People of Frictional: Thomas Grip

Introduction
This will be the first part in a series where we introduce all the members of Frictional Games. Apart from the obvious "getting to know the team", it will also be an insight into the daily workings of the company. What makes Frictional Games different from many other developers is that everybody works from home, rarely meet in person and very few have had any professional game making experience before joining the team. All communication is done over Skype (plus the rare phone call), and for the last few years the whole team only meets up once a year. When we tell this to people we usually get surprised reactions, and they have trouble understanding how it all can work. Hopefully this series can help answer that.

With that said, let's get this series started! First up, I will get myself out of the way.

Who am I?
Hi all! My name is Thomas Grip and I am one of the two founding members of Frictional Games. For the first few years at Frictional Games I used to work from my living room, on a desk placed next to the TV.(This made me an expert in shows like Top Model, Bold and Beautiful and whatever my fiancee watched while I worked during the evenings.) Eventually we moved to a bigger apartment and I got my own office. This how my work space looks right now:

Background
I started out making games in 1997 (when I was 16) and my first game, called "Köttar Monstret" (yeah, I know...), was made on a TI-83 and became kinda popular in my class. At the time I did not have a computer, and had never really used one. I did not feel I was a very technical person and even though I had chosen to study the natural sciences, my main interest was with art and I drew and painted a lot. But when I started to program on that TI-83, which was quite clunky with only 8 or so short lines visible at once, it was like a revelation to me. I had never understood that you could do this sort of thing with a computer. I was hooked, and needed to learn more. First up, I got hold of an actual PC, this wonderful machine, and started to learn QBasic on it. With no access to the internet, my only source of information was old and worn programming books that I found at the library. I remembered that I searched hard for some book that explained how to display graphics. When QBasic did not tell me, I learned Pascal, but no graphics in there, so I went on to C, but I did not find anything there either. The best I could do was to get colored symbols from the extended ASCII character set, but that was no fun, I wanted proper pictures!

When at school I mostly spent lectures drawing stuff like this.

Eventually, I stumbled upon a book, called Game Programming Explorer or something, in the back of a strange bookstore at the outskirts of my home town. It explained to me that I had to program these routines myself! So I learned all about the wonderful world of Mode 13h. Soon after I bought a proper PC (120Mhz if I recall correctly) that some shady guy had advertised in the newspaper. As we got better access to internet at school I found a site called ProgrammersHeaven.com (it looked different back in 98) and I downloaded tons of stuff on floppy disks. My most important discoveries were Denthor's Asphyxia Tutorials and a small game called "Boboli" that came along with source code (made by this guy). These were my main inspirations for a while - until I stumbled upon Allegro. This was (and still is) a game development library with tons of useful functionality. No longer did I need to code all those low-level graphics, keyboard and sound routines myself! It was like magic to me. And what was more, around this library was a whole community of people making games.There were annual competitions, reviews and an online database with all games using the library. As far as I know, this was the first gathering similar to today's indie movement.

Exploring a dark basement in my first proper horror game, Fiend.

Using Allegro I created Project 2 and continued making another similar top-down game using rendered Half-Life models. Eventually I made Fiend, the game that set me on the course as a horror game developer. In this game I made pretty much everything myself, code, art and music. As a sidenote, it is interesting to note that I had zero expectations to make any money from this. I simply made these games, because I loved making them. Even getting player feedback was a rare thing. The very idea of selling my games was preposterous. I think this was a pretty common mindset at the time, and quite different from how it is nowadays with outlets like Steam. Making your own games feels much more like a viable career option today. Back in 2000 this was not the case at all.

In 2002 I started studying at the university (bachelor of science in software engineering) and I had also started my next project: Unbirth. This time I wanted to make it in 3D and started the to learn some basic modelling and texturing. However, there was a big problem with finding a 3D engine. All the good ones were commercial and expensive, and the free alternatives did not feel like viable options. I think the best one was Ogre3D, but it was lacking a lot of features back then. Luckily, I got in contact with a guy that was developing his own commercial 3D engine and I got to use it for free. I worked on the game for 2 years, but it never got completed, mainly due to various engine problems along the way. After this I swore to never use unfinished third-party software again, and try to make as much as possible by myself. All this time was not wasted though as I had learned tons about the structure and design of a game engine. Had I not used this engine for Unbirth, I doubt I could have created my own later on.

Jumping and shooting, while conserving energy, were the core aspects of Energetic.

During the development of Unbirth I got to know Jens, whom I would later found Frictional Games with, and as our university educations would end at the same time, we decided to make a thesis project together.This resulted in Energetic, which can be seen as a the first step towards the formation of Frictional Games. It was the first project that we made from the ground up together and some of the game's engine code is still in use (the engine was actually named HPL at this point).

When university was over I did not know what to do next. I knew I wanted to make games, but I do not think I ever saw it as a proper career path and instead just thought I should do something non-game programming related. At  this point Jens asked me if I wanted to do a Master's course at Gotland. The course was all done from a distance and was mainly about making a big game project. That sounded really interesting to me, so before the course even started, I began working (using Energetic's code as a base) on my own 3D engine. The idea was to make a game that continued along the same lines of Unbirth. And one thing was sure: I did not want to use a third party engine again.  When the course was over, the Penumbra Tech Demo was the result. The game did not do very well at a competition we submitted it to (SGA), but I hoped it might be a way to get a foot inside some actual game company. However, a month or so after putting it up online, it exploded and got downloaded more than a million times over the course of the summer. Remember that all start-up game devs: bad results in a competition is not the end of the world!

Before starting Penumbra: Overture, we had some plans to do a sci-fi brawler/shooter. Here is an enemy sketch I made for that game.

With this success behind us, we decided to try and start a company, and I scrapped my thoughts on joining a "proper" game developer. The technology used in the tech demo was the foundation for our first game "Penumbra Overture", with the team consisting of myself, Jens and another guy from the master's course, Anton.  Having worked on the game for more than half a year,  Frictional Games was officially formed January the 1st, 2007.

Working from home means you sometimes need to do multiple tasks at once...

What do I do?
When Frictional Games first started I did all the C++ programming, level design, planning, about half of the map scripting (using Angel Script), most concept art and even some level modelling. As we hired more people the amount of stuff I have to do has (thank god!) gone down a bit, and currently I mostly do design, part of the programming and most of the planning. I also act as a sort of lead artist and decide in broad terms what direction the art should take.

The thing that I spend most of my time doing these days is design work. This includes a large variety of tasks, and the most obvious is simply writing a design document for each level. When making the type of games that we do, a proper design for each level is crucial. We do not have any basic gameplay mechanics that you can simply add in a variety permutations. Every activity must be designed, programmed and often have specific art assets created for it. On top of that, every single part of the game is deeply connected with the story. Actually, when we create our games we do not really separate the gameplay and story, as both stem from the same kind of interactions. The only thing that we take care of separately is the plot, which is something that is written at a fairly early stage and describes the main happenings that the player will take part in.

So when you have a game like this, you cannot just start with a basic ideas and then flesh things out as you go along (as you might do in a shooter). Normally, we have our writer, an artist, a programmer and sometimes even our sound and music people doing assets for a level at the same time. All of these parts are crucial for the final experience and had we not had a written plan that everybody could use as a base, then nothing would work. However, the design document is not something set in stone. It just represent the first draft. As the map is being implemented things evolve and might change quite drastically. This means that the people who are working on the map, writer, programmer and artist, are all part-designers as well. Sometimes it is just not possible to implement something like the design document says, sometimes details are missing and sometimes new ideas that takes things in a entirely new direction pop up.

Example of the amazing ms-paint art I sometimes send as feedback to artists.

This leads to my biggest design related task: feedback. As all of the assets and implementations are constantly in flux it is my job that make sure that they are still coherent with the overall vision of the game. This might sometimes lead to long discussions on what the intentions are, nagging on specific details or just explanations of the bigger picture. While crucial, this sort of things is often annoying to me because it never feels like you are never accomplishing anything. You basically just pester people about changing things. But it is also a great feeling, as you got more of an outside view and can see the entire project coming together, step by step.

The programming tasks I do mostly have to do with subsystems, map scripting and AI. At the start of SOMA (our current project), I did a lot of tech related programming, for instance terrain, undergrowth and scripting. But ever since we hired a dedicated tech programer I hardly do any of that. I still try and get my hands dirty in tech when I have time for it though, and I implemented an immediate GUI system quite recently. But mainly I just plan out what tech related things to focus on, and help out with some of the high-level design. Since I do most of the gamedesign work, I try and program the more design-sensitive or unpredictable parts when I am able to. I think that if you as a designer only ever supervise the construction of a game, there is a certain magic that gets lost. For certain parts of the gameplay, you cannot say how you want it to work until you see it in action. Therefore I feel it is very important that I build some of that stuff, like AI and certain visual effects, myself.

All planning is done in Google Docs. Here is how end of last year looked like. (Spoilerish stuff cencored!)

Finally, I also do a lot of the planning for the project. Our approach is not to micro manage or waste time on any sort of strict development method. What we do is that every week people get something they should work on and then we have special "Show And Tell"-days when the task should be done and shown to the rest of the team. How to utilize the time during the week is totally up to each and everyone. Despite having this loose attitude towards planning, there is still quite a lot of work to it. Whenever some assignment slips, it often affects the schedule of several other team members and you need to move stuff around.. It is also important to constantly plan far ahead, and make sure that project is on track. It is easy to just get focused on the "here and now" and forget about the overall progress. As early as possible we make a rough plan on when the game is to be completed, and then update that with more detailed information as we go along. This can be really depressing work, as looking a year or two into the future makes it feel like the time ahead is so short, which leads you to thinking life is too short, etc, yada, yada.

There is a bunch of other small stuff that I do, like pr, interviews and booking travel. But all that is not very interesting and I think you should have heard enough now to have a fairly good idea of what it is that I do all day!


Stay tuned for more! In two weeks it will be time for Jens, the other founder of Frictional, to talk about his past and what his job is all about.

Gone Home - The Amnesia Edition

From time to time we get requests from people who want to license our HPL2 engine in order to make a commercial game. This is quite flattering, but the answer is always "no". Our reply is to simply state that there is no documentation, we do not have time for support and they are better off using Unity or UDK anyway. In all honesty, we also do not have any high hopes of these projects finishing at all. Choosing an engine is one of the very first decisions made when starting the development of a game, and very few games, especially indie ones, go beyond a pre-production phase.

So it came as quite a surprise for me when I learned that Steve Gaynor, one of the people behind the phenomenal Gone Home, had sent this sort of mail to us! I met him briefly at GDC this spring, and was quite amazed to hear that the very first prototype of the game was made in HPL2. He had mailed and asked if the engine would be possible to use for a commercial game, and got the usual response. Fortunately this did not discourage the team from continuing. It also seems like they took our advice since the final version of Gone Home is made in Unity. I really wanted to see the level, and told Steve that I would mail him when I got back from GDC. But as always other stuff happened and I just pushed the thing forward. I swear that I had "Mail Steve about Amnesia: Gone Home" written on my todo list for 6 months!

Then Steve mailed me for totally different reasons, and I decided I really had to get this Gone Home prototype over with. He scavenged his files and managed to dig out the map. This was during the whole SOMA teaser campaign and I did not have time to look right away. A few days ago things finally settled down a bit and it was time to take a look.

The prototype is quite short and very basic; it is really more of a proof of concept. But it still gives a very good sense of the game, and having played the full version, I could recognize quite a bit. It does feel a bit awkward to play an early test like this though. Gone Home is a very personal game, and playing this prototype felt like a meta version of the game's voyeuristic thematics.

We got Steve's mail regarding HPL2 engine on the 14th of January 2012 so this prototype must have been made before that. This means the prototype is over a year and half older than the final game and made almost 5 months before the game was announced. My guess it is the first time that the ideas for the game got some sort of substance.

Here is a few comparisons between the prototype and the final game. Prototype is on the right (as if you couldn't tell...):

The game opening is in the exact same place, on the porch of the house. There is even still a chair and small table with a pot next to the front door!

The first key is still found hidden under an ornament! I think this is a very neat puzzle as it explains to the player that it is worthwhile to do some extra scavenging and acts as a sort of unobtrusive tutorial. So it is not that incredible that it stuck so long. But still, very fun to see this intact.

And here is the first view when entering the house. It is not visible from the screen, but both versions have paths leading both to the left and to the  right, giving the player three different ways to start their exploration. Like the key puzzle, there are good reasons this stuck, but it is still awesome to see it this similar.

Taken together, the prototype is really incredibly close to the final game.

In case you are not amazed by the similarities in such an old prototype, check how Amnesia looked at the end of 2008 (a few months less than 2 years before release):


I also have to note the awesome handy work on this toilet:

If you want to try the level out yourself, you can download it from here:
http://unbirthgame.com/GoneHome.rar
Just extract the file in the "custom_stories" directory in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, start the game, press "Custom Story" and select and start "Test Game".

Finally, if you have not played Gone Home, do so now! It is a really unique and emotional experience that is a must for anybody interesting in videogame storytelling. You can get it here:
http://www.gonehomegame.com/

Lots of thanks for Steve Gaynor for saving this lovely slice of history and letting me (and all of you now) try it out!

Useful Tips for Horror Game Designers

A while back Chris Pruett (creator of the excellent Chris's Survival Horror Quest and currently at work with some creepy stuff at Robot Invader) and I had some discussion about common horror / puzzle tropes over twitter. Now all of these little nuggets, and more that came up during subsequent mail discussions, have been collected into a nice blog post by Chris. If you are ever going to make a survival horror please read this first. Here comes:


Puzzles 
No puzzles about equalizing pressure (or any other type of dial) by adjusting switches or knobs. Do not include puzzles that involve reconnecting the power, especially to an elevator. No sliding bookshelves with scratch marks on the floor. Avoid puzzles that involve pressing keys on a piano in a specific order. Do not require the player to collect paintings to reveal a secret image, or examine paintings to decode a correct sequence of buttons. No locked doors with an engraved symbol that also appears on the key. No important documents encrypted with stupid-simple substitution ciphers.

As you design, repeat this mantra to yourself: "I will have no keycard doors in my game." No feeding fertilizer or poison to giant plants. Check yourself before adding puzzles about inserting crystals, gems, or figurines into some ornate locking mechanism. Reconsider any puzzle involving a four-digit number sequence, found elsewhere, that opens a lock.

Do not employ sliding block puzzles. Ever. That includes sliding statues! No!

Deny the urge to take inventory items away from the player without a legitimate reason. When building puzzles that require combining more than two items, you must allow combination of arbitrary pairs of items even before the entire set has been collected.

Do not turn terrifying monsters into puzzles unless your goal is to kill all tension.

It's important to make objectives and mechanics clear, but if you just tell the player what to do and where to go, you've removed the puzzle entirely. Let them think for themselves occasionally. Be especially vigilant when designing any cumbersome door opening apparatus. Remember, your players will only believe so much!

This got old in 1997.

Story 
Not all stories have to be about the protagonist's personal demons. Don't blame everything on evil mega-corporations. You don't need a crazy Special Forces unit with an awkward acronym name. Do not include a sequence in which a child must crawl through a small opening to unlock a door for an adult. No more helicopters escaping from mushroom-cloud explosions. Eschew underdeveloped sub-plots about drugs.

Avoid zombies. But if you must use zombies, for the love of all that is holy, do not rely on a virus to explain them. Zombie dogs: no.

Not all vengeful ghosts need to be women. And curses do not all need to spread like a virus. And the virus doesn't have to kill its victims after exactly seven days. Also, ghosts don't always have to be innocent people who died horrible deaths.

It's not very believable that a high-security military research complex would have passwords written down on scraps of paper. If your plot twist involves the surprise reveal of a secret, sinister cult, you should probably stop.

Try to think of ways to put your characters in vulnerable situations that are not limited to making all of your characters petite school girls. Men can be vulnerable too. Plus, I know some school girls that could wipe the floor with your sorry designer ass.


Levels and Characters
There are other ways to block a passage off than having the roof collapse. Make a distinction between locked doors that will eventually open and doors that can never be opened; if you have any of the former, the latter must be barred, or broken, or otherwise obviously forever inaccessible. Be warned, however, that "it's jammed" gets old mighty quick.

No arbitrarily non-interactive objects; either you can interact with all doors or none of them. Ensure that you have more doors that can be opened than cannot. Do not block the player with short fences or other obstacles that should be trivial to bypass.

If a location is supposed to carry emotional weight, do not litter it with ammo boxes and collectibles. Do you want the player to contemplate the horrible living conditions of a young child or rummage through their things looking for loot?

Just say "No!" to items that are of great use to the player's problems but cannot be picked up. No obstacles that could be easily dispatched using the protagonist's arsenal but instead require some puzzle sequence to overcome. Do not provide a stock of limited supplies unless you make the remaining amount clear. Do not put hidden collectables in horror games with large levels, or in games that do not allow you to backtrack. Maybe just skip the whole hidden collectable thing completely.

We don't need any more tentacle monsters in horror games. Especially not tentacle monsters with bright, bulbous weak spots. Avoid close-quarter combat with ghosts that can pass through walls. Never throw the player against a source of infinite damage unless you also provide a source of infinite health and ammo (e.g. infinite enemy spawner).

Little known fact: not all monsters have an irresistible urge to bare their teeth and scream at the player. Nor do they all hunch over with long, bent arms. Crazy, huh!?

Excepting certain types of zombie, it is almost never exciting to see a monster charge the protagonist. Perhaps you can modify your AI to stalk the player and approach him slowly to appear more menacing? Caveat: circling the player and occasionally revealing a weak spot is not a good alternative.

Ask yourself: "how many times have I been to the gym this year?" You're a game designer, so the answer is probably "none." Do you think your game's cultists have it any better? They're too busy summoning an obscure deity to think about their diety. So why did you make them look like they're all bodybuilders and/or silicon implant models?

And while we're on the topic of appearances, does your monster really need that awkward underwear? I mean, you just had him rip a dude's head off in the last scene; I don't think your audience is going to be phased by a little monster nudity. Or heck, just come up with something else. Tiny bits of torn fabric around the midsection of an otherwise naked beast is a cop-out.

Took forever to find pants in my size. And now they're torn.

Technical Stuff 
When you have a body lying on the floor that is significantly more detailed than all of the other bodies on the floor, we all know that it'll come to life and attack us sooner or later. Also, a surprise attack isn't very surprising if the game suddenly starts loading like crazy moments before.

Do not put scary encounters in cutscenes. I know, I know, you want to control the camera and the timing and the sound so everything is "just right." But listen, games don't work that way. Take a gamble. Let the player discover the monster through gameplay.

Navigating save slots, confirming file overwrites, and waiting for flashy menu animations is pretty much the worst possible thing you can subject a player to. Your sense of presence must extend to the game as a whole, even your UI.

If you have item descriptions, why not make them interesting or useful? Everybody already knew it was a trashcan before they examined it.

It may sound a bit unintuitive, but horror games work surprisingly well without rocket launchers. And you'd be surprised how fun mystery games can be when they don't have RPG mechanics shoved into them.

Fail in every other category if you must, but do not fail in this: map and menu screens must not require a loading pause to display. It is bad enough that you have to bring these up in the first place. Oh, and checking the map every two steps is not fun.

10 seconds of loading to tell us that flashlights are useful in the dark. 

Follow these tips and you'll be well on your way to making a horror game that is fresh and original! After which you can make endless sequels!

SOMA Officially Revealed

Intro

After more than two weeks of teasing, we are happy to properly announce our new game: SOMA. It is a sci-fi horror game played from a first person perspective with the goal to deliver a truly disturbing experience. Having worked on this project for over three years now, it is really nice to finally reveal it to the world!

The game will be released for PS4 and PC, and it will be out some time in 2015.

Here is the official reveal trailer featuring some gameplay:



Making The Trailer
While the footage above is unedited gameplay footage (I played through and recorded it myself), it is not from an actual game level. Just like with our Amnesia teaser video, it is a custom made map that is meant to show off the general feel and tone of the game over a four minute long trailer. This means that it is not an exact representation of how the game is actually played. It gives a pretty good idea of how the gameplay works though.

Coming up with the idea for this trailer was quite hard. We knew from the start that we wanted to have it as recorded gameplay. It was crucial that it showed that SOMA will allow you to play through its central themes. The subject matters of the game are not some kind of wrapper, they are an integral part of the gameplay. So having a trailer entirely made out of uncut gameplay felt like the best way to show this.

With Amnesia doing this sort of thing was fairly simple as the core ingredient was the player running and hiding from monsters. In SOMA it is much more complex. While the game also has its share of monsters, hiding and stuff like that, it is not what makes the game special. What sets SOMA apart is that it gives a first person account of some deep and really disturbing ideas regarding the self, mind and consciousness. These are things that we take a lot of time to build up in the actual game, so showing it off in a few minutes is quite difficult.

Our first idea was to use a lot of dialog to get this across, but that did not feel right. The player will be be an active participant, and do not sit by passively listening to characters having discussions. So instead we approached the themes in a very direct and visceral manner.

A final aspect of making the trailer was not to have too many spoilers. Because of this, the video does not star the protagonist from the actual game, but a totally different (and minor) character. The events that occur in the trailer are not taken directly from the game either. They just showcase the kind of happenings one can expect from the final game. This means that we can give a good overview of what the game is about, without spoiling the actual game experience. But don't worry, the things in the video are very much related to the game's story. Everything you see are hints of things to come.

Live Action Videos
Another big part of the reveal for our game was the release some creepy and mysterious teaser material. You can see texts and films here:
http://somagame.com/item-2656.html
and here:
http://somagame.com/item-4017.html

First I guess I have to settle the big debate: Are these inspired by SCP? And, yes they are! That was actually the pitch for the whole thing: "Let's have some SCP-like texts on the website to give out spooky and fragmented info before the final trailer is released.". The game itself is however not very close to the SCP-style at all. There are some SCP inspiration in SOMA for sure, but it is a lot more subtle and has to do with how we think about monsters and artifacts. They play a larger role now, the foreboding is much deeper and there is a bigger connection with them and the central themes in the game. Actually, a lot of the SOMA's themes are directly expressed through interactions with enemies, an idea that stems from SCP.

Enough SCP, let's move on to the actual teaser texts and films. At first the teasers had a much weaker production values. The idea was just to use plain text and perhaps a few images. As Mikael wrote these he suggested that we might add sounds to them, e.g. a recorded interview, and that felt like a good idea. But that was as far as we thought about going.

When discussing a release trailer for Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, we came upon Imagos Films and decided to give them a go. Jens contacted them about making a trailer, and they were really excited about it. They even agreed to having a meeting in the middle of the night in order to fit our schedule. Some quick drafts were made for a trailer, but because of various issues, it all fell through in the end. We felt bad about this and promised they would be our first choice when needing some other video material.

A few days after Mikael suggested having voices for the texts, it hit me that we could perhaps use Imagos Films to do some simple clips instead. We mailed them and they said they were up for it, so Mikael converted the transcribed audio from the documents to film scripts and then we set the ball rolling. I did not really expect much from the films, but after seeing the first few WIP shots and production designs, I knew that it could actually turn out really cool. But the end result turned out even better, and it blew my (and everyone else's at FG) mind.

It has to be mentioned how quickly these films were put together. The first script drafts + instructions were sent on the 2nd of september. This meant they had a less than a month to produce the first movie. Then another movie needed to be done a week after that. Given the amount steps needed to go from script to final film, this is insanely fast.

Will there be more movies? We would really like that to happen, but nothing is set yet. Stay tuned for more news regarding that!

End Notes
This reveal has been quite a lot of hard work and there have been way more things to deal with than I first thought. Worst must have been the major server failures that we had on the days before the first teaser would go live. This turned out to be because of a DDoS attack and took quite a while to fix (Jens had to come out of a parental leave to work on it). We had to put off the whole first reveal for a day because of this. It was quite embarrassing, as people wondered what the hell happened and we had to reschedule a bunch of other stuff connected to the reveal (like the PlayStation Europe twitter).

And then of course the final trailer reveal had to be problematic too. Early on the day before reveal (as of writing, yesterday) Tapio, external sound person, had finished editing the trailer, all of David's, external art person, animations were in and all sound was synced and nice. However, as he exported the final version the quality was crap. I had hoped to have a calm day and just code stuff but instead I had to help Tapio search for the error, trying to convert files better, etc. Nothing worked. On top of this, our ftp servers were really slow and sending files took a long time and was a general pain. Eventually, I had to re-edit the entire trailer (adding animations, fades and syncing sound)  using Windows Movie Maker as quick tests showed the final quality was much better there. At the same time we became aware that we also needed an ESRB logo and had to scavenge the net for a proper one. We were now much later than planned and stress was taking its toll. After many grueling hours we finally got it working though. Only to find out the next morning (day of the reveal) that the damn ESRB logo was not shown long enough, so more editing, exporting and uploaded were needed.

In the end it worked out fine though and the whole reveal has been very successful. (As I am writing this we have not seen any reactions to the final video, so I am hoping those are good .. :) )

Now it is time to go back full time on work for the actual game. We are all incredibly excited about SOMA and hope that these 2+ weeks  of teasing and reveal have gotten you all interested aswell.

And do not worry, between now and the 2015 release there will be a lot more unsettling stuff revealed!


Want to end with some links to the non-Frictional people that helped this reveal happen:

http://www.imagosfilms.com/
The makers of the two live action teaser films.

http://www.kohijin.org/
The coder of our teaser site.

http://davidsatzinger.carbonmade.com/
Made gameplay trailer animations, SOMA and FG logo, website graphics and some teasing images.

http://www.kaamossound.com/
Made all the sound work for the gameplay teaser.

http://www.evolve-pr.com/
Who sent out PR and nagged various publications. Jens, who normally does this, has been on parental leave and I would have gone mad if I were to do all that too....

http://www.mikaelpersson.se/
Made trailer-specific animations for the corpse and monster encounter.

5 Core Elements Of Interactive Storytelling

Introduction
Over the past few years I have had a growing feeling that videogame storytelling is not what it could be. And the core issue is not in the writing, themes, characters or anything like that; instead, the main problem is with the overall delivery. There is always something that hinders me from truly feeling like I am playing a story. After pondering this on and off for quite some time I have come up with a list of five elements that I think are crucial to get the best kind of interactive narrative.

The following is my personal view on the subject, and is much more of a manifesto than an attempt at a rigorous scientific theory. That said, I do not think these are just some flimsy rules or the summary of a niche aesthetic. I truly believe that this is the best foundational framework to progress videogame storytelling and a summary of what most people would like out of an interactive narrative.

Also, it's important to note that all of the elements below are needed. Drop one and the narrative experience will suffer.

With that out of the way, here goes:


1) Focus on Storytelling
This is a really simple point: the game must be, from the ground up, designed to tell a story. It must not be a game about puzzles, stacking gems or shooting moving targets. The game can contain all of these features, but they cannot be the core focus of the experience. The reason for the game to exist must be the wish to immerse the player inside a narrative; no other feature must take precedence over this.

The reason for this is pretty self-evident. A game that intends to deliver the best possible storytelling must of course focus on this. Several of the problems outlined below directly stem from this element not being taken seriously enough.

A key aspect to this element is that the story must be somewhat tangible. It must contain characters and settings that can be identified with and there must be some sort of drama. The game's narrative cannot be extremely abstract, too simplistic or lack any interesting, story-related, happenings.


2) Most of the time is spent playing
Videogames are an interactive medium and therefore the bulk of the experience must involve some form of interaction. The core of the game should not be about reading or watching cutscenes, it should be about playing. This does not mean that there needs to be continual interaction; there is still room for downtime and it might even be crucial to not be playing constantly.

The above sounds pretty basic, almost a fundamental part of game design, but it is not that obvious. A common "wisdom" in game design is that choice is king, which Sid Meier's quote "a game is a series of interesting choices" neatly encapsulate. However, I do not think this holds true at all for interactive storytelling. If choices were all that mattered, choose your own adventure books should be the ultimate interaction fiction - they are not. Most celebrated and narrative-focused videogames does not even have any story-related choices at all (The Last of Us is a recent example). Given this, is interaction really that important?

It sure is, but not for making choices. My view is that the main point of interaction in storytelling is to create a sense of presence, the feeling of being inside the game's world. In order to achieve this, there needs to be a steady flow of  active play. If the player remains inactive for longer periods, they will distance themselves from the experience. This is especially true during sections when players feel they ought to be in control. The game must always strive to maintain and strengthen experience of "being there".


3) Interactions must make narrative sense
In order to claim that the player is immersed in a narrative, their actions must be somehow connected to the important happenings. The gameplay must not be of irrelevant, or even marginal, value to the story. There are two major reasons for this.

First, players must feel as though they are an active part of the story and not just an observer. If none of the important story moments include agency from the player, they become passive participants. If the gameplay is all about matching gems then it does not matter if players spends 99% of their time interacting; they are not part of any important happenings and their actions are thus irrelevant. Gameplay must be foundational to the narrative, not just a side activity while waiting for the next cutscene.

Second, players must be able to understand their role from their actions. If the player is supposed to be a detective, then this must be evident from the gameplay. A game that requires cutscenes or similar to explain the player's part has failed to tell its story properly.


4) No repetitive actions
The core engagement from many games come from mastering a system. The longer time players spend with the game, the better they become at it. In order for this process to work, the player's actions must be repeated over and over. But repetition is not something we want in a well formed story. Instead we want activities to only last as long as the pacing requires. The players are not playing to become good at some mechanics, they are playing to be part of an engrossing story. When an activity has played out its role, a game that wants to do proper storytelling must move on.

Another problem with repetition is that it breaks down the player's imagination. Other media rely on the audience's mind to fill out the blanks for a lot of the story's occurrences. Movies and novels are vague enough to support these kinds of personal interpretations. But if the same actions are repeated over and over, the room for imagination becomes a lot slimmer. Players lose much of the ability to fill gaps and instead get a mechanical view of the narrative.

This does not mean that the core mechanics must constantly change, it just means that there must be variation on how they are used. Both Limbo and Braid are great examples of this. The basic gameplay can be learned in a minute, but the games still provide constant variation throughout the experience.


5) No major progression blocks
In order to keep players inside a narrative, their focus must constantly be on the story happenings. This does not rule out challenges, but it needs to be made sure that an obstacle never consumes all focus. It must be remembered that the players are playing in order to experience a story. If they get stuck at some point, focus fade away from the story, and is instead put on simply progressing. In turn, this leads to the unraveling of the game's underlying mechanics and for players to try and optimize systems. Both of these are problems that can seriously degrade the narrative experience.

There are three common culprits for this: complex or obscure puzzles, mastery-demanding sections and maze-like environments. All of these are common in games and make it really easy for players to get stuck. Either by not being sure what to do next, or by not having the skills required to continue. Puzzles, mazes and skill-based challenges are not banned, but it is imperative to make sure that they do not hamper the experience. If some section is pulling players away from the story, it needs to go.


Games that do this
These five elements all sound pretty obvious. When writing the above I often felt I was pointing out things that were already widespread knowledge. But despite this, very few games incorporate all of the above. This is quite astonishing when you think about it. The elements by themselves are quite common, but the combination of all is incredibly rare.

The best case for games of pure storytelling seems to be visual novels. But these all fail at element 2; they simply are not very interactive in nature and the player is mostly just a reader. They often also fails at element 3 as they do not give the player much actions related to the story (most are simply played out in a passive manner).

Action games like Last of Us and Bioshock infinite all fail on elements 4 and 5 (repetition and progression blocks). For larger portions of the game they often do not meet the requirements of element 3 (story related actions) either. It is also frequently the case that much of the story content is delivered in long cutscenes, which means that some do not even manage to fulfill element 2 (that most of the game is played). RPG:s do not fare much better as they often contain very repetitive elements. They often also have way too much downtime because of lengthy cutscenes and dialogue.

Games like Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead comes close to feeling like an interactive narrative, but fall flat at element 2. These games are basically just films with interactions slapped on to them. While interaction plays an integral part in the experience it cannot be said to be a driving force. Also, apart from a few instances the gameplay is all about reacting, it does have have the sort of deliberate planning that other games do. This removes  a lot of the engagement that otherwise come naturally from videogames.

So what games do fulfill all of these elements? As the requirements of each element are not super specific, fulfillment depends on how one choose to evaluate. The one that I find comes closest is Thirty Flights of Loving, but it is slightly problematic because the narrative is so strange and fragmentary. Still, it is by far the game that comes closest to incorporating all elements. Another close one is To The Moon, but it relies way too much on dialog and cutscenes to meet the requirements. Gone Home is also pretty close to fulfilling the elements. However, your actions have little relevance to the core narrative and much of the game is spent reading rather than playing.

Whether one choose to see these games are fulfilling the requirements or not, I think they show the path forward. If we want to improve interactive storytelling, these are the sort of places to draw inspiration from. Also, I think it is quite telling that all of these games have gotten both critical and (as far as I know) commercial success. There is clearly a demand and appreciation for these sort of experiences.


Final Thoughts
It should be obvious, but I might as well say it: these elements say nothing of the quality of a game. One that meets none of the requirements can still be excellent, but it cannot claim to have fully playable, interactive storytelling as its main concern. Likewise, a game that fulfills all can still be crap. These elements just outline the foundation of a certain kind of experience. An experience that I think is almost non-existent in videogames today.

I hope that these five simple rules will be helpful for people to evaluate and structure their projects. The sort of videogames that can come out of this thinking is an open question as there is very little done so far. But the games that are close to having all these elements hint at a very wide range of experiences indeed. I have no doubts that this path will be very fruitful to explore.


Notes

• Another important aspects of interaction that I left out is the ability to plan. I mention it a bit when discussing Walking Dead and Heavy Rain, but it is a worth digging into a little bit deeper. What we want from good gameplay interaction is not just that the player presses a lot of buttons. We want these actions to have some meaning for the future state of the game. When making an input players should be simulating in their minds how they see it turning out. Even if it just happens on a very short time span (eg "need to turn now to get a shot at the incoming asteroid") it makes all the difference as now the player has adapted the input in way that never happens in a purely reactionary game.
• The question of what is deemed repetitive is quite interesting to discuss. For instance, a game like Dear Esther only has the player walking or looking, which does not offer much variety. But since the scenery is constantly changing, few would call the game repetitive. Some games can also offer really complex and varied range of actions, but if the player is tasked to perform these constantly in similar situations, they quickly gets repetitive. I think is fair to say that repetition is mostly an asset problem. Making a non-repetitive game using limited asset counts is probably not possible. This also means that a proper storytelling game is bound to be asset heavy.
• Here are some other games that I feel are close to fulfilling all elements: The Path, Journey, Everyday the Same Dream, Dinner Date, Imortall and Kentucky Route Zero. Whether they succeed or not is a bit up to interpretation, as all are a bit borderline. Still all of these are well worth one's attention. This also concludes the list of all games I can think of that have, or at least are closing to having,  all five of these elements.

Links:
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2012/08/the-self-presence-and-storytelling.html
Here is some more information on how repetition and challenge destroy the imaginative parts of games and make them seem more mechanical.

http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/08/the-interactivity-of-non-interactive-media.html
This is a nice overview on how many storytelling games give the player no meaningful choices at all.

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/07/thoughts-on-last-of-us.html
The Last of Us is the big storytelling game of 2013. Here is a collection of thoughts on what can be learned from it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel
Visual Novels are not to be confused with Interactive Fiction, which is another name for text adventure games.

Thirty Flights of Loving
This game is played from start to finish and has a very interesting usages of scenes and cuts.

To The Moon
This is basically an rpg but with all of the fighting taken out. It is interesting how much emotion that can be gotten from simple pixel graphics.

Gone Home
This game is actually a bit similar to To The Moon in that it takes an established genre and cuts away anything not to do with telling a story. A narrative emerge by simply exploring an environment.

Thoughts on The Last of Us

I have now finished playing The Last of Us and feel it has quite a few things worth discussing. Overall it is a great game and there is a lot that can be learnt from it. Especially noteworthy are the nerve wrecking encounters. When at its best they top even the ones in Resident Evil 4 (2005), which I think features some of the best action gameplay ever. It also manages to use just about every trick in the book to tell its story. It is a very solid package and masterfully crafted. At the same time, while wrapped in an emotional plot, it is really just a game about combat and part of, what I think is, a worrying trend in video game storytelling.

Before The Last of Us can be properly analyzed, we need to go back to the early days of the game industry. At the beginning of videogame history, games were just about doing a few simple actions over and over. These games did not have a recognizable story as such, but simply provided a rough context for the action.

In Asteroids (1979) the visuals consisted of simplistic line drawings, but in the mind of the players they controlled a spaceship blasting incoming chunks of rock. While this thin veneer of story was not really important for the game as such, it greatly enhanced the experience. This was clearly shown in early advertisements where the screenshots are small and concept art showing off this fantasy takes up most of the space.

For the remainder of this article I will refer to this extra high-level concept as the story layer. This essentially refers to any part that does not directly support the core gameplay but is there only there to add an extra sense of purpose and narrative. Important to note is that the gameplay can still incorporate parts of the game's story; all of the narrative experience does not reside in the story layer.

While these high level concepts were (and often still are) very simplistic, it is pretty clear that they are essential. There are very few games that do not share this quality and just go 100% abstract. Even a weird game like pacman has some form of story layer to it.

This slowly gave rise to storytelling in action games. Rudimentary plots were added, for instance a summary of the background story at the start, and this eventually expanded to cutscenes in between the levels. The extra story content was not connected to the gameplay as such but simply provided context and rewards. But while it did not directly influence the gameplay in any meaningful way, cutscenes and an explicit plot could still improve the feel of the game.

The biggest evolution in storytelling came from Another World (1991) where the story layer and gameplay fit almost flawlessly into one another. No longer were the narrative elements superficial, but instead carefully ingrained with the gameplay. Actions that were made in gameplay smoothly transitioned into a cutscene and vice versa. The interactive scenarios were also carefully designed in order to make sense in the games story. Despite this tight coupling, it is important to point out that the focus of all gameplay segments was still about challenge and "fun". The game contained a number of mechanics and each section tested the player's skill in one or more of these. While the non-interactive plot elements improved the experience, they were still not crucial. Were the story layer to be taken way, the gameplay sections would still work fine in their own right .

Another World was a ahead of its time and it took a lot of years before the rest of the industry got up to speed. But when it did, the idea to close the gap between the gameplay and the story layer really caught on. Earlier, the story layer had mostly been seen as an extra, but ultimately superfluous, feature. But it rose in prominence, and was seen as increasingly crucial. Along the way, a host of new ways to add a story layer emerged. The audio logs from System Shock (1994), in-game cutscene from Half Life (1998) and the omnipresent narrator from Portal (2007) are probably the most important ones. All of these provided tools to merge the two conflicting elements. Along the way, the complexity and maturity of the story layers increased as well.

Even though modern action games now come with a wide variety of stories, the basic format is still the same as in the early days. The player is given a narrow set of mechanics that needs to be skillfully used in order overcome the challenges provided. On top of this is an extra narrative wrapping, the story layer, that helps shape the experience into something more meaningful. This is a recipe that most recent high profile games use, including Dead Space (2008), Uncharted (2007), Tomb Raider (2013), Halo 4 (2012), Portal 2 (2011), Bioshock (2007), and many more.

Here is where The Last of Us comes in; it is the latest step in this evolution. It is probably also the game that, so far, managed marry the gameplay and the story layer most elegantly. This makes it into an emotional journey, but it is crucial to remember its pedigree. It is still an action game with an additional story layer.

Just like a number of recent games with narrative ambitions, e.g. Spec Ops (2012) and Hotline Miami (2012), it takes the gameplay as a starting point for the story. This is different from a game like Uncharted where the high concept came first. In Uncharted's case it was to replicate an Indiana Jones-like adventure movie. Because of this, the gameplay's need for constant bloodshed has a hard time fitting the happenings in the story layer. This caused a very noticeable discrepancy in the game's narrative, the so called "ludonarrative dissonance". The game's protagonist would slaughter hundreds of people and afterwards crack a joke and worry about his relationships. But in a game like Last Of Us, the violent gameplay is taken as a given and the whole world shaped accordingly. The game is set in a story where butchering hundreds of people makes sense, giving the holistic experience a strong feeling of consistency.

There are still a few problems between of the story layer and the gameplay, but on the whole the played narrative is quite coherent. It has been rightly celebrated for doing this, but few voices have been raised by the troubling development it is part of. If we agree that The Last of Us represent a high note of videogame storytelling, an example to follow, then our boundaries for telling stories are very narrow indeed.

The game has a lot in common with the recent Spec Ops: The Line. Both feature a dog-eat-dog world, takes place in the destroyed remains of a city, and have you play as violent and deranged characters with no qualms about butchering countless people. Both of these games have also been praised for their mature and intelligent storytelling. And sure, they both feature deep and nicely portrayed characters, but what it all really boils down to are neat ways to justify a lot of violence. If this represent the future of videogame storytelling, then we are doomed to play as broken, murderous protagonists living in worlds populated by antagonists.

When faced with the problem of reconciling a character like Uncharted's Nathan Drake with the massive violence, the proposed solution is simply to make the character better fit with the killing. I find this close to giving up on the problem altogether. In a way games like Uncharted are, despite their gameplay and story layer discrepancy, much more interesting as they try to be about something other than raw survival. Embracing that videogames is all about violence feels very cynical and uninspiring to me.

It is also crucial to keep in mind that the core gameplay has not changed much over the years. These games are still about doing a few actions over and over. When these actions do connect to the story, like they do in both Spec Ops and The Last of Us, it is not so much because they are proper narrative devices, but that the story has been shaped to fit with them. The repetitive action is still king, the need to have a massive body count is still a must. This is not bad as such, I thought Last of Us was a great action game. But, I have problems with it being seen as good interactive storytelling, it is really just good usage of the story layer. This might seem like play of words, but there is an important aspect to have in mind: Like games of the past, The Last of Us would have worked very well with its story layer removed.

When taking a closer look at The Last of Us, its action heritage is quite evident. It is very clear that at the core lies a straightforward game about looting, sneaking and killing enemies. Here are a couple of examples:

• The goal of the player is always to go forward to a place highlighted early on. Once there, a cutscene takes over and reminds you of your next goal. It is basically a modern incarnation of the the ancient "walk left to right"-mechanic.
• Every non-combat challenge of the game is a combination of a few simple elements: ladders, planks, pushable dumpsters, floating pallets and generators, all used in predictable and streamlined ways. This is typical of what you see in old actions games; there are a few well tested puzzle devices that gets reused throughout the game.
• During gameplay, NPCs turn into combat objects and are streamlined to support the action above everything else. This is evident in how they do not affect your ability to sneak, can stand a lot more damage than the protagonist, have infinite ammo supplies, etc.
• The game features plenty of looting and crafting which is just a revamp of what we have seen in Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, and many more. It is there to give the player something to do when going through the world and is used as a way to provide more variety to the combat. 
• Environments where combat encounters occur are almost always crafted in such a way that it is possibly to know that a fight will ensue long before it actually happens. Strategically scattered bottles, carefully placed cover spots and early depots of ammo are among the things that hint that the game is now all about making sure the core mechanics of an encounter work.

There is more that can be pointed out here, but I think this is enough. The takeaway is that this is the core of the game; all of these elements are what sum up the game's underpinnings and what provides the central experience. I think it is an incredibly important point. Before we speak of the game as some highpoint in storytelling we must realize where it comes from - it is an old fashioned action game. And if we do not realize this, we will be stuck in a dead end, because there is not much in terms of storytelling that can be done with this. The Last of Us probably represent as far as you can go with stories that are based on this foundation.

This is when things get interesting. We can now see that the emotional narrative is not part of core gameplay, but comes from a totally different direction. Here The Last of Us has a lot that can be learned from and be inspired by.

First of all, the game uses just about every trick in the book to get the story across outside of the cutscenes. And not only that, pretty much every one of these elements has an excellent implementation:

• Notes. The game feature scattered diaries, audio logs, manifests, letters and more, almost all of which have believable content and placement. They also have great length so they feel very fluent to pick up and read through. 
• Overheard conversation. This can either come from hostiles in combat situations or from the characters in one of the few non-violent section with other people. They are effectively used both to convey the state of the world and to give more information about the characters.
• In-game cutscenes. In a few areas, events takes place as you walk past them. For instance, at one location the military can be seen rounding up infected people. And if you go in for a closer look, the armed personnel act accordingly and push you away. This makes the scene feel alive instead of becoming some kind of carnival ride (as was the case Bioshock: Infinite (2013),  for instance). What I also think makes them work is that the game use these events sparingly and make sure they happen in appropriate places. For instance, in the above military scene it makes perfect sense why the player cannot get close to the civilians.
• Artifacts. Various artifacts can be picked up that tell something about the world. These are things like maps, dog tags, photos, etc. All help to build up setting and are lot easier to fit in than notes (which easily feel contrived).
• Protagonist and partner banter. As you walk through the environment there are conversations back and forth between the protagonist and his partner (for most of the game a teenage girl). This is also one of the few places where some of the responsibility is placed on the player. Once a conversation starts, the protagonist can be made to go off in whichever way; it is up to the player to act in a way that makes sense. Because of this a lot more and varied content can be put in these dialogs.
• Graffiti and billboards. Here and there, texts are placed on the walls that help explain what has happened to a place or to just give some more texture to the environment. Survivors scratch words of warning, a settlement have lists rules and so forth.
• Environments. The environments themselves is a great source of the storytelling. Abandoned homes, fortified warehouses, etc, all help to build up the world the game takes place in and tell the story of what has occurred.

None of these are new or revolutionary tricks, but they are put together really well and are never overused. It is so easy to just use one trick for everything, but Last of Us show restraint and use its devices where appropriate. Much of the time these devices work in tandem and that is when they really shine. A common example is walking around in a derelict building while the characters comment on the surroundings and notes found; this really increase the sense of presence and feeling of being inside a narrative. 

One has to have in mind that the world of Last of Us fits perfectly for the above devices, but there is no inherent problem with using them in just about any sort of story. Also noteworthy is that, apart from the overheard conversations, the narrative devices have very little connection to the core gameplay; they are all part of the story layer. It is incredible how many elements that make up this layer now. What began as a simple intro text or just a painted image is now a large collection of systems. While the story layer was once a fragile structure, merely having a supportive role, it is now so complex that is can pretty much stand on its own. In fact, that is just what it does a few times in The Last of Us. And it is now that we enter the really intriguing territory. We have now come to a point in the evolution of videogames where a once upon nonessential element has gotten enough substance to branch off and become something in its own right.

The best example of this is The Last of Us' opening. Here the player takes on the role as a young girl who finds herself home alone while it becomes increasingly apparent that something terrible is happening in the outside world. Just about all interactions here has something to do with the story and minor details like the girl's animations help set the scene. It features just about all the narrative devices mentioned above and uses them to tell the player a story through play. 

The opening is also a good showcase for how and when to use cutscenes. I normally see the goal with interactive storytelling is to let the player play from start to finish. However, in order to play certain parts properly you need to be in the right mood and have certain background information. The opening cutscene helps establish just that, and makes the gameplay so much more effective. While I still feel that cutscenes should be used sparingly, I am thinking more and more that it is wrong to dismiss them entirely. Many interactive scenes are not just possible to jump right in to, but require some kind of setup. Many times this setup is just not possible to play through, and needs to be carefully directed. In these cases a cutscene is required and lets the player play through a scenario that would not be possible otherwise. I think the main rule is just to make sure that the interactive part is where the engaging actions occur. The cutscene should not be the main attraction, it's role is merely to be there as support. It is also worth mentioning that the opening cutscene works so well because it happens at the start of the game; the player has not become used to being in charge yet and is much more willing to be passive.

The next great story layer sequence is the deer hunting scene. Here you are hunting a deer in order to get food. The first arrows are not enough to bring it down, so you need to find it again and take additional shots. As you are doing this, you will eventually figure out that the best way to find it again is to follow its tracks. Having hit it once the deer will also leave a trail of blood, making tracking easier. While following the wounded animal you will eventually find yourself right outside a previously unseen building, the deer lying dead nearby. By letting you track the deer, the game has managed to lead you into finding a new location all on your own. This transition is really awesome and great way to progress the story simply by playing.

One could argue that this scene use the combat system and therefore part of the core gameplay, but I argue that is not really correct. It does use some combat mechanics, but the scene itself contain none of the dynamics of an enemy encounter. Therefore I think it is okay to say that this is scene is almost purely part of the story layer.

The final sequence I want to discuss is the giraffe scene. Like the previous scene, it is quite simplistic but extremely effective. It starts with the protagonist's companion, the teenage girl Ellie, getting excited over something she has seen and then running off. This starts sets up a mystery, and gets the player curious over what it is she has spotted. She continues to run ahead of you, seeing the mystery object more times and getting increasingly excited. You run after her, but are never able to get a peek of what it is she is seeing. Finally you come to an opening and see that what she spotted is a herd of giraffes. It all ends with a serene scene as the couple watch the herd walk among a city block overtaken by trees. The build-up and final comes together very nicely.

Worth mentioning is that part of the power comes from all the hazards you have had to face earlier, but I do not see that as evidence that the core gameplay played an important part. These hazards could just as well have been made using other techniques.

The scenes I have described takes up a tiny part of the The Last of Us. Most of the game is about combat, looting and solving repetitive puzzles, elements that you are expected to find in a classical action game. But these sequences and a few others shows that there is much more to this medium than repeating a core gameplay mechanic. The truly poignant and yet fully playable moments of this game is a testament to this.

So when talking about how well The Last of Us does storytelling, it is not productive to discuss how consistently it manages to merge its gameplay and story layer. I hope to have shown that this is a dead end. What is important are the other things, the elements that used to be fluff but has now become a force to be reckoned with on its own. There is a lot to learn from The Last of Us, but it is important that we look in the right places. It might be an classical action game at heart, but also contain elements that show the way forward.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us
In case you are in need of more info on the game, wikipedia is a good place to start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlBrenhzMZI
To get some more insight into the workings of Spec Ops: The Line, I recommend this Errant Signal Episode. It is an excellent overview of how the game uses its violence to send a message.

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/04/thoughts-on-bioshock-infinite.html
In case you enjoyed this critique of The Last of Us, you will probably also like my thoughts on Bioshock Infinite. There are a lot of similar topics discussed.

Notes:

• My history of videogames is a very quick and dirty overview. For instance some early games like Project Firestarter have some of the story integration seen in Another World, but I skipped those in order to make it a bit more clear. Also, many of these early games never really caught on and did not have nearly as much influence as the games I mention. I would have liked to do a more in depth article on the history of violence and storytelling in games, but not sure I will have the time in the near future, so this will have to do for now.
• Once the story layer got more prominent the discussion about "story" versus gameplay started to grow. Many people thought that the extra story segment was really distracting and that games should only focus on the core gameplay instead. I cannot recall this discussion ever being about the incoherence between the two, but simply that the extra story elements were not very engaging. It took a lot longer for the idea to pop up that there was a sort of friction between the story layer and the gameplay.
  It was not until the story layer had grown quite a bit until the idea of "ludonarrative dissonance" was brought up. First coined by the Far Cry 2 (2008)  lead designer Cliff Hocking, the core issue that it address is that the storytelling layer and gameplay disagree with one another. This of course has always been the case, but in a game design equivalent of the uncanny valley, it did not become apparent until the gap was small enough. So while the problem is true, the whole idea is kind of a truism. The gameplay and story layer has always been separate elements, and are conflicting in their very nature. I am not really a big fan of the term, as I think it is a bit backwards way of thinking. If the goal is to do interactive storytelling, all is already lost once you start dividing gameplay and narrative into different categories.
• As I played The Last of Us, it also hit me that sometimes cutscenes work best when you there is no need for interaction. First of all, it makes the project so much easier to manage. Scenes with extensive dialog often require quite a lot of preparation and if they are to be highly interactive, then there is a constant need for tweaking. If the interaction is very simple (like button mashing), or not present at all, then you can evaluate these bits of the game at a much earlier stage and save a lot of headache.
  It may also be good for the narrative if the player does not have anything to do during certain sections. In most cases a real life dialog is not a very active experience as many utterances come almost automatically. So not having much for the player to do might actually feel more natural. Also, if the player is forced to perform actions then it might detract their attention from what is being said. So instead of trying to make the dialogs highly interactive, it might be better to just make sure they are short and keep them free from gameplay.
  This is actually an approach that we are taking with our new Super Secret Project. We scrapped many of the more wild initial approaches because they were too hard to do and often made dialogs less engaging.