The Future of Storytelling: How Medium Shapes Story

In this 2013 GDC session, Schell Games' Jesse Schell examines the history of how different mediums have shaped and re-shaped the story, cull out the most useful patterns, uses them to look forward to the mediums we know are coming next, and makes some bold predictions about the shape of stories to come.
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[@cwknight]

There are some visionary ideas in this talk.

[@helloofthebeach]

I enjoyed this all around but calling Pikachu a "disobedient little cuss" made my night.

[@1995yuda]

OK. This right here is one of the most interesting talks I've ever heard.

[@BackfallGenius]

From 2013 and still highly relevant. Great talk and speaker 👏👏👏

[@yairmorgenstern416]

What an amazing speaker! I've combed the GDC archives and only now I've come across this gem, this deserves way more searchability than it has!

[@LoonAtticLtd]

This is a brilliant talk.

[@1995yuda]

This dude just flat-out revealed the origin and inspiration of D&D. Holy shit, man.

[@twoboxtoofurious]

Jesse Schell is the best Game Design teacher in the world

[@andrewclastic2835]

10/10 Talk. Thank you, Jesse Schell.

[@lozdyck8155]

JESSE SCHELL. THE MAN. THE MYTH. THE LEGEND.

[@leander11]

Great talk! I´m really excited for the future of games.

[@fotografritz_]

Interesting to see this talk now, with five years apart, since I think many things have improved and changed since then. As far as the "tragedy" is concerned, I think Life is Strange covers that to a great deal. It uses the "listening" aspect Jesse Schell describes here well, I think, by letting you take time and breathing in the world how you like it. I don't think it's about the choices that change the narrative, it's about the freedom to think about the choices and by looking at everything the medium gives you. Life is Strange excels at that and so does the lasting impact it can have, amplified by visuals, music, voice acting and other elements. To advance storytelling, you need the mechanics for sure. But it must be aided by all other elements. Even the cited Phoenix Wright has a unique art design, funny writing and great music. Just the mechanics alone wouldn't do - but it's nothing without it.

[@the_kindman]

very inspiring vision of a future of narrative in videogames, albeit it depends a lot on very complex technology (the talking to a character part) and an utopian / holistic view of the videogame market (with characters that exist cross-plattform and -game). sadly i don't see any of that happening at the moment. even the narrative promises of VR are kind of underwhelming at the moment (vr also caters to the "lower verbs" especially to the arms, it seems ;-) i do think however that there are some truly masterfully crafted narrative games out there and from what i see a lot of them have one thing in common: simplicity. there is "Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons" for example that has a very simple concept: your two hands control two brothers. and than they use this idea and build something truly special with it. then there is "gone home": you/your character gets home and nobody is there. what happened? and then you start to search the house. that's all there is to it. and it works. or take "the stanley parable": a narrator wants to tell a heroic story in which you are the protagonist - but you might want to sth. else instead - like just standing around or just try out that other door. baam! masterpiece. it seems to me there is merrit in combining simple gameplay mechanics with smaller stories, that aren't necessarily about the epic heroes journey, saving the galaxy and what not. don't get me wrong: i love my mass effect and my horizon zero dawn., but the real greatness in narrative games might have to come from humble beginnings - maybe?

[@BaroTheMadman]

I was playing Okami HD on the switch (basically a tablet) on a place that totally qualifies as a reading nook and totally agree with what the man says about "the venues".

[@katobytes]

Yeah that was an interesting point in his talk. The type of story you're consuming will likely determine where you will consume it.

[@tree-turtle9944]

That part near the end was a real trip

[@leonardodorea3890]

that's some Sci-Fi stuff... oh man... Thats awesome and inspiring

[@1995yuda]

That EA joke was funny af. Nice talk with some golden moments.

[@RaoulWB]

16:22 this talk is precious

[@IceGoldDev]

GDC please up mic quality

[@MeRenegade]

well that is fantastic !

[@princeofpassionxokjreed312]

Then dissing E A sports, good stories should be in E A world.💙💙💙💙💙

[@Luis-Torres]

Gonna be honest I don't really agree with the idea of virtual companions. People don't need virtual friends for life, and trying to do anything like that kinda loses sight of the goal here: to make a game with a great story. The problem you seem to be trying to exposs without explicitly saying so is that games aren't immersive enough. To be honest, I don't think this full immersion is the answer to this problem, though it may certainly help, I think the problem is in the mindsets of the average person. As a lover of video games, there are a few games with stories that I would call masterpieces. A lot of these games ARE tragedies that have terrible endings! What I think we need is for people to change what they think about video games and story because video games are a fundamentally different medium than the others. There are definitely some great points here but as a gamer myself some of the things he brings up are a bit more disturbing if anything.

[@brandonfrommississippi]

This talk introduces some amazing ideas. As he repeatedly said the implementation of these ideas are up to game developers. I absoulutly agree VR gaming is the best medium for narrative storytelling. Think about astrobot rescue mission vr on ps4. In Astrobot you are not Astro himself in the game but rather you exist as a robot following behind astro in 3rd person and control his movements. He is the only one who acknowledges your presence in the game world for the most part except for those pink ink shooting enemies. You control his actions and movements but you are not him. I believe this 3rd person vr perspective is the zygote of future vr titles. Imagine if you could talk to him and he could talk to you.

[@literaryartist1]

This really blew my mind. Will Smith also stated somethings about what he believes is the future of storytelling. All very exciting.

[@Dayglodaydreams]

I think someone should make a top-down action-adventure game. And every movement the character makes corresponds to a musical note. Every move the enemies onscreen make correspond to a note with a different musical instrument (different enemy type, different instrument/timbre). Maybe different weapons correspond to different instruments (different timbres). The sound effects might get a little chaotic, but that’s okay. If you want, you can do the same thing with color?

[@koalabrownie]

I think you should make it

[@nothingthere3959]

There is already an adventure game where the character is moves accordingly to the player's singing. I don't remember the title though, I remember only that Pewdiepie played it in one of his videos this year.

[@springchickena1]

this is literally all i think of

[@kuronosan]

That's a privacy nightmare.

[@kas9402]

most likely anything like this will be a private program that you license and own and which nobody else has access to in a very important legal sense. Violating this thing would be just as bad (worse really) than having your phone tapped, your emails or your private journal read, etc. I'm pretty sure that if his vision comes to pass that powerfully it will not be a bunch of random info running on a public server.

[@keithhunt8]

Very cool.👍

[@Mo8yG]

I got lot respect and I have learned a lot from Jesse. But is technology going to solve the problem of narration...well maybe it will assist but eventually it has to be game design. I mean a painting tells a story, if you are willing to read it, so why can't games? There are games which make you emotional e.g. Inside. VR is like 3D movies, potential if used properly but more of a gimmick.

[@markus_luik]

tl;dr we need more creative narrative work rather than new tech and big data. I find multiple issues with this view of narrative. Yes, verbs are important but they do not depend on natural language interaction. Mediums build medium-specific verbs. You know a sad scene is coming in a movie if it is raining and there is dramatic music. That is not inherent to humans, it is a pattern that people have learned to understand and which movies have learned to build off of. Games have such verbs and patterns but they’ve often been based on confrontation. The notion of virtual companions is based on a (dystopian) notion of having media last and interact with people life forever. People caring for a character is not about time, it is about how you use that time. For Hamlet to work, Shakespeare did not have to work the characters into peoples minds for years. A good story, whether in a game, book or film can make people care about their characters in a short time (Titanfall 2 single player campaign for example). When respawning is an issue, simply disable it, punish it or add events that the player can not change. Moving on from characters is okay, we do not need Mario to be everyone’s best (totally not corporate) friend. “Crafter of characters which you want to have in every platform” is terrifying. Don’t get me wrong, we need good characters and we need good stories for those characters but a character does not exist on it’s own without their story and a one which you want to spend years with on a regular basis is so easy to be abused by giant companies. Although the idea of having a character passed down from generations is an interesting concept but if a character ages, I doubt the younger generations would be incredibly keen to connect with them. Yes, we need media which helps people get through tough times, but not as a constant lifeline, as a sweet memory.

[@GabrielDias0223]

Although storytelling has not been fully embraced by mobile gaming, I don't think it's right to call it a crappy place for storytelling. When we think of a big TV in a dark living room, we think of a spectacle, an epic journey we can embark through games or movies. And that's probably the best scenario for 90% of stories. But imagine a person going to sleep. He's had a tiresome day and just wants to be alone in his room, lay down in bed and forget everything about his life or himself . He turns off the lights, gets his phone, and open an immersive game with people (not even characters to him anymore) he loves and that actually listens to him. Wouldn't it be an even more personal experience?

[@frickthefuckoff]

Wow, there were far more talks than I originally anticipated.

[@jx4219]

11:42 HA! Jokes on you! I didn't have an emotion for years!

[@TheRodss]

The MPC from Darkest Dungeon react to how you use them in the game and if they get tired of you they leave.

[@lovely-shrubbery8578]

Oh their games can make you cry, just for the wrong reasons.

[@jx4219]

Still, for a life-long 'companion' and a kinda deep connection with them you would need a true AI which we don't have and don't get. Why should i care about some version of cleverbot for my whole life? I mean you will be able to unravel the "AI" if you dig deep enough. With cleverbot and siri this depth is rather shallow. In the end it would just be a digital assistant. But i'm not sure. It probably doesn't take that much to fake a human. Also i guess it probably won't only blow up into the fairy tale but more in the relationship sector and you don't even need good storytelling there. Depends. But a cleverbot AI can only ever react and not act. It relies on predetermination. Still good enough. Will be done. I'm not sure it will transform humanity yet. And i'm not really waiting for talking to or befriending videogame characters. But then again. It is big. We could create humans. Blade Runner says hi.

[@scottalexander_]

I think this is cool, but I don’t see how this could contribute to the narrative of a game, or make it a more compelling experience

[@chillociraptor5007]

Because in a narrative you remember the characters more than you do the actual plot. The character are inherently what makes a narrative good. Their decisions and actions influence the world around them, for better or for worse. By having a deeper personal bond to incredibly well crafted lovable characters for all their rights and wrongs, that level of interactivity won't be found in ANY other medium. At it's core, video games are an interactive medium. That's what they're known for. And this evolution of characters is exactly what will drive that point and solidify videogames as a medium of its own, as a platform of all kinds of artistic expression. With this it can be the literature of the 21st century. That in every sense of the word, makes a game more compelling.

[@scottalexander_]

@@chillociraptor5007 you brought up some very good points and I actually agree with you there

[@chillociraptor5007]

@@scottalexander_ thank you! Sorry it took 2 years for a reply to come your way lol

[@michawitkowski1798]

I love the problem statement, but I don't think the solution is correct.

[@Indiana-Jonas]

i miss miitomo

[@yoyo21926]

I like good stories, I would love to make a game focused on story but it would be too time consuming. For now im developing games just focused on fun addicting gameplay.

[@StarContract]

ToppyGames Your strategy makes perfect sense, stories are resources hungry

[@Yamartim]

It's interesting how this aged and now we have games like undertale, the last of us, nier and nier automata, walking simulators...

[@myrwynn1145]

I'm not sure how to interpret what you're saying ? Do you mean by that that his predictions failed and that we got good stories anyway ? Personally, I think his hunches were pretty good aside from the timeframe in which it'll happen. We still haven't gotten a true timeless classic video game story in my opinion.

[@helloofthebeach]

It's only been five years and a lot of what what he was talking about was based on technology that he thought was at least a decade away, which we still don't have. I think those games do important work but it's entirely possible we'll see them as important predecessors rather than evidence that the medium has matured. We aren't there yet at all. (Undertale in particular seems like an interesting mock-up of the virtual companion stuff, making up for being completely scripted by daring you to treat the work as if it wasn't. The way different people responded to that dare might be a preview of debates we'll be having 30 years from now.)

[@helloofthebeach]

It's Danielle Steel (not Daniel) and comparing walking simulators to romance novels is pretty out there but I'm sure your other opinions have merit.

[@CynicalGamingBlogTerry309]

Videogame stories are not supposed to be Shakespearean, they are not the core aspect of a videogame, sure some games have a lot of storytelling but ultimately the story is but a means to an end, a means of rewarding players for making progress. My trying to turn games into hollywood movies/classic novels, you're taking away from the games themselves because doing so costs resources, resources that could be better spent on enhancing the gameplay. As such story is mostly an afterthought and it should be because these are games, not movies or books. You want to write a good story? Go write a book!

[@daniele36140]

I get your point and I totally agree. But it's a talk about story in games. He never said that story will be everything (or even the most important part) about a video game. Of course there will be puzzle game in the future.

[@PixelMake]

You have some valid points but i would say it was a bit heavy handed to say "story is not a core aspect."There are many games that would offer very little enjoyment without the effective story story telling deployed well, with that being the case I would argue story is sitting at the roots driving the player to continue that is a core feature, honestly im buying banner saga sequels for the story. maybe the discussion should be about the term game, when story is the core feature is it even a game anymore?

[@ZoidbergForPresident]

"Videogame stories are not supposed to be Shakespearean" It's not because they never were that they are supposed to never be...

[@koalabrownie]

People need to ditch this shit idea about video games vs movies vs plays vs novels. What ties all these mediums together is that they provide an EXPERIENCE. And the question is how do you make the quality of the experience comparable to, or exceed, those of other mediums?

[@ZoidbergForPresident]

Lol, just in the process of reading the art of game design. :D Just read a part about "games not being the experience". XP

[@fappylp2574]

Virtual companions have an insane amount of dystopian potential. Imagine you slowly form a bond with a virtual character or personality. Over the years they become a good friend and you develop a mutual and deep understanding of one another. Now remember that this character is probably running on EA's mainframe and through them they have essentially uninhibited access to your most private life. The ultimate venue for big data, _a wiretap into your soul_ with which you can be subtly influenced. *Lovely*

[@TheSlyakot]

its not like we have much privacy left anyways...

[@Eyewarp]

The idea of that or just the character never aging as you grow old and die sounds kinda like something out of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.