How to Use Story Structure to Improve Indie Game Design

TL;DR

Story structures give game developers a reliable, tested system for shaping player experience, and most developers already do this intuitively without naming it. Motivations split into external ones, changing status, location, or relationships in the outside world, and internal ones, overcoming an emotional block or learning something new. Succeeding externally while failing internally produces tragedy, as in Romeo and Juliet.

Transcript

[Applause] okay hello everybody thank you all for coming uh yeah so uh let's just start off with a couple of thanks here to get it rolling if the slides work there we go awesome firstly want to say thank you to GDC for inviting me thank you to the organizers of the Indie Summit for putting this whole thing on and finding such great speakers Kate Co... Read More

Key Insights

• Story structure is a skill many game developers already apply intuitively, and the value of studying it consciously is moving that instinct into the conscious realm where it can be deliberately used to fix stories or gameplay that feels unrewarding.
• Flow is charted with challenge on one axis and skill on the other. A game demanding high skill with low challenge becomes boring, while low skill against high challenge makes players anxious, so designers aim to keep players in the flow channel.
• The flow channel was originally imagined as a straight line where challenge and skill escalate in perfect relationship, but designers discovered a wavy, wobbly line is more fun. Recommended reading on flow includes Jenova Chen, Jesse Schell, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
• The classic tension diagram plots tension against story time from zero to one hundred percent, passing through the inciting incident, a low midpoint where fixing things makes them worse, and the black moment of greatest darkness before the story is overcome and ends.
• Tension and flow diagrams share a common logic: much time passing with no tension is boring, and very high tension with little time passed feels unnatural and too tense. The two ideas map onto each other closely.
• A game's story has two halves. Pre-authored content covers events, storytelling, mechanics, and the world the developer builds in. The user-generated version covers the player's interaction and their interpretation, which may differ from the world the designer intended.
• The player experience is the line created between authored design and player action. In a racing example, developers used AI rubber banding and track design to place a rival just ahead at the final bend, while the player's skill and cornering choices completed the story.
• Motivations divide into external and internal. External motivation means changing something outside the person, such as becoming rich, reaching a place, or forming a relationship. Internal motivation means changing something inside, such as overcoming grief or learning something they should have already known.

Questions & Answers

Q: Why should indie game developers learn story structure?

Storytellers have used structured systems reliably for millennia to create great audience experiences, so rather than reinventing the wheel to understand player experience, developers can learn from how storytellers shape experiences and guide the emotional journey players go on. Much of this work is already done intuitively by developers, and studying structure moves that instinct into the conscious realm. It also supplies debug questions to fix stories or gameplay that feels unrewarding.

Q: What is the flow channel in game design?

Flow is usually expressed as a diagram with challenge on one axis and skill on the other. A game that demands very high skill but offers low challenge becomes boring, while one that requires low skill against high challenge becomes too difficult and makes players really anxious. The flow channel is the space between those failure states, and designers try to keep players inside it. It was first imagined as a straight line but works better as a wavy, wobbly one.

Q: Who should you read to learn more about flow theory?

The talk recommends Jenova Chen, Jesse Schell, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is described as the person who came up with a lot of this material. His name is noted as tricky to search for, with the advice to just type Mihaly and flow into Google and it will come out fine. All of these people are credited with having done amazing work on flow.

Q: How is story tension diagrammed?

Tension is plotted on one axis with time running along the bottom from zero to one hundred percent of the story. The curve rises at the inciting incident, which forms the first peak, then drops to a low midpoint where things have unexpectedly got worse through attempts to fix them. It then reaches the black moment, the point of greatest darkness threatening the character, which is eventually overcome at the story's end. In practice the line is more nobbly than the clean version.

Q: What is the difference between pre-authored content and user-generated story in games?

Pre-authored content is what developers put into the game: events, content, storytelling, mechanics, and the world it is set in. The user-generated version of the story is the player's interaction with that world plus their interpretation of it, which matters because the world the designer builds may not be the world the player sees. Players interpret differently based on their experiences of playing games and of the world around them, so the two sides can produce different results.

Q: How does the racing game example illustrate player experience?

The example places a car on a racetrack in a city, a setting that already carries narrative because players know cars and cities. The race involves back and forth with a rival, and on the final bend the rival drives badly enough for the player to take it on the inside. Developers shaped that through AI rubber banding, keeping the opponent close but stupid enough to crash, and through track design with straights and corners that built rhythm. Players shaped it through skill, choices, and cornering.

Q: What is an external motivation for a character?

An external motivation is the desire to change something in the world outside you. Common examples include getting richer, stealing money from a bank, or becoming rich and famous, all of which change your status in the outside world. Travelling to reach a certain place or explore a new area changes your status in terms of location. Forming friendships, love, and relationships changes your relationship status. Emotions are internal in some ways, but how they affect the outside world still counts as external, such as dating the hot guy in the office.

Q: What is an internal motivation and how does it differ from an external one?

An internal motivation is a desire to change something inside the person, usually framed as overcoming a problem or an emotional block, such as overcoming loneliness or grief. Another internal motivation is learning something new, usually something the character should have already known. Revenge is external because it acts on the outside world, while overcoming grief is the internal part behind it, and trying to overcome grief by killing people outside is how a lot of video game plots work.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Mata Haggis, a professor at NHTV University in the Netherlands, ran his own indie company Mono for seven years, making games for himself, the web, friends, and companies like MTV2 and Channel 4, then worked at EA and Rebellion as a writer, narrative designer, and lead designer. Most recently he released Fragments of Him with the studio Sassybot.

• Flow theory plots challenge against skill: high skill requirement with low challenge makes a game boring, while low skill with high challenge makes players anxious. The goal is keeping players inside the flow channel. Early thinking treated this as a straight line where challenge and skill escalate together, but a wavy, wobbly line turns out to be more fun.

• Storytelling tension is diagrammed the same way, with tension on one axis and time from zero to one hundred percent of the story on the other. The shape runs through the inciting incident, a low midpoint where attempts to fix things make them worse, and the black moment of greatest darkness before the ending.

• A game's story sits between pre-authored content, meaning events, mechanics, and world, and the user-generated version, meaning the player's interaction and interpretation. The same racing moment can be read as tension curve or flow curve. Developers shape it through AI rubber banding and track design, while players shape it through skill and choices.