on writing games

try not to break the fictive dream

In the book “The Art of Fiction”, John Gardener talks to us about the Fictive Dream.

The reader enters a dream when they start reading.

And it is our job as writers not to wake them up from this dream.

If we bore them or break the suspension of disbelief, boom, they wake up.

“In bad or unsatisfying fiction, this fictional dream is interrupted from time to time by some mistake or conscious ploy on the part of the artist. We are abruptly snapped out of the dream, forced to think of the writer or the writing.” John Gardener

This problem, obviously, goes beyond fiction.

In video games we call it retention.

What is interesting to highlight is that retention poses different scales.

There is an element of retention in that we call moment-to-moment gameplay. This retention has to do with the gameplay being satisfactory at all times.

The player has to have a more or less clear intention horizon, and achieve effects and progress through their movements in the game space. All of this has to feel satisfying.

As Gardener would say, we must not bore them, or they wake up.

But we also have other types of retention. We have elements of extrinsic motivation: achievements, unlockables, events, etc.

These types of retention are more long-term, the player returns to play our game driven by that extrinsic motivation.

When I think about how the Fictive Dream manifests in games, I specifically think about moment-to-moment gameplay.

All extrinsic retention tools necessarily break the Fictive Dream and have a more gamey nature, separate from storytelling: the story disappears and the focus is on the game.

Maintaining the Fictive Dream must be the first item to keep an eye on during playtesting.

If you are making a narrative game, you have to treat the rupture of the Fictive Dream as a high-priority bug.

Otherwise, you are leaving your players without what they came to seek.