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Exploration of Narrative Structure in Games for Story Creation

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Exploration of Narrative Structure in Games for Story Creation Exploration of Narrative Structure in Games for Story Creation by Bethany Dunfield A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Information Technology in Digital Media Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2017 Bethany Dunfield Abstract While video games have become a popular medium for storytelling, as a more subjective form of game content, evaluation of written or generated narratives remains difficult. We propose a model for game narrative (the combination of story and its discourse) that can be used to both help write game stories, and evaluate existing ones. This model is based on scholarly models of narrative, alongside narrative structuralism, which can give information about each narrative event and its’ position within the overall sequence of events making up the story. We also show from the literature that strong stories feature an external goal or quest which can only be achieved by a character resolving their own internal struggles. To create our model, we performed a study of existing video game stories, using the aggregate critical score as our metric for quality. Stories were broken down into their component events, and data was logged about each event’s importance, whether it sourced internally from a character or externally, and whether the event corresponded to a component of narrative macrostructures such as “The Hero’s Journey”. Results from our analysis show a strong relationship between the ratio of internal “character-driven” events versus external “plot-driven” events and a story’s quality. We were also able to make recommendations about overall story event structure, such as limiting strings of external, or “plot-driven”, events. i Acknowledgements I would like to dedicate this thesis to the late Dr. Anthony Whitehead, who was my thesis supervisor and mentor until his death. There were many times through the course of my graduate studies that I considered quitting. But I left every meeting with him inspired and ready to take on the new challenges of the week. Without his wisdom and guidance, I truly do not feel I would be writing this document. I would also like to thank Dr. Ali Arya, who stepped in to fill Anthony’s shoes. Coming into a project in its late stages, and having no knowledge of what we had done before is a difficult situation. However, Ali worked hard to make sure the adjustment went as smoothly as possible. My thanks extend to the entire administration and faculty of the School of Information Technology, who went above and beyond to make the transition for us students as easy as they could, despite dealing with the loss of a valued colleague and friend. ii 1 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................ii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. viii 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Background ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Problem Statement .......................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Significance ....................................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Contributions .................................................................................................................... 4 1.5 Thesis Structure ................................................................................................................ 6 2 Related Work .......................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Narrative and Storytelling ................................................................................................ 7 2.2 Narrative in Games ........................................................................................................... 9 2.3 Interactive Stories .......................................................................................................... 11 2.3.1 Types of Stories ....................................................................................................... 12 2.3.2 Player versus character ........................................................................................... 13 2.3.3 Embedded and Emergent Spectrum ....................................................................... 14 2.3.4 Challenges ............................................................................................................... 15 2.4 Narrative Structuralism .................................................................................................. 15 2.5 Procedural Content Generation Overview ..................................................................... 18 iii 2.5.1 Narrative Generation .............................................................................................. 19 2.6 Approaches to Narrative Generation ............................................................................. 21 2.6.1 Emergent Narratives / Player-Driven ...................................................................... 22 2.6.2 Character-Driven ..................................................................................................... 23 2.6.3 Author Simulation ................................................................................................... 24 2.6.4 Hybrid approaches .................................................................................................. 25 2.6.5 Discourse and Quest Generation ............................................................................ 26 2.7 Gap Analysis ................................................................................................................... 27 3 Research Approach ............................................................................................................... 29 3.1 Character-Driven and Plot-Driven Events ...................................................................... 29 3.1.1 Character-Driven Events ......................................................................................... 30 3.1.2 Plot-Driven Events................................................................................................... 30 3.1.3 Examples ................................................................................................................. 31 3.2 Research Question ......................................................................................................... 32 3.3 Research Method ........................................................................................................... 33 3.3.1 Data Collection ........................................................................................................ 33 3.3.2 Data Analysis ........................................................................................................... 34 3.3.3 Visualizer Development for Preliminary Analysis ................................................... 37 4 Results ................................................................................................................................... 45 4.1 Quantitative ................................................................................................................... 46 iv 4.1.1 Overall Results ........................................................................................................ 46 4.1.2 Character-Driven and Plot-Driven Probability Analysis .......................................... 48 4.1.3 Narrative Macrostructures ..................................................................................... 54 4.1.4 Conformance to Macrostructures .......................................................................... 57 4.1.5 Critical Reviews ....................................................................................................... 58 4.1.6 Distance Analysis between Games ......................................................................... 59 4.2 Qualitative Results ......................................................................................................... 61 4.2.1 Internal and External Goals ..................................................................................... 61 4.2.2 Discourse Rearrangement ...................................................................................... 62 5 Discussion.............................................................................................................................. 64 5.1 Research Question Response ......................................................................................... 64 5.1.1 Narrative Macrostructures ..................................................................................... 65 5.1.2 Character-Driven and Plot-Driven Events ..............................................................
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