Ken Levine on Storytelling
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Push vs. Pull
Levine thinks that you should build games that encourage the player to discover the narrative, rather than pushing it via cutscenes. Levine said, "What's the purpose of a cutscene? It's to push information at the player. It's the same as linear media -- it's not our advantage, it's not our strength." When it comes to optional story, "The answer is yeah, they may miss it. You have to accept they are going to miss maybe most of it. That's OK, because the people who engage and pull it toward them will be so passionate about it because they were involved in that decision."
Three Levels of Story
According to Levine, BioShock operates on three levels. "We did some focus testing on BioShock -- and their answer as a focus group of 40 people was... 'Uh... Madden? Halo 3?'. The truth is that people have no idea of franchises. It's so hard to understand the experience of actual guys. You have to make the game for people who don't care." Levine's three levels:
Level 1 - "Where do I need to go, who do I need to kill? If you don't hit those people you will be making those games, as we did at Irrational, that sold 150,000 units."
Level 2 - "I need to kill this guy Andrew Ryan, there's that Fontaine guy, there are those little girls. I'm usually in this group in games, some interest in the story."
Level 3 - "Think about music. There's the weird kid in the back of the classroom who's writing all the Nirvana lyrics on his notebook. That's the hardcore fan... you have to give them all of that love, a novelistic level of detail. That has to be there but it can't get in the way of the experience of the guy who just plays Madden and Halo."
"If you want people to follow your plot it has to be really fucking stupid."
