The Narrative Design Exploratorium

This is the third part in an ongoing NDE series featuring interviews with Masters of Narrative Design. While a seemingly new term, the design of story experiences is nothing new. As game developers are increasingly looking to create meaningful virtual narrative experiences, looking back at the lessons learned by these masters becomes increasingly valuable. Today's master is David Sosna, director, writer, producer, actor, and engineer, in his seasoned career he has worked on Tv dramas, music videos, feature films, video games, live performance and more. He gets the job done, on budget, on time, and focuses on giving his audiences the most entertaining experiences possible. Today I'm hoping to see what we can learn from his wealth of experience in popular media.

Stephen Erin Dinehart:  David, thank you for taking the time to interview with the NDE. How do you feel your previous work in entertainment relates to your current position?

David Sosna: I spent my motion picture career as a First Assistant Director on feature films. That work focused on deconstructing a script, extracting its requirements, providing an unambiguous schedule of what to shoot when, with what assets present. Then, during shooting, running the set, making ad hoc decisions, keeping the train moving. Now that I've switched to Associate Producer, my previous work experience is much more applicable.

SED: As a person who has worked on high profile projects for film, Tv, the stage, and video games, how does well-crafted narrative affect your work?

DS: When working on content, especially narrative design, story is everything. Story and dialog, actually. For me, the old saw, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage" still works. I just saw Batman last night. The world thinks it's a great movie. I think the last half of the picture is incomprehensible, lacks credulity and is too frenetic and opaque to be understood. That's not good story telling, in my view, in spite of earth-shattering grosses.

SED: When mentoring me at Relic you provided the best notes I've seen. In that, what are your top five rules for creating quality game screenplays?

DS: 1) Write believable, interesting characters that the audience cares about. 2) Keep it moving. 3) Excise excess. 4) Be unambiguous and easily understood at all times. 5) Make every word count, be required and believable; especially dialog.

    Lee Sheldon, writer and designer, has written a very good op-ed piece for Game Career Guide on game writers. Lee and I have butted heads on more than one occasion about the narrative designer role in game development, but I think at the end of the day our goals are the same. I’d even dare to call him a narrative designer. Lee advocates innovation, craft, education, and vision. He has a talent that has spanned many media formats, and his wisdom speaks for itself. Read the full article at GameCareerGuide.com

“…skill sets for writing and designing are very different. They simply must be practiced in concert for both to perform their best.” - Lee Sheldon

    Sande Chen has written a cover feature for Gamasutra on the creation of more meaningful games. Some months ago I was happy to be interviewed by Sande, and am now glad to see her article published. Creating meaning in games is what narrative design is all about! Whatever the message might be, there is a legacy of techniques by which audio, visual, and now interactivity, can be designed as to enhance communication with the Viewer/User/Player. Read the full feature on Gamasutra.com

“As champions of the story, narrative designers are more than just dialog writers. By using themes and other tools of storytelling, they oversee the process of crafting a meaningful experience throughout the game.” - Sande Chen

This is the second part in an ongoing NDE series featuring interviews with Masters of Narrative Design. While a seemingly new term, the design of story experiences is nothing new. As game developers are increasingly looking to create meaningful virtual narrative experiences, looking back at the lessons learned by these masters becomes increasingly valuable. Today's master is Bruce Block filmmaker, teacher, storyteller; in his seasoned career he has produced and consulted on more than 40+ films. Unlike most masterful wizards, Bruce shares his secrets both in seminars and in his book "The Visual Story", the methods he describes there are used in film, television, animation and design studios all over the world, and best of all, go into making the most compelling stories for any screen for the past 100+ years. Today I'm hoping to see what virtual world creators can learn from his wealth of experience.

Stephen Erin Dinehart:  Bruce, thank you for taking the time to speak to me. In your book, "The Visual Story", you define the basic visual components as "Space, Line, Shape, Tone, Color, Movement, Rhythm" are these arbitrary? How did you come up with this set of components?

Bruce Block: I wish I had come up with them...I'd have trademarked the components. The seven basic visual components are derived from about 2,000 years of art. Its just lots and lots of people drawing and trying to discover what works and what doesn't work. Go into any room in any museum in the world and its really full of lots of old and new examples of someone communicating a story, mood or emotion using the seven basic visual components. Some people debate that there is an eighth basic component: time. Its possible that they're right but I found many "time ideas" are too hard to control. The part of time that I do like I incorporated into the component of rhythm.  I am constantly reading new and old texts on visual structure looking for another component to add to the list. In searching for two decades, I've not found any constructive suggestions for an addition.

Lately, I've been asked a lot of questions about 3-D, which is currently entering a technical renaissance. It fits very neatly into the existing component of space. Every time a new technology is developed which "changes everything" it really falls easily into one of the existing components. I don't think anyone is going to discover a new color or letter of the alphabet. I'm not closed to the idea of a wonderful, new visual component popping onto the scene, but a lot of people much smarter than me spend a lot of time looking for another visual component and have come up empty.

    In 1992 a game was released by a developer started by Louis Castle and Brett Sperry, then called "Westwood Studios" their game was titled "Dune II: the Battle for Arrakis."  (see North American box art and gameplay video clip below) Taken from the epic styles of traditional war-games past like those of publisher Avalon Hill, specifically their game Dune. The game has up to six players, select a race, build a stronghold and attack your opponents for resources and power. The object of the game is to seize opponents strongholds. This is done with a player driven strategy of economics, military, religion, and treacherous diplomacy. The Dune video game had one primary difference. Rather than turn-based systems of the Avalon Hill games, the video game is meant to be occurring in "real-time", that is, without turns. The core gameplay of Westwood's Dune II involved picking a race, building a stronghold, and taking over opponents strongholds. The real-time elements centered around three major activities, building and upgrading units and strongholds, managing and gathering resources for military and industrial needs, and finally, combat with opponents and sand-worms.

    Let that not diminish the sheer genius of the collective iterative innovation of the RTS game type itself. Unlike other styles of videogames RTS puts the player in charge of an army of his/her own creation and sets them free in a virtual sandbox to play. Though "Dune II" did have one predecessor, a little known title called "Herzog Zwei" in which the player commanded individual units in an effort to destroy their opponent's base. What is most interesting from a storytelling standpoint was the perspective, or seeming lack there of, the games seemed to have little to do with the stories of individual characters, they exist somewhere between 2nd person omnipotent and 3rd person and allowed the player to 'command vast armies'. From it's inception the stories for RTS where all seemingly war-based, even 1st generation RTS titles like Blizzard entetertainment's groundbreaking 1994 fantasy game "Warcraft: Orcs and Humans" was nevertheless about war.