When Gameplay Limitations Become Story Strengths

Ah, hello again, friend! Welcome, welcome. I’m happy to have you here. Come back in, take a seat. Your favorite armchair’s got your name on it. The tea’s hot—peppermint this time. Don’t mind Mr. Game Grump—he’s taking a nap.

All games have limitations, right? It’s why Mario can’t leave the Mushroom Kingdom, why Pikachu can’t zap Ash’s friends, and why Lara Croft can’t leave the tomb until she raids it. But what’s the difference between a limitation that won’t break the carefully constructed fantasy of our game, and one that makes players throw the controller across the room? 

The answer: smart use of fiction. But not just any fiction—a thoughtful, carefully crafted fiction that not only explains the game’s limitations without breaking the player fantasy but strengthens the story as it does.

Today, I want to talk about how to not just disguise our games’ limitations with fiction, but to use those limitations to deepen our narrative.

To get there, though, we’ll need to understand what design decisions keep the player happily swimming in our carefully constructed daydream and which jolt the player rudely awake. And to understand that, we need to first talk about player verbs, player expectations, and the promises we’re constantly making to our players—without even knowing it.

What Are Player Verbs?

What does Mario do? He jumps. What does Master Chief do? He shoots. What does Lara Croft do? She . . . well, she tomb raids. More specifically, she jumps and shoots, and also collects artifacts and solves puzzles. These are all player verbs.

All the ways the player can interact with our game are player verbs. If you’d like to be a bit more academic—and why not, the stakes are quite low here—you might say that any on-screen event that results directly from a player input is a verb.

Move the control stick—run. Press A—jump. Shake that Wiimote—play the bongos. The player gives an input, and the designer interprets that input into a game action. That’s a player verb. And the collection of verbs we give our players defines the ways they can interact with our game. You can think of this collection as the player’s verb toolkit.

From the couch, Mr. Game Grump startles awake. “Hark, a vagrant!” he shouts. He stabs at the air with an imaginary épée.

“You were having a nightmare, Mr. Game Grump,” I say.

He smacks his lips and looks around, lowering his imagined sword. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re talking about the player’s verb toolkit, Mr. Grump. It’s a pretty deep topic, when you really think about it.”

“Pah! ‘Player verbs.’ You always have to complicate things. The player presses buttons. Things happen. End of story. Where’s my tea?”

“Ah, yes. I’ll be right back.”

When I return with Mr. Game Grump’s peppermint tea, he’s looking surly. “Better be hot,” he says. “So, what’s so complicated? The player gets verbs and uses them. Whoopee. It’s all patronizingly obvious.”

“Well,” I say, “Have you considered that the moment we give players verbs, they form expectations about how they can use them?”

“Of course,” Mr. Game Grump says, sipping his tea. The steam gathers on the tip of his nose.

“And have you considered that those expectations form a promise between player and game designer?”

“Naturally,” says Mr. Game Grump, though he sounds less sure this time.

“And that if we break those promises, the carefully constructed dream we’ve created for the player comes crashing down?”

Mr. Game Grump sinks back into the couch, warming his hands on his mug. “Explain yourself,” he says. “And don’t make it overly verbose.”

Expectations Become Promises

What’s the first thing a player does when they pick up a new game? Press all the buttons, of course! They want to know what they can do in this exciting new space. And from that first moment, they begin forming expectations around what sorts of exciting things they’ll be able to do with these new verbs.

Let’s imagine the player has begun a new game where they’re playing as a powerful goddess who must navigate the human world searching for her son who’s been captured and hidden by a rival god. The goddess has a number of exciting powers: she can fly, she can read other characters’ minds, and she can cast powerful thunderbolts. Let’s imagine what the player might think—and the expectations they might form—as they first explore these verbs.

Wow! I can fly around? Amazing—look how high I can go! I can see everything from here. I see some islands in the distance—I bet I can go check those out. Wait—there’s a town. Let me go try to read some people’s minds for information on my son. Cool, everyone has little thoughts I can access. I want to use this on everyone! Wait, my thunderbolt power. Let me try it. Wow, it totally caught that barn on fire! It would be pretty naughty if I tried it on a human… Oops! Heh. Well, guess I know it works. That’s powerful—I’ll bet I can really make use of this!

Seems like the player’s having a great time playing our new game. But amongst all that excitement, did you notice all the expectations they’ve formed? If you read between the lines, they’re quite clear:

• I can fly to any location I can see.

• I can read the mind of any character I want.

• I can smite anyone I like with thunderbolts.

To me, those expectations are perfectly reasonable, given the fantasy we’re creating with the player (they’re an all-powerful goddess, after all). But there’s a danger here: once players have created expectations—and it happens quite quickly—those expectations become set in stone. The player feels them as a promise the game has made them—that they’ll be able to use their verbs in whatever way they’d reasonably expect, given the way the story, the game world, and the gameplay interactions are being presented.

This is all well and good, but the problem is that promises carry a lot of emotional weight, and once a promise has been made—whether you as the game designer have meant it or not—it has the capacity to be broken, ejecting the player from the waking dream we’ve so carefully crafted for them.

A String of Broken Promises

“Players these days!” Mr. Game Grump laments. He’s waving around his peppermint tea. “‘You promised me. You betrayed my expectations.’ What a load of infantile rubbish!”

“You’ll spill your tea, Mr. Game Grump,” I say.

“In Pac-Man, did I feel betrayed that I couldn’t burst through the walls and leave that ruddy maze forever?” The tea’s really sloshing now. “In Donkey Kong, did I feel betrayed that Jumpman couldn’t strap on a jetpack, rescue the princess, and scorch the big ape’s butt hair with their rockets? Who cares? It’s ludicrous!” With one final thrust, the peppermint tea spills into his lap. “Ach!” he shouts. “Napkin, napkin!”

I rush to the kitchen and bring back a dish towel. Mr. Game Grump gingerly pats down his lap. “It’s your fault I did that,” he says. “Spouting all that nonsense.”

“I’m glad you’re not burned.”

“A wet lap’s almost as bad, if you take the mortification into account.”

“To your point, Mr. Grump, you didn’t feel betrayed in those games because you didn’t expect to be able to do those things. There wasn’t an illustration of Jumpman with a jetpack on the side of the arcade cabinet, so the game wasn’t breaking any promises.”

“I still can’t fathom why you’re so concerned. If the player feels betrayed, they should get over it—it’s just a game, after all.”

“The player’s feelings are a big deal, Mr. Grump. They’re the only thing that matters, when you get right down to it.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Would you like the player to throw your game in the garbage can?”

Mr. Game Grump finishes dabbing at his trousers and tosses the dish rag on the coffee table. “Well . . . only a fool would want that.”

“It’s what players do, if they feel betrayed by a game.”

“So you’re saying it’s a financial concern?”

“I suppose you could look at it that way, if you really wanted to.”

“Then explain, and try not to get too deep into all that feelings rubbish. It makes me nauseated.”

To really understand why we should care so much about breaking our promises with the player, we need to see how it makes the player feel to have their expectations dashed. Let’s take another look at our goddess game. If you’ll remember, the expectations the player formed were:

• I can fly to any location I can see.

• I can read the mind of any character I want.

• I can smite anyone I like with thunderbolts.

Now let’s imagine three situations that might come up in this game and see how the player reacts.

First, the player has been tasked with searching the open world for a hidden cave where their son was last seen. Flying around, the player passes over lakes and rivers and other geographies searching for likely locations but doesn’t find the hidden cave. Then, out in the sea, they see an island with a mountain. There might be a cave at the base of that mountain—let me fly over the water and go check it out. But as the player reaches the shore and begins to fly out over the water, a message pops up on screen:

YOU ARE LEAVING THE STORY AREA
PLEASE RETURN TO SHORE

What? the player thinks. I just spent an hour flying over the highest mountains and the deepest lakes. Why can’t I fly over this measly spit of water? That’s lame!

The player presses on, but after a few more moments, the game automatically teleports the player back to the mainland. Disgruntled, the player continues their search.

Later on, the player’s looking for a god who has information on their missing son. To find him, the player has had to read the minds of multiple henchmen. Finally, the player learns the god’s location and finds him. He says he won’t give the player information on their missing son until they do a task for him. Wait a minute, thinks the player. I can be clever here. If I just use my mind reading power, I can look into his thoughts and find where my son’s been taken! The player gets excited, feeling very clever with their idea, and tries to use their mind reading power on the god—but nothing happens. They try again. Nothing. The power won’t work. Now that’s really unfair, the player thinks. I could read the minds of every single other character in the game—now, on the one character I’d really like to get information from, the power doesn’t work. What the heck!

Even more dejected than before, the player goes through the god’s requested task, feeling cheated the whole time because their clever solution was invalidated by the designers for seemingly no good reason. 

Finally, after completing the quest, the player gets the information they need and finds that their son is being held by Zeus himself. At long last, the player gets to confront the god who stole her son and get him back! The player goes to Zeus’s lair, and there’s their son, locked inside a cage. Zeus tells the player that he has the key to open the cage, but he won’t give it to the player until they go kill a rival god for him. Screw that, the player thinks. The key’s right there in Zeus’s pocket. I’ll smite him with my thunderbolts right now and be done with it!

Except when the player tries to make lightning rain down on Zeus, nothing happens. They smash the lightning button again. Their son is right there. The key is right there. Zeus is the only thing that stands in their way—but a message pops up on the screen.

INVALID TARGET

That’s the moment the spell on the player is forever lost. That’s the moment the player takes their controller and hurls it across the room, never to play our game again.

And can you blame them? The game has promised them that they’re an all-powerful goddess with amazing abilities, only to have the developers step in and limit, quell, or otherwise thwart the player’s verb expression whenever it doesn’t serve their design.

These examples might seem extreme; they’re not. They come up often in all sorts of games. How many times have you been unceremoniously kept from leaving the play area by a developer message much like the one above? Think of all the many first-person shooters or RPGs where you’re allowed to kill thousands of baddies—only for your war axe of infinite slaying to become harmless as a plushy toy when you try and use it on a friendly NPC. Promises are being broken all the time, and each time they are, the player is jolted from the fantasy, until eventually they stop playing.

The reasons for doing this are easy to understand. In our goddess game, for instance, let’s imagine we’re a smaller team, so we have certain limitations. We don’t have the resources to allow the player to travel to multiple islands, so they must stay on the mainland. The player also can’t read every NPCs mind, because certain NPCs need to have information the player can’t easily get. Lastly, we can’t have the player using thunderbolts on friendly NPCs or story characters because that would be a huge addition of time and labor to implement and playtest.

Developers are constantly working with limitations, but when those limitations are exposed as obviously as they were in our goddess game, the player feels cheated, betrayed, and dejected—and ultimately gives up.

“We’re ruined,” Mr. Game Grump says. He looks like he’s just gone ten rounds with a gorilla. “It’s hopeless. According to you, the only way to make the player happy is to give them everything. But we can’t put the whole universe on a hard drive—it’s impossible!”

“You’re right, we definitely can’t,” I say.

“Well then, games need limits!”

“I agree, they certainly do.”

“But you’re saying we have to give the player everything they desire—that’s impossible, and you know it!”

“Ah, see, I’m not saying that. I’m saying we have to give the player everything we promise. And with clever fiction, we can limit verbs—and in turn meet our promises—in ways the player won’t even notice. We can even do it in ways that actually improve our story.”

“You must think you have a magic wand, waving your words around like that.”

“Does it come across that way? I don’t mean it to.”

“Well then, get on with it. I’m in the mood for a nap, and you sure are long winded.”

When Gameplay Limitations Become Story Strengths

The issue isn’t a lack of care on the part of developers. On the contrary, developers care an awful lot about their player’s enjoyment—that’s the whole point of making games! The reason we sometimes inadvertently break promises with the player all comes down our game’s limitations and how our fiction either supports or creates conflict with those limitations. Let me explain.

First, games must have a limited scope. There are only so many hours in a day, and budgets aren’t infinite. Like Mr. Game Grump said, we can’t deliver the whole universe on a hard drive, and we also can’t allow the player to do everything—we must limit what they can do.

On its own, this is fine. When we run into problems is when the fiction of our game is at odds the game’s limitations. It’s when you give the player a gun, the backstory of a merciless bounty hunter, and tell them shoot—but then limit who they can shoot. It’s when you give them a map and a compass, the backstory of a cartographer of an unknown land—but then riddle your open world with invisible barriers.

Again, the problem isn’t that these limitations exist, it’s that they’re in direct conflict with the game’s fiction and the player’s expectations about what their character should or shouldn’t be capable of.

The trick to solving this problem is to create a fiction that uses your game’s limitations to deepen your story. If you can manage to do this—and it’s not easy; it takes real narrative and gameplay creativity—then players will accept the limits of their verb toolkits as though those limits aren’t there at all. In fact, it will help deepen the fantasy to the player.

Let’s go back to our goddess game and patch things up. We’ll return to each issue and punch up the fiction so that each limitation both makes sense and deepens the story.

Flight

The issue: We like our flying mechanic, but we can’t let the player exit the main playable area. How do we keep the player from using their flying power to leave the map without developer-imposed boundaries?

Fiction change: Let’s say that the goddess character is the hybrid child of a female god and a human man. Because of that, she didn’t inherit the full, glorious wings of her mother, but only small, pint-sized wings. Growing up, she could never fly very far or for very long, and the other gods made fun of her for it. As an adult, she’s developed quite a complex about her small wings and has always felt a lesser god because of it.

Effect on verb: Now, the goddess character can only fly for a limited period of time before her small wings tire out. When she lands, her animation shows her to be tired and overburdened. She must stay on land and recover stamina before she can fly again. 

Resulting improvement: With this new bit of fiction, we gain two things. First, there’s a clear reason why the goddess can’t fly across the sea to nearby islands: her small wings can’t take her there. The developer’s no longer standing in the player’s way—it’s the player character’s own flaw that is the limiting factor.

Second, we gain a juicy bit of character detail we can use in our narrative; the inferiority complex our goddess feels because of her parentage and physical deficiency can be a story thread we use throughout the game for character development, plot points, and dialogue.

Reading Minds

The Issue: The player has the ability to read other characters’ minds, but we can’t let her read the minds of certain story characters, since they have vital information we’d like the player to earn through side quests and other forms of gameplay.

Fiction change: The goddess can only read the minds of humans—not of other gods. It’s a source of frustration for our player character that the minds of other gods have always been off-limits to her. Even more importantly, this limitation manifests in her relationship with her parents; she’s always been able to read her human father’s mind, but her goddess mother remains forever inscrutable. 

Effect on verb: The player can no longer read the minds of gods, so developers are free to hide key story information inside god characters without fear of the player discovering it.

Resulting improvement: We’ve gotten what we need from a design perspective—the player’s mind-reading power is limited—but we’ve also deepened the complexity around the goddess’s relationship with her parents. Because we’ve highlighted this limitation in the fiction, the player feels more immersed in the story because of it, not less.

The Thunderbolt

The issue: The player has an exciting, powerful lightning bolt power, but we don’t want them to be able to use it on story-related NPCs, otherwise the player will be encouraged to kill their way through the game instead of working through the challenges and story we’ve designed.

Fiction change: The goddess herself doesn’t have the power to shoot thunderbolts. Instead, she must pray to Zeus, and he is the one who rains thunderbolts down from the sky. The code of the gods dictates that Zeus may not use his lightning on innocent people or other gods, so our goddess character is now beholden to Zeus’s code of ethics for use of her lightning power.

Effect on verb: When the player tries to use lightning, their goddess character speaks a prayer to Zeus, asking for his aid. If the target’s valid, Zeus’s voice booms from the sky: “Let lighting rain on these fowl creatures!” But if the target’s not valid, Zeus dessents: “It is against the code.” 

Resulting improvement: First, we have a great reason why the player can’t go around zapping every story-related NPC they don’t like with lightning, which is helpful to our design scope. (Ask any professional game dev—being able to attack important story NPCs adds months to development time.) We’ve also introduced a strong fictional element to the game—the code of ethics among gods—which we can use in our narrative. Lastly, the player will develop a relationship with Zeus throughout the game simply by virtue of praying to him to use his lightning power, making his betrayal at the game’s end even more impactful. Not to mention that when the player wants to smite Zeus to get their son back, it’s now obvious why our lightning power won’t work—Zeus would never zap himself with a thunderbolt!

Look how much deeper we’ve made our narrative with these three changes! Our player character went from all-powerful god (boring!) to a real character beset by inner turmoil, physical challenges, and relational conflicts that all stem from real design limitations. By changing the fiction, we’ve taken those design limitations and made them into story strengths. The struggle against these limitations doesn’t become a fight between player and designer—they become story challenges the player must face and overcome.

After all, a good story is all about overcoming obstacles. Obstacles are built into game design—there’s no avoiding them. So instead of running or hiding, we can use them to our advantage.

Conclusion

“Things used to be so much simpler,” says Mr. Game Grump. He’s gone and changed into a bath robe so he can let his trousers dry. “You gave the player a paddle and a ball and said, ‘Enjoy Pong.’”

“But it makes sense, doesn’t it?” I ask. “If the fiction can give strong narrative reasons for our player’s limitations, it strengthens the story and keeps the player fantasy alive. Not to mention it means we can keep our promises.”

“It’s hard work, making games. The whole thing makes me want to take a nap.”

“That’s alright, you can take a nap. We’re done for the day.”

Mr. Game Grump sinks down into the couch, wrapping himself up in the terrycloth. “Just promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“While I’m asleep, don’t change my fiction. I wouldn’t like that.”

“Game developers aren’t that powerful, Mr. Game Grump.”

“All the same,” he says. His eyelids are already drooping. “I’d like my dreams to remain my own for the time being, thank you very much.”

“Alright then, I promise.”

“Good,” he says, and he drifts off into a dream I can only guess at.

Meet Mr. Game Grump

Welcome, welcome! My name is Lucas, and I’m a writer and narrative designer for games. Please, come in. Take a seat. I’ve set out a nice arm chair for you, and there’s some nice chamomile tea on the coffee table. Don’t mind the velvet on the arm rest—it’s already worn. I find worn velvet’s the most comfortable. 

I’m happy you came to chat about narrative design—it’s one of my favorite topics. Please, get comfortable, sip your tea if you like, and settle in. I’m excited to see where the conversation will take us—there’s so much to consider! We might as well jump right in—

—Ah, yes. The old man snoring on the couch. I suppose there’s no avoiding it. I was hoping he wouldn’t make a nuisance of himself, but perhaps it’s best to introduce you. That man there, using his tweed jacket as a blanket and smacking his lips in his sleep, is named Mr. Game Grump. Mr. Game Grump is an old-school game designer who grew up back in the days when games were, as he describes them, hardcore. 

Between you and me, he doesn’t care for the player very much. In fact, he thinks the player’s a needy good-for-nothing who should be grateful we deign to give them any games at all. Needless to say, he doesn’t care much for the player’s feelings.

Yes, he does live rent free. I don’t know what he does with all his time, but he does spend an awful lot of it grumbling objections from my couch.

Now where Mr. Game Grump believes the player’s feelings don’t matter much at all, I believe the player’s feelings really do matter. They’re everything. So since Mr. Game Grump’s already here, I’ve made it my job to try to convince him that to give players the most riveting experiences we can possibly give them, we need to deeply consider the player’s feelings. After all, the fantasy we weave in our designs is only half-finished until the player picks up the controller and begins to co-create the fantasy with us. 

Maybe you and I can convince him together.

Oh, look! Speak of the devil. Mr. Game Grump has just woken up from his nap. “We have a visitor,” I say. “Mr. Game Grump, please, meet the reader. Would you like to tell them anything? We’re just starting to talk about narrative design.”

“When I was young, games were hard!” says Mr. Grump. He fidgets uncomfortably underneath his tweed blazer. I did already mention he doesn’t pay rent? “And besides, I don’t take kindly to your characterization of me.”

“You heard that? I thought you were asleep.”

“I was fake sleeping, you dolt.”

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I don’t get hurt feelings—you’re just wrong. And young. Naivete is also likely.”

“Oh, so then you do care about the player’s feelings?”

“Absolutely not!” Mr. Game Grump sinks deeper into the couch and ditches his tweed blazer for a nearby blanket. “And anyone who does is mollycoddling. There’s a ten-dollar word for you. And I won’t define it.”

“You do have nice diction, Mr. Grump.”

“Hrmph,” Mr. Game Grump says, settling back in for a nap. “Wake me up when you have something interesting to say.” And with that, he dozes off—and this time is really asleep.

Well, Mr. Game Grump hasn’t ever been easy to please. The thing is, we do have lots of interesting things to talk about together. In the end, I hope we can figure out what makes for a game that achieves our medium’s ultimate goal—a fantasy in the mind’s eye of the player so visceral that, at least for a little while, they’re swept away into the sort of transcendent emotional experience that only the video game medium can provide.

Maybe, with your help, Mr. Game Grump will come around.