In her post, IntroComp and Hooks, Emily Short introduces the “plot hook” and the “game hook”.
- Plot hook - Make the player interested in what happens next in the story.
- Game hook - Make the player interested in the interaction.
One thing you learn in screenwriting is that everything needs to be a hook. Go to USC’s screenwriting school and you’ll learn the Sequence Structure which breaks a screenplay into 15 minute segments, each with their own hook and payoff. A graduate of USC, Chris Soth teaches the same technique but calls it The mini-movie method. When you sit down to write a screenplay you don’t worry about the next scene, but rather the next hook.
What separates a game developer from an immersive story artist?
In writing a screenplay all you have at your disposal are plot hooks. A game developer has both. An immersive story artist will also have both. So what separates a game developer from an immersive story artists? Not much actually. It comes down to how many plot hooks are used vs game hooks? Use more game hooks and you might be creating a game. Use more plot hooks and you might be creating an immersive story.
Not an exact science, more analogous to movie genres
However counting up the number of plot hooks vs game hooks will not always yield if a given example is an immersive story or game. What if one of those plot points is more important than another? Just as in a screenplay the sequences build on one another. So does it matter what the final hook is? I would rather not try and break this down to an exact science. People have been trying to break move genres into exact buckets for years. In the end that is what we’re dealing with, genres. Immersive story and games are not completely separate mediums.
If a movie has 10 murders it’s most likely a horror or mystery. It’s almost certainly not a romantic comedy. The same is true with immersive story and games. I haven’t seen a video game that employed a true plot hook, so they are certainly in the game category. Some of the interactive fiction games Emily Short discusses on her blog could be in the immersive story category.
Hollywood’s warning to never mix genres
It’s a well known rule in Hollywood - don’t mix genres. You don’t want your audience paying for a comedy and finding a horror once the movie starts, al a Vampire in Brooklyn. It will be interesting to see how this rule transfers to games and immersive story. Already we see some deride games for story getting in the way, others praising the game developers for breaking new ground.
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