But acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

I want to dig into that question here, using the notions expressed by Spector and Jaros as a jumping-off point. This isn’t a rebuttal or a reiteration–rather, it’s a different framework for viewing many of the same challenges. We may even come to some of the same conclusions.

Know Your Themes and Your World

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

• allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.
• immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

• Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?
• Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?
• Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn#8221;)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

Teach Your Players About Your Worldview (and Fast!)

Of course, you knowing the compass points of your world doesn’t necessarily mean your players will. (Unless you are using a license, they almost certainly won’t.) For most games and most narratives, it’s best to lay out at least the broad strokes of your world’s principles early on; if one were to equate a game with a television show, you’d want your audience to have a sense of the themes by the end of the pilot.

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

Every Path Should Present a “Satisfying” Story

Once your world is defined and the player understands it, you’re essentially asking “What sort of story do we want to tell together#8221; when you present the player with choices. But what those choices are and how they play out is critical to shaping a satisfying narrative.

First, avoid presenting options that can’t lead to an engaging and stimulating narrative. That doesn’t mean every option needs to hand the player a trophy. What it does mean is that you should avoid wasting the player’s time–if one or more narrative-driving choices results in substantially “better” stories than others, why are the not-very-good options even available?

When you ask the player “What sort of story do we want to tell#8221; it’s okay if the player says “a bittersweet story” or “a tragic story of hubris” and the game obliges. But if the player wants an unhappy story, it still needs to be narratively satisfying. If you’re offering me a choice between The Taming of the Shrew or Romeo and Juliet, great; don’t offer me a choice between The Taming of the Shrew or a YouTube video of someone weeping.

In order to make all your paths satisfying (within reason–there will always be certain combinations of choices that are unpredictably unaffecting or fail to suggest an internally consistent player character), consider your themes closely when developing your choices and mechanics. The ability to murder people on the street might be an appropriate option for a modern-day crime game; the ability to murder any crew member probably doesn’t add anything to your Star Trek game, as it’s unlikely that’s going to lead to a satisfying story worth telling. Use those resources to broaden your relevant options instead. (A Star Trek game might not give me “violent vs. peaceful” choices, but “technical vs. diplomatic” choices, each shaping a different sort of story and outcomes. e.g., you might allow a player to explore the dilemma of a sturdy peace rigorously enforced by technological disarmament vs. a more fragile, bloody peace reliant on the will of all parties involved.)

If you must have dead ends, make them quick to resolve–don’t force your player to experience a dissatisfying story just because he tried something thematically off-key.

Judge the Player Character, not the Player

Making sure that your choices and story paths have equal narrative validity brings us to the question of judging.

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

Is it possible to trick the player into thinking an option will lead to a different outcome than it does? Of course, and it’s not particular difficult. You can offer the player a Captain America-style superheroic action story and give her grim-and-gritty Platoon instead, but to what end? Any message you’re trying to send will need to overcome the massive barrier of the player’s irritation at your bait-and-switch. Better to be honest about what the player is getting into upfront (thematically–you don’t have to give away your plot points!) or design a more linear game without multiple narrative approaches (or both).

And of course–as we discussed above–“judging” needn’t be a question of a positive or negative outcome. For combat-heavy role-playing games, most developers try to provide many viable “builds” of player characters for different combat abilities and playstyles; judging a narrative “build” of various choices most likely isn’t about whether the ultimate result is good or bad, but about what form the world and characters take according to the themes and ideas you’ve chosen to prioritize.

Don’t Pull Punches

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged.

If you create a world in which consistency and determination win out while moderation and compromise result in disaster, or where technological and diplomatic solutions can both be applied to reach largely the same outcomes, you’re already making a case to your audience. Your game is your study of a particular worldview, and every player choice is a supporting argument. (Even if you throw in choices and consequences that go against the overall thrust of your narrative, you’re only arguing for a more nuanced worldview–not stepping back from the case itself.)

You owe it to yourself and your players to present a vision that’s well-considered and coherent. Once you’ve determined the rules of your world, follow through on them. If you find that means some of the choices you want to present to your player result in uninteresting, non-engaging, or “not fun” outcomes, then you’ve got a problem–but most likely, that problem is either in the basic principles of your narrative or in the kinds of choices you’ve put on offer. If you find yourself “watering down” or skewing choice outcomes in a way that feels narratively wrong in some ineffable way, you’ve likely got the same root trouble.

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

There are Always Exceptions

None of this may apply to your project. If you’re building a serious game that’s meant to double as a police procedure training lesson, you’re likely going to have a lot of absolute right-or-wrong answers. Or maybe you want a game with an absolute narrative score, where more points correspond to a better ending.

That’s okay. There are no rules. But then, I’m here to defend didacticism–not ensure its absolute triumph.

Or, more likely, not.

The notion of killing someone close to the protagonist to kick off a story is an old one. In traditional media, most of the time it’s not really meant to be a motivation that’s of particular interest to the audience: we’re not expected to be too distraught over Hercules’s children, or the Punisher’s family. Instead, we’re meant to accept the motivation as valid and move on–it’s just enough to give the protagonist an excuse to do what he (with occasional exceptions, it’s usually he) does while we enjoy the resulting twists, turns, and carnage. The inner pain driving the protagonist isn’t the subject of the story–what matters is what he does with that pain, and the consequences that ensue.

It’s not the most intellectual or humane way of telling a story, but you know what? Sometimes it works.

It doesn’t work in a video game. We’ve talked before about the importance of converging player and player character motivations, but to recap: The closer the player’s motivations are to the player character’s, the more engaged you can expect the player to be in the narrative. Wanting the same thing (beat the boss!) is good, but wanting the same thing for the same reason (beat the boss because he’s so, so irritating!) is better. When the player’s motivations are unlike those of the protagonist, you lose one of the unique strengths of the medium and–assuming you want a compelling story at all–you burden yourself with the need to craft a dual-track narrative that functions to motivate the player and player character separately. (A topic potentially worth tackling some day in a separate article.)

You can’t motivate a player by killing someone she’s never met before, or who she’s seen only in the briefest of cutscenes. That much should be obvious. As a consequence, if the player character is supposed to be distraught by the loss of someone dear early on, you can almost guarantee the player won’t be. Your story won’t fail on a technical level (in the sense that all characters can still act reasonably based on their internal motivations), but you’re raising a barrier to the player’s actual interest and involvement in the narrative.

This peril can arise in less contrived scenarios, as well–any situation in which a player character’s motivations are driven by something the player hasn’t experienced is a risk.

Let’s move from theory to something more concrete, and examine some different scenarios for a theoretical action-adventure game we’ll call Drug Murderer: Yes, Thou Shalt Totally Murder.

Scenario One: The player character, Karla, is a loyal member of the Red Panda gang. Within the opening half-hour of gameplay, a fellow Red Panda betrays her and kills her best friend, sending her on a one-woman rampage to defeat the gang that was once her surrogate family.

With a full half-hour in which to get to know the Best Friend, the player might actually care when he dies. But the player isn’t going to care with anywhere near as much fervor as Karla–and most likely, the player’s anger will drop off very quickly without reinforcement. At best, this can serve as an inciting incident to a larger plot in which new motivations can be introduced. At worst, it’ll be entirely ineffective.

And that’s assuming that we get a solid half-hour demonstrating that a) Karla and the Best Friend have a believable relationship, and b) the Best Friend is an appealing enough character that the player will actually like him. Fail to devote enough time and effort to either of those tasks and failure is a foregone conclusion.

Scenario Two: As Scenario One, but the game’s development team has decided that Scenario One’s perfunctory motivation isn’t going to work. Still, that opening sequence has already been designed, the cinematics have been motion captured, and so forth–the dead Best Friend stays.

As a corrective, once Karla’s rampage begins, she now quickly discovers that the Red Pandas have acquired a nuclear weapon and intend to detonate it downtown in return for payment from a terrorist group. Karla’s motivation now shifts from a simple quest for vengeance to a desire to save the city.

This is a nebulous, impersonal motivation, but it gives something for the player to experience and latch onto. Handled with delicate care (and with effort put in to make the player invested in the city), it might work; at the very least, it gets us past a severe Karla / player divide, where Karla focuses only on the Best Friend and the player has nothing driving him other than “finish the game.” A hand off in which a non-functional motive is exchanged for an adequate one is better than not making the swap at all.

Scenario Three: As Scenario One, but instead of trying to hurry past the initial motivation and replace it with something else (as in Scenario Two), the development team decides instead to make the death of Best Friend a turning point for the entire game.

The story is realigned so that for the first third of playing time, Karla and Best Friend are partners inside the Red Pandas. The death of Best Friend doesn’t happen until well after the point where the player is sold on the character and the relationship–once the player has bonded with Best Friend, killing him off has the same effect on the player and on Karla. This approach is simple and potentially very effective.

Scenario Four: After much debate, the development team has decided to get rid of the Best Friend motivation altogether and try to find something less dependent on a particular moment and character. Now Karla is an enigmatic figure with a hatred for the Red Panda gang and a depressed and detached affect. Over the course of the game, the player discovers the root of Karla’s present state–she was once a DEA agent who was held hostage by Pandas, locked away in isolation for years. Now she’s sworn vengeance on the group.

This really isn’t appropriate for most games. By intentionally obscuring Karla’s motives, the player is actively prevented from empathizing with Karla even as he works to accomplish her goals. The player is being asked to put himself in Karla’s shoes, to strive (through gameplay) to do what she’s trying to do, without understanding why.

Scenario Five: In this scenario, Karla’s past is the same as in Scenario Four, but her time as a hostage is shown in a non-interactive introductory sequence. This is an improvement–at least the player can understand what’s going on–but it’s not as effective as it could be.

Scenario Six: Instead of the non-interactive introductory sequence from Scenario Two, the player actually plays through short segments from Karla’s time as a hostage. These would need to be intense to be effective, but the job of this game is to convey a taste of the feeling of isolation and helplessness (as opposed to building a complex relationship, as would be required for the Best Friend scenarios). It’s still a challenging narrative and a tough protagonist to work with, but the approach becomes more viable this way.

Alternatively–or in addition–the player could spend time with the depressive Karla post-hostage-scenario but before she begins her murderous rampage (e.g., dragging herself through her day job at the DEA, talking to therapists, etc.) While it’s rarely as effective as creating emotion and motivation through direct experience, players can respond to a “character tutorial”–learning what sort of character they’re playing, how she reacts and how she thinks, and establishing the limits of behavior and agency–in the same way they respond to a tutorial that teaches game systems.

As with a mechanical tutorial, a character tutorial should come early and shouldn’t challenge or confuse the player. It should ease me into the character I’m playing, clearly delineate her motivations, and allow me to gradually buy into her personality, laying out the baseline from which I’ll work going forward and helping me adopt the character’s mindset.

There’s no single right answer among these scenarios. They all have strengths and they all have weaknesses. For most types of games, some will clearly be more appropriate than others, but there are always exceptions to wrestle with.

Nonetheless, it’s imperative that game writers are able to see these strengths and weaknesses instead of relying on the tricks of non-interactive media. Because if a writer (of all people!) isn’t aware of the peculiarities of interactive narrative and able to steer a game’s development appropriately, who else will?

Image purloined from the official site.

Saints Row IV is clearly comedic, but its narrative also succeeds in ways rarely seen in modern big-budget games. It builds its emotional stakes, Player engagement, and yes, quite a few jokes on a fundamentally joyful core.

Let’s talk about why it works.

But first, a quick summary for those unfamiliar with the game. (And of course we’ll be vivisecting the patient, so if you haven’t played it expect many delightful surprises ruined.) Brett Molina’s review in USA Today describes the Saints Row franchise thusly:

The transformation of Saints Row has been fascinating to watch. When it first launched in 2006, Saints Row seemed like a Grand Theft Auto knockoff, featuring the exploits of the Third Street Saints gang in the fictional city of Steelport.

Then things got weird. Instead of taking a dramatic turn, Saints Row II and Saints Row The Third ramped up the craziness. They focused on what made open world action games fun: exploring freely and wreaking havoc. Oh, and you can choose to do a lot of this while wearing cat suits.

In Saints Row IV, leading the Saints is not enough. Instead, players serve as the president of the United States from “The White Crib.” An upcoming speech is disrupted by an alien ambush that leaves the White House cabinet missing and Earth in ruins. Eventually, the president is captured and placed in a simulation of Earth.

Trapped (mostly) in the simulation (a la The Matrix), the gangster-turned-POTUS proceeds to gain simulated superpowers (improved via lightweight RPG-style mechanics), rescue his or her fellow gang members, and take the fight to the aliens in an open world environment. Story missions are linear and scripted and unlock as the game progresses, while various activities and minigames are available at any time.

Joyful Noises

Although the protagonist’s personality and dialogue are predetermined, his or her physical appearance, clothing, gender, and voice can all be heavily customized by the Player along with a steadily growing array of superpowers and special abilities. These aesthetic and mechanical options are old tricks, traditional means of giving the Player a strong sense of ownership and attachment to the Player Character. They’re deployed well and they’re deployed appropriately, but they’re not what makes Saints Row IV’s treatment of the protagonist special.

Instead, consider this quality that sets the Saints Row IV “Boss” apart from so many narrative-driven video game protagonists:

The Boss loves his or her life.

Saints Row IV is as full of delights for the Player Character as it is for the Player. The Boss cheers enthusiastically when he or she collects a power-up item. The Boss sings along to the radio. The Boss appears to genuinely enjoy spending time and hanging out with his or her colleagues. The Boss gets a kick out of fighting.

Raising the roof in the middle of traffic. How much more joyful can you get?

That doesn’t mean the the Boss can’t view dangerous or unpleasant situations as dangerous or unpleasant (although Saints Row IV never takes itself too seriously), but it does mean there’s an ubiquitous effervescence to the narrative. The Player Character always has something to be excited about, whether a new weapon or a chance to reunite with a friend.

That’s an incredibly appealing quality in a human being. We like spending time with people who are enjoying themselves. “Funny” is great, but enthusiasm is infectious, and my desire to spend time with the Boss was a major part of what kept me engaged with the game.

Not every story needs a protagonist with this particular joie de vivre, but it strikes me as a particularly effective creative choice for this medium. So many games are built on giving the Player a chance to have fun, yet utilize dour or grim (if occasionally snarky and sarcastic) protagonists. But synchronizing the Player’s experience with that of the Player Character nearly always provides superior engagement and immersion, so why not let a game’s protagonist enjoy him- or herself alongside the Player?

And while it may be easier to fit such a character into a comedy, there’s no reason joy can’t fit into more dramatic stories, too. An outwardly angsty, tormented protagonist isn’t the only way to give a story weight. (I say this, of course, as someone who loves and writes angst-ridden stories… but remember how incredibly effective other methods can be!)

Emotional Stakes

In the world of Saints Row IV, blowing up Earth (an event that occurs relatively early on) is a joke. Sure, characters occasionally seem a little mad or a little down about it–but mostly, it’s an over-the-top gesture in an over-the-top game. It’s insane and funny and just a bit horrifying if you think much about it.

But when one of the Boss’s friends is hurting? That’s when the music changes and all the characters gets scowly. And even though I haven’t played a Saints Row game before and the intricacies of the relationships are largely lost on me… when the Boss gets upset that his or her friends are being hurt? I care, too.

Why? Because as we established already, I care about the Boss. I like the Boss. I don’t need to care about his or her friends so long as it’s clear how and why they’re important to the character.

The evil alien Zinyak, the prime enemy of Saints Row IV, is an absurd character wonderfully portrayed by voice actor J. B. Blanc. I liked having Zinyak show up–which isn’t something that particularly motivates me as a Player to stop him. But the Boss really, really doesn’t like Zinyak, and again… I care about the Boss. So I’m okay fighting the enemy.

High five!

Saints Row IV consistently values relationships above events–a fairly standard dramatic approach–to an almost satirical degree. And it’s only “almost” satirical because it still works. The events can be unimaginably important, and yet I still care more about helping my pals come to terms with their pasts.

Yet none of this would matter if the game weren’t so effective at creating a likable central protagonist. We’ve all played a dozen games which motivate the Player Character–and attempt to motivate the Player–through a threat to a loved one, and which fail utterly because I don’t really care about the Player Character in the first place. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you handle one aspect of your narrative well; sometimes the weakest link in the chain is all that matters.

Embracing Gameplay

Another unusually successful element of the Saints Row IV narrative is its treatment of “standard” (that is, non-narrative-focused) gameplay: e.g., open world combat and exploration.

Most big-budget titles that set the Player loose in an environment built to react to havoc ultimately ignore the fact that much of what the Player does jars with the central narrative. Mowing down civilians–accidentally or not–or engaging in a high-speed chase over the sidewalk “ought” to have permanent legal and psychological consequences if the characters are to remain relatable and the setting is intended to be remotely realistic.

But generally speaking, games that let you cause absolute havoc are designed to encourage that havoc. Which means in many games of this sort, either the protagonist comes across as a psychopathic lunatic or the narrative suffers from a fundamental disconnect. (Alternatively, the Player may actually try to play the game “in character” and avoid wreaking havoc… and thereby experience an internally consistent narrative that simply isn’t much fun.)

Note the in-game pixelation of the character on the right: a reminder that no, this isn’t even real in the game’s own universe.

Saints Row IV handles all of this with one easy excuse: The world is a computer simulation. It’s okay when it doesn’t make sense. It’s okay to use random cars as explosive weapons or shoot friendly civilians to regain health. The protagonist is acting out the same impulses as the Player, but he or she isn’t hurting anyone within the framework of the story. Even bad AI and bugs are justified by the narrative.

As with ensuring that the narrative’s major emotional beats are character based, this aspect can be boiled down to a trite and traditional piece of advice: establish the rules and themes of your setting upfront and abide by them in gameplay and narrative. But once again, since so many games fail to acknowledge that my gameplay takes place in the same universe as the narrative, it’s useful to look at an example that takes this to an extreme–and entirely succeeds.

If anything, bridging any gameplay-narrative divide is far more important to a dramatic narrative than a comedic one. By making everything “real”–that is, by creating a much tighter narrative in which everything I do, “gameplay” or not, fits with everything else–moments of actual emotion and importance hit much harder. My mind doesn’t need to spend effort justifying how killing enemies in combat doesn’t matter, but killing a character in a cutscene does, because the story’s already done it. I can absorb everything the game offers me without artificial distractions.

Sex Positive

The last success we’re going to look at is the game’s treatment of sex. Saints Row IV is the rare video game that handles sexual content:

a) in a largely positive manner. That is, sex is depicted as something that people desire and seek out and participate in consensually. Characters have sexual agency. They aren’t punished or stigmatized for it. Even kinks (such as one prominent character’s BDSM hobby) are treated as harmless quirks–fodder for infrequent jokes among friends, but not a source of shame or a defining characteristic. The “romances” the Boss can carry out with the crew are delightful in this respect:

One of my favorite “romances.” Not my video.

b) in a way that almost never conflates sex with genuine violence. There are a few rare exceptions (to my mind, some of the content in the Enter the Dominatrix downloadable content was a failure on this front; and I found some of the comedy weapons such as the dildo bat to be in poor taste, albeit essentially harmless), but next to the cavalcade of rape threats and misogynistic foes found in many games, Saints Row IV is practically utopian.

c) without favoring any particular gender, orientation, or gender-orientation combination. Or it tries to, at least. Sure, non-player characters wander the city in fetish gear, but women and men so dressed come in roughly equal numbers and are equally absurdly exposed. The Boss can romance other characters regardless of his or her gender. (In fact, the Boss’s own gender is fluid–the Player can change the protagonist’s gender essentially at any time, as well as mix and match male voices with female bodies or vice-versa.) It is worth noting that plots focused on past romantic partners or sexual dangers invariably center on women, but these are relatively few and far between.

This shouldn’t be difficult and it shouldn’t be rare. But it is rare, and Saints Row IV is a worthy example to study when considering the role of sex in a “mature” game.

“Mature” might be an overstatement. Or maybe not?

Yes, even with the dildo bat.

Final Thoughts

Saints Row IV was my introduction to the franchise. Based on reviews, I expected to enjoy it and be amused. I didn’t expect it to be worthy of a full-length dissection, yet here we are

Every narrative has its flaws, and Saints Row IV has its share as well. It relies a bit too much on character knowledge from previous Saints Row games; not all of its dramatic moments land, and a few seem oddly disjointed; and the game has an occasional tendency to ignore its own rules (or forgo an explanation of why they don’t apply).

Yet it’s still a fantastic narrative piece for all the reasons discussed above. The fact that Saints Row IV tells a funny story isn’t why it works–“funny” just happens to be the sort of story the wonderfully crafted narrative sets out to tell.

Footnote: This post draws from my experiences with Saints Row IV and its downloadable content packs Enter the Dominatrix and How the Saints Save Christmas. The standalone expansion Gat out of Hell ships this week. Hopes are high.

(Success, in this case, being shorthand for “ability to elicit the desired audience reaction,” which should be broad enough to cover both “making the player cry” and “increasing the player’s engagement with the game setting and thereby the player’s willingness to spend money on microtransactions.” We’ve got a big tent on this site, with room for everyone.)

In traditional storytelling media, writers are concerned with finding ways to make the audience empathize with the protagonist. And for good reason–even when an audience may not want a given protagonist to succeed at her goals, we should care about her fate and the fate of secondary characters (otherwise, what’s the point?) It’s difficult to care about a character we’re unable to understand or relate to.

In interactive narrative, empathy continues to play a role–but it’s intimately tied to the player’s own motivation. Unlike in traditional media, where the audience is essentially passive, video game players must constantly and determinedly exert effort in order to drive the narrative forward. If I (as a player) don’t spend an hour of my life struggling and figuring out how to win a boss battle, then the player character doesn’t get to the next stage of the story.

As a consequence, the more a player’s motivations diverge from those of the player character, the more difficult it is for the player to empathize and immerse herself in the player character’s head. The opposite is true as well: the better synchronized a player’s motivations are with those of the player character, the more natural the player finds empathy and immersion. When I loathe an antagonist and the player character loathes the same antagonist, it’s deeply satisfying when we finally overcome the foe. If I like an antagonist the player character loathes, my interest in overcoming a thousand obstacles to defeat the enemy dwindles. That doesn’t mean, however, that matching motivations precisely should be an overriding goal. (We’ll get to that part shortly.)

Let’s look at some theoretical examples. First, an extreme case to illustrate the worst-case scenario.

“Drug Murderer,” a modern-day stealth-action game.

The player character is a successful drug dealer. By murdering a judge and his family, the player character hopes to postpone a trial that could implicate her. She must fight her way past police guarding the judge’s house and kill everyone.

In a traditional storytelling medium, this would be a difficult scene to pull off–but if the protagonist were sufficiently developed and compelling, the audience might still care enough about her to want to see the outcome. (Or loathe her enough to want to see her fail–either way, the audience is invested.) The audience doesn’t have to want her to murder the family for there to be dramatic tension–the question of how far she’ll go, whether she’ll succeed, what happens after, and so forth are all potentially engaging questions.

In a video game, where I’m the one pulling the trigger and agonizing over how to get through the bathroom window without the family dog alerting the cops–where I’m the one who has to work to make the protagonist succeed–I’m as likely as not to wonder why I’m even bothering. I may care about the player character, and I may believe that this is a crime she’d commit, but that doesn’t mean I approve. What I really want is for her to surrender to the cops, or change her mind and go home, or find some other alternative. Instead, the only way I can advance the game narrative is to put in the effort to do something I don’t want to do.

(Or maybe I do want to do it, if the gameplay is compelling and fun enough and I can ignore the narrative implications… but we’ll get to that shortly, too.)

Generally speaking, this isn’t a bold artistic move that makes me complicit in the crimes of the player character. It’s a failure to acknowledge player motivations that simply makes me frustrated and less interested in the story. It asks the player to stop caring about why he’s doing things and to just do them to move things forward. (This is one example of the much-ballyhooed-but-still-genuinely-useful-as-a-term “ludonarrative dissonance.”)

This isn’t to say a scenario like what’s described above could never work, but it’s a challenge. Still, it’s an extreme case, and most player / character motivation issues in games are more subtle.

Suppose the protagonist of Drug Murderer is committing all the same acts but is also working with the CIA to expose a group of heroin-producing terrorists, and thus acting with sanction; this is a more likely plot for a video game (simply given marketability and what sorts of stories sell), but it has the same problems in a less blatant form. Or perhaps the protagonist is committing all her atrocious acts in order to rescue her uncle, held hostage by other dealers–an uncle given a decent amount of development and screen time, but not a character so compelling that most players would cross any line to save him. Beware the point where the player decides, “No–I’d actually kind of prefer to fail here, all things considered. The characters think the end goal is worthwhile, but I don’t.”

After that, the player must either divorce his narrative engagement from gameplay entirely (at which point, the gameplay interaction represents little more than the “interaction” of turning pages in a book to progress the story) or submerge himself in the player character’s mind so fully that he can proceed without revolting against the tasks he must perform–not impossible, but difficult, and something many players may not be interested in trying at all. Broadly speaking, it’s my belief that player motivations and player character motivations should, at a minimum, converge, even when they do not overlap.

A disconnect needn’t come about for moral reasons, either. If Drug Murderer presents a series of side tasks requiring the player to do a great deal of work to romance a secondary character, those tasks become busywork unless the player actively wants the romance to succeed (because the player likes the secondary character, sees the tasks as not excessive, etc.)

In other cases, the motivational disconnect may not be about in-world preferences at all. Let’s look at another example.

“Dragon Swords VII: The Chaos Daemons,” an open world fantasy role-playing game.

The player character (built from a variety of custom gender / race / class combinations by the player) must save the world from the evil chaos daemons by closing the fabled Daemongate in Blackmoor Swamp.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that the game narrative successfully creates a degree of player investment in the world–that is, the player would rather see the world saved than not. (After all, without at least competent writing the rest of our problems don’t matter.)

In this scenario, we have clear agreement between player and character motivations on the ultimate goal of the game. Everyone wants to save the world. The disagreement comes in methodology. As mentioned above, Dragon Swords VII is an open world game–its environments are elaborate and expansive, filled with lovely hidden touches and hundreds of side quests. Players can entertain themselves for hours just following caravans down the setting’s roads. (Dragon Swords VI: Eye of Darkspine was an ill-advised foray into action-adventure, and the less said about it the better.)

So while the player character is motivated to get to Blackmoor Swamp and save the world quickly, the player is likely to want to spend as much time exploring the setting as possible before finally, reluctantly, finishing the last of the side quests and heading for the endgame.

It’s not a disastrous difference. Our lines converge, and the points farthest apart still aren’t as far separated as in Drug Murderer. But maybe we could make it better? Maybe we can tweak our game’s scenario to encourage a closer relationship between player motivation and player character motivation.

So let’s say instead that in order to close the Daemongate at Blackmoor Swamp, the player must first accomplish two things: First, he must unearth a series of lost stores of mystical knowledge buried across the land (plot coupons), searching for clues to their location along the way. Second, he must weaken the daemons’ power–they feed on conflict–by bringing peace to the land, doing everything from ending wars to helping the desperate and impoverished.

Suddenly, the player character has a reasonable motivation to explore the world in detail and perform hundreds of side quests. Sure, it’s not a perfect match, but we’re a lot closer–and maybe close enough, depending on the overarching goals of the project and other aspects of the narrative.

Is there a scenario where we can make the player’s motivation to explore the world match precisely with the player character’s desires? Certainly it’s possible. Consider a game in which the player character is, literally, an explorer–a stranger from another land come to see what’s out there and gain the knowledge and riches of another culture. But that’s a game with a very nontraditional approach to video game fantasy, and there’s nothing wrong with liking both epic save-the-world plots and open worlds. Perfect implementation of any narrative technique isn’t always optimal for a project as a whole; and sometimes “good enough” is, in context, the best you can do given the goals of the project.

Now let’s look at one more example, this time focused on dissonance caused by game mechanics (as opposed to overall gameplay or narrative factors).

“Manual Transmission II: Speed Limit – Infinity,” a racing game with a story-driven campaign mode.

The player character is an internationally known race car driver who can outrace anything–except his own dark past. He must take on a series of challenging courses and win in order to pay off his mysterious backers. Numerous “achievements” requiring the player to, e.g., hit birds on the course, sideswipe all opponents, and complete a race without leaving first gear bring replayability to the courses.

Do I even need to go into detail as to why this causes a player / player character split?

Some achievements might still require the player to finish the race, too–but not most of them. Replace “Hit all the birds” with “Unlock all the achievements” if you prefer.

But does it matter?

In a game with minimal story focus, these achievements don’t cause a great deal of damage–who cares about the narrative consequences if the narrative only exists as a framing device for the gameplay? No one complains that chess doesn’t dramatically emulate medieval warfare beyond the names of the pieces.

But the more important the story becomes, the more of a distraction they potentially present. Consider if the aforementioned Drug Murderer had an achievement requiring the player to give money to every homeless person in the city, or if Dragon Swords VII had an achievement requiring the player to only jump, never walk anywhere?

And of course, achievements are simply the easiest target when it comes to game mechanics encouraging action opposing or tangential to player character motivations. Crafting systems in otherwise heroic RPGs often fall into this territory–while it’s not outright wrong for my world-saving archmage to spend vast amounts of time looking for plants in the forest to dye his robe a new, awesome color, it’s not exactly a player / character motivation match, either.

On the other hand, achievements and optional challenges can also reinforce a bond between player and player character motivations. In Thief: The Dark Project, the player takes the role of Garrett, a master thief renowned for his ability to slip in and out of any place undetected. While the game’s lowest difficulty setting permitted the player to complete missions even while hacking her way past guards and alerting half the town, the highest difficulty required the player kill no one (along with stealing more treasures, completing additional objectives, and so on)–just like a proper master thief would.  In essence, the game asked the player to try playing as much like Garrett as possible, but didn’t force so precise a match on players who wanted another playstyle.

(“Say,” the eccentric reader may now ask, “why did you switch from using fake games in your examples to using a real one like Thief#8221; My answer: I’m not here to be negative, and while I needed examples of narrative done wrong, I didn’t want to hold up someone else’s work for excoriation. But I’m happy to praise success stories, and Thief was a perfect example of what I wanted to illustrate.)

Similarly, Manual Transmission II could improve a player’s narrative engagement and immersion by making its achievements based around, for example, crowd-pleasing stunts–encouraging both player and player character to do stupid, difficult, dangerous things that nonetheless make narrative sense.

Of course, it’s always more complicated, and in the real world one has to consider motivation in the context of other narrative factors and gameplay as a whole. As with our last discussion (on Character, Viewpoint, and Audience Sympathy), we’re not even beginning to address the question of what happens when you introduce multiple player characters, or what happens when you partly hide a player character’s motivations from the player (the player character, a Secret Service agent, must get the president safely away from Russian agents… only to reveal that, previously unknown to the player, she’s in on the Russian plot!); suffice it to say that the principles remain, but applying them becomes much trickier.

Nonetheless, player motivation is something that must be considered at every stage of the game writing process. As outlined above, it’s vital when developing high-level story outlines, but it also comes into play on the detail level, with individual game systems and quest objectives and even branching conversation options (it doesn’t matter if every conversation choice is in-character if none of them match the player’s motivations–but splitting “player-driven options” from “player character-driven options” has problems as well!)

Know your players and understand what they’re bringing to the game. Know your characters and what drives them. And remember it all, for every step of development, for every mission and line of dialogue.