A quick and simple rundown of the power of "player fantasy" in narrative design
- OR -
Narrative happens everywhere all the time on every single screen.
This is a super simple narrative design trick that I've used on basically every project that I've worked on for the last decade. (I suppose that it actually dabbles a little bit in the fabled User Experience Design, for those of you who might be interested in such things.)
Before I get any further, I should make it clear that I don't mean "narrative" here as character dialogue and text logs and big cinematic cut scenes.
I mean narrative at its most primal: THEME and DREAM.
I mean… (*Cue drumroll and/or epic eunuch choir chanting*)
THE PLAYER FANTASY
I use the term "player fantasy" a lot when I'm talking to clients, and I almost always have to stop and define it really quick.
It's a weird sounding term, but the idea is actually incredibly simple: What dream does this game let the player live out?
Be a fearless Space Explorer? Be a brilliant Napoleonic general? Lead a Crusader kingdom?
These things are wish fulfillments which the games offer to players. The cover of the game promises an experience, and then it is the job of the rest the game to actually deliver on that promise.
The perennial example that I point to is Insomniac's Spider-Man:
Just about every critic who talked about this game kept repeating the phrase (to the point that it became a joke), "IT JUST MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE SPIDER-MAN."
"Be Spider-Man" was the clear player fantasy that Insomniac set out to capture. Everything from the web swinging movement to the fighting animations to the dozens of alternate Spider-Man suits drawn from decades of esoteric Spider-Man historyto the user interface looking like little programs and gizmos that Peter Parker had made himself reminded you that you were Spider-Man.
Of course, it's not just superheroes that can do this.
Sea of Thieves is a master class in capturing player fantasy through every element of a game. Everything is there to make you feel like a pirate.
Just look at the raggedy map edges on the menus! Every little bit of this game is there to remind you that you're a scurvy pirate on the sea of adventure!
After all, these simple bits of user interface – menus, health bars, level select screens – are the things that the player interacts with the most.
"Player fantasy" is one of the most incredible tools for a development team.
For every single element of the game, you just ask yourself "Does this make me feel like X? How could it make me feel like X?"
When you have a clear player fantasy that every member of the team understands, it becomes the unifying principle that makes every one of your assets feel like a cohesive whole. Anytime you end up with a game that feels like less than the sum of its parts, chances are there wasn't a clear player fantasy that everyone agreed on.
Back when I worked on the Temple Run franchise, I like to compare this to throwing a themed birthday party:
If you're throwing in Indiana Jones themed birthday party, you want everything to make your guests feel like they're on a wild Indiana Jones adventure and nothing that reminds them that they're not. You don't play pin the tail on the donkey, you play snatch the idol! You don't give everybody cupcakes and gummy bears, you have skull cakes and gummy snakes! Heck, throw a couple of rubber spiders around the sink, and now even taking a bathroom break feels like part of the adventure.
Nothing is just there. Everything is part of the experience.
The power of theme is what allows Monopoly to sell 70 bajillion different versions of exactly the same game. Space Monopoly and Nightmare before Christmas Monopoly are identical on a mechanical level, but the player who loves Space will go out and buy Space Monopoly.
And just look at how much work they put into space-ifying everything! All the graphics, all the names, all the pieces have only one job: MAKE IT FEEL SPACE SO HARD THAT PEOPLE WHO OTHERWISE WOULDN'T CARE ABOUT MONOPOLY WILL GO OUT AND BUY THIS THING.
Clearly, it's working for them.
So, what's the player fantasy for your project? What dream does this game let the player live out that they can't get anywhere else?
The next time you add a big gray rectangle piece of UI, ask yourself: Does this make me feel like I'm living that fantasy? How could it make me feel like I'm living that fantasy?
Nothing is just there. EVERYTHING IS PART OF THE FANTASY.
Comments