“How Can a Narrative Designer Encourage Empathy in Players?”
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“How can a narrative designer encourage empathy in players?” Many video games seek to create a meaningful relationship between the player and NPCs in their in-game worlds. This can be a romantic, platonic or familial. Narrative designers want to create the illusion of a real emotional bond with a fictional game character, even though many of the stories these relationships exist in are linear. In screen-writing, there are distinct methods to generate empathy and engagement from the audience for characters on screen. However, players have agency, it is by the nature of the medium that they are able to shape and have a meaningful effect on the in-game world they are inhabiting. Viewers of film and literature do not have this ability. Thus, a problem arises. What is applicable from the language of film to generate these relationships in a medium where there is uncertainty about how a player will act? How does a narrative designer approach this issue? “What is taken to be real elicits emotions. What does not impress one as true and unavoidable elicits no emo- tion or a weaker one.”1 How can this scenario be avoided in games? Whilst cinematography and acting bring weight and meaning to a story and its characters, in Commented [ST1]: Not sure if this was meant to be a full stop but a comma would make the sentence flow much game development; animation, level and mechanic design, as well as several other disciplines better must also align and flow to successfully generate player empathy. This is what shall be explored, through investigating case studies of how it has been approached with different degrees of success in several video game titles. Within these case studies I shall be focusing on a specific type of relationship and how empathy is created. Familial relationships between the player and an NPC in a parent and child dynamic. I narrowed my investigation to this type because there are numerous examples of these relationships in games, and traditionally they are a stronger emotional bond to investigate than that of a romance or friendship. Finally, I shall be referring to my own past game development projects, discussing how this research will affect my future developmental processes as a narrative designer. ‘The Walking Dead’2 by Telltale Games provides an excellent example of an NPC with a strong narrative design, that leads the player to feel empathy and a powerful bond with them in Clementine. Telltale takes many traditional storytelling techniques to create the bond with Clementine. How are these techniques applied in a gameplay setting and to what degree of success? John Truby argues in ‘The Anatomy of Story’ that “all characters must be a 1 Frijda, N. (2007). The laws of emotion. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum. 2The Walking Dead. (2012). Telltale Games. variation of the theme” otherwise opponents and side characters will feel “cardboard and one- dimensional”. The theme being ‘the moral viewpoint’ of any given fictional world. In games however, theme often refers more to tone and setting than a highly conceptualised philosophical view. On the other hand, it can be argued that a strong theme from a screen- writing standpoint is expressed well in The Walking Dead. Maintaining empathy and compassion for others is one of the core themes of the game. Much of the time the choices that revolve around self-preservation and selfishness have poor consequences for the player. In the first game for instance, the player is punished entire chapters later if they choose to steal a stranger’s food. Lead writer Mark Darin has stated that the first season is Lee’s “Redemption story” and that “Clementine is the lens through which we see all of our actions.”3 The creative director, Alyssa Finley has added that “Clementine started out as a symbol of something to worry about but became a symbol of hope”4. This aligns with the tone of the game’s world, one of intense risk and danger, and so creates a relationship that feels tangible and fragile. Commented [ST2]: This whole paragraph was really nice, good shit Perron’s5 research into “Fiction/witness emotion,”6 maps directly onto Ermi and Myra’s three immersions, imaginative7, sensory8 and challenge based9. These concepts and theories have 3 THE WALKING DEAD Telltale Season 4 Teaser Trailer (2018) PS4/Xbox One/PC. (2017). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfVUXDczTMg [Accessed 29 Apr. 2018]. 4 THE WALKING DEAD Telltale Season 4 Teaser Trailer (2018) PS4/Xbox One/PC. (2017). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfVUXDczTMg [Accessed 29 Apr. 2018]. 5 Perron, B. (2005). A COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO GAMEPLAY EMOTIONS. DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play, [online] 3. Available at: http://www.digra.org/digital- library/publications/a-cognitive-psychological-approach-to-gameplay-emotions/ [Accessed 9 Apr. 2018]. 6 Fiction/witness emotion is the response in the viewer to witnessing the actions of fictional characters and their emotions. 7 Imaginative immersion is when the gameplay world itself is strong enough in its narrative elements to draw in the player and suspend their sense of disbelief. 8 Sensory immersion refers to the audio-visual aspect of gameplay, and whether is it compelling. 9 Challenge-based immersion is when difficulty and flow align within gameplay, to allow the player to be challenged just enough to be lost in the moment and forget their surroundings. Ermi, L. and Mäyrä, F. (2005). Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion. Conference: Digital Games Research Conference 2005, Changing Views: Worlds in been useful when investigating player/NPC relationships designed with the desired effect of a close bond. Furthermore, it can be argued that deep emotional attachment from players towards fictional characters are generated, when the player feels drawn in during this fiction/witness response and experiences these three categories of immersion. If the player Commented [ST3]: This could do with being expanded on a little bit vicariously feels the emotions of another character successfully, it is very likely that they will feel empathy towards them. Empathy can also be generated and heightened if the player is successfully immersed in the game world. The level of immersion and type of emotion that is mainly aspired to in The Walking Dead is imaginative and fiction/witness. You as the player are consistently watching the emotional journeys of other characters struggling psychologically in the apocalypse. You watch Clementine’s emotional journey as she searches for her parents and struggles with feelings of terror, loss, abandonment and sadness. Commented [ST4]: Very nice Moreover, this ties into the game’s mechanics well, as she opens up to you about these emotions, and the agency to react to them is placed in the hands of the player. This feature is the core of the dialogue system and the player is forced to engage with it at all times. Whilst working on Standby, a first-person horror puzzle game, we as a team aspired to create a bond between the player and the game’s antagonist, a malevolent house-keeping AI. We employed the use of fiction/witness emotion by having the artificially intelligent robot describe its pain and frustration over having being treated as a slave, as justification for its violent behaviour. This had a good degree of success at making this opponent feel legitimately threatening during playtesting. Perhaps what could have bonded the player further to our antagonist was more direct interaction. Such as the conversations between Lee and Clementine as she demonstrates her emotional fragility. Moreover, this would have strengthened the empathy and emotional impact of having the player be the one to finally destroy the robot. Having utilised the model of the fiction/witness response in this project, and after carrying out further analysis, I acknowledge that it has limitations as a method to draw empathy from a player. There are many times where a player may be exposed to the emotions and actions of a fictional character but will regardless feel no empathy towards them. It is worth mentioning Parkes’s argument that “Emotions often do not arise when being told of loss, and the loss is Play, June 16-20, 2005, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. [online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221217389_Fundamental_Components_of_the_Gamep lay_Experience_Analysing_Immersion [Accessed 9 Apr. 2018]. merely known. They break through when the lost person is truly missed, when the arm reaches out in vain or the desire to communicate finds its target to be absent”10. For instance, where side characters are concerned, The Walking Dead often tries to instil a feeling of loss in the player but fails to as the deceased character in question, is often very quickly replaced by someone just as capable. However, the loss of Lee at the end of the game is felt intimately in the game’s second season, as the loneliness and tragedy of this is highlighted by Clementine’s solo journey through the wilderness. This is a great example of the fiction/witness model in action, and proof of its value as a starting point to generate empathy. It is also important to note that being immersed, even imaginatively in a game’s world does not guarantee player empathy towards its characters. For instance, the infamous escort mission of the president’s daughter in Resident Evil 411. The world itself is very well realised, but it is not often the case that players feel attached to the President’s daughter, but see her more as an annoying gameplay object. Interesting, Finley states that they avoided Clementine feeling like dead weight by making her “capable” 12 and “helpful” to Lee throughout the game.