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Images shamelessly lifted from various sources on the web… I make no claim to the art, I’m just using these to illustrate a point.
OK, yes, I cheated by putting in that “more” link. I really wanted the pictures to stand on their own as a complete post, examples of storytelling without words. Still, there’s more to the story, so I have to use some words after all. I’m an animator and storyteller by training (my BFA degree is in Computer Animation), though I work in games. Those characters above are great examples of emotion and storytelling through acting, especially the king and queen in Tangled. They never say a word, but they express themselves perfectly. I think we can use that as a principle to make storytelling in games better.
Let’s start with Storybricks from Namaste, brainchild of Brian “Psychochild” Green (who also wrote a great article on interesting NPCs) and his merry band of revolutionaries.
Stabs has a great writeup to start with: Storybricks in Pictures
… as well as a couple of other articles: Storybricks Q&A and Storybricks: Executive Overview and Key Information
Syl offers her take over at Raging Monkey’s: Storybricks: Breathing Life into NPCs
Rowan points out some interesting “monkeysphere” tangents; real life has a few lessons to teach us
Spinks writes about Storybricks: Storytelling with an Emotive AI (coming from a veteran of tabletop RPGs, no less, a valuable viewpoint)
epic.Ben suggests that Storybricks can even make Keanu emotional
…and I’m sure that there are other great articles I’m missing. Apologies if I’ve overlooked your take on Storybricks, and please include relevant links in the comments if you’d like. I’ll happily add them into the post with proper attribution.
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So, there’s a bunch of pictures and a bunch of links, but what’s my take? Well, I’ve not really delved into the system much. I want it to work, I want Brian to have a hit on his hands, and I want better games. The Namaste people have kindly contacted me to see about letting me see tinker with the system a little bit, and I’ll be taking them up on that when I can, then offering my own writeup. In the meantime, I think Storybricks has great potential. I might be coming at it from a different angle, what with my movie background and animation specialty, but hey, it’s not like I toe the line most of the time anyway.
Until then, might I suggest something? Watch your favorite movie (or play, perhaps) with the sound off and see just how much is communicated in faces, gestures, framing, camera moves, lighting, and timing. Really great movies can work without words, even if words make them better. That’s just basic storytelling in a visual media. They did film without sound for a while, after all, and it didn’t preclude the possibility of great movies or impressive creativity.
I’ve had a close look at Storybricks myself and written a few articles on it. For me, the power isn’t in the visual emotional cues from NPCs, but in hwo the NPCs relate to eachother and how your actions impact those relationships. I think you’ll get the idea once you see it in action, but it’s pretty cool.
An end to reputation grinds, perhaps? Fingers crossed.
Aye, I’ve got the sense that it’s about NPC relationships… but my not-quite-subtle point is that there’s a lot more to relationships than mere words. Animation can be a big help. Imagine an NPC that cringes slightly when you approach, or stiffens a bit and glares at you. Those nonverbal cues can be just as important as what someone says… especially if there’s a nonverbal/verbal mismatch.
I loved Tangled. =)
And indeed, the whole level of animations, non-verbal reactions and reading facial expressions etc. is very intriguing to think about in the context of videogames, especially MMOs. I’ve not touched that subject to much in my own article, but it’s definitely another layer to the whole thing that offers huge potential. although I think there needs to be a ‘natural limit’ to just how far games will go in imitating the real world; I’m not sure I want all aspects of human communication implemented there, it’s bad enough IRL to understand each other and interact sometimes, hehe.
Only tangentially related to storybricks, but I suspect you would like Once Upon A Time by Atlas Games. It’s a card game where you are given very basic elements of a plot and have to tell a story with it. Other players can disrupt the flow of your story, so you have to learn to weave new elements as they come up.
Tools to improve storytelling are all around us. Thanks for pointing me towards Storybricks.
Wall-E had such little dialogue I was shocked and curious if they could carry a full movie that way. They did, and it was impressive.
To clarify, it’s not quite my brainchild. But, I’m excited to be working with Storybricks. But, I look forward to having you see our demo.
And, yes, we’re looking very hard at animation and how it conveys emotions. In our current demo, we have the NPCs respond to the player’s approach with an appropriate animation. We’ve been having extensive internal discussions about how we are going to handle the non-verbal part. We want the NPCs to seem more alive in every way. We don’t have all the answers, but that’s definitely the direction we’ve been considering things.
[...] actually contacted me a while back regarding Storybricks, and at the time, my concern was about the nonverbal parts of storytelling and interpersonal communication. My specialty in college was animation, so naturally I figured that such would be crucial to [...]