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Where Drama Meets Games

Blurring the boundaries between computer games and drama.

Report on an NMK event presented at the TAPS London Writers' Festival in October 2002.

Greg Roach
The vast majority of computer games fail on an emotional and dramatic level, according to Greg Roach, multimedia pioneer and the man behind The X-Files interactive CD-ROM.

Roach was speaking at NMK’s seminar for the TAPS London Writing Festival, at which four interactive producers discussed work which blurs the boundaries between gaming and drama.

The X-Files CD-ROM is designed to be a hybrid of computer game and TV thriller. Conceptually, the gameplay is not radical: events are viewed from the gamer’s perspective as they control an avatar in a virtual world, solving problems and attempting to save Mulder and Scully from alien abduction and covert FBI skullduggery.

What sets the game apart is its classy production, and the ingenuity with which chunks of video footage are electronically pieced together to give the interactive experience the feel of a linear televisual drama.

When video footage is used in computer games it generally features woefully bad acting and the kind of clunky dialogue that small boys invent for their Action Men. By contrast, The X-Files has the same high production values as its TV counterpart, right down to a script by X-Files creator Chris Carter, and appearances by many of the show’s regular actors, including stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.

The presence of such familiar faces creates an emotional resonance for fans of the TV series, which enriches the gaming experience from the outset, says Roach. But gamers cannot themselves assume the role of Mulder or Scully, for the behaviour of these characters must remain consistent with the plot of the game and the history of the show.

Instead, the gaming engine constructs a psychological profile for the gamer’s character based on their behaviour, and this affects the narrative flow and their relationships with other characters throughout the game. That there are social consequences to actions increases dramatic tension by allowing the game to exist in a "moral and ethical universe" absent from the majority of computer games, according to Roach.

A sense of drama is also generated by the visuals, which switch between different camera angles and 1st and 3rd person points of view every 7 to 10 seconds, in a close approximation of a professionally edited TV show. The aim is to avoid the ‘cognitive dissonance’ that arises when long passive video sequences are interrupted by periods of interaction, and to achieve a closer integration of ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ elements. Each scene is built on the fly through a process of ‘synthesised continuity’, which selects a series of short clips from a database, and puts them together in cinematic sequences customised according to each player's behaviour in the game.

The CD-ROM is designed to appeal to a range of audiences, and can be viewed as a straight, 4-hour episode of the X-Files with no interaction whatsoever, a complete 40-hour gaming experience, or a compromise between the two.

It looks good, and certainly seems to represent a hybrid of games and drama - but is there a market for this kind of product? Interestingly, while the CD-ROM was a hit with X-Files fans and non-gamers, hardcore gamers objected that the dramatic framework didn’t give them as much freedom as they were accustomed to in other games. (Of course, maybe they were just annoyed because they weren't allowed to be Gillian Anderson.)

Ted Evans
For several years, Ted Evans has been battling platform limitations to deliver interactive fictions over the internet and - in his current role at Flextech - broadband and interactive TV. Because of bandwidth limitations, Ted favours graphics, animation and the clever use of sound (learned while working in radio) over video, but in other respects his creations share characteristics with the X-Files game . In work such as ‘The Cipher’ and ‘Spite’ users are given tasks to complete and mysteries to solve, and these elements of gameplay are intertwined with dramatic elements to drive the narrative forward.

When producing these games and stories, Evans discovered that allowing your audience to interact with the narrative can have unexpected results. In ‘Cipher’, an early game for MSN, Ted created some message boards and additional areas that were not central to the plot, but provided something for the audience to play around with. Similarly, ‘Spite’ featured the world’s largest virtual confessional, and the web’s only Swedish psychic, as diversions from the central narrative. Of course, these quickly became the most popular aspects of the games, and users contributed massively to these areas. Because the games were produced in instalments, Ted was able to take the audience’s ideas and feed them back into subsequent episodes.

Working in instalments also taught Evans the value of the cliffhanger ending, which turned out to work just as effectively in interactive games as in TV soaps, radio dramas and novels. 'The Cipher' attracted over one and a half million regular users, and generated a surge of web traffic each time a new episode was released. The point here is that no matter how interactive your narrative, or technically sophisticated its delivery, what matters most are the techniques of good storytelling.

Kent Massey
Kent Massey of MVmax believes his company’s technology for delivering interactive dramas will be used by everyone from producers of kids’ TV shows to soft pornographers. Fortunately, what he chose to demonstrate was an interactive cop show.

Shot on video, Kent’s pilot is closer to a TV series than a computer game. Viewers cannot fully take control of the drama’s protagonist, but they can make choices about his actions - such as whether or not to arrest a criminal - at critical junctures in the narrative.

We are not talking about an endlessly branching narrative structure here; to do things that way might require as many as 40,000 hours of footage to produce half an hour of screen time. Instead, a limited number of intertwining threads converge around key plot points and lead towards the inevitable cop show ending. In fact, it takes only 52 minutes of footage to create a 30 minute episode with a range of possible narrative permutations. Such limitations are not only necessary for reasons of cost and practicality, but also so that some semblance of pacing and dramatic structure can be maintained.

Produced for demonstration purposes, Massey’s cop show does not have the high production values or standards of acting and scriptwriting of the X-Files CD-Rom. In focus groups, almost all viewers described the show as poor when watched as a conventional TV show, with no interactive functionality.

Add the interactive features, however, and focus groups give the show a massive 80 to 90% approval rating. Could Massey have stumbled upon a way of making poor-quality television more appealing to viewers? If so, legions of broadcasters will soon be clamouring at his door.

Carolyn Ratcliffe
The final speaker of the evening, Carolyn Ratcliffe from Bristol’s Red Cat films, takes a different approach to interactivity in her work. Red Cat’s current project centres around a series of 6 short films, all sharing the same setting and cast of characters, but each filmed from a different point of view and with a distinct thematic focus.

Any one of the films can be viewed in its own right (indeed, the first was shown at Cannes this year), and once complete it will be possible to watch all six consecutively as a portmanteau feature. But at no point will it be possible to change the actions of the characters or influence the narratives in any way: these films are strictly linear.

Carolyn believes that turning any of the films into interactive games would detract from the carefully crafted dramatic and cinematic qualities of the work that she and her colleagues have produced, and shift the focus from the script and narrative progression towards the mechanics of the gameplay itself.

However, the project is also designed to be delivered via DVD or broadband, and it is at this point that the interactive elements of the concept come into play. Each of the films will be displayed via an interface which enables viewers to jump between any of the 6 movies at any point in time. The six narratives will have synchronised, interconnecting timelines, making it possible to watch the same scene from different points of view by switching from one short film to a parallel one that approaches the scene from another perspective.

Viewers will also be able to follow the progress of individual props which are pivotal to the plots of all 6 films, and follow web links providing further details on the subjects covered in each one.

Carolyn does not advocate interactivity for the sake of it, but believes that these devices help to create a voyeuristic experience that encourages viewers to become more engaged with the films, moving from the periphery of the story towards the heart of the piece. "These are not games," she says.

If the gamers among you feel excluded by this, fear not. In homage to classic arcade machines, the titles of the films are: Space Invaders, Defender, Asteroids, Frogger, Missile Command and Tetris!

Interactive Fictions was produced by Stephen Jeffery-Poulter for NMK, and presented in association with BAFTA, TAPS and the Writers Guild of Great Britain as part of the Third TAPS London Writers Festival. The event was supported by Business Link for London.