Videogame Storytelling and Plot Twists: Why We Love Plot Twists

German studio Yager Development’s new title Spec Ops: The Line has been making waves throughout the games industry. At first glance, it seems like a generic military shooter… but it gets trippy. It’s loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and sends players a message different from the standard “shoot things, you’re awesome, bro.” In stark contrast to most military shooters on the market today, Spec Ops actually makes players (gasp!) feel bad about killing hundreds of people.

Spec Ops: The Line

Why has this change of direction resonated with so many people? In the past decade as videogame storytelling has become slightly more adequate, plot twists have been an important tool for making the player reevaluate their role in the story. Look at any high-profile “arty” success over the past couple years: BioShock, Portal, Braid… they all feature prominent plot twists.

This is because games are still mostly about empowering players. Game mechanics define games, so it’s in developers’ best interest to give the player more abilities and give them more power within the mechanic as the storyline progresses. Most games feature a very linear narrative of “start out weak, get stronger, fight boss, get stronger, fight a stronger boss, repeat.” Sometimes, a game like Metroid will take away all the player’s powers near the beginning of the game, and then the plot revolves entirely around getting powers back.

This comes from the way we as an industry conceive of games. For the most part, the game mechanic is the first idea, and the story evolves around that mechanic. It’s a smart way to create a fitting storyline, but it’s also limiting. Story depends on gameplay, and never vice versa.

Dear Esther

We’re at the unfortunate stage where a “good story with subpar gameplay” is unacceptable, but “great gameplay with mediocre story” is a game we still embrace. Because of this, there’s no motivation for most developers to work on creating better stories–just worry about the gameplay and the story doesn’t matter! Of course, I firmly believe gameplay is integral to our medium, but we’ll never get to “great games with great stories” until we can conquer this fear of deep plotlines.

Because of games’ focus on mechanics and empowering players, games like Portal andBioShock stand out when they throw a wrench in that empowerment. Players want to feel competent and in control, and when we learn otherwise, we’re shocked. Encounters with characters like GLaDOS and Andrew Ryan make us rethink our role in the game world, and that affects us emotionally. Or look at a series like Half-Life; its story draws us in largely because the enigmatic G-Man reveals that even from the beginning of the game, we’re not in control.

But does this mean games HAVE to be this way to make an emotional impact on us? What about a game where the player never gains power in the first place?

The Stanley Parable

We can look at recent cult hits like The Stanley Parable and Dear Esther as titles where the player never has power, and never has the ability to gain any more. It’s great to see a few titles like this emerge, but of course, they’re still refined to low-budget independent productions. Will we ever see mainstream AAA titles do this?

Going one step further, I’d like to see a game where the player actually ends the game with LESS power than they began with. Perhaps, like Spec Ops, it begins as a cliché military shooter. You have to assassinate some foreign leader in a third-world country. But then some sort of natural disaster derails all your plans. Not an evil genius who the player can then take revenge on. Just a flood or a storm, and the player must simply survive. Without the guns they had before, without the superhuman physical abilities. Going from G.I. Joe to a refugee. When will we see that game?

Would players be unsatisfied to see a game where they end weaker than they began? If anything, this weakening would work to refine the game’s core mechanics, since players couldn’t rely on any superfluous power-ups or add-ons to their abilities.

It’s just a shame that game mechanics force video game storylines into rigidly uniform structures of increasing power. I hope one day we can see it in reverse.

Player gender and race in video games

When you play a video game that lets you create your character, what do you make them look like?

Overwhelmingly, people choose to make the avatar their own gender and race. Searching for the reason why, one's first natural instinct is to think, Players create avatars that look like them to immerse themselves in the game. But you'll give your guy chiseled abs and a sharp jawline even if you don't have them. The argument becomes People create idealized versions of themselves. This holds more water, but I'm not sure it fully explains why players almost never stray from their own sex and ethnicity. Players change many things that aren't "ideal" for them: they'll give their character a neon blue mohawk or a handlebar moustache, but they still stick to their race and sex. Even in fantasy games like The Elder Scrolls that offer non-human species like reptilian and feline humanoid races, most gamers I've talked to avoid these groups on their first playthrough.

As Lauren points out to me, however, "Sex and race are the parts of us that we can't change. Even if you don't have a blue mohawk, it would be possible to grow one; you just don't want one in real life. So with your avatar you can create this more outrageous version of yourself. You could never actually turn yourself Asian, though, whether you wanted to or not, and it would be weird if the 'ideal, outrageous' version of yourself involved you being another ethnicity."

It's a good point. But I'm not convinced "outrageous idealism" and subconscious ethnocentrism are mutually exclusive. It's no coincidence main characters in games with non-customizable avatars are predominantly white males; white males make up the largest demographic of both gamers and game developers.

Yes, there are a smattering of games with female and non-white leads, but the video game industry runs on franchises. The Price of Persia series is arguably the only major franchise with a non-white lead, and it's a whitewashed version of Iran. The biggest single game with a dark-skinned main character was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and naturally, it was a story of street gangs.

The only two major franchises with consistent female main characters are Tomb Raider and Metroid, and both of those series' sales are nowhere near the white male giants of Mario, Halo, The Legend of Zelda, and Call of Duty. Imagine if at the end of Halo 3, Master Chief finally took off his helmet to reveal he's black or Arab. How do you think the Halo-playing populace would react?

But back to games with customizable avatars. If you're a white guy like me, next time you play Fallout, try being a hispanic woman. See if it changes the way you think about your character or the way you react to events in the game. I believe that deep down, we choose the gender and ethnicity we're familiar with because it's exactly that--familiar. It's comfortable to us. Video games are a unique artform because they allow us to personally walk a mile in someone else's shoes. You love walking in a pro athlete's cleats and a space marine's boots. Now try walking in heels.