WARNING: The following post discusses key story points in Avatar. They are not “spoilers” per se, because everyone has already seen this movie (if not literally, then figuratively).

Avatar’s story is the one thing that has elicited a near-universal “meh” from the entire world. We’ve all heard it before: hero infiltrates enemy, learns the enemy is his friend and his friends are the enemy, helps former enemy fight former friend, and said fight is a standard progression of hero almost succeeds, then he fails, but then he miraculously succeeds. Archetypes like this aren’t a bad thing; after all, we humans have been telling this same basic story for thousands of years, keeping it fresh with minor variations (i.e. Avatar’s transhuman motifs), and it’s always interesting if not particularly groundbreaking. But with all the love and attention Avatar’s visuals got over the alleged 14 years James Cameron worked on them, the script is admittedly less polished. That’s probably one of the big reasons why Avatar didn’t win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

There are many little things which Cameron could have done to twist the Hero’s Journey archetype — perhaps Jake Sully should have betrayed the Na’vi willingly before feeling remorse later on, for example — or simply cleaning up some of the dialogue and filling some plot holes would have sufficed. But perhaps the best thing Cameron could have done to Avatar is to make one simple removal, changing nothing else. This one removal would make Avatar’s criticisms of the War on Terror, racism, technology, and destruction of the environment immensely more powerful.

Following the scene after Hometree’s destruction, when we see slow-motion shots of Jake and Grace being wrestled out of the avatar links, Grace shouting “you murderer!” at Parker, fade to black. Roll credits.

Okay, that may be a “simple” cut, but it’s pretty major. Still, it would have made Avatar a much better film. Hit the jump for why:

Let’s look at what occurs up until that point. Jake has gained the trust of the Na’vi, he and Ney’tiri have fallen in love, and he’s beginning to feel “like out there [in the avatar] is the true world, and in here [in his human body] is the dream.” But there’s nothing he can do to stop the military from coming to blow up the Na’vi’s Hometree. The attack is devastating, and the Na’vi know that Jake was fully aware it was coming. Ney’tiri rejects him, says he will never be one of them. It’s heartbreaking. Tragic. The evil corporation with the big guns killed the innocent natives, destroyed the beautiful forest, and tore Jake away from the woman he loved, all so they could mine a stupid rock.

If the movie ended there, everyone in the audience would leave with one thing on their mind: blood for oil is a horrible thing. Look what it did to the Na’vi. Look what it did to our boy Jake.

But no, the story keeps going. Jake escapes and gets back in his avatar body to find that the Na’vi are still alive and well (albeit badly beaten and grieving for their lost people), and all he needs to do to become “one of them” again is to ride on the back of a really big dragon. He leads them into battle against the humans, and apparently their advanced technology is no match for flying lizards, rhinoceroses, and kitty people with bows and arrows (the same kitty people with the same bows and arrows that didn’t do squat just a few scenes before, but now they’re angry kitty people, so it totally works). In the end, the evil humans are defeated, and the kitty people live happily ever after with Jake among them.

So, what is the audience thinking now? Holy shit, we just saw dragons killing helicopters. That was cool. It was like Reign of Fire, but fucking awesome instead of fucking awful.

Yes, the battle scene was awesome, but what happened to the anti-war, anti-corporate, environmentalist message? Oh, yeah, that. Yeah, I guess the whole Iraq thing really does suck. Anyway, remember when that angry cat guy just like jumped onto the ship and shot like seventeen soldiers with his bow? That was fucking sweet!!!!!!

If James Cameron had ended Avatar on a horribly tragic but realistic note, it would have been a bold, ballsy, daring move, and an extremely effective one at that. Most if not all arguments about the story being derivative and cliché would be rendered moot, and its message would pack more of a punch than any recent film of its type in recent memory. It would impress not only with its visual technology, but with its audacious injection of seriousness and maturity into a blockbuster. Here would be a big-budget, spectacular film telling us that a hero cannot save the day; only we, the people, can do so by preventing the horrors just witnessed in glorious 3D from ever occurring in reality. In terms of making pacifists out of us, “war is a drug” has nothing on that.

Alas, dragons killing helicopters is a much more impressive demonstration of glorious 3D technology. It’s not Best Picture material, though.

Béla Tarr is the director of cult classic Hungarian films such as Sátántangó. Hideo Kojima is the designer of massively popular Japanese video games such as Metal Gear Solid 4. These two men actually have quite a lot in common, save for the medium they work in, their popularity, and their pretentiousness when discussing their craft.

Let me describe Sátántangó to you, briefly. The opening consists of an eight minute shot of the camera doing almost nothing while watching a bunch of cows:

The film continues with these similarly lengthy shots, some of which have literally nothing moving for minutes at a time, for seven hours. The film could have been a series of still photographs, and not much would be lost.

Metal Gear Solid 4 opens with a 20 minute cutscene, during which the player has no chance to do anything meaningful with the controller. Here’s a snippet of it, presented Mystery Science Theater 3000-style to make it more palatable:

The game continues with these similarly lengthy cutscenes, interrupted occasionally by short interactive sequences which are heavily scripted and offer the player no chance for creativity, for 40 hours or something. The game could have been a Japanese animated film with giant robots and guns and explosions, and not much would be lost.

The key difference between Hideo Kojima and Béla Tarr is that Tarr has gone on the record saying that he doesn’t want to adhere to the conventions of “good” filmmaking and storytelling. Kojima, on the other hand, is trying so hard to prove that you can tell wonderful stories through interactivity, when in fact the interactive elements of his magnum opus add nothing to the storytelling.

Technology is rendering obsolete some classic narrative plot devices: missed connections, miscommunications, the inability to reach someone. Such gimmicks don’t pass the smell test when even the most remote destinations have wireless coverage.
[...]
I recently finished my second thriller, or so I thought. When I sent it to several fine writer friends, I received this feedback: the protagonist and his girlfriend can’t spend the whole book unable to get in touch with each other. Not in the cellphone era.

Oh, poor pitiful you, Mr. Richtel. Your entire toolbox of tired plot devices that have been done to death is ruined, forcing you to come up with new and interesting ideas. How awful. At this rate, TV producers won’t be able to have computers make sci-fi beeping noises when someone uses Photoshop. Soon you’ll have to write thrillers where characters die because their partner’s iPhone “fixed” an important “typo.” Or romantic comedies where a woman gets angry at her husband because he can’t explain what he was really doing last night with her best friend in 140 characters, minus her Twitter name. It would be terrible!

For the record, on the off chance that Mr. Richtel’s cubicle is five feet away from my mother’s, I don’t actually think he’s a lazy, whiny hack, and I’m just coming off that way to appeal to the Gawker readers. The column makes some interesting points and brings up some valid issues, though it doesn’t seem to discuss many solutions to them other than “blow up the cellphone tower.” In this day and age, where everyone is always connected, that’s the kind of plot device that people can’t relate to.

I call it “gameplay format,” because if a screenplay is a movie script, a “gameplay” should be a game script. Now, “gameplay” is already used to describe the experience of playing a game. That’s precisely why I called this format a “gameplay,” because it describes exactly that.

In filmmaking, screenwriters aren’t supposed to talk about shots or blocking or directing all that much; at most, they make minor suggestions. The screenwriter’s job is to describe the action. Why not give the “gamewriter” the same job — talk about what happens when the player’s character does what, and leave things like controls and programming to the designer and programmer?

I decided to try creating a format based on a screenplay, and I’m writing a surreal dystopian comedy/thriller game to test it out. It will be called “Status Quo”. But I want to make sure I’m on the right track as far as it being readable by humans.

I will say two things: I envision this as a 2D sidescroller simply because I can’t program or model in 3D to save my life, and centered underlined text is a “level heading”. If I have to say anything else, then this format isn’t easy enough to read, and I have failed. MISERABLY.

So, please let me know if this is comprehensible, and whether I can improve it (the format, not the game necessarily). Without further ado, after the jump, level one of “Status Quo”:

                                        THE CLINIC

               INT. EXAM ROOM

               Overhead lights slowly turn on to reveal the white, sterile
               room. BURKE, a Watchman (a man with a gigantic eye instead
               of a head) stands on the left side, dressed in a hospital
               gown.

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                                     (on INTERCOM)
                              Okay, Burke, just follow the
                              computer's instructions. We'll be
                              done shortly.

               The player now has control of Burke.

               A section of the floor on the right side of the room begins
               to glow green. A railing is on the right side of this green
               area.

                                          COMPUTER (V.O.)
                              Please step onto the green square
                              to begin the exam.

               SUBTITLE: Explain how to walk.

               The computer repeats its instruction every five seconds.

               WHEN BURKE WALKS ONTO THE GREEN SQUARE:

               The green glow stops. A red arrow appears on the large
               screen taking up the rear wall.

                                          COMPUTER (V.O.)
                              Please jog towards the other side
                              of the room.

               SUBTITLE: Explain how to run.

               A treadmill in the floor turns on. It is roughly the same
               speed as Burke's running gait. When it pushes Burke against
               the railing, he braces himself against it.

               WHEN BURKE REACHES THE CENTER OF THE ROOM:

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              That's good, Burke, just a few
                              more seconds.

               After a few more seconds of running, the treadmill stops.

               The intercom extends from the left wall, revealing a large
               retinal scanner.

                                          COMPUTER (V.O.)
                              Please look directly at the
                              retinal scanner.

               SUBTITLE: Explain how to look at things.

               WHEN BURKE LOOKS AT THE SCANNER:

               The scanner examines Burke's eye.

                                                       IF BURKE LOOKS AWAY:

                                          COMPUTER (V.O.)
                              Please look at the retinal scanner
                              until the scan is complete.

                                           WHEN BURKE LOOKS BACK, CONTINUE:

               WHEN THE SCANNER IS DONE:

               The scanner turns off.

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              I'm running the numbers now. How
                              are you feeling, Burke?

                                                     IF BURKE SAYS NOTHING:

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              Burke?

               SUBTITLE: Explain how to choose dialog options.

                                                      IF BURKE SAYS "OKAY":

                                          BURKE
                              I'm okay, I guess.

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              Good.

                                             OR, IF BURKE SAYS "NOT GREAT":

                                          BURKE
                              Still queasy.

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              Sorry to hear that.

                                                                EITHER WAY:

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              Hmm...let's see now...

                                          BUT, IF BURKE STILL SAYS NOTHING:

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              Burke, did you hear m-- oh, here
                              they are...

                                                                REGARDLESS:

                                          DOCTOR (V.O.)
                              Nothing seems to be too out of the
                              ordinary.

               The door on the left side of the room opens, and the doctor
               (also a Watchman) walks in, carrying and reading a
               clipboard.

                                          DOCTOR
                              Your iris is a bit dilated, and
                              nerve pressure's above normal,
                              but that's hardly surprising.
                              What with the riots and all.

                                    IF BURKE SAYS "THEY STARTED WEEKS AGO":

                                          BURKE
                              They've been going on for weeks,
                              though. I'm used to them.

                                          DOCTOR
                              Well, yes, we all are.

                                                  OR, IF BURKE SAYS "TRUE":

                                          BURKE
                              Yeah, that's true.

                                 IF BURKE SAID THAT, OR IF HE SAID NOTHING:

                                          DOCTOR
                              We're all used to them by now,
                              though.

                                                                REGARDLESS:

               The doctor lowers his clipboard.

                                          DOCTOR
                              It's like they're status quo at
                              this point. Very alarming.

                                         IF BURKE SAYS "MAKES MY JOB SUCK":

                                          BURKE
                              And the resulting paperwork is
                              just hell.

                                          DOCTOR
                              I'd imagine. Can't help your
                              stress level either.

                                                                REGARDLESS:

                                          DOCTOR
                              Well, at least coming here was a
                              break from all that for you. Back
                              to the grind, I guess?

                                                       IF BURKE SAYS "YES":

                                          BURKE
                              Yeah, back to the Bureau with me.

                                                                REGARDLESS:

               The doctor turns around and walks towards the door.

                                          DOCTOR
                              You can get dressed. Good seeing
                              you, Burke. I just hope it's at
                              the bar next time. Ha ha ha...

               The doctor exits the room.

                                                                   FADE TO:

                 THE BUREAU OF BUREAUCRACY/AGENCY OF INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
                                         COMPOUND

If a game developer feels they cannot tell a good story, or if they can’t get a writer…actually, scratch that, if they aren’t a writer already and they can’t get one, then they should probably be making a simulation game. By “simulation” I don’t necessarily mean Microsoft Flight Simulator or SimCity, that’s just the term I use to say “non-narrative” because “documentary” doesn’t always work (i.e. Space Invaders isn’t exactly based on real life, but it doesn’t tell a story). But assuming a developer feels up to telling an epic tale of some grizzled space marines fighting against insectoid/reptilian aliens in a palette of gray and brown, there are a few things I’d really rather they didn’t do. I will now follow in the footsteps of Our Great Noodly Lord The Flying Spaghetti Monster and give you eight of them.

1. I’d really rather you didn’t create a case of “gameplay vs. story”

This is not a debate or a question to ask, it is a design flaw. Of course you’re going to alter the gameplay to suit the story, and of course you’re going to alter the story to suit the gameplay. But for fuck’s sake, don’t make either of them worse in the process.

Case in point: Fallout 3. The game started off great, with all sorts of different quests on the side to play through and have fun with, but by far the most compelling was the main quest about finding your character’s father. It made sense that most of the production values would be devoted there, because they paid Liam Neeson a lot of money to be in it, and it was pretty much the reason your character ran out into the wasteland to make people’s heads explode with low-power rifles in the first place. So naturally, I focused a lot of my effort to the main quest, because there was always a sense of urgency (even though it was possible to say “let me repair my equipment before we go fight the enemy which is right outside” and then not come back for three in-game weeks, but it didn’t feel that way).

Then, all of a sudden, without much warning, it ended in a way that would be heart-wrenching and moving in a linear action game but is completely bone-headed and dumb in an epic, non-linear RPG. This meant you didn’t get to finish all those side quests or play anything else without starting a new game. Nothing in the story or gameplay indicated the point of no return, except for the inability to leave the final area after you’d walked in and probably saved already. So in order to end the game with such an emotional event, Bethesda compromised the gameplay by not allowing it to occur anymore. Now, the best case scenario is if the player reaches this point after there’s nothing else to see in the rest of the game and they know it, so they leave with a sense of closure. But in a game like Fallout 3, the odds of that happening are very, very close to zero.

2. I’d really rather you didn’t separate almost all of the story from the gameplay

If more than five minutes of the story goes by without the player being able to do anything (changing the camera angle or pressing X to not die doesn’t count), then you, as the game designer, should probably reconsider that portion of the story or invent some new gameplay to work with it. It’s perfectly okay to make a game where you control a character’s trigger finger and vocal chords at different sections. And if you don’t want the player to have control over specific story events, make them shorter. Cutting about 75% of the dialogue is a start, since the rules of screenwriting apply to cutscenes too.

The most prominent offender here is Hideo Kojima, especially with Metal Gear Solid 4. Metal Gear Solid 4 isn’t bad at all — it’s a stunning example of filmmaking. The fact that it has interactive portions at all, regardless of how fun they are, is my only (gigantic) gripe with it. Yes, the cutscenes play instead of loading screens, but it takes 20 minutes before you, the player, get to do anything (well, yes, you can change the camera angle or show a flashback or whatever, but I said that doesn’t count already). And later in the game, some of these cutscenes are 90 minutes long. You can pause them, you can save during them, great, but why bother with the interactive portions at all if they add nothing to the cinematics? If I were to watch all the cutscenes in Metal Gear Solid 4 as a miniseries on DVD, but never touch the gameplay, I would lose almost nothing from the story.

The Half-Life series, by contrast, tells the entire story through your character. The closest thing to a cutscene that game has is when Gordon (or Adrian or Barney in the expansions) is being restrained by something, but even then you can still turn your head to look, and it’s not for very long. Now, granted, Half-Life has never had a very compelling or comprehensible plot: the first game was about aliens appearing out of nowhere, and this creepy man in a business suit watches you try to escape; Half-Life 2 and its episodes have been about another group of aliens taking over Earth somehow for some reason, but the aliens you killed in the first game are your allies now. What makes Half-Life great is not the plot, but the characters, the moments, all that. It’s comparable to 2001: A Space Odyssey: the movie’s supposedly about a hyperintelligent black monolith thing that made monkeys smart, which is kind of a ridiculous plot, but is that really what we’re thinking about when HAL 9000 starts going insane? No, we’re thinking about the characters who are in danger from this crazy computer, and it’s pretty predictable that one of them will eventually shut HAL off, but knowing that takes nothing out of it. Speaking of which…

3. I’d really rather you didn’t tell a story that makes the game boring to play through a second time

This pretty much applies to every narrative medium, game or not, but it’s especially important when the player has to put in effort to advance the story: if knowing the ending is capable of “spoiling” the whole game, then you’re doing it wrong.

Judging by the lighthearted aura around even the darkest portions, it’s no shocker that Grim Fandango ends with Manny and Meche falling in love and (after)living happily ever after. But even if one or both of them died (again) at the end, the pleasure of playing the game is seeing all those wild and crazy places, hearing all that witty dialogue, figuring out the ridiculous solutions to the puzzles, and listening to the fucking amazing soundtrack. In fact, you can go read the entire plot summary on Wikipedia before playing the game and you’ll still have just as much of a blast with it as you would have without knowing what happens. Don’t do that, though, just play it. Now.

But not every game is quite like that. Some are, as Aubrey and Jack spoke about, “junk like [a] Dan Brown” novel, where knowing the end of the story kills all the suspense and tension that came before it. I can’t think of any specific offenders at the moment because I usually forget about this type of game entirely, but I will say that it was good of KotOR to include such a plot twist at the end of the first act of the game, not at the end of the whole thing. I accidentally found out about it on a forum before playing, so the big moment wasn’t shocking at all, but then there was about 30 more hours of really, REALLY good story (and gameplay) to make up for that.

Then there’s the type of game which, because of the story, has gameplay which is only fun the first time around. Returning to Fallout 3, I felt the opening of the game was brilliant, and it was rather ingenious how they incorporated the tutorial and character creation by letting you play your character growing up. Then I played through a second time and it was all the same, so I just wanted to go shoot super mutants’ arms off with a pistol already. But when I finally got out into the wasteland again, the sense of discovery was lost this time around, except for the discovery that the deep, multiple paths of the storyline weren’t really all that deep or multiple.

4. I’d really rather you didn’t get me interested in the story just before making me fail over and over again

It’s bad enough when a game makes you repeat the same parts you failed over and over for the 24th time when there’s no story at all. When there is a story, or at least what sounds like one, it becomes all the more annoying when you replay the same sequence so much that you forget what’s happening outside of the frustrating gameplay.

What comes to mind is Portal: Prelude, which is, admittedly, a non-commercial mod, but it’s still game design and still includes narrative. Not only was the mod hyped and marketed as containing a riveting story, but it had all the trappings of it when you began playing. The scientists chattering about you would drop little hints that something bigger was going on, probably related to GLaDOS (who everyone wanted to know the origin story of, even if it was unofficial), and that made you want to find out what would happen. Then the first challenge required escaping four turrets in the same place by having pinpoint accuracy within a split-second. And it did not get easier from there.

The developers’ excuse? Well Portal: Prelude is for the Portal master who finds the original game too easy, of course. Except for the fact that “it also had to be feasible for people that were not that used to the gameplay mechanics” of Portal, but no, they have failed at that. But even if that hypocritical statement wasn’t in their design goal, perhaps they should have realized that a person who wants to have their 1337 $k!11z put to the test probably doesn’t give a shit about story, so their efforts are wasted entirely. Unless being in a select group of elite basement dwellers who spend their lives getting good at video games for no reason is prerequisite for being worthy of knowing such an epic tale, in which case that’s kind of ironically pretentious.

5. I’d really rather you didn’t put zero effort into your writing

Like I said about Half-Life and in number 3, dialogue and moments are much more important than plot. I don’t care how epic and riveting your plot summary is, if the characters are all meatheads who say the same clichés over and over, then you can’t write for shit.

Halo is not an example of good writing. It did not sell 23949821358632857392857 copies because of the story. But it probably would have sold 92352935123597235872035870325870 if it had a script by Douglas Adams. Actually, that would probably make it a very different game, but come on…Douglas Adams.

6. I’d really rather you didn’t dupe me into thinking I can affect the story when in fact I can’t

It’s perfectly fine to tell a linear narrative where the audience can’t change how everything plays out. Movies, theatre, and books have been doing it for years, and they’re quite enjoyable. But if you’re going to allow the player to make a choice that seems like it should matter, make it matter.

I’m going to rip on Fallout 3 again. The game has four different possible endings, but which one you get is only determined by two yes or no choices that you make in the final scene. If you make choice A and choice C, you get one ending, choice A and choice D gets you another, etc. So all of those other characters in the whole game, whatever you said or did to them, none of that matters in the long run? Well, I suppose that would be true if the game ended with the universe collapsing (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

BioWare, by contrast, always manages to make you care about your actions in their games; their writing is so convincing that I always feel too guilty to play as an evil character. Even in Mass Effect, which had only one ending from a big picture standpoint, allowed lots of the subtleties to be determined by everything you’d done since the beginning of the game. They did drop the ball in Sonic Chronicles, where no matter how much of a prick you are to Amy (the bitch deserves it), she’ll still fucking try to help you, god dammit, but almost all of the problems with that game’s story are related to the fact that BioWare was under contract to not cut the stupid parts of the canon out.

7. I’d really rather you didn’t make the story repeat itself

If for some reason a player has to repeat a section of gameplay, either because they failed it the first time or because you didn’t let them save the game wherever they want since you don’t know how to design games for anything other than an arcade machine, then allow the non-interactive, and perhaps even the non-challenging, portions to be skipped over. The player knows what happened, so don’t make them sit through it again, especially if it’s a die-reload-die-reload-die-reload-x16 situation. Oh, and in dialogue trees, if they’ve exhausted all the dialogue options about a particular topic, let them know somehow if they’re about to repeat something they said already. You could make that particular topic gray or something, that usually works.

I don’t have to give you an example here; just play any game and press lots of buttons during the cutscenes. If none of those buttons skips anything, that’s bad.

8. I’d really rather you didn’t even attempt to tell a story if you can’t adhere to all of the above

If you have a great story and a great gameplay design, but can’t fuse them together in a way that works, stop trying. Change one of them to suit the other or divorce them. Those are your options.

Some stories are excellent but are absolutely inappropriate for the medium of video games. Hamlet, for instance, is impossible to give interactivity; if it is, then you’ve rewritten it or violated what I said in number 2. In addition, some types of gameplay don’t lend themselves well to being mixed with stories. Pong, for example, is probably not the best candidate for creating a narrative around. Yes, Puzzle Quest managed to fuse gem-swapping puzzles with a story somehow, but if you have the slightest doubt that replacing your story with a level number and a score counter would detract from the game, then you’re probably not as clever as Steve Fawkner.

There. That’s it. Now stop doing those things in games.