Translated by Wang Dan

This is probably the craziest industry bigwig I've seen speak recently.

At the end of December last year, Ken Levine, the father of "Bioshock", talked a lot about the game narrative design in an interview with foreign media GamesIndustry.biz. For example, he thinks that the game industry has been developing for more than 50 years, but many people may not even understand what a game is. Another example is that he thinks it is a stupid attempt to make a branch plot in film and television works to try to enhance interactivity......

Moreover, should it be said that he has no image baggage, or should it be said that he speaks bluntly. In short, the swear words starting with F (I replaced them with tmd in the translation in order to retain the original flavor), as well as the obviously negative word stupid, Ken said it all, and he didn't take it at all.

If I usually see this kind of sharp review, I have to question it somewhat: how many pounds and how many taels, is it worthy? But when I saw that the speaker was Ken, I felt that he was qualified enough to say this:

Ken entered the industry as early as 1995 and started as a game planner, and is a true veteran; His masterpiece "Bioshock" series, according to extranet statistics, has sold more than 43 million copies, according to VG Insights statistics, the total revenue of this series of products on Steam is 240.8 million US dollars (equivalent to about 1.76 billion yuan), is one of the world's best-selling game series; Narrative design is one of the core selling points of the BioShock series, and until 2024, I can still find a video of the series' story interpretation online, and some people even call it the pinnacle of the ninth art.

Of course, Ken has had his share of downturns. In February 2014, Irrational Games, the studio that developed the BioShock series, announced its closure. Three years later, he set up a new studio, Ghost Story Games, with his old employees, and exposed a new project in 2022 - the first-person shooter game "Judas", which is expected to be released in 2025.

Some of the art designs for Judas have been revealed

Swipe left and right to view

"Judas" is Ken's debut after more than 10 years of silence. In terms of narrative design, which attracts the most attention from the industry and players, he said that this time he decided to take a risk that is not common in the industry - weakening the control of the main creative team in the narrative, giving players more initiative and freedom of choice, and giving more immediate and natural feedback on players' choices and operations in the game.

He believes that games are ultimately different from movies, music, books, and other media. Similarly, in terms of narrative, Ken believes that games should not present a story for users like a movie, or give a fixed branch plot for players to choose, but should find a way to involve players in the narrative and provide a different narrative experience for each player, otherwise "it's better to just make a movie". In addition, he talked about AI, and said that AI capabilities are not enough to replace real people in game design work.

The following is the compiled and consolidated interview content (with cuts and adjustments to take care of the reading experience):

Q: What do you think are the current challenges facing game storytelling?

Ken: It's easy to show the player a story, but it's hard to get the player involved and give feedback on the player's interaction decisions. Personally, as a narrative game maker, I don't like cutscenes because they don't have an interactive nature.

Part of the reason Judas has been in development for so long is that we want it to be more responsive to player decisions. It's a difficult problem to solve, and it explains why so few games are willing to do something like that. I think the industry has been around for more than 50 years, but you may still not know what the industry is and what games are.

At the age of 50, the film industry made "Citizen Kane", and after that, the direction of the film industry and the style of products have changed. By the 40s of the 20th century, practitioners had basically figured out the industry and films. But right now, it seems that game practitioners haven't figured it out yet.

"Citizen Kane" was released in 1941

It's just a phenomenon and doesn't mean it's good or bad. I'm a little older and I've been involved in a lot of projects, but I still sometimes think, "What is this?" Let's try to see if this works. "It's a wonderful and exciting feeling of constantly trying new things.

Q: Is it because the game requires interaction that the narrative is more difficult to do? Movies, TV series, books, such works do not require user interaction, and the content presented is the same, and the creator has more control. Conversely, if the player wants more initiative in the game, the creator loses some control. How do you think you balance the "story that the creator wants to tell the player" and "the story that the player sees" when it comes to storytelling?

Ken: In the future, the story will be player-driven—and that's what we're trying to do right now. It's what sets the game apart from other mediums.

Do you want the audience to experience interaction in the movie? If anyone really thinks this is going in the right direction, I can only send a "good luck". Someone has made a stupid attempt to make a movie with multiple endings like "Clue". Recently, I have found that more and more people are trying to make film and television works with pseudo-branching plots. Such a design is too rudimentary, basic, and simply cannot be effective.

The movie "Clue", released in 1985, has three endings

One of the endings will be played randomly for each theater screening

The really key point is, when the player has an expectation that they want to participate and intervene in the narrative, how do you design to respond to that expectation? How do you make players feel like the choices they make are important and impactful? That's what you need to think about. With the same game, you have to find a way to make the player feel like they are playing with a different story.

If we can't make this difference in experience, then we might as well go straight to the movie.

Q: The branching narratives of many games nowadays, as well as interactive films, do rely on decision tree structures. We also recently caught up with the Cockpit Command team, a Star Trek-style offline flight simulator that doesn't rely on decision trees because there are actors on set who can react to the player, and people behind the scenes who can adjust to the player's actions in real time. But the game has to be programmed to respond to the player, and the developer has to predict what the player will try to do. How can this obstacle be overcome?

Cockpit Command

Ken: Interactive theatre does have a lot more room for interaction. Their strength lies in their improvisational performances and their ability to react to user actions in real time. The content our team is currently working on is very close to interactive theater, but we can't do real-time feedback with human power, and computers certainly don't know how to improvise.

Judas' approach is based primarily on recognizing and responding to player behavior. For example, the character will observe a long list of the player's actions and comment on it, "Hey, you saw this, and then you did that, and then you did this, and that's really funny, because this thing led to that ......" We're doing something like this right now.

It's a lot of work, you have to think about everything the player can do in the game, and then prepare lines for the different characters to react to those players' actions, and make their reactions seem as natural as possible.

Another thing is that we find coherence very important. You can design separate story moments that don't require antecedents, like you would in the crossword puzzle of Mad Libs: an orc finds you and gives you a quest to find item X. This kind of story is boring, like leaving empty space and then using a random number generator to roll out the empty contents.

《Mad Libs》

But once you start looking at the coherence of events — having the characters observe the player "did this, and then did that, and this led to that, and I get mad about it" — that's where things get really interesting, and that's the space we're fumbling around. It's complicated to do, and I don't think there's a molded solution at the moment.

In short, I'm interested in giving players more space to explore, and supporting and encouraging them to explore. Instead of simply telling the player, "No, you have to play the story we wrote, TMD yours." ”

Q: Some people in the industry say that generative AI can solve this problem. What do you think?

Ken: I don't think it's underestimated, AI is really powerful.

However, AI also has its limitations, one of which is persistence. Look at Sora, the video based on ChatGPT video generation software, it made a video of "woman walking on the street", and the street scene is really beautiful. But once she turned and walked back, Sora probably forgot where she was.

At present, AI still does not understand sustainability, and it may be able to learn it in the future. A lot of people are worried about being robbed of their jobs by AI right now, but have you ever seen an AI write an excellent 20-page movie script? Does it make silky transitions from scene to scene? AI doesn't know how to do it.

Some jobs can indeed be enhanced with AI. For example, you can use AI to train your bug database to query the number of bugs in certain scenarios. But AI is currently unable to write a well-structured, truly compelling story, or string together multiple scenes. Let the AI do the work, and it will be confused.

So, we (the team) didn't use any generative AI in the product design, but we might use AI in out-of-game work such as bug databases and cleaning and analyzing databases, which is what AI is good at. In addition, considering the legal issues related to image copyright, we do not plan to use AI to generate concept art.

For me, the role of AI in game development isn't impressive at the moment. Maybe it will get stronger in the future, but at least for now, I'm not worried that it will replace everyone's jobs.

Q: You mentioned earlier that you want to give players more room to explore in the narrative, but in this case, how to control the pace of the game? For example, if the main story of the game says that the world is about to be destroyed, but the player spends more than 20 hours exploring the story, the tension of the apocalypse is not diminished.

Ken: That's an interesting question. Judas opens with a ship that is disintegrating and they must flee in a hurry. We've been thinking a lot about how to do this part of the story, because in addition to leaving the ship, players may also be concerned about another important question: "Why should I do this?" "If you don't get this content ready, players may lose faith in the story. You have to respect all the things that the player might care about.

I don't think there's a fixed solution to this, and if I do, I guess the only way to solve it is this way: don't make trouble for yourself. Does the world in the game have to come to an end in the story? Because the story of Judas deals with the end times, we have to consider this question.

In fact, when we first started making Judas, we wanted to make a small-scale product. But as our ambitions have grown, so has the volume of Judas' content. Honestly, it's by far our most adventurous attempt. The reason why I say this is because I think Marvel's superhero movies also face a similar problem: every 5 minutes of TMD, the universe is facing a crisis of destruction, and by the end of the movie, you will feel that the crisis of "the universe is going to be destroyed" that was frequently foreshadowed before has become boring.

I hope to avoid that, because if you keep using this kind of plot to rush players, they will feel rushed. Ideally, we wanted to do both: to make sure the story had a sense of crisis, but also to give the player the freedom to do what they wanted and explore every corner.

Q: What do you think about the so-called "legitimate" endings of multi-ending games? There is always controversy in circles about the "true" ending of the game, and Ubisoft has also experimented with canon mode in Assassin's Creed: Shadows, in which the game makes decisions for the player. How does this affect player choices?

Ken: I haven't played the game you're talking about, and it's probably pretty good. But at the end of the day, I don't think there's such a thing as a "canon".

I don't really believe in "orthodoxy in the eyes of the creator", because one day I will die. If there are still people interested in my game after I pass away, they will definitely not be able to ask me what the "legitimate" ending is.

I've always tried my best not to interfere too much with player decision-making, because that intervention doesn't matter. Or in other words, what really matters is how the user feels about a work of art, not how the creator feels about the product. Art is the intersection between the work and the viewer. Every picture, every song, every book, every game is different. When you read a book when you are young, and when you read it again when you are old, you will feel that it is a different book. It's wonderful, and I would never try to deprive myself of that experience.

People often ask me what exactly is the ending of BioShock Infinite, and my reaction may be a bit of a jerk, and I won't answer those questions. But the answer in my mind was, "What do you think?" "That's the beauty of the game's narrative. No other medium offers such a high level of engagement to users as games.

Q: It's true, and it's hard to tell a story in other mediums in a way that doesn't necessarily have a beginning, middle, and end. If you look at Sam Barlow's Her Story, it's not a branching narrative, it has a story, but the player needs to understand it in a non-linear way. In this case, what information is obtained at which point in the game may be different for different players. How can the gaming industry explore this further?

Her Story, a movie game released in 2015

Ken: The story of the game is very flexible. Some products may indeed require a complete plot with a beginning, middle, and end, such as Super Mario 64 where the story is clear; At the same time, there are some games with very obscure stories, such as Play Dead's "Inside" and Namco's "Block Soul", where the story is vague and you don't want the player to know exactly what's going on, but you can still vaguely understand what's going on in the game, which is quite abstract.

On the surface, "Block Soul" is just a rolling sand sculpture game, but some careful players interpret the metaphor. Image source B station @ soybean flour can be the protagonist.

In fact, the more you make the story concrete and legitimate, the more difficult it is to get the narrative right. Players will expect dialogue in the game, and they want the character's motivations to be natural and reasonable. Judas has a lot of different directions, and it's very different from the games we've been working on before. Different players may trigger different episodes in different ways, and the places they can reach will vary from player to player.

We're trying to find a clearer narrative while keeping a fairly open ending. It's hard to do because we have to make the story go on in a very natural, logical way, and keep it open-ended. It's tricky, that's why it's taken me so long to make this game.

Q: How does the game environment affect the story? The narrative of Her Story is presented through short video clips, and players can watch the story in any order. But Judas and BioShock are set in a 3D environment, and players can only enter from one area to another through specific routes.

Ken: It depends. BioShock and BioShock Infinite, from a development standpoint — and what I'm going to say about that might be uncomfortable for some players — are basically a hallway, a very long hallway with a bunch of trigger points in it that trigger the elements that move the story forward.

Judas is made in a completely different way, it is more reflective of the player's autonomy and more difficult to make.

Q: Some open-world games will guide players to explore other content with level restrictions and stronger enemies that can't be defeated in the early stages. It feels like the developers are still in some control of the story to be told.

Ken: It's a trade-off. The more control a creator has, the easier it is for them to present a story that they find very easy to understand; The greater the player's autonomy, the more work the creator has.

In Judas, we tend to go with the latter, trying to give players what they expect in the story, while also unfolding the story in a way they've never seen before. It's a lot of work.

Q: Do you have schedule pressure? It's been a decade since BioShock Infinite, and not every developer has the opportunity to spend a decade trying something new. A lot of people have to launch new products within a set timeframe.

Ken: I think one of the problems facing the industry right now is that games are getting bigger and bigger, and the graphics are getting better. Making a gate now takes more time than it did a decade ago, because you're dealing with normal maps, textures and higher polygons, physics engines, and so on.

Everything has become expensive, especially when it comes to AAA games. You burn so much money, it's only natural that there will be a lot of people who care about its commercial viability. But the problem with AAA games is that if you don't innovate, you're going to start losing players because they've seen too many products of this level. So, from some perspectives, I feel like the game industry is becoming more and more conservative, and some vendors are relying too much on big productions.

It wasn't easy for me to jump out of the BioShock series. Before BioShock, I had done quite a few games, but never had a franchise as successful as it. However, I saw an opportunity in Judas, and this time I was willing to create a new IP and take the risk.

I'm actually lucky, after all, Take-Two chose to trust me (Irrational Games was acquired by Take-Two in 2006), and not every developer can have that luck. Especially in recent years, it has been difficult to be trusted by the management.

In addition to Take-Two, I'm also grateful for other companies that are willing to try and innovate, such as RockStar (the developer of the GTA series). Ideally, no matter what the field is, I hope that the investors will invest more risk-taking people in addition to stable returns. It's just that AAA games are too expensive right now, and it's getting harder and harder to take risks. So, I was able to gain trust from the management and spend money and time on the project, which is really lucky.

《GTA6》

Of course, it's hard to try something new. You take risks and sometimes you fall badly. And the higher the cost, the greater the risk. But I don't think it's okay to be adventurous without that kind of adventurous spirit - if you look at Marvel movies, if the heroes don't take risks anymore, even the audience will lose interest.

Nothing is destined to succeed. You have to give the user something that stimulates them, and it only gets more difficult over time. But guess what? That's the job of a gamer.

Q: What other games have inspired you with their narrative design?

Ken: Let's look at different types of stories.

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, for example, has a very compelling story and a natural plot that most games fail to do; But I'm also excited about the story of a game like Inside, which shows the way a story can only be done in a game — no words, no dialogue, you can't fully understand what's going on, but it still gives you an incredible storytelling experience.

The Last of Us

I remember when we were working on Thief: Dark Project, we (the team) discussed the importance of atmosphere versus story: the atmosphere of the game is important, and whether there is a clear story or not is not so important.

The games I make usually have a clear story, but Inside offers more of an atmosphere. The player can immerse themselves in this crazy dystopian world and take on the role of the child (the main character) of the game, even though the player doesn't know anything about him. Go left and right, do puzzles, solve obstacles...... It's pretty much the whole game of Inside, but its story is so gripping.

If you keep the original narrative form of "Inside" and make it into a movie, the audience will definitely not feel the same way as the players. Therefore, I have great admiration for this game.

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