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Friday, 17 April 2015
Imaginary relationships
A while back I gave a talk at the Groucho Club in London's Soho about creating emotional bonds in games and interactive stories. If that rings a bell, it's because I've posted it on this blog before. And yet the generations stream away and still gamebooks struggle to haul themselves out of the '80s mire of orc-infested dungeons where treasure chests come with riddles on the lid.
"You come to three doors and -- " Who cares? Interacting with a story can deliver so much more than that. So here I am again talking about the relationships that you might forge with fictional characters. The slides are a little out of sync; you'll see I start talking about Walt but his image doesn't come up on screen for a few seconds.But if you can get past that and the patchy audio (try here for the full text) hopefully it'll spark off some interesting comments for us to debate below.
Some takeaway points to get started on:
"I don't care about crystal meth distribution in Albuquerque, or even that much about crime dramas. But I am fascinated by the problem of Walter White. Character - that's what is compelling about a great story. And when we put character and interactivity together we have the ingredients of relationship."
"What kind of relationships can we put in these stories? All kinds. One example: you're not James Bond, you're his controller at MI6. You're in touch with Bond all the time, giving him orders, but a man who's licensed to kill doesn't play well with others. So you have an adversarial relationship. And conflict, of course, is the motor of drama."
"Those two land masses [stories and games] are connected now. There's going to be some evolving together, some exchange of creative DNA, some blurring of boundaries."
What do you think? What makes you connect with a story and want to come back for more? Don't say doors with riddles on them.
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One thing I always loved about the Avenger novels, one thing that kept me coming back: Good villains. Honoric, Cassandra, Mandrake. The recurring cast of nemeses that kept popping up gave me a compelling reason to forge ahead.
ReplyDeleteI think many of those are player-characters or NPCs in Mark Smith's Orb campaign, which helps explain why they're a little more fully rounded than, say, Balthus Dire.
DeleteAtmosphere. A sense of place. That was the immersive aspect of the best gamebooks. Part of that was the writing and part of it was the illustration. That's why when you say 'Balthus Dire' I immediately see Russ Nicholson's illustration of the man, and remembered there were three choices when you entered the courtyard of the Citadel of Chaos. This prompted me to take the book off the shelf - there are three choices when you attempt to get past the guards on the gate, three choices in the courtyard. Three doors. But they're not presented as three doors, they're more interesting and atmospheric than that ('Will you pose as a herbalist?/Will you claim to be a tradesman?/Will you ask for shelter for the night?' and 'Creep around the wall towards the tower?/Stride boldly across the courtyard?/Tiptoe through the shadows towards one of the groups?').
ReplyDeleteHowever, I also still remember my first encounter with Yaztromo. Okay, Forest of Doom was my first gamebook, so it's bound to be more memorable, but I also remember meeting Nicodemus under the bridge in Blacksand, that annoying Mini-mite called Jann in the Shamutanti Hills and allying with Throm the good-but-doomed Barbarian in Deathtrap Dungeon. The interaction was simplistic, but memorable.
I'm not interested in gamebooks as interactive fiction, I'm interested in gamebooks as gamebooks. If someone wants me to keep coming back to a gamebook, they need to write and illustrate it in such a way that I'm immersed in the world while I'm discovering the best path through to the end. If I want to build up relationships with characters I'd rather play roleplaying games, because then I'm not only dealing with the uncertainty of real people playing characters, I also have the very personal opportunity to directly add story and atmosphere myself.
I'm sure that a major factor in the success of '80s gamebooks with reluctant readers, especially 9-12 year-old boys, was the prose style. Punchily evocative (and sometimes slightly purple) prose in the framework of a simple, straightforward storyline has been key to the appeal of popular kids' fiction from fairytales through pulp mags to today's genre bestsellers.
DeleteIt's interesting that you don't regard gamebooks as interactive fiction. (Btw I use that term in the general sense - ie fiction that you can interact with - not the specific way it has been used by some adventure game designers in the last decade or so.) I certainly prefer roleplaying, but that's because I've always seen it as interactive drama. That is, I always thought of gamebooks as a next-best to roleplaying when you couldn't get a gaming group together. It's apparent that a lot of people didn't see it that way. Most gamebook readers have never roleplayed.
I haven't read the books you're referring to there, but it sounds like they all belong to the more-or-less-D&D branch of fantasy. That's another thing that interests me - why gamebook readers almost completely overlap with fans of that genre. I guess we do also see steampunk gamebooks these days, but it's hardly a huge leap from orcs to airships. Meanwhile, other gamebook experiments (whodunits, etc) struggle to take root.
It may just be that most gamebook readers today are the same people who read gamebooks in the '80s and '90s and they are looking for the same experience every time. That would explain why most gamebook apps are licensed versions of old series like FF. On the other hand, I'm a dedicated comics reader but I don't feel any urge to keep reading the same superhero titles that I used to love as a kid. So is nostalgia really what's fuelling interest in gamebooks today? (Such interest as remains other than in gamebook apps, that is.)
I'm reluctant to say it's down to nostalgia as that can sound dismissive. The fact is, gamebooks worked and worked very well. However, I do think today's gamebook readers are indeed those of us who read them in the 80s and 90s. It may well be that the original format has simply had its day as far as the current generation of kids are concerned.
DeleteBut to come back to your original question, if you really want people to forge relationships with fictional characters, I think those fictional characters need to be driven by real people. If you want people to interact with the story, they need to be able to add their own story elements for the fictional characters to interact with.
Interesting points, Robin, and it does help to explain why today's gamebooks generally hark back to the old '80s genres. Wrt to not relating to fictional characters - I guess you didn't like (or didn't try) my Frankenstein gamebook app, then, but how about Telltale's emotionally charged interactive stories? I agree they'll never match interacting with another player in an RPG, but if we can care very deeply about a character in a movie or a novel, why not a fictional character in a game?
DeleteI'm afraid I've not read your Frankenstein app, partly because it's a story I'm just too familiar with and partly because, yes, it didn't quite appeal on a nostalgic level! (It might be worth noting that I'll still watch an old Hammer Frankenstein movie despite the familiarity, because of that all important atmosphere. 'Atmosphere' is a word I use too much, but it feels the best word to describe the feeling of immersion or sense of time and place that really appeals me.)
DeleteI've also become much less interested in computer games and apps. I play Lord of the Rings online, but it's largely an exercise in seeing the sights and levelling up. I've abandoned my iPad and I don't own a mobile phone.
I may be splitting hairs here, but one could argue that caring deeply about (or despising) a fictional character is different from forging a relationship with one. The former is probably easily achieved if you have an empathetic reader, viewer or player, but I think that the latter requires active control of the fictional character by another human being.
Just quickly... something that might be worth discussing with regard to connecting to a story or character is the idea of being the only player directly involved in a particular plot thread or character. It's probably never going to be practical, but that sense of ownership may be a vital part of a real emotional bond.
I hope that my version of Frankenstein is atmospheric, albeit a very different atmosphere from a Hammer movie, but I'm afraid I can't solve the absence of nostalgia problem without a time machine! However, if familiarity is an obstacle - well, you know the story is absolutely nothing like the Hammer or Universal versions, right? (If you did know that then okay, I admit defeat.)
DeleteA lot of readers & viewers seem to have a relationship with their favourite characters, but not while actually experiencing the novel/movie. So you get fanfic and speculation about the character. The same kind of one-way relationship that fans have with their idols, in fact.
Your last point there is interesting and it does occur - in the mind of the author as they create a new work. More loosely, it could apply to Frankenstein, as there are so many permutations that no two readers will create the same text by their choices. But I'll stop there as I guess I'm flogging a dead horse on this one :-)
Young Frankenstein is probably my favourite version ;)
DeleteYou certainly wouldn't like my version, then.
DeleteHow did you feel about Kenneth Brannagh's effort?
DeleteIt doesn't particularly do justice to the novel, and DeNiro is terribly miscast, but it uses more of Shelley's original concept than the Universal or Hammer movies do. I'd still much rather read the book, though - there's so much internal stuff going on that doesn't really work in a movie, which inevitably ends up being too literal and scifi about it all.
DeleteThe thing that excites me about gamebooks (and the relatively small number of apps I play) is the sense of exploration and discovery. It's getting into the details, immersing in the grime and the grandeur, which makes it all feel real, at least in an escapist sense. The enforcement of arbitrary restrictions on that, such as the perennial FF 'one true path model', lessens my enjoyment significantly and is the surest way of making me complete the adventure, then putting it aside in favour of something more enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteExploration is valid and not something that we can really say is part of the pleasure of reading a novel. I certainly feel it in RPGs, computer or face-to-face, and it's part of the fun of Fallen London and 80 Days too.
DeleteI've found the FF approach preferable to having too much freedom. I was a fan of the Lone Wolf books until a realised that it didn't really matter what route I took as long as I killed all the monsters - I'd play through in one go and the book was done. Dead ends, bad choices, and death-dealing traps kept me coming back to discover new, safer routes. I played the Sorcery! series over and over and over and over and over again trying to get through all four books to the very end without getting killed. I stubbornly refused to map the optimum route and trusted to memory. I did the same with the Grailquest series.
DeleteI know I enjoyed the first Lone Wolf book, Flight from the Dark, and I can remember thinking that the second book, Fire on the Water, was the best gamebook I'd ever played... but I can't actually remember anything about either of them. I didn't need to go back and try again, so nothing became committed to memory.
I think back in the 80s when gamebooks were huge I'd probably have agreed with you Robin. Certainly I collected and voraciously read everything with that little green FF icon on it, and remember really enjoying Crypt of the Sorcerer, for example, which is one of the more notorious 'one true path' books.
DeleteIn my adult years though, when I do re-read gamebooks from my youth every few months, I find FF unnecessarily difficult and not enjoyable to play (to say nothing of the average writing in many). Some are still very good, particularly Stephen Hand's 3 titles, but generally they're less forgiving if a player randomly chooses the red door rather than the blue one.
The only exception to this are Paul Mason's books, which are *incredibly* difficult (and Slaves of the Abyss is annoying because the 'one true path' requires undertaking an action which is quite counter-intuitive), but at the same time have such a rich world that they allow me to fulfil my love of exploration, and I don't mind the wandering and repeated playing.
In my comment about Stephen Hand's titles, that should be *more* forgiving, of course.
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