لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Narrative Space
The last several sections of this chapter have utilized fundamental game concepts, reframing them in narrative terms to shed light on the intersection of game design and storytelling. Goals, conflict, uncertainty, and the core mechanic are all general elements of games that game designers can use to craft meaningful narrative experiences. Another familiar game concept that we can understand narratively is the space of possibility. Game designer Warren Spector connects this concept to narrative when he states that "games create 'possibility spaces,' spaces that provide compelling problems within an overarching narrative, afford creative opportunities for dealing with these problems and then respond to player choices with meaningful consequences."[7] Spector's description of a game's "possibility space" links the embedded "overarching narrative" of a game to the emergent actions and outcomes of moment-to-moment play. So far in this book, we have invoked the space of possibility metaphorically, to mean an abstract decision-space or a conceptual space of possible meaning. But what if we consider the space of possibility literally—as an actual 2D or 3D space in which a game takes place. In other words, one way to think of the space of possibility is as an actual narrative place. In Berzerk, the space of the game consists of a series of connected rooms, seen from a bird's eye view. The checkerboard pattern of a Chess board mathematically slices the space of the game into discrete modules of equal dimension, whereas the elegant grid of the Go board uses the intersection of points to describe the territory of play. In Super Mario 64, the three-dimensional space of the game is composed of concealed rooms, magical trapdoors, and secret worlds that create a vast landscape of mysterious hidden places. The spatial features of a game have a strong impact on creating the narrative space of possibility. As game scholars Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire explain, Game designers use spatial elements to set the initial terms for the player's experiences. Information essential to the story is embedded in objects such as books, carved runes or weapons. Artifacts such as jewels may embody friendship or rivalries or may become magical sources of the player's power. The game space is organized so that paths through the game world guide or constrain action, making sure we encounter characters or situations critical to the narrative.[8]
Volleyball, for example, takes place within a court 60 ft x 30 ft, divided in the center by a net 8 ft high. The only objects that exist in this space are players—six to a side—and a ball. The game play emerges from the interactions made possible by the players' positions within the spatial grid. Players occupy designated spatial positions on the court which guide and constrain player action. How and when players touch the ball, for example, is a product of their positions within the grid. The net that divides the court engages narrative play as well, for it articulates the space of friend and foe, of teammate and opponent. Across this net, dramatic narratives of attack and defense occur each time a player serves the ball.
The organization of spatial features in a game is critical to the design of a game's narrative space of possibility. If you want your players to form strong social relations, make sure to create narrative spaces that support social interaction. The spatial design of a house or restaurant in The Sims defines the type of social interactions that can occur there. If a player designs a bar that doesn't allow the bartender access to the cash register, no drinks can be served. Without the action > outcome of ordering and serving drinks, a slew of narrative interactions fail to materialize. In Black & White, the spatial features of the game world change in relation to the actions of a player, placing the consequences of player action in a narrative of moral choice. The world at the beginning of the game is an image of Edenic innocence. As a player moves through the world, taking actions and making choices, the world changes to reflect the moral nature of these choices. "Bad" choices darken and scar the world, whereas "good" choices transform it into a flowering garden. The story of good and evil is metaphorically both reflected and enacted within the spatial features of the game world. Even the way that the player moves through the world of Black & White, by "grabbing" it with the game's hand-cursor and pulling it into view, emphasizes the unusually intrinsic connection between the player and the space of Black & White.
In LOOP, the player uses the mouse to draw lines and capture butterflies moving about the screen. The formal core mechanic, drawing lines around shapes, is framed as a narrative act (catching butterflies) with which players take action in the game world. In LOOP, there is a strong fit between core mechanic and game narrative. The looping action of drawing lines with a mouse metaphorically evokes the swooping gesture of catching butterflies with a net. One could imagine an abstract version of LOOP as a game without butterflies, in which the player is simply drawing lines around colored geometric shapes—but the framing of the player's action as butterfly catching adds layers of narrative meaning to the core mechanic, creating a story context that incorporates other aspects of the game as well. Each level in LOOP gives the player a limited amount of time to catch a certain quota of butterflies, or else the game ends. LOOP communicates this time limit by the condensed representation of a single day: the rising and setting of the sun. This narrative device ties the core mechanic of the game to an episodic structure. A clock, hourglass, or even just numbers counting down could have been used to mark the passing of time, but these design solutions do not complement the narrative context of the game. Each "day," players have a chance to collect more butterflies. Once the sun sets, providing that players have managed to catch enough butterflies, the colorful insects disappear until the dawn of another day when it is time to catch some more. As the level of difficulty steadily increases, the dramatic tension is heightened. Because of the intense concentration required to collect as many of the increasingly agile butterflies as possible, the sun seems to set faster and faster with each passing day. It doesn't of course—it only feels that way! Every five levels, a player has a chance to catch a special butterfly and reach a bonus level. These levels are set at nighttime and feature a rising moon as a timer instead of a setting sun. Bonus levels do not have a quota of butterflies to catch and therefore provide a more relaxed context for the core mechanic within the overall rhythm of the game. These nighttime levels reframe the core mechanic in a narrative context opposite to that of the daytime levels. In this way, the narrative framing works hand in hand with the formal game structure to maximize narrative meaning from the simple core mechanic.
What about a game that has no predefined physical space? Mafia is a social game of secret identities and clever bluffing in which players sit in a circle and take turns voting which among them are the secretly designated killers. There is no game board or physical materials, and playing the game does not require a specific kind of space. Yet the loose arrangement of players in a circle creates a spatial order that maximizes narrative interaction. Players must be able to see each other clearly, in order to scrutinize body language and make guesses about who might be the hidden members of the Mafia. The spatial configuration of players is critical to the system of public and private information at the center of the game. A player out of sight would be able to avoid scrutiny from the others. Instead, the democratic arrangement of players ensures that everyone playing is both observer and observed, equally culpable and suspect. The play activity of Telephone shares a similar spatial design, but a very different set of narrative interactions. Players of Telephone sit in a tight circle (the tighter the better) in order to facilitate whispering into a neighboring player's ear. Although this formal interaction could occur in another spatial configuration (such as a line), the game would lose its essential narrative of circulation—of watching the message travel through a physical and social space that stretches from a starting point, through the bodies of the players, to arrive at its final destination in the ear of the last player. The spatial arrangement of the players in a circle, although not a formal requirement of the game, enriches the narrative quality of the play experience by teasing out the game's inherent story of the same-but-different transformation of information. What are the implications for design? Pay careful attention to the way that your game creates and organizes space. What kind of seating arrangement does the design of your board game imply? Will players be able to hold the cards they need to keep hidden or will they have to improvise screens that limit social interaction? How do the two teams first approach each other on the field of play? Does the way your game breaks up the classroom space imply narrative ownership of territory? Does the structure of the space between two dueling card players express the magical territory where their epic battle takes place? In every game you create, consider how the design of the space weaves together formal and experiential elements to represent and facilitate the stories you want to tell. [7]Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire,"The Art of Contested Spaces. " In GAME ON: The History and Culture of Videogames, edited by Lucien King (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2002), p. 70. [8]Ibid. p. 65.
