14 DAY TRIAL // This year’s Game Developers Conference has been – as usual – a great source of information on both existing and future projects of the game industry’s superstars.
One such piece of information was revealed by Ken Levine, during a panel at GDC, saying that his next game will not have a linear narrative, stating that the main reason for the decision is the fact that narrative-driven games, although having the potential to present a great immersive experience, have little replay value.
During the panel, Levine also mentioned that having a linear narrative “puts a boundary between the developer and the audience,” as “narrative doesn’t lend itself to systems.”
He expressed his pride regarding his achievements in the last 19 years, during which he was involved in projects that had linear narratives, detailing how he perceives their impact and how he feels that they ultimately don’t keep developers as engaged with the community as other types of titles.
“The problem with narrative is that you sort of have to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. That gets time consuming. That gets expensive. And you’re devoting years and years of your life to this one sort of big moment.
“You ship the game, and it comes out, and people play the game and it’s 12 hours long and people have a great experience and you see cosplayers and fans for years like that, but you don’t have that constant engagement with the audience,” he stated.
Levine noted that he wants to devote his time to creating a narrative-driven experience, but one where the elements are non-linear and they interact with each other, with all narrative elements triggering from player actions, instead of it being the other way around, with players following a pre-determined path.
While having an open-ended narrative experience does sound nice on paper, in reality it might turn out to be confusing and players may end up getting tangled in all the threads. Levine said that he doesn’t want to get it to the point where it gets too convoluted.
“You’re going to have to balance these things off one another, but they’re all going to be transparent to you. We’re going to have to have a limited number of them so you can track them all and it doesn’t become a giant spreadsheet that overwhelms you,” he said.
Ken Levine’s latest hit is the highly acclaimed BioShock Infinite, a first person shooter with an enthralling storyline. After shipping the game, he closed down his studio, Irrational Games, and announced that he wants to focus on new smaller projects.