Literature Review When it comes to developing a story that garners interest, there are always certain boundaries, and

boundaries that can be broken. Within the medium of video games, lore plays a vital role to the believability and fullness of the story. In practice, it is one of the most essential pieces to the game's design due to its influence on architecture, morals, and content. Along with that lore comes many new terms, either re purposed for the game's story or created entirely fresh for the game. !his means that a common le"is is present and few terms need to be e"plained before I go any further. !o start, the basics of games and lore will be covered specific to the game #ark $ouls, which will be used as an e"ample for this research. Terms: RPG: #ark $ouls is an R%&, or a Role %laying &ame. An R%& is any game or game system that allows the player or players to have a pivotal role in which they have some say in the game world. !his system gives them key decisions to make such as '#o I save their life for my gain, or sacrifice them for the greater good() and other such choices. An R%& can also allow a player high levels of control over the personality, physical traits, and statistical traits *+ombat style, weapon choice, etc.,. Lore- .. +hoi, /. 0uang, A. /effrey, and 1. .aek discuss the ob2ects that go into creating a believable, living fantasy world. 3ore specifically, they give four parts that make up what the game world and its lore should have. !hese four parts are imagination, identification, analogy, and satisfaction. Imagination: 4ssentially, fantasy is used to stimulate a person's mind to create images and ideas that help to make the game and its content more interesting. Any good lore no obvious failures in the construction of the games plot, history, or story mechanics, and no interesting mysteries easily solvable by anyone, even to the story's characters. #ark $ouls does this well by making the player actually have to find the story, rather than feeding it to them. Instead, they give the player a small bite of information with the linear plot, but all the other information is on the edges of that stories branches and in all the dark corners of the game world. !his creates

an interesting pu55le to be solved and a lore that can be read into and formed based on opinion and still be technically right. According to this article, it is described as the e"perience of things that 2ust won't happen to you. 6sually these things are impossible even under the perfect circumstances and have an air of science fiction or high fantasy to them. Identification: !his is summari5ed as a connection to the game world. 7bviously, a story has to connect with its followers. If it does not, the readers8players tend to get left out and put off from the story. A lore and game world that includes the players and plays on their likes or dislikes tends to be more successful than perfect people in a perfect world. 6sually, a story has a character that has traits similar to the player, or similar enough to connect to on some level. !hrough the course of the story, the character overcomes their faults and triumphs 2oyfully. !he player8reader feels accomplished as well because they helped the character overcome their fault and in turn overcome their own *even if it was all 2ust in their head,. Analogy: #escribed by the article as 'e"perience related to the real world.) 9or instance, if the country you live in is having tough economic issues, you are more likely to play a game that deals with that than a game about everyone being wealthy. If the game is believable and broken 2ust like the real world is, people are more easily drawn to dealing with those problems than they are dealing with the problems of 'everybody is rich' or 'nobody can die.' Analogy also gives a sense of immersion, or a feeling of actually being in the game world. #ark $ouls does this by having minimal $creen elements and a fleshed out, logically built societal system and architecture design. 9or e"ample, you will never see a modern American home ne"t to one of the castles in the game, and you also won't see a surge of prosperity and happiness in an abandoned city. !hings appropriate and realistic are always portrayed in order to gain interest8immersion from the player. Satisfaction: While described as 'the level of satisfaction being given to environmental factors.) 9or instance, if a given location in a game makes players really happy, then they are

satisfied with that area, regardless of their reason. If it is a visually appealing place or otherwise does not matter. What does matter is that the player can continually come to that location and be satisfied with it. It is a simple e"planation but it holds utmost priority in development. If you can get a player hooked and really going at the story or game, then you have gained a profit and fan that will continue to return for at least a measurable chunk of time. Developing Lore to Engage I find that, more often than not, developers like to use story to enhance flavor or add a sort of 'story gimmick' to their game. !he main issue is that the player plays the game for its mechanics, and ignores the story more than anything else. !ake +all of #uty for e"ample. It has very little story lore to go by, e"cept that you are fighting terrorism in a very realistic setting. 9or some this is enough, and the game's main draw is the game play mechanics. 0owever, you don't find players immersed into the game world. Instead, you find players talking in the 3eta of the game, working around role play to get to higher efficiency. 7ther games, such as .ethesda's $kyrim, focus almost solely on Lore and story. In these cases, players tend to get drawn into the world and try to play it as if they were actually there rather than playing a game. In other rare cases, players create lore and a community e"isting in the lore. #ark $ouls is one of these, although a uni:ue e"ception. #ark $ouls has the lore already placed within the game world, but the player must find and piece it all together. What ends up happening is players coming together to create a cohesive tapestry or lore with the pieces left for them. In another instance, ;. 3oltenbrey's 76! 79 +0ARA+!4R article discusses a game where a fresh, new lore that never e"isted was created. In the original 0alo game, several players came together and created a long running series of short episodes that followed a story of their devising, completely running off the rails of what the game's story already had. !he series was a massive hit, gaining thousands of fans and spawning a whole studio of content creation. What is so important about this creation of lore is how it engages the player or players. In +all of #uty, there was no engagement, and the game diffused into skill only combat with no immersion. In

$kyrim, the player was fully engaged by lore and e"plored to their hearts content despite simple game mechanics. In 0alo and #ark $ouls, people went out of their way to create an interesting lore for them and others to en2oy. What I find in all these e"amples is the desire to engage in learning new things to increase the level of immersion and satisfaction in the game as a whole. I draw that a game's lore has a higher level of importance than almost any other factor in a game. Perspectives on Lore !he viewpoint which the player finds themselves on a games lore falls on the shoulders of their choices. Waelchli describes that a players behavior directly corresponds to their decisions in games and their interaction with it and others through online social connections. If a player can develop lore by making decisions, then their behavior can also influence the lore of a game. 9or e"ample, a player who takes things slow and waits things out decides to let a dragon live so that he can sneak by unharmed may have a lasting impact on the story, whereas a player who seeks only challenge takes on the dragon and sends the game in another direction entirely. 7f course, this only works with games that have a well thought out lore. In a game where the community is very high above the game lore, a player's behavior only affects their score. !here are few ways around this, but some developers enable systems to keep players from developing such a meta before it happens. A game's Artificial Intellegence, or AI, handles all logical processes not done by the player. Anything from non player characters patrolling an area to stock market fluctuations are handled by these AI. <aturally, a good AI system will be deceptively human, and a bad one can range from too powerful to unbelievably stupid *$.+ass,. AI that fits a games lore takes a lot of work to pull off. 9irst, the AI must follow the conventions of the game world and lore. If no one goes to the dungeon, the AI doesn't go even if the player is in there. If the guards are overly cautious, then they will check every sound they here instead of drinking a beer. $o long as the AI looks and acts like someone would in that situation, immersion is intact and the lore is strengthened to a greater degree. Information can be carved from in game characters in this way. 9or e"ample, if one of the main characters prays to a god of luck,

then we have learned that religion is taken seriously and that there is a goddess of luck. We can use this information to further engage ourselves in the lore and to develop it further based on other information. !here is one issue that cannot be easily dealt with, and that is players who do not seek out information for various reasons. A game's lore can only be seen if it is sought, even if it is given to you. $ome players may try to find ways to get around finding the lore, or even find a way to accomplish something without doing any work. !hese players are known as self validators *+. 0eeter, .. 3agerko, .. 3edler, /. 9it5gerald,. $elf =alidators hate challenge and risk, so any kind of game can turn them away, and a story that has good lore that must be sought out can pose a challenge they do not want to take. Instead, they choose to research and e"perience the lore through someone else's e"periences. !his negatively impacts a player's view on the lore because they do not have the proper identification and immersion to accompany their knowledge. 3uch is lost in this situation and even the best story can fall apart at the seams. Time and Lore 9or many, a long and detailed history tends to be favorable over a short, spotty history. I believe this is because of the level of detail and scope it gives to the lore and the player's purpose. In a game, the longer you have to do things or the longer you last in a game session has a massive impact on the player footprint on lore. 9or e"ample, in +ivili5ation, a strategy game, sessions can last as long as several millennium *in the game,, but only a few hours in real life. !he decisions you make in that scenario have a greater gravity than a game like Animal +rossing, which runs on real time. .oth decisions may be e:ually important to the progress of either game, but the effect the decision has on the player and his understanding of the game world and lore are drastically different. In +ivili5ation, researching nuclear technology for >? years has a certain mood to it that makes it distinctly important. In Animal +rossing, buying a shovel has the same affect on game speed and advancement, but feels much more small in comparison.