Story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations © The Author(s), Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 2021 Published version Mochocki, Michał; Koskimaa, Raine Mochocki, M., & Koskimaa, R. (2021). Story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations. Images : The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication, 29(38), 5-31. https://doi.org/10.14746/i.2021.38.01 2021 Images vol. XXIX/no. 38 Poznań 2021 ISSN 1731-450x michał mochocki Department of Anglophone Literatures Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland michał mochocki, raine koskimaa Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies University of Jyväskylä, Finland Story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations* Abstract. Mochocki Michał, Koskimaa Raine, Story beats in videogames as value-driven choicebased unit operations. “Images” vol. XXIX, no. 38. Poznań 2021. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Pp. 5–31. ISSN 1731-450X. DOI 10.14746/i.2021.38.01. We present aframework of story beats, defined as microunits of dramatic action, as atool for the ludonarrative analysis of videogames. First, we explain the Goal - Action - Reaction - Outcome model of the story beat. Then, we present six types of story beats, Action, Interaction, Inaction, Mental, Emotion, and Sensory, providing videogame examples for each category. In the second half of the paper, we contextualise this framework in the classic game studies theory of videogame narrative and player action: unit operations, gamic action, anatomy of choice, and game design patterns, wrapping it up in the most recent trends in cognitive narratology. Ultimately, we present the story beat as aludonarrative unit, working simultaneously as a‘unit operation’ in the study of games as systems, and as amicrounit of character action in narrative analysis. The conclusion outlines prospective directions for using story beats in formal, experiential, and cultural game research. Keywords: transmedia, narrative, beat, narratology, character, videogames, game studies We approach the story beat as amicrounit of dramatic action found in all narrative media: the smallest unit discernible within scenes. Ascene may consist of only one beat, but often has more. Focusing on transmediality and narrativity, astory beat framework may be aunified classification system of narrative microunits across film, fiction, drama, and videogames.[1] In this paper, however, we are focusing entirely on videogames, with transmedial narratology secondary to game studies. We are not abandoning the narrative focus, sticking to the idea of the story beat as aunit of dramatic action involving imaginary characters, but we will approach it through the formal lens of games-as-systems, and the experiential lens of player action. We start by the presentation of the story beat framework, originally developed for multiple narrative media,[2] which includes the Introduction * For M. Mochocki, this research was funded by “Miniatura 3” grant from the Polish National Science Centre (ID 451101; No. 2019/03/X/HS2/00425). For R. Koskimaa, this research was supported by the Academy of Finland funding (CoE in Game Culture Studies, Project No. 312397). [1] M. Mochocki, R. Koskimaa, Transmedial Story Beats: Towards A Ludonarrative Framework Across Film, Drama, Fiction, and Videogames, forthcoming. [2] Ibidem. Images 29(38), 2021: [5–31]. © The Author(s), Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 2021. Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the CC licence (BY, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 6 GARO structural model of the beat and aclassification system with six categories. In sections 2 and 3, we demonstrate the framework with videogame examples for each category. The games are selected for practical purposes in that they employ specific beat types in an illustrative way, but many other games could have been used as well. Finally, in sections 4 and 5, we position story beats in the ‘foundational’ theories of game narratives and gamic action developed in the 2000s: unit operations, gamic action, anatomy of choice, and game design patterns. The conclusion outlines prospective directions for using story beats in formal, experiential, and cultural game research. The GARO structural model for story beats[3] has four parts: (G) Goal: what the acting character is trying to achieve in terms of story values. Story values are binaries, such as “alive/dead”, “locked/ unlocked”, “hostile/friendly”, “known/unknown” etc., with the character’s intended goal expressed in the infinitive (“to do… / to achieve…”), (A) Action: what the active agent is doing to achieve G, expressed as agerund or active verb, (R) Reaction: what resistance comes from an opposing force, also expressed as averb. This R is driven by acorresponding Goal, “not to do…” or “to do … instead”, running contrary to the G that drives A. (O) Outcome: what results from the A+R confrontation, expressed in terms of story values being changed or staying unchanged. If avalue is changed, this is aturning point for the scene. Sometimes the beat is more R- than A-driven, especially if it is the R-eaction that relies on the player character’s choice. See 3.1 and 3.2. The R part has some less obvious variants besides an actively opposing force. Passive resistance is one alternative. For instance, the (G) Goal is “to unlock the door” (story value: “locked/unlocked”; which may be linked to higher-level values “imprisoned/free”). The (A) is the Action of “lockpicking” (may also be “bashing down”, or “shooting the lock”, etc.). The (R) is the opposing Reaction, which in this case is passive “resisting” by the mechanism, its countergoal being “to remain locked”. The (O) Outcome will either change the story value “locked > unlocked”, or fail to do so. Another variant is Internal struggle beats that locate Aand R in the character’s mind as two opposing ideas or desires. We also accept R-less beats (GA_O) as the weakest form of what could possibly count as dramatic action. Examples include: conducting alibrary search to find critical information; tracking footprints in the forest; shooting at amotionless target; climbing awall. The confrontation happens between the character’s Aand the difficulty of the task, as determined by environmental factors and the character’s skill level. This is similar to ‘passive resistance’, but it hardly makes sense to say that books, footprints, target shields, or walls are “resisting”. The essential The story beats framework explained [3] Ibidem. 7 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations point is that the Amay succeed or fail, so the Oremains uncertain. The risk of failure is enough to add dramatic tension to the A. With such variations, this model powers various categories of story beats, which we classify according to the nature of dramatic action driving the beat: 1) Action Beats, driven by DO-ing, divided into Physical, Magical, and Technical subtypes, 2) Interaction Beats, driven by SAY-ing or INTERACT-ing, divided into Feel good/bad, Convince, Find out, and Change status, 3) Inaction Beats, defined by NON-action, divided into Physical stoppage and Verbal stoppage, 4) Emotion Beats, driven by FEEL-ing, divided into Calm and Trigger, 5) Mental Beats, driven by THINK-ing, divided into Psionics, Decision, and Discovery, 6) Sensory Beats, driven by SENSE-ing, divided into Natural senses and Super senses. This framework is informed by amix of literature on story beats in the theatre,[4] film,[5] fiction,[6] and videogames,[7] plus ‘stragetic experiential modules’ from experiential marketing.[ 8 ] For detailed credits, see Mochocki & Koskimaa;[9] though it seems this paper will be out first). As creative work often deviates from ideal models, we come across mixed-type beats, with the Aand R in the A+R confrontation representing different categories (see 2.0 below). We also have incomplete beats with no O, often in chains of A+R confrontations where the next Adoubles as R(eaction) to the previous beat. Due to limited space, in this paper we focus on standard full-size beats, but it should be noted that GARO as the basic ‘atom’ of dramatic action is divisible into ‘subatomic’ parts. Story beats are defined by dramatic action: one that struggles with an opposing reaction/resistance, and the outcome of this confrontation is/seems uncertain. This is contrasted with simple, i.e. non-dra- matic, action that effortlessly succeeds. To adjust the granularity of story beats to areasonable level, we also introduce serial action: aggregation of multiple microactions aimed at the same goal. In video game studies, this is particularly useful in the analysis of combat scenes. [4] W. Dunne, The Dramatic Writer’s Companion: Tools to develop characters, cause scenes, and buildstories, Chicago 2009. [5] R. McKee, Story: Substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting, New York 1997. [6] K. Cowley, Action beats, dialogue beats and beat variation, [in:] Stories Matter, 2014, <http:// www.katherinecowley.com/blog/action-beats-di- alogue-beats-and-beat-variation/>, accessed: 2.03.2020; eadem, Writing Powerful Story Beats in Fiction, SlideShare 2016, <https://www.slideshare.net/ kathycowley/writing-powerful-story-beats-in-fic- tion>, accessed: 2.03.2020. [7] A. Ganszyniec, Narrative-driven Game design, YouTube 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=KR6W6YkUcd4>, accessed: 2.03.2020. [8] B. Schmitt, Experiential Marketing: How to get customers to sense, feel, think, act, and relate to your company and brands, New York 1999. [9] M. Mochocki, R. Koskimaa, forthcoming. michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 8 If we were to isolate single (not serial) actions in combat in Witcher 3, we would have: fast attack, strong attack, dodge, change weapon, move, eat food, drink potion, use awitcher sign. Some of those can be story beats defined by dramatic action: attacks as A-actions meet with R-reactions; dodge counts as Geralt’s R to somebody’s A. Some are not: healing and the Quen sign (magic shield) meet no opposing force, being ‘simple’ (non-dramatic) actions. Moreover, in prolonged combat with multiple attacks, movements, and defensive actions, most are of little consequence. Damage is being dealt and healing resources spent in small amounts, without asudden change in the life/death situation. Only one or two decisive attacks become value-changing turning points: those that kill, incapacitate, or which otherwise determine victory. This can be seen as multiple inconsequential beats, escalating to one beat (climax) with the turning point that ends the scene.[10] Alternatively, all combat and healing actions can thus be framed as one serial Aaction expressed in one verb: “fighting”; with asimilarly serialised R reaction “fighting back” constituting only one beat. It is also possible to point to mid-scene turning points: moments that do not yet decide ‘win/lose’ but ‘gain asignificant advantage’, such as disarming or stunning the enemy. In Dunne’s dramatic writer’s companion, “achange of beat often reflects achange of strategy.”[11] If acharacter fails to do something on their first try, and immediately tries anew strategy and wins, we have atwo-beat scene. Video game combat easily lends itself to such compartmentalisations: a‘change of strategy’ enacted by achange of weapon or preferred form of attack, or moving from one opponent to the next, or switching from offensive to defensive tactics. This last option makes sense in Witcher 3; we may fight agroup of drowners defensively, with frequent dodging and healing as we are knocking monsters down one by one, only to switch to offensive style with the last creature. Consequently, the scene would have two beats (defensive combat + offensive combat). An even better example from Witcher 3 is aconfrontation with shield-bearing enemies, the first beat aiming to change the “shielded/unshielded” story value, to refocus on “alive/dead” when the shield is dropped. It is certainly possible to scale the granularity of story beats down to each single attack/defense, or one beat for each fallen monster, but compartmentalisation into two-three larger beats as combat stages seems much more productive. Of the six types of story beats (see Introduction), only Action and Interaction are commonly recognised in videogame design (the latter under the name of ‘dialogue beats’). Different games offer dif - ferent diversity of particular forms of dramatic action, which depends Action, speech, and inaction beats [10] J. Yorke, Into the Woods: A five act journey into story, London 2013. [11] W. Dunne, op.cit., p. 122. 9 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations not only on the game, but also genre, and historical moment of genre development. For instance, The plot of most first-person shooter games is to wage as much slaughter as possible; in Thief, the main goal is to avoid conflict, sneaking through shadows and darkness to avoid detection. Deus Ex, also principally designed by Thief ’s Warren Spector and built on the Unreal game engine, extends Thief ’s design to include forms of goal-reaching beyond both combat and stealth. Deus Ex adds character interaction and skill use as alternative, nonviolent ways to traverse the same narrative space; in fact, the player has access to numerous solutions for any one challenge the game provides. The particular innovation of Deus Ex is its addition of amoral tenor: each violent and nonviolent player decision affects the outcome of the game.[12] We have divided Action beats into Physical, Technical, and Magical, all driven by verbs reflecting DO-ing. Interaction beats are driven by SAY-ing (and therefore could be termed Speech beats), or gestural-physical INTERACT-ing (could be called Body Language beats), but we decided to unify the verbal and nonverbal varieties under one category (corresponding with Dunne’s ‘behavioral beats’). Instead, we subdivide Interaction beats into Feel good/bad, Find out, Convince, and Change Status. The next category, named Pause/Inaction beats, are refusals to act or speak: Physical stoppage or Verbal stoppage. These are not driven by any active verb, as they are NON-action. Often, the Aand R in the GARO structure may belong to different categories of dramatic action. For instance, aphysical attack Amay be repelled with amagic shield R. Both are (re)actions based on DO-ing, but of different subtypes: Action: Physical versus Action: Magical. In such cases, we assume it is always the Aor R of the focalising character (typically = player character) that determines the subcategory for the beat. Such type-mixing also happens between the main beat categories. Imagine one character shouting an insult, and the other responding by throwing apunch. The nature of dramatic action in A“insulting” classifies it as an Interaction beat, subtype: Feel bad. But the R “punching” / “assaulting” begs to be classified as Action: Physical. With Interaction beats, we could always stretch the scope of non-verbal physical INTERACT-ing to include “punching” among behavioural forms of communicating emotions, next to “hugging” and “pushing”, as it is done in The Sims. But behavioural interactions cannot be possibly stretched as far as to include all beat varieties. When the A“insulting” (Interaction: Feel bad) is answered with R “mind control” (Mental: Psionics), or R “casting magic missile” (Action: Magical), the beat is clearly mixed. [12] I. Bogost, Unit Operations: An approach to videogame criticism, Cambridge, MA, 2006, p. 63. michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 10 Action & interaction examples The following examples come from the gameplay trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, available on the GamesRadar channel on YouTube. Ahigher-level story value, i.e. the mission objective, is to rescue akidnapped woman. In the language of changeable values / game states, the value binary is “kidnapped/rescued”, which will determine the “failed/accomplished” for the mission. Rescuing requires agunfight, where the player character’s life is at stake: “alive/dead”. The loss of health from wounds is incremental, which makes this value at least three-stage: “alive/wounded/dead”, the “wounded” state being ascale. (Alternatively, we may think in two binaries: “alive/dead” and “wounded/unharmed”). Enemy combatants may also be assigned the “alive/ dead” values. However, in this scene (as in many games), the point is not specifically to kill; it is often enough to eliminate the opponent from combat. Therefore, even if “alive/wounded/dead” also makes sense, it is perhaps better to set the values as “active threat/eliminated threat”. This will equally apply to situations when the intention is to kill and to those where killing is not necessary, and also to combat with machines, whose state cannot be named “alive/dead”. The most frequent verbs for (A) and (R) in the first mission are “shooting” and “ducking/taking cover”; the most frequent (G) Goal is to “eliminate threat”, aka “kill enemy”. Selected beats are listed by the timestamp in the trailer. 2:03 Action: Technical G: to unlock door / A: player character (PC)’s remote partner T-Bug is hacking the lock / R: electronic lock resists hacking for awhile / O: hacking is successful, the door opens (story value: locked > unlocked) 2:40 Action: Physical G: to approach the scavenger quietly / A: character is sneaking up to him / R: is perhaps perceiving the environment but unsuccessfully due to headphones / O: unnoticed, PC moves within the reach to hit the enemy from behind (story value change: out of reach > within reach; undetected > undetected) 2:44 Action: Physical G: to eliminate the scavenger / A: PC hits him on the head, pushes his head down in the water, and shoots point blank; all three actions may be aggregated as aserial action “attack” or “assassinate” / O: the scavenger is eliminated (killed, in all likelihood) (story value: active threat > eliminated threat; alive > dead) 3:00 Action: Physical G: to eliminate the scavenger in the corridor / A: PC is shooting / R: surprised scavenger fails to defend himself / O: scavenger is eliminated (story values: as above) 11 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations 3:02 Action: Physical (serial action) G: to eliminate the group of scavengers in the next room / A1: PC and A2: her partner are shooting and ducking / R*: scavengers are shooting back / O: all scavengers but one are eliminated, PC is wounded (*R may be analysed as one collective reaction, or R1, R2… for each combatant) 3:34 Action: Physical G: to eliminate the last scavenger from the other room / A: PC continues shooting / R: scavenger is shooting back / O: the scavenger is eliminated (story value: active threat > eliminated threat; alive > dead) 3:37 Action: Physical G: to eliminate the previously-unseen scavenger boss / A: PC is shooting / R: enemy is retreating to the next room closing the door / O: PC fails to shoot the boss down, the boss remains an active threat behind closed door (story values: active threat > active threat; enemy without cover > enemy behind cover) 3:40 Action: Physical G: PC’s partner wants to open the door / A: by pulling it / R: the door resists / O: staying locked (story values: all remain unchanged) 3:44 Action: Physical G: to eliminate PC and partner / A: enemy starts shooting through the wall / R: to survive, PC and partner rush to find cover / O: they survive behind cover (story values: without cover > behind cover) 3:50 Interaction: Convince G: to convince PC to do so / A: partner shouts “Blast the wall!” / R: PC accepts the plan / O: and moves to do as told (story values: hiding > taking initiative; unmotivated > motivated) 3:54 Action: Physical G: to eliminate the boss / A: PC starts shooting blindly at the wall / R: enemy returns fire / O: both shooters remain active (unchanged story value for all participants: active threat + alive + behind cover) 3:55 Interaction: Convince G: to persuade PC to locate the enemy with ascanner / A: partner shouts “Use your fucking scanner!” / R: PC replies “Got none to fucking use! / O: request is rejected (story value: none changed) 4:05 Interaction: Convince G: to persuade PC to go attack the enemy from the balcony / A1: T-Bug tells PC to do so + A2: partner tells PC to distract the enemy / R: PC decides to obey / O: PC moves to do as told (story values: stuck > on the move; no plan > anew plan) michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 12 4:13 Action: Physical G: to eliminate the boss / A1: PC is shooting from the balcony window + A2: partner is charging through blasted wall to melee attack / R: boss unsuccessfully directs fire on the PC / O: partner eliminates the boss (story value: active threat > eliminated threat) 4:52 Action: Technical G: to check the health of the rescued girl / A: PC connects and activates biomonitor / R: biomonitor successfully runs the scan / O: biomonitor displays health status, and provides information about TT medical insurance with blocked signal (story values at stake: “unidentified/ identified” health status in this particular action, “alive/dead” for the girl, and “successful/failed” for the mission (which will fail if the girl is not rescued alive). 5:13 Interaction: Find out G: to find out about the jammed signal / A: PC asks T-Bug for help / R: T-Bug tells to check the neurosocket and remove shard / O: PC knows what to do (story values: “unknown/known” course of action, linked to higher-level story values as above) 5:23 Action: Technical G: to restore signal to TT / A: PC reaches to pull the shard / R: the shard is easily removed / O: signal restored, amessage from TT announces help will arrive in 180 seconds (story values: “jammed/unjammed” for the signal, which translates to “not coming/coming” ambulance crew, which is again linked to “alive/dead” for the girl, whose survival depends on quick hospitalisation). In these examples, we trace beats of dramatic action involving all the characters, including PC’s partners and enemy boss. Alternatively, analysis may be narrowed down to dramatic action of the PC. In this case, commands shouted by the partners may be reframed as contextual elements of the Set-up for beats initiated by the PC, not as NPC-ini- tiated Interaction beats pushing the PC’s action to the R reactive role. The commands / requests from the NPC partners may be classified as simple (nondramatic) actions, as they do not open any conflict about astory value; they only support the collective PC-led dramatic action. Inaction examples An Inaction beat, subtype: Verbal stoppage appears in Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone when O’Dimm comes to collect Olgierd’s soul. As the demonic O’Dimm is about to destroy Olgierd, the player controls Geralt’s behaviour with two options: “1. [Help Olgierd]” and “2. [Don’t get involved]”, with arapidly decreasing progress bar counting down time to make the choice. Such achoice between an Interaction and Inaction contrasts with scenes offering only options of active Action / Interaction. 19 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations Mental beat – decision – discovery – psionics THINK Sensory beat – natural senses – super senses SENSE Pause/Inaction beat – verbal stoppage (pause/refusal to speak) – physical stoppage (pause/refusal to act) (NON) Having presented the story beats framework in 1.0 to 3.0, we now wish to contextualise it in game studies. Many now-classic studies from the 2000s frame the narrative content (and structure) of videogames as one layer of rule-based systems. Salen & Zimmerman[19] write about “atomic structures of games as representational systems, linking together signification, simulation, and storytelling” across chapters Games as the Play of Meaning, Games as Narrative Play, and Games as the Play of Simulation. Juul’s[20] notion of half-reality / half-fictionality highlights the dualism of real rulesets (governing player actions) alongside fictional narratives (with character actions). Galloway, defining videogames through “actions […] active participation of players and machines,”[ 21 ] separates the nondiegetic layer of rulesets, hardware and interface from the diegetic one, where “[t]he diegesis of avideo game is the game’s total world of narrative action.”[ 22 ] In Björk & Holopainen,[ 23 ] diegetic Narrative Structures, Characters, Game World, and Cutscenes are among game design patterns alongside non-diegetic game elements and components. Moreover, many patterns may apply to non-diegetic player behaviour, as well as to diegetic characters; these are primarily found in the categories “Actions and Events”, “Goals”, and “Social Interaction”. Let us consider the key elements in more detail. Characters Befitting the nature of story beats as units of character-centred dramatic action, videogame characters “participate in both modes, the narrative and the dramatic,”[24] The correspondence of aplayer’s action in the game interface and character’s behaviour in the imaginary world allows for ludonarrative unity: “diegetic operator act” in Galloway’s four-part classification of gamic action, spanning between machine/ operator and diegetic/nondiegetic. They “are diegetic because they take Player/avatar’s action in game studies [19] K. Salen, E. Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game design fundamentals, Cambridge, MA, 2004. [20] J. Juul, Half-Real: Video Games… [21] A.R. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on algorithmic culture, Minneapolis 2006, p. 2. [22] Ibidem, p. 8. [23] S. Björk, J. Holopainen, Patterns in Game Design, Hingham, MA, 2005. [24] S. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, J.H. Smith, S. Tosca, Understanding Video Games: The essential introduction, New York 2008, p. 178. michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 20 place within the world of gameplay; they are operator acts because they are perpetrated by the game player rather than the game software or any outside force.”[25] Importantly, Galloway highlights the representational-performa- tive aspect of such an act: adromenon representing afictional narrative through enactment in action.[26] He links it to the forefathers of game studies, Huizinga and Caillois; we will look upon today’s enactivist narratology by Caracciolo.[27] Diegetic operator acts are perhaps the most interesting area of investigation. However, the transmedial story beat framework also covers “machine diegetic acts”: actions and reactions of computer-con- trolled characters (NPCs), monsters, and inanimate forces, as long as these forces are ‘agents’ initiating actions/reactions. Also, the framework covers the player character’s actions as represented in computer-con- trolled cutscenes: they “are outside gameplay, but they are not outside the narrative of gameplay.”[28] Cutscenes ‘steal’ the performative power from the player, removing the enactment-in-action required in Huizinga’s ritualistic dromenon. However, according to enactivist narratology, even though viewers/readers are not controlling the character’s action in film/fiction, they simulate it mentally[29] and feel as if they were.[30] In any narrative genre, mental enactment of character-centred dramatic action is gamelike and (thus?) ritual-like.[31] In videogame cutscenes, this is just one step away, one moment from player-controlled enactment in gameplay. Goals/conflict Salen & Zimmerman highlight the parallelism of story goals and game goals, which “not only help players judge their progress (how close are they to winning), but also guide players in understanding the significance of their actions within anarrative context.”[32] Goals are often defined in conflict, which “in agame is one way narrative events advance”. Thus, Salen & Zimmerman’s systemic approach to game narratives is compatible with the principles of dramatic narrative: conflict presumes astruggle between opposing forces, in agame there should always be some element that works against player success, an element that acts to try and ensure the failure of the player. This role is often [25] A.R. Galloway, op.cit., p. 23. [26] Ibidem, p. 2. [27] M. Caracciolo, The Experientiality of Narrative: An enactivist approach, Berlin – Boston, MA, 2014; idem, Playing home: videogame experiences between narrative and ludic interests, “Narrative” 2015, no. 3 (23); idem, Ungrounding fictional worlds. An enactivist perspective on the “Worldlikeness” of fiction, [in:] Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology, eds. A. Bell, M.-L. Ryan, Lincoln 2019, pp. 113–131. [28] A.R. Galloway, op.cit., p. 11. [29] M.-L. Ryan, From possible worlds to storyworlds. on the worldness of narrative representation, [in:] Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology, eds. A. Bell, M.-L. Ryan, Lincoln 2019, pp. 62–87. [30] M. Caracciolo, Ungrounding Fictional Worlds…, pp. 157–176. [31] L. Alexander, Genre, [in:] The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds, ed. M.J.P. Wolf, New York 2018, pp. 256–273. [32] K. Salen, E. Zimmerman, op.cit. 21 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations taken by avillain character, acompeting player or team, or may be embodied in the game system as awhole. From anarrative perspective, this element motivates and contextualizes player action […]. The conflict of agame infuses every moment of its play. To maximize the narrative play in your game, you must pay close attention to how the conflict in your game is narrativized.[33] They trace narrative structures on the macro (story) and micro level, as we do scaling up from beat to scene to act to story. The micro level, as in Ganszyniec’s[34] model uniting story with gameplay, assumes that “core mechanics represent the essential moment-to-moment activity of players.”[35] which gets “narrativized.” In connection to text adventure games (Interactive Fiction), Aarseth coined the concept of intrigue, as parallel to the narrative of the game. Intrigue is “asecret plot in which the user is the innocent, but voluntary, target […], with an outcome that is not yet decided.”[36] Intrigant is the agent who is responsible for the intrigue and is to be separated from the actual opponent, like amonster in afight. In some of the cases above, where there is no clear opponent but something that challenges the player, we can refer to the intrigant. Aarseth, too, has borrowed his concept of intrigue from drama theory. Goals are often deeply nested, with one action serving multiple goals, e.g. the immediate goal to break through adoor serves the interim goal of eliminating an enemy who hides there, which in turn serves the purpose of rescuing akidnapped person (mission objective; equivalent of scenic objective in Dunne[37]). Mechanics Moment-to-moment gameplay is the level of the story beat, according to Ganszyniec,[38] Yorke[39] and other narrative designers we cite in the previous paper (forthcoming). We have pointed to action verbs - such as running, shooting, begging, intimidating - as common denominators for games and stories, as they are used by game designers/ scholars to describe mechanics, and by narrative designers to identify action in story beats (e.g. McKee[40]). Salen & Zimmerman find this essential to the experience of narrative in games: core mechanics create patterns of repeated behavior, the experiential building blocks of play. Designing moment-to-moment play as narrative play means paying attention to exactly what players are doing in your game, how their choices and outcomes are represented, and how these moments fit into larger narrative frames. Recognizing games as narrative experience means considering them not just as bits of plot that are arranged and rearranged through interaction, [33] Ibidem, pp. 387–388. [34] A. Ganszyniec, op.cit. [35] K. Salen & E. Zimmerman, op.cit., p. 389. [36] E. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on ergodic literature, Baltimore 1997, p. 112. [37] W. Dunne, op.cit., p. 93. [38] A. Ganszyniec, op.cit. [39] J. Yorke, op.cit. [40] R. McKee, op.cit. michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 22 but instead considering them as an ongoing activity in which aplayer engages with acore mechanic to make meaningful choices and explore aspace of possibility.[41] Parallels between verbs for player action and verbs for narrative-building are of special interest to videogame narrative designers.[42] Nonetheless, it is worth repeating that player’s engagement with game mechanics is not limited to player action. Mechanics understood as “methods invoked by agents, designed for interaction with the game state” are “available both to human and artificial agents”[ 43 ]. NPCs, monsters, inanimate forces: they all may be vehicles of mechanics-driv- en dramatic action/reaction in beats. The importance of verbs is reflected in our classification of story beats types, defined as they are by DO-ing, SAY-ing, THINK-ing, etc. Emotional outcome Action > outcome is the basic atom of gameplay in Salen & Zimmerman (2004). Juul’s (2005) Classic Game Model assumes “aclear valorization (goal) and emotional attachment to the outcome” of player action. Goal-valorisation is aformal feature, defined in terms of potential game states resulting from the mechanics of gamic action. Player’s cognitive and emotional interpretation of it as success or failure is an experiential feature. Björk & Holopainen combine them in the concept of closure: Closures are quantifiable and meaningful player experiences usually associated with game state changes. Closures may be associated with achieving goals but do not have to be so; aclosure might instead be the point when it becomes obvious that agoal cannot be reached. Another relevant difference between goals and closures is that the goals are within the game definition and do not exist at aparticular point in time. The closures are always tied to aparticular point of time in the gameplay […]. goals are part of the game, closures happen when playing the game.[44] Closures are tied to end-conditions, which “define the requirements on the game state for […] acompletion of aclosure;”[45] and to evaluation functions: “the algorithms used to determine the outcome of end conditions” including “terms of winning and losing.”[46] This ideally describes McKee’s[47] model of the story beat: the character’s action as an attempt (against reaction) to change astory val- [41] K. Salen, E. Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Cambridge, MA, 2004, p. 389. [42] e.g. K. Tremblay, Storytelling with Verbs: Integrating Gameplay and Narrative, YouTube 2020, March 17, <https://youtu.be/ontNUxSLhb8>, accessed: 2.03.2020; B. Jaekle, The four basics of open world storytelling, “Gamasutra” 2018, January 4, <https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Benjamin- Jaekle/20180401/315969/The_Four_Basics_of_Open_ World_Storytelling.php>, accessed: 2.03.2020; M. Krpata, Verbs, [in:] Insult Swordfighting 2013, September 25, <http://insultswordfighting.blogspot. com/2013/09/verbs.html>, accessed: 2.03.2020. [43] M. Sicart, Defining game mechanics, “Game Studies” 2008, no. 2 (8), <http://gamestudies.org/0802/ articles/sicart>, accessed: 2.03.2020. [44] S. Björk & J. Holopainen, op.cit., p. 21. [45] Ibidem, p. 22. [46] Ibidem, p. 23. [47] R. McKee, op.cit. 23 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations ue from positive to negative or vice versa. In videogames, story values are encoded in game states. Whatever is required in the narrative to complete the action/reaction confrontation is an end condition: what must happen for the confrontation to come to an end. Frequently, it is when the acting character successfully completes the action, or has the action thwarted by areaction, or abandons the attempt. Another end condition may be alimited amount of time. When the confrontation has ended (end conditions being met), the action is judged as successful, or failed, or partially successful. In game terms, evaluation functions measure the achieved game state, triggering acorresponding outcome; it may be as definitive as win - ning or losing, or may come in the form of rewards (e.g. scores) and/ or penalties. It may also be as simple as scoring apoint: “At the end of each atom, points are recorded, and the winner of the game is the one with the most points at the end.”[48] In any case, the completion of the confrontation brings Closure to in-game action/event, which doubles as Resolution in narrative terms. The player’s emotional attachment to action’s outcome[49]– winning, losing, scoring– runs parallel to audience’s emotional response to story values being changed, or failing to be changed.[50] Coming full circle, from rule-based game systems back to general transmediality, let us consider story beats as Bogost’s ‘unit operations’. As small-scale discrete units, they “strive to articulate both the members of aparticular situation and the specific functional relationship between them,”[51] and include “abstract routines for characters and objects in the world.”[52] The story beat realises this as follows: − The situation includes two members, an acting agent and areacting agent, at least one of which is acharacter (human, humanlike, or any somewhat-sentient being capable of acting and experiencing). − Their relationship is antagonistic: one acts towards adesired result, the other counter-acts or resists. − Their confrontation escalates to aclimax, and leads to aresolution. Unit operations “may be observed in any artifact, or any portion of any artifact, rather arbitrarily […] across expressive forms, from literature to film to software to videogames.”[53] This is exactly the idea of our transmedial framework of beats as (ludo)narrative microunits. Acomment is needed on the varied degree of unit-operationality in games. In “the struggle waged between totalizing structures and componentized structures,”[54] the unit-operational logic governs the latter.[55] Componentised ones invite “modes of meaning-making that [48] G.S. Elias, R. Garfield & K.R. Gutschera, Characteristics of Games, Cambridge, MA, 2012, p. 20. [49] J. Juul, Half-real: Video Games… [50] As highlighted by story beats theorists, e.g. McKee, op.cit.; W. Dunne, op.cit.; R. Laws, Beating the Story, Falcon Heights 2018. [51] I. Bogost, op.cit., p. 14. [52] Ibidem, p. 60. [53] Ibidem, p. 14. [54] Ibidem, p. 7. [55] Ibidem, p. 59. michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 24 privilege discrete, disconnected actions over deterministic, progressive system.”[56] By contrast, with its linear progression in the nested hierarchy of story/act/scene/beat, traditional storytelling builds “holistic, totalizing systems from the top down.”[ 57 ] Some videogames and game genres follow this model, e.g. point-and-click adventure games like Syberia, where the narrative system is pre-designed holistically, and discovered step by step. In Bogost’s terms, this is system operations. In unit operations, we have “systems as assemblages of units,”[58] whose example in videogame narratives is The Sims: Hot Date.[59] Juul names it ‘games of progression’ versus ‘games of emergence.’[60] Open-world RPGs like Witcher 3 combine the system-operational progression of quests with unit-operational emergence of world exploration. Where the game positions itself on the scale between progression and emergence determines the importance of the story beat in relation to the story. In top-down linear narratives, the story beat only executes astep in pre-determined plot, astep of minor importance in most scenes, more important only in climaxes of major and final events. In emergent, unit-operational narratives, it is the flow of story beats that shapes narrative progression. The procedure of Galloway’s ‘diegetic operator acts’, when the character’s action is triggered by the player’s action, may be further described in Salen & Zimmerman’s[61] five-step ‘anatomy of achoice’. Set-up 1. What happened before the player was given the choice? 2. How is the possibility of choice conveyed to the player? Confrontation (Action) 3. How did the player make the choice? Confrontation (Reaction) 4a. What is the result of the choice? Resolution 4b. How will it affect future choices? 5. How is the result of the choice conveyed to the player? Salen & Zimmerman highlight the difference between 2. and 5. as “external events” that are represented to the player in the game interface (screen, audio, hardware game controls), and 1.,3.,4. as “internal events” that take place in the game state machine. They come Unit operations andanatomy of choice [56] Ibidem, p. 3. [57] Ibidem, p. 49. [58] Ibidem, p. 7. [59] Ibidem, p. 86–89. [60] J. Juul, The open and the closed: game of emergence and games of progression, [in:] Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings, ed. F. Mäyrä, Tampere 2002, pp. 323–329. 25 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations together in narrative designer Ben Jaekle’s words: “Gameplay is Story. The player’s choices are the character’s choices.”[62] Analysis of player choices in story beats, exemplified by Murray’s MSc thesis,[63] is by all means afruitful area of investigation. Co-presence of multiple goals– and choice of actions leading to various potential outcomes - may be analysed with Mawhorter’s “choice poetics.”[64] To broaden the scope, let us consider if it also works vice versa: the character’s choices imagined as the player’s. Does it make sense to apply the anatomy of choice to ‘diegetic machine acts’, i.e. actions taken by the player character in cutscenes, and by NPCs in general? In the literal sense, no human choice is being made, with events determined by algorithms. However, if we replace ‘player’ with ‘character’ as choice-maker, the procedure of the story beat remains. This is the point of “narrative-driven” video games,[65] focused as they are on fictional characters to which players “attribute consciousness.”[66] Whenever it is an actual story beat (with agoal identified in the set-up, action clashing with opposing reaction, and the resulting outcome), then the character’s decision to act is this character’s choice in the storyworld, whether player-controlled or not. The continuity of choice-making between gameplay and cutscenes finds support in Alexander’s anthropological genre theory, which assumes that all action in narrative genres “manifests the dynamic metaphors of choosing the right turn in the story’s cognitive maze.”[67] The protagonist - avatar — ashared, projected alter ego of the audience — makes complex decisions and initiates steps, considering variable options for the paths taken, limited by each genre’s conventions. As expected, the audience, familiar with the genre and aware of possible steps, is eager to follow the hero’s moves, in “his shoes,” calculating at once how to act wisely in this predicament.[68] Let us not be misled by Alexander’s use of the word ‘avatar’; she does not speak of videogames, but rather, she applies game metaphors to narrative genres in any medium. To her, “The game-like foundation of genres originates from ritual, which gave birth to interactivity as riddle-saturated challenges, inseparable from ritual structure,”[69] and it is “Pathfinding and pathmaking […] that define the intrinsic link between ritual, genre, and game.”[70] [61] K. Salen, E. Zimmeran, op.cit. [62] B. Jaekle, op.cit. [63] J.T. Murray, Annotating Player Experience in Telltale Games The Wolf Among Us, MSc Thesis, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz 2018, <https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/69n1d6tp>, accessed: 2.03.2020. [64] P.A. Mawhorter, Artificial Intelligence as a Tool for Understanding Narrative Choices, PhD Diss., UC Santa Cruz 2016, <https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~pmawhorter/research/dis/artificial_intelligence_as_a_tool_ for_understanding_narrative_choices-Mawhort- er-2016.pdf>, accessed: 2.03.2020. [65] M. Caracciolo, Playing home… [66] Idem, The Experientiality of Narrative…, pp. 115–117. [67] L. Alexander, op.cit., p. 271. [68] Ibidem, p. 266. [69] Ibidem. p. 271. [70] Ibidem. p. 266. michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 26 The difference between physical enacting of avatar’s action via game controllers, and witnessing his/her action in cutscenes, is even more reduced by embodied affective responses. This goes beyond the early videogame narratology[71] that rejected the passivity of cutscenes (and film, fiction, drama) on the grounds of cognitive activity in interpretation, memorisation and anticipation. Enactivist embodiment is attributed to “motor resonance”: the fact that mere observation of somebody performing an action (or imaginary act of ourselves performing it) triggers partially the same brain and hormonal activity as actual performance. Readers/viewers of fiction “internally and unconsciously enact the characters’ movements”[72], shaping “our evaluative enactments on the basis of our sensorimotor skills (which are derived from our bodily experience of the world).”[73] To Bogost, these “mirror neurons” phenomena “suggest ways of understanding units of representational meaning that do not necessarily have recourse to narrative”[74], more like adirect transfer of bodily experience. Yet, to narratologists, it is very much about narrativity. […] narrative has abuilt-in rhythmicity that involves both the representation of bodily movements and the negotiation of affective values […]. In prose narrative, these movements are amatter of semiotic representation rather than direct perception: nevertheless, our imagination of characters moving in narrative space is still to alarge extent based on patterns arising from our embodied interaction with the World.[75] The embodied affective responses are physiological, and therefore no less physical (material) than pressing buttons. This invites us to rethink the boundary between seeing and doing. Early studies on videogame storytelling emphasised the bodily aspect of thumbs and muscles operating game controls.[76] Defining diegetic operator acts as ritualistic dromenons, Galloway insists “while there is an imaginative form of the expressive act within the diegesis of the game, there is also aphysical form of the same act,”[77] so what used to be the act of reading is now the act of doing, or just ‘the act’.”[78] However, with some exceptions, such as haptic controllers, “the symbolic control of keys, controller buttons, and thumb sticks” has “no direct, mimetic relationship between the actual movement performed by the player and the corresponding movement executed by the avatar.”[79] It is likely that narrative involvement with “the alterbiography […] generated by the individual player as she takes action in the game”[ 80 ] is much more [71] e.g. J. Newman, Videogames, London 2004, p. 94–98. [72] M. Caracciolo, Ungrounding fictional worlds…, p. 124. [73] J. Alber, Logical contradictions, possible worlds theory, and the embodied mind, [in:] Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology, eds. A. Bell, M.-L. Ryan, Lincoln 2019, p. 170. [74] I. Bogost, op.cit., p. 70. [75] M. Caracciolo, Ungrounding fictional worlds…, p. 122–123. [76] J. Newman, Videogames…, p. 141. [77] A.R. Galloway, op.cit., p. 25. [78] Ibidem, p. 2. [79] G. Calleja, In-Game: From immersion to incorporation, Cambridge, MA, 2011, p. 63. [80] Ibidem, p. 115. 27 story beats in videogames as value-driven choice-based unit operations reliant on the ‘mirror’ or ‘motor’ response fired up in the brain by identification with the audiovisual and textual representations of the avatar. “People move their hands, bodies, eyes, and mouths when they play,”[81] but they do not freeze motionless for cutscenes. They move eyes, smile, flex muscles, clench or unclench fists, jump on the chair when jumpscared. Also, the less-visible bodily responses - heart rate, breath, adrenaline rush– do not differentiate between gameplay and cutscene. This is not to deny the importance of player’s kinaesthetic agency in the overall gameplay experience, only to emphasise that bodily action-response is not limited to it. All in all, if story beats are transmedial, they can be found in non-gameplayed representations just as well as in operator acts, in cinematic cutscenes as well as in the cinema, in textual descriptions no less than in literature, in the player character’s actions, and in those taken by NPCs. In narrative-driven video games, Caracciolo insists, gameplay-based uncertainty of outcome tends to overlap closely with the narrative suspense. If the player sends the character down arisky ladder, the player’s uncertainty about the failure/success of in-game action cannot be separated from the narrative interest in how it will end for the character.[82] Having established this, let us return to procedural unit operations. The above-described components, characters + goals/conflict + mechanics + emotional outcome, all meet in the story beat, from Set-up (beginning) to Confrontation (middle) and Resolution (end). In terms of the GARO model, 1. (G) Goal/Conflict is established in the Set-up / Stimulus. The goal is to change the value of one (or more) parameters in the game state. 2. (A) + (R) The core of the story beat, which is the Action/Reaction pair (Conflict), is governed by Mechanics. 3. (O) The Outcome of the Action is the story beat’s Resolution, bringing an emotional Closure when the challenged story value changes or remains. There is further variety in the structure of the Action+Reaction (A+R) pair with regard to player control (operator vs machine); and to the relative power of Ain relation to R. Sometimes, it is R that matters more, especially when it is operator-controlled when Ais coming from the machine. Diegetic operator act (A) is the core of narrative videogames: player’s action directly controls avatar’s A, which meets with R coming from acomputer-controlled opponent (an NPC, monster, or inanimate force). Typical example: attack an enemy. Diegetic operator act (R) reverses the above: Acomes from acomputer-controlled agent, and the player’s action controls the avatar’s R. Typical example: defend against an attack. [81] A.R. Galloway, op.cit., p. 4. [82] M. Caracciolo, Playing home…, p. 236. michał mochocki, raine koskimaa 28 Diegetic machine act (A/ R) are actions / reactions of computer-controlled objects paired with diegetic operator acts in the above examples. In cutscenes, machine acts include all actions / events, including those of the player avatar, as the avatar temporarily becomes computer-controlled like an NPC. Nondiegetic operator act (A) may also translate to adiegetically-meaningful avatar’s action. Galloway defines them as “actions of configuration […]always executed by the operator and received by the machine.”[83] For example, In Final Fantasy X the process of configuring various weapons and armor, interacting with the sphere grid, or choosing how the combat will unfold are all executed using interfaces and menus that are not within the diegetic world of the game. These activities may be intimately connected to the narrative of the game, yet they exist in an informatic layer once removed from the pretend play scenario of representational character and story.[84] On the one hand, configuring equipment in anondiegetic menu may easily be translated to the character trying on suits of armour, packing / unpacking bags, or manually crafting items from components. Based on the nature of the narratively imagined activity, it would be classified as “physical” or “magical” action (see 2.0). It is questionable, however, if such actions could function as Aor R in story beats. Abeat requires aconfrontation between Aand R, which does not exist in configuration actions that meet no resistance and automatically succeed (or automatically fail, given the carrying capacity limits or level requirements of certain items). Multiple actors further complicate the structure. If the beat includes more than two acting agents, we may have one Awith multiple Rs, or several As with one R, or the same Aor R jointly performed by several actors. The most complex option of multiple simultaneous As paired with multiple Rs may be relatively easy to deal with by separating into several simultaneous beats. In this article, we have taken alook at story beats in video games. We had defined story beats in atransmedial way,[85] making the concept applicable to stories in different media, but here the focus has been on the specifics of video games. Story beats are basic units in dramatic action, moments where story-based values are changed (or there is an attempt to change those values) and there is an opposing force or instance to be detected. This is captured in the Goal-Action-Reac- tion-Outcome model, where the action (and choices behind actions) may be performed by the player or game characters. The GARO model is adjusted to fit into the unit operations framework.[86] The framework of story beats representing five layers of experientiality – action, interpersonal interaction, emotion, thought, and Conclusion [83] A.R. Galloway, op.cit., p. 12. [84] Ibidem, p. 14. [85] M. Mochocki, R. Koskimaa, forthcoming. [86] I. Bogost, op.cit.