Effective talk: Guide the player through a story (Candy Crush)
Year of Talk: 2021
Live games are Journey:
Initially, a Lore/Story bible and a character bible were used to keep track of the events occurring in the game. This helped them at least make sure there weren't any conflicting narratives.
However, the team wanted to see about reworking the system to allow for better storytelling throughout the game. Especially given the game had been out for about 9 years at the time of the talk there was a lot of story that needed to be remade and streamlined.
They realized that the story was being told as if there was a trail of food that led the player throughout the gameplay and the story.
When the director of narrative designer (The talk presenter) went through how the game was presenting the narrative they realized that much of it was incoherent. Many times, there would be events one day that would adhere to a theme and related characters, but the following day the theme would completely change. This meant that players might not notice or grow attached to any specific characters as there wouldn't appear to be a coherent story being told. Many players would end up paying less attention to the story because of this and become detached from any moments of storytelling that would occur.
According to a poll that the team conducted in 2018, they discovered that in both Candy Crush (CC) main title games a majority of the players (83% in CC Saga and 87% in CC Soda) didn't know anything about characters past their names and maybe how they looked.
Finding the recipe for storytelling:
The game initially is simple to learn but harder to get extremely good/master the game. There are also very core mechanics with the 3 of a kind which Candy Crush is well known for and a unique art style.
The presenter boiled down how to best present the narrative principally using Context, Characters, and Conflict. The plan was to integrate these systems more closely to the gameplay mechanics. This way the players can experience the story unfold and how it affects the game state and the different mechanics. According to the presenter, this redesign drastically improved player engagement throughout the game.
Characters:
An example of how it was used for Candy Crush Soda was when the art team planned on transitioning the art assets from a 2D to a more 3D look. Instead of just making the switch the narrative team decided to create multiple events for a few months. Each event would have different weather effects that would come and go to help contextualize how everyone was being affected. By the end of the planned events, there was a massive in-game flood which was the transition point to 3D assets. But it also allowed the devs to find new ways of incentivizing players to interact with characters and help rebuild the city.
This new “rebuilding” event allowed players to feel more connected with the characters. This was because they would take part in the city rebuilding as they played the game. This allowed the new 3D assets to be introduced slowly as the city was rebuilt. Meanwhile, it would allow players to slowly get to know more of the characters and feel a deeper connection with them.
According to feedback that the team received many people felt more connected to the many characters. As well as the fact that during this time many people were stuck due to lockdowns this allowed them to find new connections and feel a deeper sense of community with the game.
Conflict:
Another of these story events that the team worked on for Candy Crush Saga revolved around some of the in-game mechanics, specifically some of the reward mechanics. The event started by having said rewards be taken from the player which is used in a heist to steal from a vault. This sequence was done as part of level progression which meant that players would need to do more levels if they wanted to solve the heist mystery or even just continue in the story.
By having conflict occur around many of the reward and power-up systems it meant that players could focus on how they use said rewards and power-ups as well as how to get more. Having the event occur and be determined by how far along the player goes on the levels allowed for the map to transition from a mostly static map layout to a more vibrant one.
After some of these initial events where the team was able to find success, they decided to continue with this event-driven narrative. As many of these narrative events occurred which would affect the game world it would push players to take action to help the world and characters they have become fond of over the past events. This would also give more meaning to the main gameplay loop of solving 3 of a kind.
Another event the team worked on was to show off certain characters (Like the Bubble Gum troll) in the new 3D assets through conflict. This allowed the team to show off new assets while also keeping the player invested and challenged with new mechanics. Using the achievement system in the game helped improve the theme of the event, which directed the player to spend more time playing with the different mechanics and exploring the new UI areas.
Something they had noticed was that many of the events were very conflict-related, so to move away they planned out another set of events that weren't based. What took its place were more humorous events that would allow players to laugh at and with the game. An example given during the presentation was a “Secret Crush” event which updated many of the UI elements to have a more positive connotation and have the player feel more joyful while playing. The event was meant to be more aligned with a slice-of-life type game with various humorous moments.
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