games

It’s Not the Genre, It’s The Originality

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I encountered this delightful quote from the author of cookie clicker, aka Ortiel42:

indie games: what if you were a little fly. what if a sentient locomotive was after you. what if you tidied up a house. what if you were a bear who runs a B&B

AAA games: what if u had a gun

As a fan of indie games, I felt this tweet.  AAA games of guns and guys run together in my head, few of them distinct or interesting.  Much like the all-too-similar AAA action RPGS, they just seem, well, all alike.

But here’s the thing – I enjoy a good shoot-em-up.  I’ve backed Early Access games like the lovely throwback Prodeus.  I downloaded the wonderfully overdone pixelated FPS Project Warlock after seeing a review.  So I’m not biased against games with guns at all.

So why did this quote resonate with me?  I think because the FPS games I like are indie, with that punkish indie feel I treasure.  I don’t have a problem with “gun games” I have a problem when the games seem all alike, like many AAA titles.

It’s not the genre, it’s the sameness.  That’s why that single Tweet resonated with me so hard.

AAA titles can get away with the sameness.  It’s well-produced sameness, well-marketed, with a lot of cultural cachet.  People are going to buy them because everyone knows them and they know what they’re getting, even when bad. It’s much as Serdar notes – in a time of choice you go with what’s known.

AAA titles are also trapped.  Knowing they have to go broad, knowing they have to appeal to everyone, they “sand the rough edges off.”  They’re not chance-takers in many cases, and even the chance-takers risk becoming Yet Another Repeating Franchise.  Sometimes you have to play it safe.

Any game – or media – genre can be made interesting.  My game library has many a fantasy RPG and I delighted in the fantasy-isekai take of the anime The Faraway Paladin.  But these games and media are things that had an edge, a break, something unique.  Just like the razor-raw edges of punk caught the souls of people, I want something to catch me and you can’t do that with blandness.

Even when it’s a genre I actually like.

Still I agree with the original tweet that I want to see games try a lot more things.  Perhaps a skunkworks as opposed to giant years-to-deliver titles may serve companies well.  That may also serve me well in another column . . .

Steven Savage

The Writer’s Game: Approaching Infinity

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Welcome to the start of a new series analyzing how games and game systems provide lessons for storytelling.  I will focus on what games teach us in general, though my focus is on advice for non-game tale-telling.  Now, onward!

Approaching Infinity

Approaching Infinity is a space adventure in the “roguelite” vein.  Like the classic game “Rogue,” the game is usually over when you die.  Games become a little easier as players unlock resources available for the next adventure into a hostile cosmos.

The game contains all the elements of classic space adventure in a simple retro style that draws from decades-old genre tropes.  Travel in space, blast aliens, trade goods, explore planets, the usual.  The lessons come from how these tropes work within more significant stories and how they come together to make a unique tale in each game.

Approaching Infinity‘s story elements exist on three levels and provide valuable lessons on writing.

Great Rivers of Story

At the “top” of Approaching Infinity‘s stories are different factions, about a dozen as of these writings.  Players can take missions for these factions, and most missions unlock further opportunities and advance the tale.  When the player completes a faction’s linear chain of missions, they usually unlock an ending to the game.

Each mission chain provides a background story on the faction and its place in the galaxy.  The player’s activities have meaning in the context of the game.  Faction missions also provide a sense of a bigger picture, filling in blanks as one plays the game.  One could play the game many times before they saw everything or understood the backstory.

These “big arcs” remind writers that stories work with an overall, meaningful tale.  Such arcs don’t have to be complicated (Approaching Infinity‘s quest chains are mechanically simple), but they should have truth in them.

These multiple story possibilities also provide a potential writing exercise.  When one looks at all the possible “big picture” stories in a work, work out multiple endings – alternate tellings.  Such work helps you understand the tale you ultimately tell, as you’ll understand why things happen and what might have been.

Choice in the Flow

The “big arcs” in Approaching Infinity also interact, depending on player choices.  Choosing to help one faction can alienate another faction.  Completing part of one mission chain may make you enemies as you’ve had to blow up a few enemies.  You can try to please everyone, but you can’t, as which “big arcs” you follow lead you down specific paths.

The game handles this with a simple diplomacy score.  The score goes up when you do things a faction likes and goes down with the opposite.  When you have about a dozen factions competing and random and procedural events happening, the game becomes complex.

Story-wise, this is a good example of how smaller-picture actions cause “big arcs” to collide.  How many great tales hinge on that one choice or one mistake?  Approaching Infinity creates that feeling of tension in a complex-to-evaluate, simple-to-understand way.  A player’s (or character’s) choices pile up and life becomes complicated at some point.

The individual parts of a story don’t have to be complicated –the “big arcs” can be simple.  The interactions, the choices, they make a tale delightfully complicated.  Plus, playing with those choices lets you ask “what If,” much as players of Approaching Infinity see their suddenly-destroyed starship and ask what they could have done differently.

All Those Tiny Waves

The sweeping adventure and juggling alliances of Approaching Infinity happen in a procedurally-generated galaxy.  Each game is random, meaning new sectors, planets, caves, space wrecks, and more await you each adventure.  Each game also starts with giving you a choice of ship models and commanding officer.

This randomization and choice mean minute-to-minute happenings are personal.  Around every corner is a new planet, new piece of equipment, a new discovery.  The fine details of your adventure are personal and unique to you and your game.

If you’re on a mission from a quest chain to defeat a space monster, you have many choices.  Do you craft a new weapon for your starship?  Dash deeper into more dangerous parts of the galaxy to buy one?  Raid enemy ships for parts and equipment?

These choices may also affect your quest chains, your “big arcs.” Even when they don’t, they’re uniquely yours, part of your adventure.

For writers of any kind, this is an example that a tale is driven by discovery.  A story may be linear and straightforward, but it’s the moments that bring it to life.  When every scene, every chapter is unique, personal, and meaningful, a story grips us.  Even when a scene doesn’t surprise or suddenly switch up the big picture, it matters.

Of course, the tiny picture might create a sudden, surprising change in plot.  In Approaching Infinity, an unwise small choice might just affect the big picture.  Even when it doesn’t, there’s the tension that it might.  In many a game of Approaching Infinity, I kept an eye on my diplomacy, knowing I might make enemies I didn’t want to make!

Closing In On Infinity

Approaching Infinity‘s mix of simple “big arcs” and personal, minute-to-minute experience makes the game a Space Opera simulator.  Using simple roots, it creates a replayable adventure seeped in both lore and individual experiences.  No one element is overly complex, but their interactions are – just like many good tales.

Takeaways for Writers:

  • Having backstory-driven “big arcs” gets you to the truth of your tale.  They can – and often are – simple.
  • Plot multiple “big arcs” even if you don’t use them to understand your setting better.
  • Possible “big arcs” interacting help you craft a meaningful tale.  Those smaller moments of interaction drive the story.
  • Complexity can come from the simple interaction of simple “big arcs.”  The results are often far from simple.
  • Those moments where character choice sends them down one path or another are meaningful.  They also let you play “what if” and evaluate your work.
  • Storytelling is gripping when events, even small ones, are personal and meaningful.  Events don’t have to have big impacts.
  • Small moments and choices bring tension because they may have huge impacts.  Even when they don’t and the story goes along, that tension engages the audience and is meaningful.

Steven Savage

Fallen London: Why It Works

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

I found Failbetter Games browser-based adventure game Fallen London via it’s Kickstarted sister game, Sunless Sea, a kind of nautical rogue like of comedy-horror-adventure. I quickly took to Fallen London’s playable-novel style of adventure (in fact, moreso than the brilliant but nerve-wracking Sunless Sea). As I played this game I began to wonder just why I had taken to it so much – enough to get a monthly subscription for extra elements. That’s where this essay comes in.

It’s clear this award-winning browser game has a certain something that compelled me and others. By getting my own thoughts together here I hope to make a small contribution to game analysis, as well as understand my reactions. Fallen London got me thinking about game mechanics in surprising ways, and a good analysis should help me – and others.

So let’s look at Fallen London – and what it does right. Join me, Delicious Friend.

The Basics of Fallen London

In Fallen London you’re a newcomer to the Victorian subterranean city, which was London some thirty years ago until it was stolen below ground by strange forces. Now under control of the mysterious if often friendly Masters of the Bazaar, nominally ruled by the “Traitor Empress” that made a deal with them, it’s a haunted, weird, scary, and wonderful place. Hell is nearby and has an Embassy, living objects come from distant shores of the underground “Unterzee” and previous stolen cities ruins lie around. Also, people are mailing cats.

You walk into this as a newcomer, arrested for some reason (likely just coming there), and upon escaping embark on your own destiny. Poet, spy, mercenary, investigator, and more all are available to you. As you progress you make connections, improve your character, find lodgings, unlock further secrets, and so on. Whatever you do is up to you.

All of this happens with very well-written text and story vignettes that really bring the half-horror half-comedic setting to life. Fallen London, bluntly, is probably better written than most any game and quite a few books, somewhere between Monty Python, Eldritch Horror, and Discworld.

As I analyzed it I was able to find six areas that the game did things right. These traits and mechanics, in combination, produce a marvelous experience.

Let’s take a look.

Fallen London’s Writing Writing: Expressive, Layered, Personal

It’s hard not to go on about the writing in Fallen London. Were it simply a series of novels or a comic series it’d be an epic experience on its own. The fact this writing is couched as a game makes it even more compelling as you live the writing. This excellent wordsmithing succeeds due to three factors:

Writing Comes First. It’s very clear that the writing of Fallen London is meant to be of the highest quality. The tale-telling clearly has come first over all else, bringing you into the setting, but also making the choices and usual actions of an RPG have a particular urgency and life to them. The writing is not just witty and illustrative – it makes your choices feel real, and the choices and plots are well-thought out.

Branching And Combining Stories. Various conditions unlock story options, stories have multiple resolutions with real impact, and the end of one of the tales may lead to several others. This produces clear choices that feel very real – and are often real as they will lock future choices on one hand, while opening others or at lest providing resources to open them.

Parts Of A Whole. Though there are many stories and “storylets” great care has been taken to make them part of a whole. A mysterious squid-faced man handing you a chunk of slimy amber isn’t a random event, but is due to a backstory. A marsh filled with giant mushrooms isn’t just a marsh, but the site of races as people have discovered that running across giant mushrooms is rather sporting. Everything is connected (finding these connections could occupy you quite a bit in the game).

Abstract Characters. One of the most curious elements of Fallen London is most characters are referred to by abstract names – the Wry Functionary, the Knuckle-Scarred Inspector, and so on. Instead of making them distant this abstraction makes them archetypical, giving them life, while also making the experience personal and unique. Everyone may encounter a Sardonic Music-Hall Singer, but it’s their own, personal one.

Attributes And Failure States In Fallen London: Clear, Abstract, Applicable

Representing characters with various numbers is a classic element of role-playing games. Fallen London is no different, but does it with a mix of generality, clarity, and precision.

Distinct Attributes. Characters are represented by four different Attributes – Watchful, Shadowy, Dangerous, and Persuasive. These Attributes affect a character’s chance to succeed at an appropriate task with a simple random “roll,” and a success provides colorful descriptive text as well as various rewards This simplicity makes characters and characters easy to understand – but also distinct depending on how high that Attribute is.

Attributes Associated With Settings. Various areas of the setting are associated with the activities requiring a given Attribute or Attributes. A monster-haunted area may yield mostly Dangerous tasks, while a street of crime and mysterious couriers may have mostly Shadowy activities. The limited but distinct sets of Attributes in turn allows for easy definition of various areas of the game and the stories within, as well as what one may do there.

Distinct Failure States. Each Attribute has a parallel failure state called a Menace that usually increases if one fails a more severe challenge – for instance failing a Dangerous challenge may result in an increase to Wounds. One can usually guess the probable results of a failure state from the Attribute involved and the descriptive text. The failure states also contain witty descriptions, such as one where spending time with a Vicar raises the Menace of Scandal when said Vicar turns out to be a reporter in disguise who assumes less than pure intentions. Failure is a story.

Unique Results Of Failure States. The Menaces can be treated by specific actions, such as taking Laudanum to deal with the Menace of Nightmares. In addition, if Menaces get too high then the character you play suffers specific effects, such as being imprisoned for having too much Suspicion. Addressing these challenges leads to further stories, making the tale one experiences both appropriate and unique.

Acquired Traits: Linear, Distinct, Multiple

As the character adventures, they make friends, solve cases, advance in the ranks of clubs, and so on. Representing these is done distinct from the attributes in question, often as the result of an action.

Achievements By Simple Numbers. To represent the connections people make, achievements and reputations and so on, there’s simple number scores characters acquire. These represent everything from how good a thief they are to how well-connected they may be to the police. A character may have many of these or only a few – it depends on the activities of the characters. This simple method allows for very complex character differences all with different “piles” of simple numbers.

Reputation As Number. Depending on how a character dresses, their home, and how they comport themselves, they get reputations – Bizarre, Respected, etc. that also have simple number scores, much like Attributes. The items that influence these traits, of course, often have clever and witty descriptions.

Use Of Acquired Traits. Acquired traits open up new story opportunities or may even be used like Attributes in some occasions, such as using one’s Dreaded reputation to threaten someone. Thus these acquired traits become goals, rewards, and tools while just being simple numeric stores. The drive to upgrade them also helps propel some of the game, and may inspire players to upgrade equipment and Attributes.

Progress In Fallen London: Numerical And Relevant

Progress in various ventures in Fallen London is measured by numeric scores, much like the acquired traits.

Progress Is A Number. Progress in almost anything is represented by a simple number score, often raised by challenges against Attributes or exchanging certain items. One may be “Solving a Case” and solve it when one has a score of ten. Or one may be exploring an area and solve it when one has ten points of “Exploring.” These scores are like very temporary Acquired traits, and often reset when a venture is over. These provide clear, simple measurements of progress.

Progress Influences Story. At a certain amount of “points” gained towards knowing a character or group you may unlock options such as starting a romantic relationship. Other scores may increase the challenge, such as solving a case getting harder the further one progresses, with new challenges arising. The score becomes a signal of challenges to come as well as a goal (and a player may feel their heart race as a score climbs . . .)

Negative And Conflicting Progress. These progress scores may, at times be negative or even conflict. One may be trying to outrun a rival, and as “progress” increases the rival is closer. Or one may be trying to keep one score up and another down. A few simple numbers can lead to complex stories and decisions.

Inventory; Abstracted, Related, Storied

Having a large inventory of “stuff” is a time-honored RPG tradition, and Fallen London is no different. However it uses the “adventurer inventory” to cover a wider range of ground, representing possessions far differently.

Everything As Inventory. Anything in one’s possession is portrayed in inventory, but this goes beyond guns or treasures. Possessions can also include knowledge, stories, or insights (each with its own description). One may thus have 1000 Clues or 50 different seafaring stories from their ventures – treated and inventoried no different than 70 pieces of Jade or a mysterious pistol. By treating everything as inventory the game allows a unique way to measure progress and address challenges – one may need to blackmail and enemy, and that story requires 3 Blackmail Materials (which a handy intriguer may have handy).

Inventory Presents Story Options. An item in your inventory isn’t just something to sell or “spend” for a challenge, be it pearls or an Appaling Secret. Inventory items often provide other story options when you select them, from acquiring other items to opening more stories, to helping you solve mysteries. A single kind of item might open up multiple options, giving you different ways to use them – each with their own descriptive text or substorm. One of my favorite examples is having Appalling Secrets – one option in using them is to try and “forget” a few of them with the hope of reducing Nightmares.

Inventory Converts. Another brilliant innovation in the game is that related items, from treasures to knowledge, can often be traded up in the associated “story options” mentioned. Hints become Clues, Jade can be traded for artifacts, candles traded to a church in return for mysterious salts. “Trading up” and at times “trading down” is required to unlock stories or do tasks, and figuring this out is an interesting challenge that contains its own miniature tales. One of my favorites experiences realizing that treasures I’d gathered in a seafaring venture could be swapped up to get information that in turn I could trade for a map to let me continue my adventures.

Economics: Omnipresent, Clear, Varied, Storied

As noted, some of Fallen London is about swapping various items or literal pieces of knowledge to achieve different goals. The entirety of Fallen London is actually about economics.

Progress Is Transactional. All of the well-written stories in Fallen London are essentially accessed by a transaction. This could be swapping a “move” to achieve something, or as complex as figuring out how to “grind” for information to get a legal document in order to get your hands on some important books. As these transactions are clearly stated and often work in a similar manner, the game is very easy to pick up – but the challenge is figuring how to pull off the transactions. After all you may want to save those Whispered Hints to solve a bigger mystery later, or your need to get your hands on seditious material requires you to choose between stealing from a group of Devils or getting into a fistfight with a book-carrying critic.

Tradeoffs Requiring Thought. The economics of the game also require one to consider tradeoffs. One may reduce the Menace of Nightmares with a good cup of wine, but a drunken night may raise the Menace of Scandal, which is best addressed by spending a few turns going to Church.

And So Our Analysis Of Fallen London Ends

So those are my initial thoughts on what makes Fallen London work. To sum it up I’d say it’s a writing-centric game that uses a series of simple scores and inventory systems in combination to allow for complex tales, and has simple but interesting ways to portray common game mechanics and choices. That is, of course, a simple summary.

Now as for what else we can learn, let me see where my investigations – and you reaction to this essay – take us . . .

– Steve