The Economics of Videogame Storytelling

Many are experimenting with formulae that are heavy on the “Video” part of VideoGame and much lighter on the “Game” part. The game with no gameplay. This is an increasingly popular trend in the videogame market. This is much to the chagrin of the old-school gamers, who see this as some sort of polygonal blasphemy against the founding principles of our medium. Those principles say that gameplay come first. The proposed philosophy behind the new movement is simple; game makers want to make games more “accessible”. This is not a new goal by any means. They want a product that the entire family can sit down and share in. To facilitate this, they see the simplification of game mechanics as a necessary evil that must occur. The controller or keyboard is a major hurdle that stands between a non-gamer and games. Nintendo broke down this barrier with the Wii and as a result, they saw tremendous success. However, the success was also short-lived because the simplified controls meant that there was little variety and depth in terms of gameplay. The controls attracted attention, but the gameplay failed to hold or sustain it. There are only so many interesting games that can be made from wagging a controller about. To take this experiment further, now game makers are attempting to migrate away from a gameplay focus to that of a story focus, in an effort to make a product with a longer shelf life and more lasting appeal than Wii games had. While most of us scoff at this trend, I think that there may be some opportunities for them in this pursuit.

In the ever expanding arms race for attention, movie studio budgets have ballooned substantially. With that, the need for expanded audiences grew in parallel. We now have a situation where movie studios generally do everything in their power to avoid that “R” rating. Making a blockbuster PG-13 movie isn’t just about toning down the swear words and nudity though. To capture that audience, the narrative needs to be fairly simple. Cutting back the nudity, violence and language in True Detective might give it a different rating, but it doesn’t necessarily give the makers a different audience. What this means is that a lot of topics are off limits for most blockbuster movies now and they have become very conservative in terms of content. This is why comic books have been sought out for narrative guidance for blockbuster movies. Comic books represent years of data on how complex a narrative can be for this young audience and more importantly, which narratives are the most profitable. How far can you go before you lose the audience? You may be able to get to PhD level with time travel theory but can you tell stories about finance or love and still be profitable? For all intents and purposes, movies have become a prettier version of Network television. There are exceptions, and these are usually made with small budgets or specifically with the aim of obtaining awards. I mean it’s not like you can enter Transformers 4 for Best Picture now can you? http://www.cinemablend.com/...
In 2014, none of the top 10 grossing movies got anything higher than the PG-13 rating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... As Movie studios got more conservative over the years, Cable companies saw the opportunity to go in the opposite direction. With cable television, rating doesn’t matter as much, because it’s easier for kids to get hold of a remote than it is for them to get hold of a R rated movie ticket. HBO, Showtime and now streaming services are delving into some very risqué topics that most movies won’t go near. They are having tremendous success in the process. Its here that I think gaming also has a similar opportunity. We may never again have a great Watchmen or Punisher movie, but can we have them in AAA game form?

According to the ESA statistics, 5 of the top 10 selling Videogames of 2014 got the Mature rating by the ESRB. Games are generally not scrutinized by parents as much as movies for a variety of reasons. Some simply aren’t aware of the game content and don’t take games seriously. Some may not even be aware that games now have storytelling if the only game they ever knew was PacMan. Also, games are longer to experience and are skill based. Parents may not be able to complete the game themselves or may not have the time to sit and watch their kids play. I’ll just ignore that moral conundrum for now and focus on my point. As a medium, games get away (commercially and financially) with dealing with mature topics and content. They can have much bigger budgets that cable TV show. Big Budgets and poor policing of the ratings system may give us an opportunity to explore adult topics and content with a PG-13 budget.

We may have the artistic (and financial) license for more adult narratives, but do we have the audience? I want to say yes…with limits. Games like The Walking Dead explored the parent child dynamic in season 1 with great success. So did The Last of Us, which also sparked a great debate because of its ending. Joel’s final decision follows a “needs of the one vs the needs of the many” theme. We have all been programmed by society and the media to choose the latter, but this is not the direction that Naughty Dog chose for its main character. Instead they told a story that allowed you to empathize with a man who chose his own happiness and sanity over the needs of a world that had dealt more than a fair share of cruelty to him. Bioshock dealt with societal structure and human nature to great effect. I’m not saying that the gaming audience can embrace every topic or theme, but there is a certain amount of variety. For one thing, I can’t really think of any exceptional love story in a major game.

So, we have opportunity and we have the audience for some mature themes. Now comes the question that we started out with. How much gameplay is “enough”. This is not an easy question to answer and proof of that comes from the fact that no one has really found an answer after years of trying. It’s further complicate by the recent growth of Lets Play and Let’s watch videos. Gaming is slowly becoming a more passive experience for people. While I love the Telltale game series, I personally feel that those games are far too short on the gameplay end of things. In fact I usually just passively watch a no commentary, let’s play video to experience them. I don’t really feel compelled to actually play them. That can’t be good for the developer. Lucky for them, there are many who think differently. At $5 an episode and with each episode lasting around 3 hours, it’s a good distribution model and good value for money. The stories are good, but the game sure as hell doesn’t run smoothly and they aren’t the greatest in terms of spectacle. They simply want to tell a story and found a cheap way with many acceptable compromises to make their model successful. The question remains as to whether a visually unimpressive and at times glitchy game can have success with a casual audience. Why not just take that money and see a great spectacle of a movie? I don’t see this as a model that can have casual appeal and quite frankly, my interest in the Telltale games has waned significantly. I would much more prefer the series as a more concise animated movie than this slow passive gameplay.

Gone Home was a great exercise in interactive gameplay and also managed to tackle a great variety of mature content and themes. It’s a great exercise in environmental storytelling and tells a competent story in a way that only a game can. It allowed you to discover or uncover a story at your own pace and via exploration and interactivity. Whether it was Game of the Year material is debatable, but its contribution to the advancement of narrative in games is not as far as I’m concerned. Is it accessible to wider audiences? I think so, but I’m not sure that it’s the visual spectacle that modern audiences have grown accustomed to. It certainly has appeal, but that appeal is not broad. Also, I’m not sure how much of that I want at a time. I’m not sure that it can be scaled to a $60 product but with the growth of digital distribution, that may not be a problem. It certainly has couch appeal, as I myself played it with a friend. It was a great co-op experience.

This may be a bit controversial, but I actually think that “The Order: 1886” comes very close to achieving the balance between gameplay and story that can be attractive to casual gamers. They had a solid but by no means great story. Their presentation was sublime with some of the best animations, motion capture and voice acting in the medium. The gameplay was fun, simple and unobtrusive enough to not interrupt the flow of their narrative. That thermite gun was awesome. A bit more variety in the enemy types would have made the game a lot better. The problem then? They tried to sell a 6hr game with a competent but not special story for $60. Instead of making compromises in the visuals and presentation, they went for spectacle. I loved it and I want more of it, but it’s not a model that studios that are not first party can indulge in. Sony can run a studio at a loss if it means more consoles sold, but no third party can do that and stay in business. The technology is certainly there, but the value proposition for the average consumer is not. Based on the reaction from the gaming community, the value proposition isn’t even there for the core audience.

We have the opportunity to explore a wider range of story topics with a poorly enforced ratings scheme and an audience that is fairly receptive to a wide range of story topics. We have a large audience already and it continues to grow and hence we can afford the budget necessary to make a true visual spectacle. We have a growing segment of the gaming community that prefers to watch games being played as a type of shared experience with friends. We have the technology to rival the presentation of mainstream movies. We may even have the correct balance in gameplay and story to attract wider audience. What we don’t have, is a great model to make it truly a value product for the average consumer. For that, the costs associated with development have to decline or the audience has to expand (or both really), to allow a migration away from the $60 price tag. We can already make great narrative experiences. We may need to rebrand some content as “interactive entertainment” to avoid offending the sensibilities of core gamers and avoid confusion as to different focus of such entertainment. Its only time before we can make them spectacular yet affordable enough for mainstream audiences to accept gaming as a true narrative medium.

[s45gr32]

Great article and interactive entertainment is much better than video games. Say how comic books got renamed graphic novels. Also, no mention of to the moon that while it lacks massive appeal and spectacle it does offer a phenomenal story that is combined with gameplay beautifully. Mass Effect is the only game I can think of that offers what tou described