Three-Act Structure

Just a quick one here.

I came across an article the other day by Julius Kuschke (of articy:draft fame), concerning narrative structure and games: Aristotle was not a Game Designer. Thought it was worth sharing.

His basic point (initially taken from Warren Spector) is that many (most?) game narratives attempt to follow a standard three-act structure, as found in other media, despite their (on average) comparatively far lengthier runtime.

The more 'conventional' narrative approach, often attempted by many game stories.
(Image taken from Julius' article.)

The problem is that, whilst the first and final acts tend to be handled with some competency, there is a great struggle in pulling off a fully satisfying middle act. This is all due to the length of the average game - even the greatest middle act will run stale when spread over 5/6 hours+ or so!

It seems to me there's also another conflict at play here, which only adds to the problem. Since the second act primarily focusses on conflict and the facing/overcoming of obstacles, and this is precisely the focus of many games, there is the added pressure to reach the second act quickly and dwell in it for a long time so as to show off all that gameplay! Whether conflict is a necessary feature of games and gameplay is a topic for another day, but this certainly seems true of action(-adventure) games. The core appeal of these games is in that middle act, which therefore seems to be set up for failure from the beginning. Perhaps some of these games should simply do without story (surely not all games need one!)? Although for some such games, it could be argued that the story is all there is to cover for otherwise repetitive gameplay (but maybe that's a design issue that should be fixed?).

[As an aside, this a problem I've been finding with The Last of Us thus far (although it exists as somewhat of a counterpoint to the above musings). By my reckoning, I've just come to the end of the (lengthy-ish) first act and I'm already pretty sick of the constant combat. Combined with the dissonance between a narrative focussed on struggling to survive in a broken civilisation and encounters with enemies that can be quite comfortably punched to death, it's pretty much exactly what I expected before everyone started raving about it and I figured I should at least take a look. I'll persevere and see how it progresses though!]

Julius' solution is that games of length should borrow story structure not from film (we'll get to that whole self-worth complex somewhere down the line), but rather television serials. In other words, we should favour a tiered narrative structure.

A tiered story structure, as common in television series and (the better) episodic games.
(Image taken from Julius' article.)

It's not a revolutionary idea: small, self-contained mini-arcs that in turn contribute to a larger structure. Indeed it seems quite obvious once you take into account that a part of the game narrative problem is rooted in the length of the experience - but it's definitely not a particularly commonly observed structure (in long-form games)!

To be clear, this is about more than episodic games (who have already taken this approach). The proposal is that this will hold even for works delivered as a whole, in much the same way that one can quite enjoyably watching a chunk of a television series in a single sitting.

Like I say, not necessarily revolutionary, but food for thought all the same. I've been thinking about game narrative a fair bit lately in light of a heavily drama-driven project I'll be undertaking towards the end of the year. However, in that case the problem is very much reversed as it will be a pretty short piece - I'll post more on this further down the line.

As always, discussion is very much welcomed.