Due to the issues I encountered in my previous project (See Critical Play), I decided that this time around I wanted to start with a strong High Concept idea that I already had a clear idea of how to develop, and work forwards methodically developing and implementing it.
When I was at university, I had an idea for a game based on my moniker; Tincture. The concept is derived loosely from the evocative environmental design and “detective work” of Return of The Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018) [1] and inspired by my fascination for the aesthetics, lore and history of medicine, alchemy and potions. In the next post I will define the outline idea for the game, and more fully develop my concept, but this first post is dedicated to summarising and outlining useful parts of the article Game Spaces Speak Volumes: Indexical Storytelling (Fernández-Vara, 2011), an paper about the use of space based storytelling through environmental indices in the Peircean sense.
The concept derives from Charles Peirce’s Philosophy of Language (Pierce, 1998) [2] and more broadly from semiotics as a school of philosophy. According to Peirce, there are three types of signs; Icons, Indices, and Symbols, but we will be focusing purely on the second of the three for the purposes of this summary as Indexical Storytelling is mainly done through Indices. I’ll include below a quick summary of the three types of signs as they’re still interesting:
- Icons: Signs that convey ideas by imitating them (photograph, statue, drawing, painting)
- Indices: The idea is physically connected to the sign (smoke & fire, sign post & location)
- Symbols: Associated to idea through usage, arbitrary connection (words, hazard symbols)
Indexical Storytelling tells a story through “traces” in the world, either left by previous agents or naturally built into the environment (trees growing facing the sun indicate sun direction), and has been used to flesh out worlds with little details to make the player feel like the world they are experiencing is “lived in”, as well as to convey relevant gameplay information to a player such as a dead NPC to indicate potential danger in the area. These are both examples of Indexical Storytelling as afterthoughts in games, but the potential of the practice allows for the creation of games entirely focused on storytelling through environment, and until Return of The Obra Dinn, I had not seen a game that made full use of this practice.
A strong reason to rely on these practices to convey information is to avoid breaking diegesis and suspension of the world, as elements like minimaps, compass indicators and “glowing trails” for players to follow, while useful, also tend not to be diegetic and while sometimes unnoticeably, break the barrier between world and game, where Signposts do not. The downside of course is that you can force a player to “think too much” leading to even small tasks like arriving at an important location harder than they maybe should be.
While Indexical Storytelling is used heavily in Detective Games to great effect, these games also tend to use many active elements such as interrogatable suspects and new occurrences that lead to new information which I want to avoid. Instead I am going to focus on what the article calls Interpretation of Remains where a player is called to interpret traces left behind by other agents who have been in the space before, the traces being objects that those agents had modified previously.
These modifications are designed with a purpose by the level designers and narrative designers, to communicate information to the player, be it lore, gameplay info, navigation info, or just a small “diorama” of a self contained story. ( You see a bear and man dead on the floor, both with wounds, the man crawling away leaving a trail of blood: Man bitten by bear, fought back and killed it but bled out trying to find help )
I will be making use of a series of these “traces” to create a small self contained story that proceeds as the player explores the space, piecing together the information, both towards a final goal of completing the main objective, but also to learn the story of the world they are inhabiting before doing so. ( if they so choose )
In the next post I will outline the idea of this game, and attempt to flesh out some of the systems and mechanics that the game will contain to allow the player to reach their final objective.
Bibliography
- Lucas Pope (2018). Return of The Obra Dinn. 3909 LLC (Played 2018)
- Fernández-Vara, C 2011, Game Spaces Speak Volumes: Indexical Storytelling, DiGRA/Utrecht School of the Arts, January, 2011. Volume: 6. ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666
- Peirce, C. Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 2. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1998.