195: A Videogame, in Three Acts

[Jeff Tidball]

A Videogame, in Three Acts

Most moviegoers know instinctively that movies are formulaic. But it might surprise you to learn just how rigid the formula can be. Jeff Tidball examines the movie's three-act structure and how it could help game designers make their creations more emotionally involving.

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[Cousin_IT]

good read & some good points. For myself, my experience with most games is they suffer quite hard from Michael Bay syndrome. By which I mean its all well & good when theres big explosions & loud noises to distract you, but the moment it quiets down for a bit you realize that theres nothing particularly interesting about what your experiencing beyond the fireworks.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

I think this is a trickier topic than just borrowing from film methods because any narrative structure you impose on a game is going to inhibit its ability to be a game. For as much as we can accuse developers of only asking "Will you win?" you have to acknowledge that the main thing on the player's mind is "I want to win." How is someone going to impose the second act? A forced loss like in a JRPG? A cutscene? No matter what, you're still slapping an illusion on their progress or diverting the flow.

I think we're all becoming aware of how limited the current plots of games are, but it's a question of player motivation, not what else you can shove down their throats. You have to make them want something besides just victory.

 

[October Country]

Good article.
I find that in most games that rely on or feature a compelling narrative, the "what then" act will be presented as a short cutscene at the end and so not really a part of the actual game, just an emotional wrapping up in movie-form. That is also the problem because games are based around the interactivity and the player being able to make something dramatic and ationpacked happen - it's hard to present the third act as interactive without it being unsubstantial gameplay-wise.

 

[level250geek]

I'm not a big advocate for telling stories through games. I think gaming itself is good enough. That does not mean, however, that I don't appreciate a game that establishes an extensive fictional universe, has a narrative that runs in the background but is engaging none-the-less, or that uses its narrative as a game play element (Braid, Portal).

The biggest difficulty with applying the three act structure to games is this: the best movies, the ones that break the mold, are tragedies. The answer to the question "Will the hero succeed?" is no, or they may succeed but at a great cost (such as the death of a loved one, or them self).

How can you apply to games and not frustrate the player? In a game, the pay-off is victory: you can't get around that. The closest one can get to this in a game is the noble sacrifice (most recently, the ending of Halo Wars). Giving your own life for the good of others sounds most heroic and, in a sense, rewarding; but game after game with this ending just makes a whole new formula.

 

[KDR_11k]

Birth, Death, Rebirth.

What should definitely not be forgotten is that many stories begin in the act: James Bond finishes up some smaller job or maybe the first episode happens at a time in the mid-season, etc. This is to give the viewer the immediate impression of "this is what you'll get". Games don't do that, many games mess up by including a completely unengaging beginning that merely explains to you how to operate your character and what all those symbols on the screen mean. That fails to grip the player unless he already knows he'll like the game once this boring beginning is over.

Yes, a game's beginning should establish why you should care but a game is about interaction first and foremost so the beginning needs to establish this with interaction and about the interaction. Nothing is worse than a 24 minute intro with nothing about the interactivity happening. If you want an interactive introduction maybe some buildup sim like Anno or Dwarf Fortress could fit, you build something up and when the problems arise you want to deal with them because otherwise the things you built up will be lost. What these games do NOT have is the third act and really, why would they? Gamers aren't likely to leave any business unfinished, they'll not only kill their opponent, they'll burn their city to the ground and then pour salt on that ground. There's no next. Either the player is dead or everybody else is.

Well, there we have our problem: Players. How do you get an engaging story when the main character is a pragmatic munchkin? Railroad him? Yeah, that's going to make for an interactive story, whenever the player doesn't follow the script the designer wrote for him he'll get punished, great interactivity. Doesn't matter if you can make stuff emotionally engaging and characters genuinely likeable, at some point the player will want to see what happens if he stabs them in the face and if it's just on the second playthrough. It gives a bigger sense of accomplishment to do something unconventional, to do something only you did, to write your own story rather than merely following the rails set by the designers. I guess by that metric we should be praising ToadyOne instead of Hideo Kojima because the goal of Dwarf Fortress is to create emergent stories naturally and if they're just the story of a megalomaniac who built a tower out of flesh and bones while flooding the oposition with magma.

Players: Give them a hand and they'll take the whole arm, then use it to anally violate a nearby donkey.

Yeah, I know we'll probably not want to transplant the three act structure verbatim anyway (old plays had five acts and TV didn't take all of them) but we should be careful about making the wrong moves, especially in the beginning when we have to establish more "why should I care about this game?" than "why should I care about these characters?".

 

[Aptspire]

Portal:
Act 1: Hello and again, welcome...
Act 2: We pretended we were going to murder you...
Act 3: Well, you found me, congratulations...Was it worth it?

 

[GoldenShadow]

This fits extremely well to the Half-Life Episodes. SPOILERS for those who haven't played the game.

SPOILERS

The first act establishes a dramatic problem.
-Half-Life 2 Episode 1: There is a massive portal brewing over the citadel

The second act resolves the dramatic problem.
-Half-Life 2 Episode 2: The science team successfully closes the portal over the citadel with a missile.

The third act answers the question, "What then?"
-Half-Life 2 Episode 3: what then? we don't know yet.

/SPOILERS

 

[ShadowKirby]

Careful guys, I am getting my notes out of my backpack.

You are using Field's 3 acts structure of the classic Hollywood movie but what about the 5 acts structure from Thompson: Setup--->Complicating action----->Development----->Climax----->Epilogue.
Let's use Bioshock as an example.

Setup: The introduction cutscene in the plane, maybe we can even consider the title screen and the selection screen where you decide new game/load/options as a part of it as it gives you info on the game and actually gives you a form of interactivity.

Complicating action: The plane crashes and you go down to Rapture, you meet Atlas. The first level in a way.

Development: Most of the game. The development is divided by levels, or chapters.

Climax: The final fight against Fontaine.

Epilogue: The final cutscene.


Of course, as opposed to Thompson's theories, the first 4 acts are not about the same length with a shorter conclusion. A way bigger percentage goes to development, 50% and up. I still think games should find their own structure but nothing stops us from using movie theories as a base.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Games are completely different to movies. I don't see how this screen writing formula is more useful than the monomyth concept especially since movies are so short and lacking in participation. I suppose that more high definition games that had little interactivity would benefit from being short and formulaic. Would they be able to differentiate themselves from movies in a positive way though?

 

[ukslim]

Cleanest example of the three act plotline: Independence Day.

Per the billboards:
Day 1: they arrive
Day 2: they attack
Day 3: they day the Earth fights back

 

[sneak_copter]

This fits extremely well to the Half-Life Episodes. SPOILERS for those who haven't played the game.

SPOILERS

The first act establishes a dramatic problem.
-Half-Life 2 Episode 1: There is a massive portal brewing over the citadel

The second act resolves the dramatic problem.
-Half-Life 2 Episode 2: The science team successfully closes the portal over the citadel with a missile.

The third act answers the question, "What then?"
-Half-Life 2 Episode 3: what then? we don't know yet.

/SPOILERS

Hahahha. That's very good, besides the spoiling it for people.

 

[GyroCaptain]

I've seen plenty of films that played fast and loose with the system. By and large, they were better for it. Then again, the overall introduction/question->resolution->climax/what then? provides one more good reason why Indigo Prophecy is jarring. It follows the formula perfectly (thus building expectations) until it goes bananas and then restarts somewhere after the beginning. It's like switching channels between two drastically different films on TV.

 

[The Random One]

Interesting theories, but little more. As it's been said before, you can't apply the theory of movies and cinema to games, at least not directly. Your article mentions that you can't make the game more compelling by adding to the gameplay. To that, I say: Yes, you can. Play NetHack. The story fits in a small box of text. It's not compelling because of that, it's compelling because of the ridiculous depth of gameplay, far beyond most of the deepest games out there. It may be a special case, but even if you make the story more compelling while ignoring gameplay, it won't work - the gameplay has to help you out here. After all, it's what makes a game a game.

Another strike against it is that games are much longer than movies. A three-hour movie is long. A five-hour game is short. If you develop something in the first minutes of gameplay and hold it over the players' heads for the hours and hours of gameplay it loses its power over time. There are ways to reverse this, mostly renewing the conflict (also know as 'there goes the city again') but a better way is to solve issues while creating new ones.

 

[trollboy]

The problem right now is that video games haven't really established a formula that works for them. With a few exceptions, a video game will either take a story and play out most of it in cut scenes, as an imitation of a movie, or it will ignore a story and just keep placing the gamer into random scenarios w/ little explanation or reason besides "He told me to." Something that is not easy for everyone to grasp is that video games are not movies where you play the central character. Just like comic books are not just movies with the central images printed out. And just like the fact that books are not just a screen play for a movie. They are separate mediums and for them to work properly they need to be approached from a different POV.

 

[Ronwue]

I always thought the game industry needed better writing in general. But I never thought of it that way...

 

[Droids_Rule]

Sweet, he mentioned Dawn of War II.

 

[dcheppy]

3 act structure is okay but remember that acts 1 and 3 should not be cutscenes. For story driven games:

Act 1: Exploration- drop the player into the gameworld, introduce him to game mechanics, some bad guys etc.. make the player care about the world he/she is saving. At the end of the act introduce the dramatic question. "the world is in danger, you need to save it"

Act 2: Escalating Challenges- The player completes a series of escalating challenges until he answers the dramatic question. "I've purged the world of evil"

Act 3: The Final Boss- Story driven games need this. "With the world purged of evil all I now need to destroy the devil"

Epilogue/Credits: A cutscene running alongside the credits is okay here because it's hard to play credits(flower and katamari damacy are notable exceptions)

an example of a game that uses this structure(among many good games) is god of war.

Act 1: The Agean Sea- you are thrown into Kratos world and the game explains its mechanics to you. you are not fighting for anything, just fighting and exploring.

Act 2: After the Hydra fight Athena tells you your mission is to fight Ares, and a series of challenges leads to you to him.

Act 3: The Boss Fight: Ares. Epic fight

Hl2 also notably follows this formula.

 

[zebrin]

Ahh, three act screenwriting. You have to love these things.
however, as has been noted above, it does not translate properly to a game. Games are a newer medium than film, and are just now coming into their own as a narrative style, ("Half Life 2" and "Mass Effect" being notable for their driving stories) The thing is, these games are just that; stories. They have conflicts, resolutions, and new conflicts all leading to a finale. But the main thing the player sees is "Ok, how do I solve this one?"
In movies, the plot is the main driving force the viewer asks themselves "Ok what are THEY going to do about this?". It moves the show along. In games, it is the player that moves things they ask themselves "How am I going to deal with this?". Some of the best games are ones that allow for exploration while leading to an overreaching plot-line, things like Morrowind, in which the game presented you with an empty book, with a good plot-line to start out with. But how you finished the story was entirely up to you.
They give you a story, and tell you to run with it.
Morrowind barely even has an opening act. They start you on a ship, where you get to name yourself, then move you through character creation, and then put you into the world to do whatever, and be whatever. The conflicts the game presents are resolved by the player in the way they see fit, and then a new conflict arises.


However, I do agree that most good games have a structure to them. What that structure is, I do not yet know, hell... I doubt even the game designers themselves know yet. The thing about games is that they are so... open, the myraid ways of writing them so diverse, that a strict formula to making one just won't work. After all, try using the three act formula for making Tetris and it detracts from the game, but if you do not have a well made framework for a story driven game, even the best story will suck.
And never forget that game-play will define it all. Because the game-play is the vehicle that the story rides in.