These are the speaker notes for GDC 2010 presentation: "What Happened Here?" - Environmental Storytelling, by Harvey Smith and Matthias Worch.
You can contact us at matthias (a.t) worch *d,o,t* com and harvey (a.t) arkane-studios *d,o,t* com. The slide downloads are at http://www.worch.com and http://www.witchboy.net.

* Slide 2:
Welcome to “What Happened Here” - Environmental Storytelling.

I’m Matthias Worch and this is Harvey Smith.

The image that you are looking at is one of our favorite environmental storytelling moments – if you’re wondering how two goldfish got stuck to a window screen 6 feet off the ground - and what this has to do with game development - stick around!

In this session we examine the game environment as a narrative device, with a focus on involving the player in interpreting information, in opposition to traditional fictional exposition. 

We'll dive into the theoretical foundation of the topic first and present practical examples from current games. After that we have some ideas to further the state of the art.
 
* Slide 3:
Before we get started, a couple of notes:
 
Please set all phones to vibrate
 
Please fill out the comment cards - they help the advisory board make GDC better for all of us.
All comments are passed on to the speakers as well, we welcome your feedback.
This is the GDC version of the talk. A “director’s cut” is also available.
 
We would like to point out another GDC 2010 session, for a different take on this topic:
Richard Rouse III: “Environmental Narrative: Your World Is Your Story”.

* Slide 4:
Our session is divided into 5 sections.

In part 1, we lay foundation - we look at what a game environment actually is and what it represents
 
In part 2, we present a definition for “environmental storytelling” and further this definition with examples from games and other sources
  
In part 3 and 4 we look at the two main forms of environmental storytelling: designer-authored and systemic. We present practical techniques and some pie-in-the-sky ideas.

Part 5 is conclusions and QA.

* Slide 5:
To effectively talk about this topic, we need to see how “environmental storytelling” fits into the bigger picture.

We need to gain a common understanding of what a game environment represents and which functions it serves. 

Let's see how we can describe a game environment.

* Slide 6
A game environment does a lot of things. It

Constrains and guides player movement through physical properties and ecology 
Uses player reference to communicate simulation boundaries and affordance
Reinforces and shapes player identity
Provides narrative context 

But we're interested in environmental storytelling, which mostly lives in the last two bullets above.
So we’ll just skim over the first 2 points.

* Slide 7:
We’re going to reference this specific example a lot: one of the opening moments of Bioshock 1, a new year's eve party gone askew. I'm sure a lot of you have played this game and remember the area.

* Slide 8:
The level layout of this space demonstrates the idea that an environment “constrains and guides player movement through physical properties and ecology”.  

The physical properties are represented by the walls, staircase etc.
The gameplay ecology is made up of enemy and item placement.  

We can also see that a game environment represents access, and that the restrictions on access create decisions and meaningful play.

* Slide 9:
Through the familiar visual reference, or affordance, the area itself communicates with the player.

Here, the cash register implies money, the bar and booze signs imply alcohol.

The player understands the purpose of this place and has an idea of what resources might be found here. 

* Slide 10:
When it comes to simulation boundaries, Bioshock does a good job in this area. 

The entire game is indoors, which communicates the playable area well. 
 
There’s a dance floor here, but cutting a rug us outside the focus of the game’s core mechanics. <click>

The player quickly comes to understand the simulation boundaries in Bioshock. <click>

* Slide 11:
So we’ve touched upon how game environments constrain and guide our movements, and how they communicate through familiar references.

We can also say that: “The environment shapes and reinforces the identity of the player.”
 
Harvey did a GDC talk called "The Imago Effect", which covers the subject of how identity is in part performative and part shaped by context.

In short, games ask the player to assume an identity, contextualize this identity within a game environment, which in turn often implies or encourages social norms and behaviors. <click>
 
Again, our Bioshock case study works well here because it's all about social experiments related to greed and morality, with an emphasis on societal recklessness, collapse and decay.

* Slide 12:
Bioshock makes us feel at ease bashing and looting.

By contrast, how does the environment in Portal shape the player’s identity?

The environment makes you feel like a lab rat and lends itself better to a puzzle game.

We can see that the environment contextualizes experience and even exerts influence over the identity the player takes during play.

* Slide 13:
So the main focus for the talk is this: “The environment provides narrative context.”

We're saying that the game environment, which has been derived from a fictional premise, can communicate 

the history of what has happened in a place,
who inhabits it,
their living conditions,
what might happen next,
the functional purpose of the place,
and the mood. 
 
And when environmental elements are used cohesively, no one has to say anything...the world speaks for itself as the player moves through it.
 
This is what our talk is all about: Creating environments that furthers the story as the player advances through the game.

* Slide 14:
That's why we chose this Bioshock area as our first example: 
 
The trappings of a decadent party imply volumes about the state of Rapture just before its societal collapse. 
 
This is also supported with recorded speech/dialogue. But much of the fiction and the associated mood are conveyed through props and textures alone. 
 
Now we’re going to dig deeper into environmental storytelling.

* Slide 15:
In part 2 we’re going to take an in-depth look at *what* environmental storytelling does, and *why*.
 
* Slide 16:
Environmental Storytelling is the act of “staging player-space with environmental properties that can be interpreted as a meaningful whole, furthering the narrative of the game.”

In the next slides, we’re going to break this down into four functions.

* Slide 17:
At its purest, environmental storytelling is about putting 1 and 1 together.

Imagine a fictional scene, in which a man is tying his shoes. He breaks the lace, takes off his shoe to throw it out of the window, and screams and curses.
 
We all know what's going on here, right? 

The man doesn't really, really hate his shoe - his underlying emotional state is making him angry at this, a largely unrelated, activity.<click>

What we're talking about here is subtext, which transforms simple scenes into something with a deeper meaning. To understand this scene, we have to make a connection.

* Slide 18:
In game terms, this is similar to embedding narrative elements in the background of a scene.

So this is our first function: “Environmental storytelling relies on the player to associate disparate elements and interpret as a meaningful whole.”

But in a practical sense this example is weaker, because it’s film-based. It directs our gaze and focuses our attention.
 
In games, we explore.
 
So let's find an example that requires some "exploration" of the environment. 

* Slide 19:
Which brings us back to the image that we started out with: two goldfish, stuck to a window screen, 6 feet of the ground.

"What Happened Here?"

Any ideas? If you DON’T already know the answer you might be able to figure it out before we solve it.

Let’s see what happened here.

* Slide 20:
First, we'll pull back a bit further to reveal the entire window.
 
That doesn't give us too much new information. 

* Slide 21:
Next, we turn around, to get a reverse view of the window.

Lots of mold and water damage.
And notice that the couch is standing on the coffee table!

* Slide 22:
Let's go to the immediate neighborhood.

* Slide 23:
And finally, pull back to reveal a bird's eye view of the area.

At this point, you might have a pretty good idea what the context of this goldfish example is.

* Slide 24:
It's Hurricane Katrina.

These images come from "After The Flood", a book by photographer Robert Polidori, who went into New Orleans just days after the hurricane ravaged the city. 

* Slide 25:
And armed with this context, we can also make sense of how those goldfish ended up dead against the window:

<See chart>

In the end, the goldfish remain stuck against the window mesh, as a chilling reminder of the events that transpired here.

That is pretty damn cool in my book (as far as a catastrophe goes, of course), and shows the power of environmental storytelling.

We were able to arrive at this conclusion by combing all the clues from the surrounding area.

* Slide 26:
And based on that action, we can say that environmental storyteling
"Fundamentally integrates player perception and active problem solving, which builds investment.“

* Slide 27:
After the Flood is full of stories like the goldfish one.

It’s a sobering book, worthy of a closer look that we don't have time for in this lecture. 
 
But each image poses that question: "What happened here?“
 
And we're eager to figure that out.

That doesn't mean that we all come to the same conclusion, though. 
 
As we're looking at these situations we find clues everywhere - but those clues can be interpreted in different ways.

* Slide 28:
That’s another interesting property of environmental storytelling: it's open to interpretation.
 
This is screenshot from Bioshock, past the mid-point of the game. This is a level in which the player goes up against a theater and show-obsessed madman by the name of Cohen.

Our interpretation of this scene is this: Someone from "the party" got frozen in the middle of a BJ. Ice is used everywhere in this level, the player has an ice plasmid, so this reaction made a lot of sense.

The official explanation by designer Jordan Thomas (who went on to become creative director on Bioshock 2) is quite different:

* Slide 29:
There are plaster scenes like this one scattered all over the environment, and each represents a vignette from Cohen's life. 

This particular scene is of a woman that was trying to arouse him but simply didn't succeed leaving him sort of locked in the moment.

Most of the scenes in this level highlighted moments where Cohen felt emotionally or sexually repressed, tending more towards a feminine than masculine outlook.

The mask had additional symbolism to the designer. 

* Slide 30:
Clearly, Jordan put some serious thought into these setups.

But is it a problem that we didn't get all that?

We don't think so, because these setups – while indicative of a complex world with intricate backstory – are not fundamental to understanding the main narrative. 
 
And Jordan Thomas himself strongly believes in white space (as evidenced by his speech of the same name at Teeside University). Every player is going to bring his own views, experience and frame of reference to the scene, and come to different conclusions.

So environmental storytelling  "Invites interpretation of situations and meaning according to players' views and experience."
 
There are cases when we want the message to be unambiguous, though... especially when it affects gameplay. Next, we'll look at an example where environmental storytelling does bleed over into play. In the use of telegraphing.

* Slide 31:
Earlier on, we concluded that game environments use player reference like signs and posters to communicate affordance. Sign are usually taken at face value. 
   
We’re more interested in weaving gameplay hints into the environment, creating a mini story that can be picked up by the observant player. But too often, these moments are simply there as backdrop, assembled at random.
  
But we can do more with them.

* Slide 32:
In this Doom 3 example, bloodstains leading into a bathroom telegraphs the presence of a monster.

The player can prepare - load his gun - or choose to entirely avoid the area.

* Slide 33:
This dead NPC sizzling in a fence points out real environmental dangers to the player. Just like the trail of red blood leading into a dark room helps the player prepare for what’s ahead.

Environmental storytelling “Can help the player navigate an area by telegraphing. “

* Slide 34:
In this section, we’ve broken down our top-level environmental storytelling definition. To recap, environmental storytelling

Relies on the player to associate disparate elements, interpreting them as a meaningful whole.
Fundamentally integrates player perception and active problem solving, which builds investment. 
Invites interpretation of situations and meaning according to players' views and experience.
Can help the player navigate an area by telegraphing. 

So now we know what environmental storytelling can do for us. But we don't necessarily know why it does this.

Let’s quickly look at some of the reasons why interpretation is more compelling than exposition, so that we can use the technique to its fullest effect.

* Slide 35:
One term we've used repeatedly in our definition is the word "interpretation.“
We’ve said “The player *interprets* disparate elements as a meaningful whole,” and “Environmental storytelling invites *interpretation* of a situation based on the player's personal views.”
 
So the question we really have to answer is why that act of interpretation is compelling to us. What that really comes down to is the fact that environmental storytelling is active. 

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget showed that play, discovery and interaction are key to learning. 
This active approach to learning creates participations, which breeds investment.

Students and player alike brings his own experience, so the act of interpretation gains personal meaning.

“Active” also means that the story isn't shoved down the player’s throat – quite the opposite, discovery is self-paced. The player is *pulling* the narrative.

This leads to a familiar world, which is self reinforced, more complete, and more immersive.

* Slide 36:
To give you an example: there's a setup in Fallout 3 in a child slaver's den. 

Lounge tables near dance poles 
Booze
Manacles on a pole
And a teddy bear

Wow, that’s terrible conclusion we arrive at.
 
It's important to remember that we never saw the act. It’s a mental leap; we are hard-wired to draw these conclusions. 

We didn't see children getting tortured for entertainment - the act happened inside the player's head. 

The concept behind this is the Law of Closure. As humans we have a innate need to categorize and fit visual elements into a larger framework. To do so, we draw conclusions.
Scott McCloud applied this concept to visual storytelling in "Understanding Comics." 

“What’s important is what happens between the panels.”

* Slide 37:
This quote from Steve Powers sums up this section perfectly.

Steve is a long-time advocate of letting the player fill in the gaps. 
He’s worked on the Ultima games, the Deus Ex series and is now working on Epic Mickey for Disney.

"What changes Guard_03 from an abstract obstacle into a person? Did someone get hurt in this alley? What does the innkeeper do with his free time? Answering these questions transforms the game space into a coherent world. Meaningful narrative is inferred by players if you give them cues but leave them the space to imagine."

* Slide 38:
Steve Powers, everybody!

* Slide 39:
We can categorize these functions of ES into the "what" ("what does it do for us?" - in black) and the "why" ("why does it do this?" - in green).

The key finding behind from this section is this: Environmental storytelling creates games spaces in which the player is fundamentally invested and immersed in.

* Slide 40:
Now that we have a good idea of what environmental storytelling is, and why it can do for us, we should look at some practical techniques.

First, we’ll look at creating designer-authored storytelling environmental storytelling moments. 
That seems to be the current industry standard/status quo, where pre-existing props are arranged to say something about a situation.

* Slide 41:
Here we have a list of tips to make your job of creating these moments easier. 

We'll go through these one by one.

* Slide 42:
Let's start with our first, quite obvious technique: "Establishing a discernible chain of events." 
 
Environmental storytelling is often about cause and effect, as is intuitively apparent in this L4D example. 

One person wrote on the wall, other survivors felt compelled to comment on his writing, and we ended up with several days worth of commentary.

* Slide 43:
Expressed as a chain of events, the Left 4 Dead example looks like this:

The commentary is running on a couple of separate tracks, with some outliers.

* Slide 44:
We've been representing these chains of events with flow charts.

In fact, these charts are adapted "puzzle structures" from Randy Smith's 2009 GDC talk: "Making Your Players Feel Smart: Puzzles As User Interfaces“.

We suggest you look up that presentation for much more background on designing and visualizing good puzzle design.

* Slide 45:
Consider authoring some of these puzzle structures for your design docs. They get all LDs and environment artists on the same page and into the same habits and force everybody to think about the chain of events that lead to a scene.

When dressing up the scene, think about how these elements connect. This is how we take the act of simple environmental jumbling to the next level:
Placing a cup of coffee in an odd place.
Offsetting a chair in front of that table a little bit.
Maybe it was hastily pushed over. 

Think about what happened there.

* Slide 46:
One of our favorite moments from Bioshock 2 happens during the amusement park ride:
an animatronic version of Andrew Ryan has been hung, splattered with white paint, and Prof Lamb propaganda has been painted on the walls behind him.
That's cool but hardly unique in BS2. What sells the scene is the paintbrush left on the table.

* Slide 47:
Now we've created a little story out of elements. But that isn't enough. We need to make that story compelling. 

That means: "Ensuring that event engages the player."
 
In this example, a Bioshock splicer was crushed by a vending (ATM?) machine.
  
There’s a lot of subtext and associations here. 
 
* Slide 48:
ATMs are associated with money and represent other people's savings
Trashing an ATM (or stealing from it) is frowned upon by society 
Splicers represent social ideals gone wrong
Water reminds us of Rapture's setting
 
In good environmental storytelling the elements combining to a larger picture, but have individual significance as well .

An anonymous rock wouldn't work as well.

* Slide 49:
The result of combining elements that already have inherent meaning:

Event is more than just a creative death moment: It reinforces Bioshock's larger theme of societal decay
The presence of the money pickup is explained and contextualized
Examines player actions: Our reaction to this guy’s death might be “serves him right”, but why is it okay when we loot and steal?

Now we've connected disparate elements and turned them into stories, and given these stories meaning.

There's one key phrase in this section, which leads us to the larger theme of echoing the world at large.

* Slide 50:
That key phrase is "The event reinforces Bioshock's larger theme of societal decay."

Without this evocative premise, the ATM storytelling moment wouldn't be nearly as effective.

* Slide 51:
If we really think about it, the ATM example we just used is pretty anemic.

Here's the puzzle structure for that event.

* Slide 52:
But if we really think about it, there's a lot more that lead to this situation. 
 
There's the entire underpinnings of Rapture and the events that lead to the beginning of the game, and that chain of events is exceedingly complex
(Warning: not necessarily a comprehensive summary of Rapture’s rise and fall!)
 
So really, the ATM event rests on a much larger foundation, and when put together, we end up with something that is just as complex and compelling as real life.

* Slide 53:
Which brings us to another important guideline: Make sure that all ES moments draw from your story premise, echoing the world at large. 

Every anonymous ES moment wastes the opportunity to say something about the game.

By tying the storytelling moment into the premise, we create a narrative positive feedback loop:

Premise spawns events
Events remind player of premise

* Slide 54, 55:
These shots are from Dead Space follow that rule, creating environments that build on the game's theme of religious fervor, dementia and occult. <click><click>

* Slide 56:
This highly detailed world helps in another way: they make the player to do the heavy lifting, interpreting each situation - no matter how silly - into the larger framework.

These shots from Fallout 3 might look humorous, but because they come from the same, fully fleshed-out, world that gave us the example of the child slavers camp earlier, we’re looking for ways to explain these setups.
Maybe survivors got bored, or maybe kids snuck into a dungeon and played with debris.

* Slide 57:
We want to point out one inherent danger of designer-scripted environmental storytelling: 
A disconnect between what the player can do and what the game depicts the non-player characters doing can be jarring.

* Slide 58:
Here we have a scene of two characters laying in bed, having died with their arms around one another. 

This scene from Fallout 3 is probably okay, because the game isn’t a love simulator and because the player is accustomed to moving through the world looking at the wreckage of society. 

But if this took this any further, this moment might feel hollow:
The player has no real relationships with characters that would justify such an intimate action
The game environment and time stream cease to exist after the player-character’s death. (Some games show a monster gnawing on the player-character’s bones, post mort, but that’s where the story ends.) 
 
We’re looking at potential simulation boundaries, and our environmental storytelling moment is pointing them out graphically. 

Slide 59:
Here's another example that we really like a lot:
Somebody built a ramp in the sewer system and tried to play Evil Knievel.
  
But… can we play Evil Knievel?

What does this moment say about the game? Fallout 3 is a game heavy on traversal. Does this example remind us of things that we can't do, drive around the wasteland on a motorcycle?

Once again, the example is probably okay, because Fallout 3 never communicates the possibility of drivable vehicles elsewhere in the game, and the bike looks sufficiently broken.

* Slide 60:
The line is sometimes razor thin. And to give you an example of a setup we would definitely want to avoid: dead NPCs squashed by doors.

* Slide 61:
Here we have a common gameplay element that the player constantly interacts with – if we see a player squashed by a door, we want to do the same.

* Slide 62:
We've talked about these tips and techniques at length.

We've also identified an inherent danger in designer-authored environmental storytelling: It has the potential of exposing a disconnect between the player and designer-authored events, which in turn makes the player feel removed from the decision making of the world.

We believe that this gap can be closed and, in fact, should be closed.

Which brings us to section 4.

* Slide 63:
This section is about systemic environmental storytelling, which is about dynamic history making.
 
* Slide 64:
In games, especially immersive first-person simulators, we aim to make the player an active participant, authoring his own experience as much as possible. 

So this section is about how game systems can contribute more dynamically to environmental storytelling, reflecting the player’s actions and agency. 
 
We often think of environmental storytelling only as designer-placed clues that deepen the world.

Some games have scripting branches that communicate consequences visually:

* Slide 65:
For example unhiding Paul Denton's corpse in DX1, depending on the player's actions earlier in the game. 
 
But that just amount to a giant flowchart. we can do more.
 
Slide 66:
Let’s find some game systems that contribute to this “dynamic history making”. 
 
Decals and breakables are an easy example, because breakables tell the visual history of the player’s interaction with the level.
Often seeing the site of a battle again triggers the memory of what happened there.
 
Slide 67:
So we want to tell a story about Half-Life 1 deathmatch. 
 
Half-Life, if you don't remember, was the first FPS game to really use decals for great effect - and in multiplayer, the game allowed players to spray their own logos all over the environment.

Here’s a little story, in pictures. Imagine we’re walking down the hallway and notice decals on the wall. 
We see a smiley face made out of bullet holes.

* Slide 68:
Another smiley face and grafitti

* Slide 69:
A wide view of the scene

* Slide 70:
And here we see the tragic conclusion to our story.

We can deduct: 
Player sprayed a lot of graffiti
Distracted 
Didn't notice an enemy player
Got shot in the back while he was authoring his latest masterpiece.

That's a story on par with designer-authored storytelling we presented in section 3.

And it's a great example of dynamic history making through game systems.

We can see that decals and breakable provide some good examples that we can draw from.

* Slide 71:
Multiplayer games, by their circular nature, repeatedly expose the player to the environmental interactions of other players. 
 
Linear single-player games don’t have this benefit as players rarely revisit areas.

The trail left behind by a player goes unnoticed, and acts of environmental interaction lose power.

* Slide 72:
To address this, you could do a couple of things:

1. Create geographically circular SP spaces. 

That means back-tracking gameplay, with spaces that are so connected and non-linear that the player keeps revisiting them. (Thief games are a great example.)

2. Or you could devise systems that allow the player to “look back” into earlier scenes via cameras, as Deus Ex, Splinter Cell or Duke Nukem 3D have done.

If we do this, we need to make sure that that mess we created earlier is still around, though!

* Slide 73:
As we talk about this, we're bound to butt up against technical constraints. 
There's only so many decals we can draw, only so many dynamic objects we can keep in memory, etc.

And yes, that's true. But here’s a quote that sums up the issue quite succinctly from a design standpoint

"Of course you have to cache out bodies, debris and decals, due to memory constraints. But remember that's also a design decision. Players get value when they see that their acts are persistent in the world. It's memorable to come back and see your own mess."

* Slide 74:
This is a quote by game designer Raphael Colantonio, who is working with Harvey on Arkane Studio's next game right now.
This quote sums up our position very well, and we should allocate resources to it.

* Slide 75:
Beyond decals, common player-pickups/systems – rather than simply disappear – could leave the empty packaging on the floor.

Imagine a fictional version of Bioshock in which the player drops an empty syringe when refilling his Eve supply – this syringe can also be used as a visual element in designer-authored environmental storytelling.

The player actually creates the visual language needed to decode designer-authored environmental storytelling moments.
This connection between systemic and designer-authored storytelling creates emotional impact; the situations observed by the player parallels his own play.

* Slides 76:
When systemic environmental storytelling is done right the player visually leaves his mark on the environment, and gains meaning by reflecting on his actions. 
 
In Spider, Tiger Style Games' award-winning iPhone game, there's a strange feeling of satisfaction at the end of each level, seeing your handiwork. If you haven’t played it – the player is a spider creating webs to trap bugs.

Seeing your webs at the end of each level doesn’t just give you a sense of completion, like un-blacking the fog-of-war in an RTS; these are the specific webs *the player* created during play. 

* Slide 77:
Characters and their behavior can communicate the player's influence over the world in ways that don't require massive exposition.

After the player has harvested or saved a Little Sister in Bioshock, the Big Daddy still walks the level, trying to find her.. 

Pounds on Little Sister’s den
She does not emerge 
Big Daddy mournfully departs

This is a great reflection of the player's actions

It also provides insight into the game’s literary ‘tone’ (or how it 'feels' about those characters).

* Slide 78:
Many games use animation and voice lines played by an AI to indicate state. There's a gold mine of opportunity here for communicating AI response to the player's prior actions.

In Far Cry 2, guards communicate their lack of suspicion by talking and texting on their cell phones, implying that...
 
They're unconcerned and distracted
They don't know you're there 
 
The player fills in the blanks and makes up stories about what these guys might be doing. I often assumed a guard was texting a girlfriend in some small town nearby, making plans for the evening. 

* Slide 79:
To sum up section for, we encourage you to…

Devise systems that allow players to see their impact on the environment
Create gameflow structures that allow for revisiting spaces
Remember “Caching out shell casings" is a design decisions
Keep visual history cues consistent between the player and the designer-authored bits
Aim for player-centric thinking in your environmental storytelling setups.

* Slide 80:
Takeaway and Conclusions

* Slide 81:
We wanted to do a few things today:

We wanted to advocate for thoughtful environmental storytelling.

We wanted to provide you with an overview of practical techniques.

But we also wanted to push for dynamic systems that enable the player to author his own environmental storytelling  moments.

Once we embrace this, the player will become a fundamental part of the history making of our game worlds. 

* Slide 82:
Contact information and thank you's.

* Slide 83:
Resources

* Slide 84:
Empty.