This document discusses the relationship between development and storytelling. It notes that as developers, we should allocate some of our energy to improving our work by looking at it as a story. Storytelling can provide more value than technical improvements alone. The document provides many examples of how narratives and story structures can be useful in game development, including for progression, emergence, and engaging users. It also covers challenges like ensuring gameplay mechanics support the story and avoiding unethical manipulations of user behavior.

1. ROME 11-12 april 2014
Development
and storytelling:
a many-to-many
relationship
http://bit.ly/devstory
Pietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli

2. Why care?

3. You, developer (in some sense):
as you can learn anything,
you should allocate a % of your
energy to improving
your work / product / service / (life)
looking at it as a story.
3

4. 4
Storytelling can give
more value to your
game than more FPS!

5. 1.Getting it in
the hands of
users
2.People want
to use it
5

6. 6
I’ll break the
news for you:
you
are
a
writer

7. Hidden thesis:
you can learn
anything
The Genius in All
of Us: New
Insights into
Genetics,Talent,
and IQ
This should be a life belief of any geek.
7

8. "We will encourage
you to develop the
three great virtues
of a programmer:
laziness,
impatience,
and hubris."
Larry Wall,
Programming Perl
Competitve advantage of the software developer: everything else is simpler – so you can learn it.
8

9. Writing code
& good writing

10. http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-write-without-writing
10 10

11. “ The difference between a tolerable programmer and a great
programmer is not how many programming languages they know, and it's
not whether they prefer Python or Java. It's whether they can communicate
their ideas.
By persuading other people, they get leverage.
By writing clear comments and technical specs, they let other
programmers understand their code, which means other programmers
can use and work with their code instead of rewriting it.
Absent this, their code is worthless. ”
Dev side.
11

12. “In defense of my fellow
programmers,
communication with other human
beings is not exactly what we
signed up for”
Not signed up for.
12

13. Give me an example
of stories useful in
development

14. Ideas ->
Drawings ->
Requirements ->
Mockups ->
Functional mockups ->
Linked mockups ->
Conditionally linked mockups ->
Javascript browser prototype ->
Javascript model ported to a
Unity quick prototype ->
Unity for web / desktop demo ->
Multi platform deploy
}GLUE?

15. Could hardly be simpler: a match-3 game, Bust the Dust.
15

16. 10000000 addictive, linear story.
16

17. Not alone in developing awareness.
17

18. Maybe getting to
the point

19. 19

20. Learn to write

21. How I learned to write: it is a
skill, a real craftmanship.
Made many discoveries.
My story.
21

22. 22
Its a craft.

23. Quality resists means.
23

24. For sale:
baby shoes,
never worn.
Practical tips:
- brevity- Twitter is a great master
- break common places
-use a third eye
- use white space,no wall-of-text 24

25. Tip.
Self-contained
posts.
People can join any time.
25

26. The most important point I’m
making is to
WRITE WITH THE DOOR OPEN.
What I am saying is simply: write a dev log?
Learn to detect the story
26

27. http://www
.shiningroc
ksoftware.c
om/
There are videos, and quick ways to do them. If you have a narrative defined, you can do them quickly.
27

28. No way to learn more, experiment, get feedback,attention, ideas than passing the damn door: I am a
novice in games, but I am keeping the door open…
28

29. No way to learn more, experiment, get feedback,attention, ideas than passing the damn door: I am a
novice in games, but I am keeping the door open…
29

30. No way to learn more, experiment, get feedback,attention, ideas than passing the damn door: I am a
novice in games, but I am keeping the door open…
30

31. Stories express
meaningful work

32. So one day you begin to write.
Thinking of your work, your new enterprise as a story can help in multiple dimensions.
If it begins to make sense to you, it can make sense to others. At least its possible.
32

33. The incredibly important day of
your game being published.
Nothing happens, a boring day
like any other.
Hooks can only come from your narrative. Repubblica 24h ...
33

35. Back to writing for
games

36. Stories, loops,
interactivity

37. One idea:
progression
vs.
emergence

38. Emergenceis the primordial game structure, where a game is specified as a
small number of rules that combine and yield large numbers of game
variations, which the players then design strategies for dealing with. This is found in card
and board games and in most action and all strategy games. Emergence games tend to be
replayable and tend to foster tournaments and strategy guides.
Progressionis the historically newer structure that entered the computer game
through the adventure genre. In progression games, the player has to perform a
predefined set of actions in order to complete the game. One feature of
the progression game is that it yields strong control to the game designer: Since the designer
controls the sequence of events, this is also where we find the games with cinematic or
storytelling ambitions. This leads to the infamous experience of playing a game "on a rail",
i.e. where the work of the player is simply to perform the correct pre-defined moves in
order to advance the game. Progression games have walkthroughs, specifying all the actions
needed to complete the game.
38

39. Emergence / Progression
Sim City, Braid.
39

40. 40

41. Narrative
for / in / from / out
games

42. The Magic Circle: Huizinga, Johan. 1971. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston:
Beacon Press.
42

43. Which story?
- user gameplay story
- learning story
- author scripted story
- game generated story
- describing the game (story as ux tool)
Distinguish: emergent narrative vs. embedded narrative.
43

44. Classical media is not interactive: depends how you look at it.There is a
branching reality, and videogames are rarely truly interactive.
http://gamamoto.com/2011/11/08/storytelling-and-video-games/ 44

45. “If one understands that
storytelling for games
has little or nothing to
do with interactive
storytelling one has
already saved oneself a
lot of trouble.”
It goes in many directions.
45

46. 46

47. 47

48. http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Adventure-Design-Ernest-Adams-ebook/dp/B00IE950C2
48

49. Relationship with
mechanics

50. Game are made of loops
To analyze the mechanics of a game, you got to find the loops.
50

51. Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Author)
51

52. Koster – Deterding definition of fun.
52

53. “Fun is
about
learning in
a context
where there
is no
pressure”
But in school there is, and there has to be, pressure.There is here a dynamic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x5YtkTw4wn4#!
53

54. http://codingconduct.cc/Pawned
54

55. Fun is learning - but
learning is not always
fun.
“Fun is a feedback we
get in the mind when
absorbing patterns for
learning purposes” -
Koster
From “Theory of Fun”
55

56. The dark side

57. No narrative ideal, no purpose beyond monetization. Lenses in a skeleton:The Sims Social.
57

58. Measure,measure,measure.
58

59. Addiction by Design Natascha Schull
http://gelconference.com/videos/2008/natasha_schull
97% is given by the slot machine – study IT

60. Applications

61. Problem:
RAI Cinema -> people love
movies, people don’t go to
movies.
Make them play “movie writer”.
Melt-a-Plot: UI design includes motivation.
61

62. 62

63. 63

64. Problem:
Integrating social tools in the
enterprise (like anything else)
is conceptually complex and
practically hard.
Social Business Toolkit
64

65. Meet this “thing”. Reactions?
65

66. We have a complex theme, a friendly approach.We basically have this problem: the cards are on the
surface.And the alternative is not very friendly. It is a learning problem.
66

67. (See mockup.)
67

68. Turning into a strategy game
activates a feedback loop – only
the digital game can give this is a
practical, feasible way.
68

69. Engine core is the action / task relationship.
69

70. Non played games.
Dear Esther, Proteus, Journey
70

71. Games for change
71

72. Games for change
72

73. Oh how nice it is to work as a
slave for this multinational
http://unmanned.molleindustria.org/
73

74. Playfied solutions
“Gamification”. Bottle bank arcade. Somemtimes, unhealthy psychological consequences.
Techniology of “fitting better”: technology for control (Foucault).
Game play is instrumental to an external goal.
74

75. http://thegamebible.com/
75

76. Finale

77. 77

78. 78

79. Persuasive UIs
79

80. Sebastian Deterding
Jesse Schell
Chris DeLeon “Hobby game Dev”
80

81. https://twitter.com/ppolsinelli/lists/game-designers
https://twitter.com/ppolsinelli/lists/game-magazines-studies
81

82. My twitter stream is mostly
dedicated to game design:
http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli
A blog on game design
http://designagame.eu
82

83. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hobbit-desolation-smaug-48-
frames-655444
http://strangesounds.org/2013/09/new-us-mysterious-booms-reports-
from-virginia-kentucky-ohio-california-florida-new-york.html
https://www.heidisongs.com/blog/2012/02/teaching-kindergartners-to-
write.html
Image sources.