrap up the story in a
way both dramatically meaningful and
emotionally consistent with the player’s
choices and play.
•If you didn’t give the player a lot of dramatic
freedom, then there’s no point in giving her
different
endings
•You may have to create several endings,
depending on how many critical choices you
gave the player

MEANING-EFFECTS
• A meaning-effect is defined by Bundgaard (2010, p. 5) as ‘‘a cognitive
response to a textual stimulus.’’ Meaning-effects ‘‘cover the whole spectrum
going from purely
emotional responses to highly elaborate interpretations’’ (Bundgaard, 2010, p.
5).
• A meaning-effect is not limited to a textual stimulus, but understood
analogously as something that is caused by a stimulus from a video game
• Studying how games can be used to create the meaning wanted by a
designer, how they create meaning despite the intentions of the designer,
and how players create meaning from the games they play is a large and
complex set of questions, which is why the focus is here limited to the more
limited sense of meaning-effect
• Focalization, Mode of narration, and Granularity are some tools which can

TOOLSFORMEANINGMAKING
• Focalization, Mode of narration, and Granularity are the tools to discuss
meaning making in video game narration.
• These three concepts are discussed together because they all pertain to the
perspective and the way of telling the player/reader what it is that they are
seeing and how.
• They all concern the perspective of telling: the way the narrative is told, and the
point of view the narrative is told from.
• During development of narratological tools for future research . In current scenario
above tools are these concepts will discussed in order to give game scholars a
more comprehensive vocabulary for studying how games create and contain
stories.
• Designers can use these tools to convey the things they want to convey in a
consistent and effective manner.
• Means it does mean that the designer have sole authority on the meaning of a

• Focalizati
on
• Focalization is the point of view
things are seen from.
• This can be the point of view of a
character present in the story,
those of several characters, or
even outside any sentient being,
a point in space.
• Any of these can include
evaluations, judgments, or
feelings.
• In the case of a point-in-space
perspective, the evaluations can
be those of a narrator.
• Genette (1988)calls this
perspective. He classifies
perspective into three categories:
Focalization
Zero
Focalization
External
Focalizati
on
Internal
Focalizati
on
Story is not
focalized into a
character but is
told from outside
any of them.
External
focalization gives
a behaviorist
view on the
characters
Internal focalization
grants access to
their mental
landscapes.
The difference between external and internal focalization is whether
there is access to the characters’ thoughts and emotions.
These can be mixed in a single narrative, and all three can be
present.
This full scale of perspectives can be found in video games.
.

• ZERO FOCALIZATION
• Games that are focused on the strategic level tend to have zero focalization. Example :
Command & Conquer RTS game (Westwood Studios, 1995). where the game is portrayed
from a free-floating isometric view. It can freely shift around the map, paying attention to
areas chosen by the player.
• Real-time strategy games use a ludic mechanics related to the point of view.
• It is commonplace for the view of the player to be limited to a small area.
• This limitation is described with a term borrowed from military theory, ‘‘fog of war.’’ The fog of
war works in two similar manners. First, only the area that the player’s units are able to see
is revealed to them.
• To learn about the surrounding terrain, it is necessary to explore the game map. Second, when
no units can see a certain area, changes in that area are not shown to the player and that area
is shown as partially hidden.
• Enemy movement, new buildings, and other changes become evident only when the player
sends units to scout the area.
• This means that while the literal point of view might be a bird’s-eye view of the map, the
perspective at least partially blends with that of the commanded troops.

• External Focalization
• External focalization is typical to video games: the story is told from the perspective of a central
protagonist, but
from a behaviorist point of view, without access to the character’s consciousness.
• A player may control the actions of the protagonist without having access to their mental landscape.
• This is where games differ from literature. The player’s perspective may be inside the body of a
character (i.e., first-person perspective), up to and including having control of all of their actions,
without having any access to their mental perspective.
• Example : Text adventure game Zork .The game is seen from the perspective of ‘‘you,’’ but this you
lacks any
distinct qualities. This featureless you is used also in other text adventure games.
• Zork is one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games, with roots drawn from the original
genre game Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written between 1977 and
1979 using the MDL programming language on a DEC PDP-10 computer. The authors—Tim
Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling—were members of the MIT Dynamic
Modelling Group. Infocom later brought out personal computer versions.

• Internal Focalization
• Internal focalization can be achieved in games with measures similar to
those in literature.
• Video games can make use of the character-internal perspective to achieve a
perspective not available in literature. This perspective is embodied in the
physical perspective of the character being played but does not allow access to
their mental landscape in the manner of internal focalization.
• In other words, the player has control over a character’s actions while not having
access to the character’s mental landscape.
• Ex: Assassin’s Creed III, The Assassin’s Creed series uses a metanarrative in
which the player controls a protagonist called Desmond in the games’ near-
future present and Desmond’s different ancestors in their historical
environments.
• Desmond is part of an organization known as the Assassins, who fight
against their eternal enemies, the Templars.

GRANULARITY
• Granularity, in the context of games that tell a story, refers to the frequency with which the
game presents elements of the narrative to the player.
• According to Bundgaard (2010, p. 26), ‘‘[g]ranularity and density capture the
fineness/coarseness of a
description and its richness with respect to elements mentioned within it.’’

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Environment Forest Waterfall Ruins Cave
No: Of levels 1 to 5 5 to 10 10 to 15 5
Player Acquire Sword
Vedas
relic
Kamandal relic Tool relic Beads relic
Final Pieces
Of medallion
No:
Medallion
pieces
Player
Collect
3 pieces 4 pieces 4 pieces 3 pieces
No: of Boss 1 1 1 2
Event
triggering
levels
Level 1: PC
Acquire
Sword Level
3: Explains
the
importance
of vedas.
Level 4:
Boss Fight
to Acquire
Vedas relic
Level 8:
Explains the
importance
of
Kamandal.
Level 9: Boss
Fight to
Acquire
Kamandal
relic
Level 11:
Explains the
importance
of Tools.
Level 12:
Boss Fight to
Acquire Tool
relic.
Level 15:
Explains the
importance
of Beads.
Level 16:
Boss Fight to
Acquire
Beads relic.
Level 20:
final Boss
Fight to
Acquire final
pieces of
medallion

Movement
Ground movements
Walk and run
movement speeds are available:
● Default speed: Running
Walk & run direction
The player can only ask his PC to move right or left. The direction is controlled by two
button the right or the left. The PC will automatically face that direction.
Jump
The PC can jump, either to avoid a fall or to reach a higher platform.
The direction of the jump is controlled by <- ,->Directional buttons and jump button
Wall Jump
Player Character Can perform wall jump to reach the higher platform which PC can
not reach with normal Jump. Wall Jump is controlled by using combo of <- ,-
>Directional buttons + jump button + jump button . Till you reach the platform .
Damage management
Every time the PC attacked by an AI the following events will take place:
1.The PC will lose 10% of its maximum health points from one hit by the
normal minions AI.
Standard minions AI.
Boss AI. Every time the PC will hit an Obstacle
4. The PC will die instantly when it hit by static obstacles like Spike, fire etc
5.The PC will die instantly when it hit by dynamic moving obstacles like Moving
spike wheel crushing hammer etc.
6. The PC will lose 10% of its maximum health points when it hit by shooting obstacle.
7. The PC will die instantly when it fall inside the pit
8. PC has Nil Fall Damage when he jumps from higher platform lower platform

GAMEOVER
CONDITION
Types of gameplay Game over condition
Combat The PC has lost all his health points
Fall The PC makes a fall in a pit
Static Obstacle The PC hit an obstacle
Dynamic Obstacle The PC hit an obstacle
Shooting Obstacle The PC has lost all his health points
Display Game over condition On-screen display
PC is killed while fighting on the ground 1.Death animation (PC collapses on
the ground)
2. Fade to game over screen
PC is killed by falling to his death 1.PC falls crashes on the
ground (camera follows his
fall)
2. Fade to game over screen
PC is killed while hits an obstacle 1Death animation (PC collapses on
the ground)
2 Fade to game over screen

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