Dev Log 3/10/26 || Game Narrative

As things begin to take shape a bit more and I can potentially turn my attention to other matters, I want to take a moment and discuss the narrative components of Goon Game. Strange as that might sound, given how the game has very little in the way of a traditional narrative framework, they are present, though undeveloped.

One of my foibles with the current discussion around Game Narrative is with the way we frame said conversation. Whenever a story in a game is brought up, it is usually talked about in the same manner as a film: X scene was so powerful, Y character spoke to me, Z climax had me on the edge of my seat, etc. A fine starting point, as film and game do share some DNA as audiovisual mediums; however, it's the differences between the two that make things more complicated.

For starters, Video games are interactive experiences; films are not. A film is a predetermined series of events presented linearly to an audience. A game is a series of potential events charted by a player in a non-linear manner. Now, of course, there is a level of variance in games that do pull them into a more linear framework (The Last of Us, Final Fantasy, Bioshock: Infinite), yet they are still controlled by the actions of a player, not a protagonist. A protagonist is a character over whom the author has control, but a player is a character over whom both the author and the audience have control in tandem. Therefore, in order to tell a compelling story in a game, you must account for the actions of the player and how those alter the story of the game. Or, you need to make the actions of the player informative to the protagonist they are controlling.

For example, much has been said about BioShock: Infinite’s story since its release, but one of the more harmonious talking points has been the depiction of Booker Diwit, the player protagonist. Wherein the gameplay in Infinite serves a dual purpose as the action the player most wants to engage with and the action that best defines the protagonist, Booker, who is introduced to us as a down-on-his-luck, jaded private eye with a violent past. A past we see put on display when the people of Colombia declare him the anti-Christ and try to kill him. Infinite is, at the end of the day, a first-person shooter; the player’s goal in each chapter is to push through and survive so they can keep playing the game. This is then reflected in Booker, who has the means to survive Columbia and who also wants to get to the next level so he can leave this floating Hell. With this, both the player and Booker are put on the same page, making Booker’s violent outbursts in cut scenes easier to buy as the player had just spent the last hour blowing people apart as Booker. This is ludonarrative, or the story of play; a topic that only gets brought up when talking about bad examples.

Good or bad, Ludonarrative can be found at any level of design. In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Hector is billed as a force of nature and a natural-born warrior in dialogue, a billing reinforced in gameplay by his base stats and growth rates, which make him nearly unstoppable. In Papers Please, the rising complexity of the gameplay challenge reflects the rising paranoia of the Arstotzka government, nudging the player into complacency and away from seeking alternative solutions to the problem at hand so they can complete each level without penalty. And in the lore of Dark Souls, Undead turn Hollow after the weight of the world has ground them into nothing but husks kept alive by the Curse of Undeath; a fate that will befall your Chosen Undead if you give up and stop playing.

Each of these examples is a form of Ludonarrative. In Hector and Booker’s case, the play reveals the qualities of their character. In Paper’s Please, the rising challenge of the game is mirrored by the story’s rising stakes, while the lore of Dark Souls provides a clearer context for the player on how their actions will impact the game’s story. All three of these elements appear in a game story to some degree, depending on the game's genre, but each contributes to telling a more compelling narrative through play, even if one is less common than the others. So while I have not set anything in stone within my own project, the seeds of a story told through play have been set.

For example, how each faction plays informs the player more about that organization and its people. The Creatures of Havoc, for instance, are ragtag rebels without a cause who just want to cause trouble, so they are the only faction that gets closer to winning the game by drawing more Reverbs (wild card effects that can screw over any player). They also have an array of spells and abilities that focus on disrupting other players, either by Goading them and making their units less accurate, or by forcing them to discard spells or add useless Chaos cards to their decks, further slowing them down.

While the Empire is made up of the Exulted remains of their warrior dead, reanimated to retake the world they once ruled, which is now in danger from the same force that whipped them out eons ago. Therefore, they are the only faction that can create new Forbidden Fruit spawns and alter the board due to their deeper connection with the earth and the powers that maintain it. They are also the faction that can replace their units the fastest, as being undead allows them to quickly recover and recoup losses. The Empire also hates the Automaton Army, seeing them as the reincarnation of the force that ended their reign, so the player is encouraged to take out AI spawners as they’ll be rewarded with more points when they do so, potentially putting them ahead of the other players.

The Chimera Core is the only faction without a firm identity as yet. I have ideas; I want them to be focused on direct combat and spectacle: rallying others to their cause through feats of daring, courage, and strength. I’m currently hovering around something akin to Guerrilla Fighters, but that one is the most subject to change, or, better put, the most change. All of these factions can be reworked: the Creatures of Havoc can be re-branded as cultists or some other brand of hooligan, and the Empire could lean more towards their Tricaraton inspirations as otherworldly. I would need time to rethink each of them in these new directions, of course, as I’d have to see what work can be recycled and what has to be tossed – but I’d still be building off the same mechanical core that informs their gameplay. Creatures are annoying, the Empire grows fast, and the Chimera Core hits hard and fast.