在電子游戲中創造實時故事

作者：Jason Bakker

《Wayward Strand》是與眾不同的。它是以70年代的澳大利亞一家醫院為背景，并發生在一艘最初來自德國魏瑪的飛艇上。這是一個實時故事。它就是一個虛擬互動劇場。在這款電子游戲中玩家所扮演的是一個生活在成人世界中的十幾歲少女。

我們很難找到去討論《Wayward Strand》及其開發的契機。但對于我們的這款游戲來說，一個最顯著的差異元素便是其實時架構。

在實時故事中，不管玩家/讀者/觀眾是否與之互動，它都會對他們的輸入做出回應。就像在我們的游戲中，當玩家角色與現實世界中的角色進行交流時，實時故事便會做出明確的回應，當玩家控制他們的角色在現實世界中的位置并通過出現在特定場景和事件中的某一部分而將自己的故事版本融入其中時，實時故事便會做出含蓄的回應。

我們的影響

實時故事并不是故事游戲常使用的架構，但也絕非第一次出現。最顯著的例子便是Smoking Car Production的《東方快車謀殺案》，這是一款以一戰前的東方快車為背景的冒險游戲。

雖然游戲廣受好評但從商業范疇來看卻是失敗的。《東方快車謀殺案》是關于實時故事敘述的一次引人注目的嘗試。正是因為玩了這款游戲才讓我開始考慮實時故事所具有的潛能。

而《Wayward Strand》實時故事的另一個靈感是來自電子游戲世界外部。在過去幾十年的后現代戲劇運動中，觀眾不再是被動的，反而變成了表演中的積極參與者。而戲劇公司Punchdrunk便是這種“具有沉浸感的戲劇”體驗的倡導者（游戲邦互：例如互動戲劇《Sleep No More》和《The Drowned Man》）。

我們團隊中的一些成員去觀看了《Sleep No More》并獲得了一些具有啟發性的體驗。《Sleep No More》有許多突出面，如真實感，即不管是表演者還是觀眾將共享同一個空間；表演如何進行以及觀眾如何成為其中一部分的神秘感；將你自己所目睹的零散事件拼湊成一個故事（你自己的故事）的神奇感。

而最后一個元素也是最讓我們著迷的內容，即探索故事空間并被推動著去做出自己的結論的感受，這也是我們想要在《Wayward Strand》通過實時故事框架而實現的目標。

設計局限

在現實世界中設置帶有心跳，節奏等具有生命的玩家角色并不是什么新鮮事。我想這是許多初出茅廬的游戲設計師都想去做的事，但這在模擬RPG領域卻非常罕見。

出于這些原因，并且因為《東方快車謀殺案》可能是我能夠列舉的唯一一個實時故事案例，且它在制作過程中出現了加班和超預算等問題，所以我們只能謹慎地去明確設計局限性并努力實現目標。

其中的一個局限便是《Wayward Strand》故事設計的固定性。與模擬RPG不同的是，我們的故事并不是源于系統模擬，它是100%定制的。就像在互動小說中，基于玩家的選擇可能會出現多種不同的場景或結果，但這里卻不存在模擬控制角色行動或故事結果。而因為實時屬性以及多個故事線程同時發生在游戲中的不同領域，探索故事的體驗便仍然是受玩具所驅動的。

《Wayward Strand》中的另一個重要設計局限便是玩家代理的級別。在大多數游戲中，玩家代理撥到11時你的玩家角色不僅能夠做出自己的選擇，同時也能夠代表其他角色做出選擇。

而我們真正感興趣的是當你向下撥時會發生些什么。如果你是作為一個擁有有限代理的角色（即擁有去影響世界改變的有限能力）會怎樣？從游戲中的編寫角度來看這真的是一個非常有趣的領域。即通過讓玩家切身考慮對代理具有特定約束性的角色，我們便能夠讓他們站在世界上其他角色的特殊角度去看待事情。

盡管玩家能夠對游戲中的故事做出影響，我們同樣也可以呈現出一些獨立于玩家角色的故事，即讓玩家在此扮演觀察者的角色。就像在生活中，人們并不會總是圍繞著你旋轉，有時候他們甚至不會去考慮到你。

還有最終一個局限便是時間。我們希望盡所能去維持玩家在《Wayward Strand》從開始到最后的游戲體驗（2個小時左右，即大概是一部電影的長度）。這對于我們的整體游戲設計具有重要影響，即不僅能夠確保互動足夠簡單，能夠創造出基于該時間范圍的故事，同時也能夠創造出你在一開始不需要花太多時間去理解的角色。這也非常符合我們希望擁有較少的補充內容的目標。添加更多內容到游戲中并不能拉長其長度，只是去拓寬可能性空間而已。

（ 本文為游戲邦/gamerboom.com編譯，拒絕任何不保留版權的轉發，如需轉載請聯系：游戲邦 ）

On Real-time Stories

by Jason Bakker

Wayward Strand is a lot of different things. Its setting is an Australian hospital in the ‘70s. It takes place on an airship originally constructed in Weimar Germany. It’s a real-time story. It’s virtual interactive theatre. It’s a video game in which you play as a character with limited agency – a teenage girl in a world of adults.

It has been difficult to find an entry point to talking about Wayward Strand and its development. But one obvious element that is a differentiating factor for our game (which is also what we’ve spent the most dev time on thus far) is its real-time structure.

I’ve touched on what a real-time story is previously; it’s a story which plays out regardless of whether the player/reader/watcher interacts with it, but nevertheless is reactive to their input. In our case the story reacts both explicitly, as the player character converses with characters in the world, and implicitly, as the player controls their character’s location in the world and stitches together their own version of the story by being present at a particular subset of scenes and events.

Our Influences

Real-time narratives aren’t a common structure in story-focused games, but it has been done before; notably in Smoking Car Production’s The Last Express, an adventure game set on the Orient Express in the days before World War I.

Critically acclaimed but commercially ill-fated, The Last Express is a fascinating experiment in real-time storytelling – you can read interviews on its development here on Gamasutra. Reading about and then playing The Last Express is probably what first got me thinking about the potential of real-time narratives.

The other key inspiration for Wayward Strand’s real-time story is outside of the video game world entirely. In the postmodern theatre movement over the past few decades there has been an exploration of audience not as passive viewers, but as active participants in the performance. This “immersive theatre” experience was pioneered by theatre company Punchdrunk in interactive theatre pieces such as Sleep No More and The Drowned Man.

Several members of our team (most recently Russell and I, earlier this year) have been to Sleep No More, and it is a revelatory experience. There are several elements that make Sleep No More singularly brilliant – the physicality, both of the performers and of you as the audience sharing their space; the mystery of how the performance works and what you’ve become a part of; and the imagination-sparking magic of piecing together a story – your own story – from the fragmented sequence of events that you personally have witnessed.

It’s this last element that excites us the most – that feeling of exploring a narrative space and being encouraged to draw your own conclusions – and that’s part what we are aiming to achieve with Wayward Strand through this real-time narrative framework.

Design Constraints

The idea of placing the player character in a realistic world with its own life – its own heartbeat, pace and rhythm – isn’t new. It’s something that I think a lot of budding game designers imagine creating, and it’s been a bit of a white whale for some time in the simulation RPG space.

Because of these reasons, and because of the fact that The Last Express, one of the only examples of a real-time story we can point to, went way over-time and over budget during production, we have been very careful in choosing our design constraints to keep our goals achievable.

One of these constraints is the fixed nature of Wayward Strand’s narrative design. Unlike a simulation RPG, our story does not arise out of a systemic simulation – it is fully authored and bespoke. As in interactive fiction, there may be multiple possible scenes or outcomes that can play out based on player choice, but there is no simulation governing character behaviours or story outcomes. However, because of the real-time nature and the fact that there are multiple story threads being advanced in different areas of the game at the same time, the experience of exploring the story is still player-driven and highly variable.

Another important design constraint in Wayward Strand is the level of player agency. In most games player agency is dialled up to eleven – your player character is in full and complete control of their situation, not only making their own choices. but often making choices on behalf of other characters as well.

What we’re really interested in what happens when you turn down that dial. What happens if you play as a character with limited agency – limited ability to effect change in their world? This is a fascinating area to explore from a writing perspective in a game. By putting the player in the shoes of a character that has specific and understandable constraints to their agency, we’re able to give them a unique and often unseen perspective into the lives of other characters in the world.

While the player is able to exert some influence on many of the stories in the game, we can also present stories that exist totally apart from the player character, that they experience as an observer. Just as in life, the situations that other people are in don’t revolve around you, and sometimes don’t even concern you.

The final notable constraint is time. We’re trying our best to keep the experience of playing Wayward Strand, from beginning to end, under two hours long – roughly the length of your average film. This has a significant and deep effect on our design of the game as a whole – from keeping the interactions as simple as possible, to developing stories that can be told within this time-frame, to creating characters that you don’t need to spend hours with to begin to comprehend and empathise with. It also fits well with our goal of having as little filler as possible, regardless of where on the ship you choose to go to at any given time. Adding more content to the game doesn’t make it longer – it just widens the possibility space.( source:gamasutra )