Literature Review

When it comes to developing a story that garners interest, there are always certain boundaries,

and boundaries that can be broken. Within the medium of video games, lore plays a vital role to the

believability and fullness of the story. In practice, it is one of the most essential pieces to the game's

design due to its influence on architecture, morals, and content. Along with that lore comes many new

terms, either re-purposed for the game's story or created entirely fresh for the game. This means that a

common lexis is present and few terms need to be explained before I go any further. To start, the basics

of games and lore will be covered specific to the game Dark Souls, which will be used as an example

for this research.

Terms:

RPG: Dark Souls is an RPG, or a Role-Playing-Game. An RPG is any game or game system that

allows the player or players to have a pivotal role in which they have some say in the game world. This

system gives them key decisions to make such as “Do I save their life for my gain, or sacrifice them for

the greater good?” and other such choices. An RPG can also allow a player high levels of control over

the personality, physical traits, and statistical traits (Combat style, weapon choice, etc.).

Lore: B. Choi, J. Huang, A. Jeffrey, and Y. Baek discuss the objects that go into creating a believable,

living fantasy world. More specifically, they give four parts that make up what the game world and its

lore should have. These four parts are imagination, identification, analogy, and satisfaction.

Imagination: Essentially, fantasy is used to stimulate a person's mind to create images and

ideas that help to make the game and its content more interesting. Any good lore no obvious

failures in the construction of the games plot, history, or story mechanics, and no interesting

mysteries easily solvable by anyone, even to the story's characters. Dark Souls does this well by

making the player actually have to find the story, rather than feeding it to them. Instead, they

give the player a small bite of information with the linear plot, but all the other information is

on the edges of that stories branches and in all the dark corners of the game world. This creates

an interesting puzzle to be solved and a lore that can be read into and formed based on opinion

and still be technically right. According to this article, it is described as the experience of things

that just won't happen to you. Usually these things are impossible even under the perfect

circumstances and have an air of science fiction or high fantasy to them.

Identification: This is summarized as a connection to the game world. Obviously, a story has to

connect with its followers. If it does not, the readers/players tend to get left out and put off from

the story. A lore and game world that includes the players and plays on their likes or dislikes

tends to be more successful than perfect people in a perfect world. Usually, a story has a

character that has traits similar to the player, or similar enough to connect to on some level.

Through the course of the story, the character overcomes their faults and triumphs joyfully. The

player/reader feels accomplished as well because they helped the character overcome their fault

and in turn overcome their own (even if it was all just in their head).

Analogy: Described by the article as “experience related to the real world.” For instance, if the

country you live in is having tough economic issues, you are more likely to play a game that

deals with that than a game about everyone being wealthy. If the game is believable and broken

just like the real world is, people are more easily drawn to dealing with those problems than

they are dealing with the problems of 'everybody is rich' or 'nobody can die.' Analogy also gives

a sense of immersion, or a feeling of actually being in the game world. Dark Souls does this by

having minimal Screen elements and a fleshed out, logically built societal system and

architecture design. For example, you will never see a modern American home next to one of

the castles in the game, and you also won't see a surge of prosperity and happiness in an

abandoned city. Things appropriate and realistic are always portrayed in order to gain

interest/immersion from the player.

Satisfaction: While described as “the level of satisfaction being given to environmental

factors.” For instance, if a given location in a game makes players really happy, then they are

satisfied with that area, regardless of their reason. If it is a visually appealing place or otherwise

does not matter. What does matter is that the player can continually come to that location and be

satisfied with it. It is a simple explanation but it holds utmost priority in development. If you

can get a player hooked and really going at the story or game, then you have gained a profit and

fan that will continue to return for at least a measurable chunk of time.

Developing Lore to Engage

I find that, more often than not, developers like to use story to enhance flavor or add a sort of

'story gimmick' to their game. The main issue is that the player plays the game for its mechanics, and

ignores the story more than anything else. Take Call of Duty for example. It has very little story lore to

go by, except that you are fighting terrorism in a very realistic setting. For some this is enough, and the

game's main draw is the game-play mechanics. However, you don't find players immersed into the

game world. Instead, you find players talking in the Meta of the game, working around role-play to get

to higher efficiency. Other games, such as Bethesda's Skyrim, focus almost solely on Lore and story. In

these cases, players tend to get drawn into the world and try to play it as if they were actually there

rather than playing a game. In other rare cases, players create lore and a community existing in the lore.

Dark Souls is one of these, although a unique exception. Dark Souls has the lore already placed within

the game world, but the player must find and piece it all together. What ends up happening is players

coming together to create a cohesive tapestry or lore with the pieces left for them. In another instance,

K. Moltenbrey's OUT OF CHARACTER article discusses a game where a fresh, new lore that never

existed was created. In the original Halo game, several players came together and created a long

running series of short episodes that followed a story of their devising, completely running off the rails

of what the game's story already had. The series was a massive hit, gaining thousands of fans and

spawning a whole studio of content creation.

What is so important about this creation of lore is how it engages the player or players. In Call

of Duty, there was no engagement, and the game diffused into skill only combat with no immersion. In

Skyrim, the player was fully engaged by lore and explored to their hearts content despite simple game

mechanics. In Halo and Dark Souls, people went out of their way to create an interesting lore for them

and others to enjoy. What I find in all these examples is the desire to engage in learning new things to

increase the level of immersion and satisfaction in the game as a whole. I draw that a game's lore has a

higher level of importance than almost any other factor in a game.

Perspectives on Lore

The viewpoint which the player finds themselves on a games lore falls on the shoulders of their

choices. Waelchli describes that a players behavior directly corresponds to their decisions in games and

their interaction with it and others through online social connections. If a player can develop lore by

making decisions, then their behavior can also influence the lore of a game. For example, a player who

takes things slow and waits things out decides to let a dragon live so that he can sneak by unharmed

may have a lasting impact on the story, whereas a player who seeks only challenge takes on the dragon

and sends the game in another direction entirely. Of course, this only works with games that have a

well thought out lore. In a game where the community is very high above the game lore, a player's

behavior only affects their score. There are few ways around this, but some developers enable systems

to keep players from developing such a meta before it happens.

A game's Artificial Intellegence, or AI, handles all logical processes not done by the player.

Anything from non-player characters patrolling an area to stock market fluctuations are handled by

these AI. Naturally, a good AI system will be deceptively human, and a bad one can range from too

powerful to unbelievably stupid (S.Cass). AI that fits a games lore takes a lot of work to pull off. First,

the AI must follow the conventions of the game world and lore. If no one goes to the dungeon, the AI

doesn't go even if the player is in there. If the guards are overly cautious, then they will check every

sound they here instead of drinking a beer. So long as the AI looks and acts like someone would in that

situation, immersion is intact and the lore is strengthened to a greater degree. Information can be carved

from in game characters in this way. For example, if one of the main characters prays to a god of luck,

then we have learned that religion is taken seriously and that there is a goddess of luck. We can use this

information to further engage ourselves in the lore and to develop it further based on other information.

There is one issue that cannot be easily dealt with, and that is players who do not seek out

information for various reasons. A game's lore can only be seen if it is sought, even if it is given to you.

Some players may try to find ways to get around finding the lore, or even find a way to accomplish

something without doing any work. These players are known as self validators (C. Heeter, B. Magerko,

B. Medler, J. Fitzgerald). Self Validators hate challenge and risk, so any kind of game can turn them

away, and a story that has good lore that must be sought out can pose a challenge they do not want to

take. Instead, they choose to research and experience the lore through someone else's experiences. This

negatively impacts a player's view on the lore because they do not have the proper identification and

immersion to accompany their knowledge. Much is lost in this situation and even the best story can fall

apart at the seams.

Time and Lore

For many, a long and detailed history tends to be favorable over a short, spotty history. I believe

this is because of the level of detail and scope it gives to the lore and the player's purpose. In a game,

the longer you have to do things or the longer you last in a game session has a massive impact on the

player footprint on lore. For example, in Civilization, a strategy game, sessions can last as long as

several millennium (in the game), but only a few hours in real life. The decisions you make in that

scenario have a greater gravity than a game like Animal Crossing, which runs on real time. Both

decisions may be equally important to the progress of either game, but the effect the decision has on the

player and his understanding of the game world and lore are drastically different. In Civilization,

researching nuclear technology for 50 years has a certain mood to it that makes it distinctly important.

In Animal Crossing, buying a shovel has the same affect on game speed and advancement, but feels

much more small in comparison.