GCDC 2007: Rolston and Bates – RPG stories shouldn’t be complex

An interesting topic was discussed during the Games Convention Developers Conference this year when Ken Rolston, lead producer of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Bob Bates, a veteran adventure author, sat down to talk about problems that modern game narratives encounter.

The two make an ideal pair to discuss the merits and downfalls of a game narrative. Rolston speaks from the viewpoint of a developer and producer of video games, giving him the insight and experience needed to judge how a game can be written. Bates on the other hand, speaks as an author. Naturally his skills in writing would give an extensive range of insight to storytelling.

It kind of goes against instinct on the essence of an RPG, but both of them agree that the storyline of a game should be less complex and more linear, giving the player less choices. Ultimately the player should only be given a certain number of choices, if any at all, that could affect the storyline.

From Rolston’s point of view, the reason for this is that there’s little pay-off to be had by the player when faced with a lot of choices that will lead to a lot of endings. A writer would have a hard time giving each choice the dramatic tension it deserves. Not only that but developers would have to provide content for each ending, which could easily fall to disaster when keeping track of all the possible decisions and objects needed for each one.

From Bates’ point of view, giving players the freedom of choice isn’t fair. The dramatic choices a character makes in a story shouldn’t be personally ours to make. “As an author of a story you have to push a character into doing things it wouldnÂ’t want to do in order to grow the character. As a game designer itÂ’s not fair to make the player have to do that.”

One point they did disagree on during the talk is on the ambiguity of a backstory. Rolston believes that a backstory can be ambiguous. The developer would leave ambiguous hints of the character’s past and leave it up to the player’s imagination to fill in the blanks. Bates, however, believes that you can’t get into the mindset of a character by being ambiguous with the backstory.

An interesting topic was discussed during the Games Convention Developers Conference this year when Ken Rolston, lead producer of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Bob Bates, a veteran adventure author, sat down to talk about problems that modern game narratives encounter.

The two make an ideal pair to discuss the merits and downfalls of a game narrative. Rolston speaks from the viewpoint of a developer and producer of video games, giving him the insight and experience needed to judge how a game can be written. Bates on the other hand, speaks as an author. Naturally his skills in writing would give an extensive range of insight to storytelling.

It kind of goes against instinct on the essence of an RPG, but both of them agree that the storyline of a game should be less complex and more linear, giving the player less choices. Ultimately the player should only be given a certain number of choices, if any at all, that could affect the storyline.

From Rolston’s point of view, the reason for this is that there’s little pay-off to be had by the player when faced with a lot of choices that will lead to a lot of endings. A writer would have a hard time giving each choice the dramatic tension it deserves. Not only that but developers would have to provide content for each ending, which could easily fall to disaster when keeping track of all the possible decisions and objects needed for each one.

From Bates’ point of view, giving players the freedom of choice isn’t fair. The dramatic choices a character makes in a story shouldn’t be personally ours to make. “As an author of a story you have to push a character into doing things it wouldnÂ’t want to do in order to grow the character. As a game designer itÂ’s not fair to make the player have to do that.”

One point they did disagree on during the talk is on the ambiguity of a backstory. Rolston believes that a backstory can be ambiguous. The developer would leave ambiguous hints of the character’s past and leave it up to the player’s imagination to fill in the blanks. Bates, however, believes that you can’t get into the mindset of a character by being ambiguous with the backstory.