One of the Family

May 2017 – Present

Conferences and Competitions
Intel University Games Showcase GDC – Finalist 2018

One of the Family is a 3rd-person branching narrative VR game that puts players inside the world of a 1940’s film noir crime drama.

Introduction

Designed and built as a exploration into player identity in virtual reality narratives, One of the Family was the culmination of work done under the project name “Presence” at Carnegie Mellon University. On the team, I had the role of narrative designer, crafting the story and game design from the ground up. This included building the interaction mechanic, designing the branching narrative, writing the script, and directing actors through motion capture and voice over.

Building the Interaction Mechanic

Wanting to explore 3rd-person VR narratives, we chose to have the player be outside the story completely, unseen to the characters like a ghost or Harry Potter in the pensieve. We took inspiration from the removed cinematic perspective of flat-screen interactive dramas like those made by Telltale Games or Quantic Dream. Instead of controlling a character, however, I was tasked with developing an interactive system for affecting the story without dialogue trees or quick-time events.

I created a way to change the story by manipulating the environment. The scene is in gray-scale like an old film, but all the interactive objects glow blue. With a simple point-and-click, each one can be toggled between two states of being (Ex. Locking a safe; Opening window blinds). Once a story-character uses that object, the object locks in however it was last set, and the story diverges accordingly. During testing, we played a great deal with pacing out the availability of these interactions, determining in the end that having every object interactive simultaneously from the start created the most exciting experience.

Designing the Branching Narrative

The story went through many revisions before ever beginning drafting the script itself. I used a diagramming software to map out the various pathways the story could travel along. This design process was a conversation between my vision as the writer, the art team’s capabilities, and the scoping concerns of our lead programmer. Instead of play-testing all 32 versions of the story every time a change was made, I developed structural paradigms for the node-tree. Every column in the chart served a specific narrative function. Regardless of the path players take through the game, every player will hit all the necessary thematic content for a satisfying story arc because of this system.

Writing the Script

Once the node tree was in place, writing the script became a challenge in creating believable dialogue that did not rely too heavily on specific past information. Every line needed to feel like it flowed naturally from the conversation before it even if I could not guarantee which path in the story the player was coming from. Additionally, because we could not guarantee the player’s attention in VR, I needed to find organic ways to repeat important information without dumping exposition. At this point, I began rehearsing with the actors and involving them in the process.