Closure in Games

This started out as my reply to a comment by SJ to a previous post, Role-Playing Games Aren't Movies. But it just got too long for that (yeah, I'm pretty long-winded, aren't I?). You might want to read that post first.

I must admit that I rarely finish an RPG, so I don't ever worry about how they end. No doubt that's one reason why I'm willing to abandon the "story-telling" model entirely. But if so, it's only one reason. Still, I understand how players might want some closure to a game, some feeling of accomplishment when they finish it. It's nice to "win" a game, isn't it?

Of course, if you're telling a particular story, you need a good ending (or several, if you're also trying to be "nonlinear"). But to do that, you must make sure that the player actually follows the story. Story-telling is inherently linear, and compromises are just that. Any attempt to tell a story to the player is going to limit player freedom. There's no way around that.

In the games I mentioned previously - Dwarf Fortress, Aurora, etc. - you can't really "win" the game, but you can always lose it. In that way, it's like life. "Winning" at life is just having a good life, a life you can be proud of, and usually (though not always), living as long as possible. But we all "lose" the game of life eventually. Of course, our society - certainly our species - continues after we're dead. In real life, the characters change, but the story goes on (though not forever - even in that sense, you can lose, but you can't win, not ultimately).

A book or a movie may end with the hero riding off into the sunset (or, at least, proudly victorious, with the beautiful girl in his arms). I always wonder what happens after that. But that's the thing with a story - it ends. And unless it's a tragedy, it doesn't normally end in the protagonist's death. Well, stories are artificial. But so are games. And yes, I do understand the desire for closure. Still, to end a game like that, you must know where the player will end up. In a book or a movie, that's no problem. The author/director knows exactly what will happen. But a computer game is different. To unleash the full potential of computer games, you must give each player the freedom to be creative himself.

I do see a couple of ways around this dilemma. One might be to keep track of player accomplishments in the game. That wouldn't be easy to do when you don't know what the "quests" will be, but it's still possible. After all, many games already keep track of your character's reputation. Accomplishments, for good or ill, wouldn't be that big a problem. Then, the player could have the option of "retiring" (as opposed to just "quitting") at any time, which would end the game with a grand celebration or a eulogy - a review of his life, anyway. Closure.

An alternate way might be for the developer to set up, in the initial game conditions, one overarching, world-spanning situation (a "primary quest" sort of thing). This might be a war, an invasion, a super-villain of some kind, a devastating plague, or anything else likely to affect everyone in the world, at least eventually.

Unlike the main quest in a story-based game, this would continue realistically whether the player got directly involved or not. However, by the very nature of such events, it would be hard for the player to stay completely out of it. Like everyone else, he'd be affected by an invasion, for example, though he might try to avoid the actual fighting. Either way, the game developer could still set up certain conditions that would "complete" the game.

For example, if invaders conquered the capitol city and killed the king, that might end the game. Likewise, if the leader of the invaders was killed, and they were driven back to just a small proportion of the gameworld. Or if a peace treaty was signed. If wanted, you could have many different situations that would end the game (in addition to the death of the main character or the player just deciding to retire). These would all be situations which wouldn't occur on their own for some time, of course. But each of them could have an elaborate finish which would satisfy any need for closure.

Note, too, that the player would still have an effect on this world-spanning problem, whether or not he got directly involved. After all, helping a town with a bandit problem would strengthen the king's ability to fight, while joining the bandits would help the invaders, even though that wouldn't likely be the intent of the bandits. And as I say, it would be hard to stay completely out of this kind of thing. That's the whole point of "main quests" - they're usually important because they affect so many people. If you're in that world, you're going to be a part of the situation, one way or another.

Let me go to a second point now, how you "spark interest" in this kind of game. It's not that there wouldn't be a story in the game - in fact, there would be all sorts of stories. Just as there are "stories" in every household in real life, so too would there be "stories" everywhere in a gameworld. With or without a dangerous, world-spanning problem, there would still be conflict, still be disagreements, still be situations full of story potential.

In Dwarf Fortress, for example, thieves steal precious possessions (and even children). Bandits attack, wild animals are often deadly, and even accidents can kill. Individual dwarves grieve when their friends or family members, or even pets, are killed, and that affects their behavior, often leading to suicide or murder themselves. They can be heroic or timid or any number of different personality traits, which also affect the situation. The game is positively filled with stories (just not any particular story).

In a more traditional RPG (so far, "adventure mode" in Dwarf Fortress isn't anywhere close to this kind of thing), your character could find situations like this everywhere. You could decide who to help or hinder. Your actions, then, would affect everyone else, too, because every NPC would have friends, family, co-workers. And whatever you decided to do, the game could pull you into the situation, so that one thing would tend to follow from another.

For example, in Mount&Blade, your character starts out randomly in the gameworld, and at first, you tend to travel around. But as you acquire followers and get a reputation - both a general recognition of your growing fame and a more specific reputation within cities and among particular lords - you start to get invitations from kings. You can, of course, just bum around and continue to stay free of any entanglements. You can even become a bandit and prey on everyone. But the game is designed so that you'll probably, eventually, choose a realm to join.

Even then, you've still got the freedom to choose your own path. For example, you can betray your king to his rival, if you wish. Or you can switch realms entirely. But generally, there's a natural, logical progression here. It's all up to you, at every point, but if you want to get ahead, it's only reasonable that people expect things from you. If you pledge to a king, he might give you a village or even a fortress, but he'll also expect your support. Reasonably enough, if you fail him, he won't be happy. On the other hand, if you're particularly useful to him, you'll be rewarded.

The point is that everything, at every point, is always up to you. What to do is entirely your choice. But the game still draws you in. You're not just doing things at random. Because of the way the world works (and it's not at all unrealistic), you get sucked into a particular point of view and into a specific set of problems and opportunities. It's likely to be different every time you play the game, because it's always your choice, but actually, the developer is still providing plenty of direction. The direction is subtle, and it doesn't affect your freedom at all, but it's not just random, either.

In all of this, though, we're only at the very beginning of this kind of game development. We see hints of how the future might be, but that's all. As far as I know, we don't have the technology yet to make fully-realized gameworlds where NPCs all have their own AI and act like people. We're a long way from the point where a player's character has real freedom in deciding what to do and how to do it, in a fully destructible world where you can do things the developer never expected. But I'm convinced that's the future of gaming.