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Foreshadowing and consistency - from a game design perspective.

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
This article isn't about storytelling. It's about designing games and about what makes gameplay fun: Gamasutra: Thomas Grip's Blog - Planning - The Core Reason Why Gameplay Feels Good

So, why post it here?

Primarily, the first quarter or so of the article goes into the concept of planning - being able to predict an outcome based on previous knowledge and current information. The writer argues that this is important in order to make games fun and tries to explain why we as humans enjoy that, as opposed to just reacting to input.

I think this knowledge can to some extent be applied to storytelling as well. Specifically foreshadowing and predictability. I think it's important to understand how we relate to things like that.
The reader obviously won't plan the outcome of the story, but they'll try to predict it. This may not be a bad thing, but it may need taking into account - not necessarily what they're predicting, but that they're predicting something.
 
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