Snap to Character: Building Strong Player Attachment Through Narrative

[@Dirvinator]

I'm 99% sure that the reason most Mafia 3 players kept all 3 mob bosses happy is because the game did a terrible job at explaining how each skill tree worked so nobody understood necessarily the benefits of getting one character to max rank in order to unlock their best perks.

[@felixdauber8799]

Isn't there also the potential question of extra work seeing as you would have to stop the pissed guy. This makes the 30-40ish percent seem more like completionists. Not related to any character question at all... (Haven't played the game though)

[@gunsbulletsheroin]

As a player I would also expect that keeping them all happy would ultimately give the best reward unless that's explicitly denied.

[@AegixDrakan]

As a pretty new Narrative Designer, I was taking *notes* throughout this talk. It was really eye opening in the way Harrison laid it out. The idea that leading with some mechanical reasons to care about a character is a great way to generate initial investment had not occurred to me before.

[@craigcordeiro8530]

This talk was incredibly useful and showed up at just the right time.

[@RglMrn]

Great talk. Thank you for sharing.

[@EViLeleven]

If that talk would be held today, they should for sure take a look at Metro: Exodus. The whole crew (and especially Anna) really grew on me hella fast. Would have never thought that to happen in an

[@Tysto]

I don’t think it's really time so much as experience that drives a player to love a character. You can speed up the process by having the character do things for the player & demonstrating that the character can be relied upon for help. The military speeds up the process of bonding by putting troops together for intense training, where they have to help each other.

[@simonlane2084]

I think that making every aspect of the game should let you care for the player. For example in Horizon Zero Dawn Aloy goes into the open world not to save it but as a revenge/discovery quest for a Tribe you wanted to be part of so bad and a personal quest for her past which only incidentally learn the worlds past and to save it.

[@warpzone8421]

Am I the only one who remembers Larry basically explicitly threatening to rebel against you and ruin the entire group's survival chances if he didn't get food? I don't really remember anything about the specifics, but that's the decision I remember making. "Gotta keep this jerk happy or he'll piss in my corn flakes."

[@ryaneble7869]

I’ve always wondered why guys who like to bash every single game developer and game designer on GDC are subscribed and watch videos that discuss the very problems that they’ve identified making these games and what they have taken away from it and trying to educate future members in the industry what they have to watch out for and what thy can do to improve at developers and designers.

[@kombinatsiya6000]

You know that dots and commas are free of cost, right?

[@dreamingacacia]

they just want to be a part of the community but they suck at it.

[@ryaneble7869]

Kombinatsiya I was trying to figure out where to put them though :)

[@helloofthebeach]

They have no idea what they like or why. They can give you reasons but it's basically a crap shoot if they're right or not because they're as in the dark about it as you are.

[@LimeyLassen]

I think player agency in storytelling is a bit overrated. Like, Frog is the best character in Chrono Trigger but he could never be the protagonist because there's a point where he gets depressed, ditches the party, and gets drunk in his house. If players were given the option to do that no one would take it. Really, the way characters in that game do irresponsible or counterproductive things without asking permission is part what makes them so memorable.

[@helloofthebeach]

God, I remember the early PS1 era where nobody would shut the hell up about "linear is bad"? I don't think it ever really filtered through to developers because Final Fantasy games kept being massive hits but at least the culture used to be far more obnoxious about this than it is today. I agree though. We have much more interesting techniques now for getting players invested than just promising their choices are important. If all I want is total agency, I have open world games. No need for other genres to shoehorn it in where it doesn't belong. (That said, hanging out with drunk depressed Frog while his friends are out killing dinosaurs sounds rad...for whatever "while" means in a time travel story.)

[@Tagline4]

Good talk, but I think it fundamentally misunderstands the walking dead choice. The players know on a meta-game level that their character can't be killed (because this would end the game in its first chapter) so they feel safe picking the character they like regardless of usefulness. The player's own survival is never at stake

[@joelcouture6914]

Great talk!

[@noskillzdad5504]

And if you want an example of a AAA studio alienating player's goals from gameplay go no further than the theater encounter in TLOU2. They called it "pushing boundaries" I called it a big pile of dog s. Cant wait for someone at a GDC talk to use TLOU2 as an example of things going wrong. It's a poster child for things done wrong.

[@olddays-tw9xe]

Now I wanna hear your opinion about it haha

[@TraZix]

Can you expand further? I’d like to hear what you mean by that.

[@zixiaozhang3491]

Players don't give Larry food because they want to get to know about him. But because they already fed Duck (Kenny's family) and it's only fair to do the same for Lily. How did you not get that?

[@TedsWorld101]

I think this applies to the current dating scene too, lol. *Building relationships takes time*, the jumping ahead to the end cheat-code is invalid

[@jasoneads6825]

Apparently I've been doing it entirely wrong. It always seemed like the story between the lines could be really compelling, but that may be a novel-era sentiment. Back to the drawing board...

[@SoftBreadSoft]

If you have time for that and it's not an RPG, it is probably a mediocre game, like the ones in the description are.

[@coldDrive]

I'm still kinda baffled at how you guys ended up subbed to the GDC channel.

[@ProductofSeebach]

@@coldDrive Mocking mediocre developers is more fun than the games they make.

[@AmSeris]

@@ProductofSeebach "medoicre developers" Remind me what games you've made since you wrote this comment.

[@ProductofSeebach]

@@AmSeris The game where you mock mediocre developers, and shit post in comment sections. I hope you enjoy playing it as you think of additional retorts and angles of attack against me.

[@AmSeris]

@@ProductofSeebach Why would I enjoy playing that? You're the one doing it. Nice to see you didn't change in 3 years as that gives quite a good perspectives on the kind of losers people like you are. Also, "angles of attack against me"? Don't get so full of yourself. Genuinely couldn't care less about you, let alone "attack" you. So you see people asking you a simple question as an "attack"? What are you gonna do? Cry and hide from my "attack"s? 😂 What a weirdo