GDC 08: Ken Levine, Narrative & BioShock
In other storytelling-in-games news, Das Broot and I were present and voting at Ken Levine's session here at GDC, both to worship at the altar of Levine (FB does have them chains tattooed on his wrists, after all) and to hear the BioShock producer talk shop about telling stories and crafting a narrative in games - and some of the lessons learned from making 2K Boston and 2K Australia's blockbuster aquatic Ayn Rand adventure.
You'll immediately recognize some of Levine's contentions about storytelling in games: "Warehouses and Sewers: Waste of opportunity" read one visual aid. Anyone who's played BioShock will probably realize the impact of this idea - playing through environments like Arcadia and Fontaine's Fisheries, those environments were crucial parts of the storytelling mechanic. Imagine playing the same game in a mud-brown series of undifferentiated corridors - and then think of all the undifferentiated, mud-brown corridors you've gamed through during the years. Missed opportunities indeed.
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We saw footage from a 2005 build of the game, with bland environments, scattered generic crates ("Five seconds till crate," Levine warned the audience), and Little Sisters who looked like horseshoe crabs with molars. Levine went on to admit that he'd made a lot of his people unhappy when he scrapped that early version, but anyone who's enjoyed BioShock is likely to be sympathetic to Ken Levine.
Ironically, it's the element of story that Levine believes is least helpful to focus on from a design standpoint - at least in a traditional manner. "Nobody cares about your stupid story," he said to a flutter of knowing laughter. It doesn't matter what happened 3,000 years ago, who was the emperor of the third elven dynasty - whatever you've got to say has to be apprehendable by playing the game, rather than by reading a 40-page manual or combing through screens upon screens of exposition.
BioShock originally had a much more convoluted storyline, with three different forms of government, many more characters and a plot that might have made Oblivion look spartan. Instead, the BioShock team killed off all characters but those necessary to the narrative: the result was a bread crumb trail of audio logs and PSAs that gave the player a sculpted, choreographed view of rapture through the eyes of citizens who embody certain parts of the story: Diane McClintock tells the story of the war while Dr Tennenbaum sheds light on the horror and heartbreak of the Little Sisters.
While many enthusiasts will always enjoy backstory and fully-fleshed worlds in games, that isn't the point, says Levine - after all, it's getting those players who might otherwise only play Madden 08 to pick up your game that makes it a blockbuster. And while Levine admitted he underestimated the players' response to the last act of BioShock, he can certainly be given credit for making a game that a great number of gamers - "Madden" armchair enthusiasts and dedicated gamers alike - have enjoyed.
tiny dancer
Posted to GDC, Hot Stuff on 21 February 2008
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: 2k australia, 2k boston, bioshock, gdc 2008, irrational, ken levine, narrative, xbox 360
Doesn't that pic of Ken Levine make him look hawt?
just straight chillin' in downtown chicago.
So they didn't architect the story of BioShock, they crafted it.