Strategies to manage Audience’s Interest

Manage Audience’s Interest

One of the main requirements for any work of art is to maintain the audience's interest. 

This is such an important and obvious concept that Aristotle was already writing about it around the year 300 BC.

Many of these fundamentals can be applied not only to create a video game's narrative structures but also to organize the creation of content such as DLCs.

Let’s go through some fundamentals here.

Fictional Pact, Suspension of Disbelief and Ludo-narrative dissonance.

According to Umberto Eco the Fictional Pact has some fundamental rules:

1. The audience voluntarily accepts the imaginary world as a new reality. What is called Suspension of Disbelief.

2. Disbelief is suspended and we agree on norms that govern the imaginary world.

3. The events that transcur in that imaginary world need to be coherent with those norms and preferable with the norms of our real world although each literary genre (and I would extend medium) has its own set of rules.

4. The author and the public pretend that the narrated events are actually happening.

If anything of the above is not respected the pact is in danger and the communication between author and audience could be at risk. Since the pact is voluntary if the audience feels like is not being respected, they are in their right to withdraw the consent.

Usually the breaking of the Fictional Pact happens when the audience is not being entertained, since the public can forgive a lot of inconsistencies as long as the movie or game is being entertaining. We will see an example of that when we talk about Resident Evil 7 (5.2.2.Motivation and Main Conflict).

But this has a limit even in the most entertaining situations. A famous case is with the Uncharted series. The players just have it hard to believe that the same guy that was murdering hundreds of people in gameplay is a likable hero. This example popularized the term Ludo-narrative dissonance, but is just another way in which the fictional pact can be broken, but one exclusive to videogames.

The typical hero that dies from a single bullet in a cinematic is another example of Ludo-narrative dissonance and the Fictional Pact being broken.

Paraphrasing Aristotle, the criteria that govern the construction of a narrative must above all respect plausibility and internal coherence, not concordance with a given contingent reality. That is, facts and behaviors must harmonize with what an audience conceives as possible human development or behavior.

Pacing and Engagement Curves

People become acclimated to the level of intensity of an experience, therefore it’s important to provide alternating high and low points to prevent this.

Is not enough to just up the tension, a game that is pure action no stop, with no variation will quickly tire the player, this is why in Game Design you often see the use of Difficulty Curves. These curves often coincide with our topic in this section, Engagement Curves.

An Engagement Curve is a chart of the intensity of an experience (includes games, movies, park rides, music, etc). It shows the intensity of the moment over time. While each experience is unique there is a target or ‘ideal’ engagement curve.

The curve is drawn with the X axis representing time inside the experience and the Y axis the Aesthetic intensity of the experience. Aesthetic intensity is the intensity of the core feeling that the experience is trying to evoke. In a horror game for instance the Aesthetic axis should be representing fear.

Time also varies greatly with each experience. Rounds of RTS games can last hours while casual mobile games last just a few minutes at most. Always have that into account when placig your important beats.

The red line is the Entry level of engagement, is what people expect as they enter an experience, you'll notice the engagement curve never drops below this line because the people are being constantly ‘surprised’ or having their initial expectation exceeded.

Notice that the curve starts before the red line, that is where the Marketing does its work, elevating the Entry Level of Engagement. But remember the part where the curve should never drop below the red line? Well, if the marketing machine overhyped the experience then that is when the audience starts to have a negative experience. Many excellent games have been killed by over hype or by setting the wrong kind of expectation.

Dead Island (2011) first trailer had everyone excited for the game, even winning several awards like the gold award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. However when the game released it received lukewarm reviews, mostly due to the tonal difference between that first trailer, which portrayed a dramatic and tragic story, and the wacky nature of the finished game.

Daikatana (2000) is infamously remembered by a double page magazine advertising that promised that John Romero (Creator behind Doom and Quake) “is about to make you his bitch”. But when the game finally released it was nothing to write home about. Especially not what the public expected from a professional with the notoriety that Romero had at the time.

Sales were abysmal, and not only killed Romero’s reputation (taking years to recover) but the Ion Software as a whole.

Intro:  The Introduction to an experience is about setting the expectations of the audience and easing people into the experience. This is a short time before the hook to set the stage before anything intense begins. It’s especially important in video games since players often expect to be able to jump right into the action, but there is a lot in their way first (tutorials, exposition, cinematics). We have already seeing how some games circumvent these issues in Missing or Eternal First Act

Hook: A moment of high intensity that grabs the audience and makes sure they want to stick around to see what happens next. It’s the first big high intensity moment.

Intermediate actions:  These are moments that bounce between low and high intensity and slowly increase in net intensity. There can be a lot of these moments depending on the experience. More about this in (Secondary Tensions/Desires).

Mid Point: Is the point of no return for the protagonist, where they get very close to achieving their goal (sometimes they get further away too), only to turn 180 degrees and go in the opposite direction. The Midpoint is usually a very high point of tension and could even serve as a cliffhanger ending if the story were to stop there. We already talked in more detail about it in Mid Point or False Endings.

Climax: This is the moment of peak intensity.

Denouement: Is the part of the story where the thensions lower after the climax, to allow the audience to rest, and all of the secondary tensions or desires that remain open are resolved.

This is where the protagonist finally kisses their love interest, or the heroes receive a medal for their efforts. Think of the ending of the first (now 4rth) Star Wars Movie.

In chapter 16 of his book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, game designer Jesse Schell explains the importance of keeping a player's interest by paying attention to pacing, and making sure the action escalates into a climax at the end of the game. 

Interest curves may also be drawn for individual levels or challenges within a game, and ought to follow the same escalating structure. Once again this is where the fractality property comes into play. 

What this means is every part of the experience you are attempting to design should follow the parts of the engagement curve, on the moment to moment, and as a whole.

Using the Curve to place content

Many developers choose to add DLC as completely divorced from the main narrative to avoid messing up the delicate balance of the narrative, but what if we need to add our content inside an already existing narrative structure. The fractality property comes to our rescue once again.

Atlus are masters of this, adding a lot of narrative content to their games Caterine and Persona 5 when launching the new editions, Catherine: Full Body and Persona 5 Royale.

In Catherine: Full Body (2009) the devs added the content in different ways.

There is a third love interest named Rin who becomes Vincent's new neighbor as well as the pianist at the Stray Sheep. Rin's involvement in the story adds tension between Catherine and Katherine (the competing love interest in the original game).

The player needs to go out of their way to begin a relationship with Rin.

There are over 20 new animated cutscenes to further develop the characters of Catherine, Katherine, and Rin, and 5 new endings.

Original Engagement Curve of the game.

New Engagement Curve.

Rin´s moments are spliced in the narrative, using the fractality property to have their full narrative follow up alongside the original main story, adding complexity but not breaking the structure. This guarantees that the story doesn't feel bloated.

After the final confrontation of the game on Day 6, if the player answers enough specific confessional questions to break the mysterious meter by this point, Vincent will proceed to ask himself three intimate questions about what he wants to do with his life. Choosing certain options will begin Rin's branch of the story. Not selecting these certain options at day 6 or not breaking the meter enough prior to it will cause Vincent to go back onto the same route as the original game though new endings for Katherine and Catherine are available on this route.

As we see the big change in route happens after the Climax of the game, in the Denouement (here in purple).

This is a brilliant approach in narrative design at the service of production.

But the auditions to the game doesn't end here. The challenge modes of the game Babel and Colosseum, have been increased with more than 200 new levels.

Also you get new characters to play as in these modes with the narrators' commentary during Babel changes depending on which character you use.

Since Babel and Colosseum are separated from the main plot of the game this is the ideal place to add levels without breaking the fractality property.

Multiplayer or Procedural Games

There are some games that can change its content based on some factors, like the interaction of other players or some other rules. In this case the use of Engagement Curves becomes more difficult to control since we would not be able to know how the players are experiencing the content. The solution for this problem is applying a technological approach using the same concepts of pacing that we saw in the previous section but giving control of the Pacing to AI or other similar tools.

Let see some examples of games that do this.

Case Study: Left 4 Dead Directors

Left 4 Dead (2010) a multiplayer PVE and PVP game, features The Director an artificial intelligence in control of game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty.

Instead of fixed spawn points for enemies, the Director places enemies in varying positions and numbers based upon each player's current situation, status, skill, and location, creating a new experience for each play-through. 

The Director also creates mood and tension with emotional cues, such as visual effects, dynamic music, and character communication. 

Moreover, the Director is responsible for spawning additional health, ammo, weapons, and Special Infected, like the Witch or the Tank.

It should be noted that there is another Director in the game, which controls the music on a per-player scale, called the Music Director.

Case Study: Alien isolation Directors

Alien isolation (2014) had an interesting approach when creating the AI that controls the titular enemy.

As explained by Andy Bray in his talk at the 2016 nucl.ai conference, the player can’t be scared senseless all the time, otherwise they’ll just give up. The tension had to vary but also maintain an air of unpredictability in the xenomorph itself. This led to the developers seeking inspiration naturally from horror movies such as Ridley Scott’s Alien, but also adventure movies such as Jurassic Park. The resulting philosophy: ‘psychopathic serendipity’ is where the alien always finds itself in the right place at the right time. Even if you’re in hiding and the monster can’t see you, and it doesn’t know your ultimate objective, it will still find a way to mess with your plans. However, the key to pulling this off was to ensure it wasn’t scripted.

To achieve this, the game requires two distinct behaviour management systems: the ‘macro’ or director-AI and the ‘micro’ or alien-AI. The director observes the player throughout the game, always knowing your location. Meanwhile the alien-AI is driven by a series of sensors and behaviours that allow it to hunt the player down. 

The director’s job is to point the alien in the direction of the player periodically, to give it a hint as to where it should be looking. 

Despite this, the alien is never allowed to cheat: while the director always knows where you are, the alien has to figure it out for itself. 

Not only that but the Alien learns from the player's behavior, getting scared by the flamethrower for instance, but knowing when to strike to avoid it, or remembering that the player likes to hide in lockers, so it searches there first.

You can fool it, you can surprise it and you can escape it.

Source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-perfect-organism-the-ai-of-alien-isolation

Case Study: 3D Monster Maze (1981)

The back of the box reads “The most amazing graphics you’ve ever seen in a ZX81…you use the cursor keys to move through the Maze, which is displayed as you would see it in reality complete with side passages, ALL IN 3D!”. That was basically the game, just with a catch, there is a T-Rex looking monster roaming the maze, hunting you. 

The creature is guided by a primitive game director, the grandfather of the AI in Alien Isolation, and just like in that game it will guide the monster towards you when it strays to far, but not outright telling it where you are, so you still have a fighting chance if the creature has not see you yet.

You can hear the steps of the monster in crunchy 80s sound; being that is the only clue you have to know its position in the maze, along with some text that indicates when the monster started to hunt you. A fantastic use of a narrative technique we will study next…Surprise Vs Suspense.

Surprise Vs Suspense

Both Surprise and Suspense are extremely beneficial resources for managing the rhythm of a narrative. Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980) exemplifies this by posing the following mental exercise.

In the first case, let's imagine that we observe 2 men talking about a completely mundane topic for 10 minutes while having a coffee. Suddenly the table in front of them explodes, killing them. That is a surprise. A sensation that can last from 5 to 20 seconds.

In the second case, let's imagine that we see a bomb with a counter that shows that there are 10 minutes left until the detonation. The bomb is placed under a table. The table at which the 2 aforementioned men are having their coffee and chatting about the same mundane topic.

When the time is up, the explosion kills them both just like last time.

We have achieved 10 minutes of tension where we wonder what will happen to those 2 guys, if they will be saved, if they will notice the bomb, followed by the 5 to 20 seconds of surprise at the resolution where they were not saved.

Horror is one of the genres that most requires proper handling of suspense and surprise. 

Jumpscares are often criticized but it's the poor handling of suspense and surprise that people actually dislike.

One of the first videogames to make use of this principle was Project Firestart (1988).

The back of the game’s cover reads “More than a game…a horror movie in outer space. Tension-building musical score and sound effects. Pans, Close-ups, fades, montage…just like a movie”. These were not just marketing words; for the first time a game was using cinematographic language like music and camera shots and combining them with unique resources from the interactive medium, that made the player feel immersed in the horror atmosphere, ready to be scared by a monster.

Project Firestart spiritual descendants would be the classic survival horror games of the 90s and 00s. These games handled the elements of suspense and surprise masterfully, leaving us time to absorb the tension amidst slow gameplay only to surprise us with sudden encounters, exactly in the same way that Project Firestart did almost 10 years prior.

The Resident Evil saga is filled with great examples. The dogs in Resident Evil 1 (1996) and Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 (1999) coming through the window, or Jack Baker coming back to life in Resident Evil 7 (2017) and surprising us in the bathroom when we find the second piece of the puzzle.

Memorable moments achieved through tension and surprise.

In the manga Goodby Eri (2022) there is a very interesting handling of tension and suspense.

At the beginning of the manga our protagonist receives a cell phone with a camera as a birthday present. The gift comes with a request from his mother, to film her dying. 

Apparently she is suffering from a terminal illness and wants her son to film every hour of her day including the moment of her death.

We then see panel after panel of what the son has filmed, until the moment of filming the mother's death arrives. At that moment the son escapes from the hospital, unable to watch his mother die. Behind him the hospital explodes.

We see that all of this was a movie that the protagonist had filmed, real, but he chose to give it that absurd ending and present it at the school film festival. 

The school hates that ending, they find it in poor taste and they start bullying the boy who plans to commit suicide because of this.

We see an incredible use of suspense, followed by surprise when what we are expecting to happen does not happen, followed by more suspense as a result of what happened, that is, intrigue, to know what led the boy to give that ending to the movie (something that we understand when reading the rest of the manga).

Secondary Tensions/Desires

As we stated before, conflict is the main source of interest in a story, however longer stories can feel stale if there is only one conflict. So it's a good practice to create secondary tensions or desires to maintain the attention of the audience and give the main conflict room to breathe.

In video games this is often represented with secondary missions.

The Yakuza/Like a Dragon saga has become synonyms with amazing secondary missions, and they need to be. Their main conflicts are often very serious political intrigue that could easily tire players if not spliced with goofy or outlandish secondary missions to break up the main tension. 

Secondary tensions don't need to be literally represented as secondary missions, it can be a mini boss encounter, a challenging platforming section and other forms of sudden change of pace that have little to do with the main story. 

Breaking the Logic to preserve Pacing

Pacing should take priority over all other elements of the narrative, even if that means sacrificing coherence or having characters act contrary to what that character has established.

It is better to ignore narrative errors than to try to justify them with more lore or content, which only serves to slow down the pace of the story and annoy the viewer.

A great example of this is in Star Wars: A New Hope, after our protagonists escape the Death Star Leia and Han have the following conversation:

• Leia: “They let us go. It’s the only explanation for the ease of our escape.”

• Han: “Easy? You call that easy?”

• Leia: “They’re tracking us.”

• Han: “Not this ship, Sister.”

Despite Leia’s doubts that they were being tracked she guides the ship to the secret Rebel base 

on Yavin 4, provoking that the Empire attacks them full force, risking the entire revelion.

Leia has been presented up to this moment as an intelligent and competent leader. So why would she do something so stupid?

Because it serves the pacing of the narrative.

If she would have acted according to her character they would have to first make contact with the Rebels for a rendezvous in Space or to another planet to collect Leia and the Death Star plans, then the Falcon should get as far away as possible, and…we are bored as an audience, the movie get stale, everyone loses interest.

So this breaking of the logic is a much better solution.

Case Study: No Jesus here

A videogame example of this is in the game The Matrix: Path of Neo (2005), where after closing following the plot of the movie in gameplay form the game reaches the climax, and stops.

Digital representation of the Wachowskisy sisters appear on screen and say the following:

“Is Martyrdom time, that may work in a movie, but in a video game the Jesus thing is well…Lame. 

Really lame. 

If you are like us then right now you are ready for 15 minutes of sweaty palm button pushing action to kick the crap of some big badass boss. 

So we suggested that we change the ending. 

We thought it would be cool after Smith rolls up screaming It's my world! ; the other Smiths jump into him merging into one Massive Monsters Mega Smith…”

This is an amazing understanding of game and narrative design. Players want a big confrontation, a big boss at the end. A cinematic would just not be enough.

By understanding the medium and the need to preserve pacing above everything else the designers managed to create a big memorable moment and analyze the difference between movies and games at the same time. The fights end in a spectacular way and connect with the ending of the movie, closing the experience perfectly.

Conclusions

As I said at the beginning, one of the main requirements for any work of art is to maintain the audience's interest. Pacing is the single most important factor to consider in that regard.

By adhering to the Fictional Pact and ensuring internal coherence, creators can maintain immersion and prevent the audience from disengaging. The discussion of Ludo-narrative dissonance in video games exemplifies how inconsistencies between story and gameplay can break immersion.  

However, remember that pacing should always be placed above everything else, even narrative coherence itself, so don't be afraid to break character or plot logic if that makes the experience more enjoyable. Is a delicate balance, but like we saw with the Star Wars: A New Hope and The Matrix: Path of Neo examples, when done right this can be overlooked, or even become a memorable moment.

The concept of Engagement Curves will come in handy when structuring content effectively within a project. By balancing moments of high and low intensity, creators can prevent fatigue and sustain interest throughout an experience. 

The fractal nature of narratives allows developers to integrate new content, such as DLCs, without disrupting the core structure.

Remember that I talked in a bit more detail about the Fractality or Nesting property in Narrative Structures in Videogames here if you are interested in knowing more about it.

Additionally, AI pacing directors, as seen in Left 4 Dead, Alien: Isolation and 3D Monster Maze, demonstrates one of the main differences between videogame narrative and traditional ones; the way a game's flow can dynamically adapt on the fly to enhance player experience. An especially important approach to consider when maintaining engagement in procedural or multiplayer games.

Whether through secondary tensions, deliberate logic breaks, monitoring Engagement Curves or even the use of an AI director; the goal is always to sustain interest and enhance the audience/player experience.

I hope this information is of particular value for game and narrative designers who must balance narrative depth with engaging gameplay.

Let's keep the interest alive!

Now, I'm asking you, dear reader.

1. Any other examples of games that respect Engagement Curves when adding new content?

2. Any examples of advertising that set your expectations too high just to let you down in the end?

Please let me know in the comments below.