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Decided to take a little break from work to mention something that I've been thinking about for a while. One of the things that makes SC so good as a spectator sport, and which sets it apart from lots of other spectator sports like football or basketball or F1 or maybe chess is the way it builds tension.
As a documentary producer, I need to make sure my stories build tension for the audience. One way to do this - and this is what most spectator sports do - is to give the audience less information than characters involved. The audience is always wondering what the character's next move is. If he makes the wrong one he could be doomed. Has he made the right one?
Think about Prison Break (see EDIT below). Count the number of times Michael Schofield KNOWS he's safely in bed and not still burrowing through the ground, but you don't. That's tension.
This is kind of like the F1. We know absolutely nothing about the teams' strategies. But the drivers all know their own strategies. The fun comes in trying to piece the drivers' strategies together by looking at the length of the pit stop, the type of tires and so forth. Problem is that that tension does not last very long. By the last pit stop, we know as much as the drivers. Then there follows twenty minutes of pointless going round the track. Or sometimes, it becomes clear in the first ten minutes that no matter what we don't know about a driver's strategy doesn't matter, because he's not going to win.
In such spectator sports, you need to try to build a second kind of tension - the audience knows only as much as the characters involved. So to continue with the F1 example, the ideal scenario is that everyone's finished their pit stops and two drivers are neck and neck. Nobody knows who's going to be first, not even the drivers. It comes down to a lot of skill and a little luck. Things like accidents give everyone a chance to catch up, so this tension is mantained.
Starcraft uses the first kind of tension in the opening minute of the game, when we wait to see the players' build orders. But after the first minute, that tension is gone. Here's the brilliant part of Starcraft: it makes use of a third kind of tension - the audience knows MORE than the characters involved.
Player A is doing a fast expand and player B is doing a proxy rax. WE know that, but they don't. It's the equivalent of watching the blonde girl turning her doorknob to enter her house while we KNOW the axe murderer is lying in wait in her bathroom... but she has no idea. And this tension is kept up throughout the game, because neither side has 100% scouting ability. Even if B spots the proxy rax, does A know that he fast expanded? Will A see that he's been spotted and change strategy? If A changes strategy will B react to the new strategy?
Or, later in the game, the hold lurker strategy, the goliaths hanging around the spot that the dropships are passing by, the DT chillin' out at the expo, waiting to strike...
This is a really, really rare thing in spectator sports and it really sets Starcraft apart. Almost every other sport is a sport of potentially perfect knowledge where you can see what your opponent is trying to do and you can immediately set about trying to deal with it. Alternatively, the audience knows less than the people involved. Formations in football (soccer) become apparent in the first couple of minutes and everyone can see everyone else. In boxing, you don't know what moves each has in store... but each of the boxers knows his own strategy so you know less than them. You can only marvel at a brilliant move... after it happens.
So where else do you see this tension where you know more than the people involved? Stud poker features it quite heavily. The audience can see everyone's hole cards so they more or less know what the best play would be in a given situation, but the players don't know what their opponents have so you know more than them. History books that deal with warfare or business competition feature it heavily as well - no surprise, since war is an RTS and business is war. Neither side knew what each other was doing, but you, the reader, with hindsight, see everything and wonder if the players will catch up.
Mark Burnett is one of the masters of this. Reality shows, which are really spectator sports, like Survivor, Amazing Race and Apprentice use it extensively. Think about all the perfect knowledge you have about the strategies used by EVERYONE. Now think about how far producers go to keep contestants from having this knowledge.
Just to give one example, contestants seldom meet in the Amazing Race. They're encouraged to do different challenges so they have no clue how far behind they are. One effect is that this forces the number one team to work like there's no tomorrow, while we know that they're wasting their effort. You'd never see this in a marathon with perfect knowledge - since the leader knows he's the leader, he's going to conserve energy.
Tension in SC stems from a few more factors, of course.
If there was no chance that a good player could turn a losing situation around, it wouldn't matter if we knew he was behind. We wouldn't care because we would already know the outcome.
Or if there is only one strategy that works on this map, the players have perfect knowledge as well - we know they'll both fast expand and they know they'll both fast expand because that's the only thing that makes sense, and having fast expanded they know exactly when each others' units are going to come out and they will counter that and...
Or if strategies in SC didn't take a while to execute, there would be no such tension. Imagine if mutas morphed to guardians much faster than they do now. Not only is there no time to prepare a counter, you lose the long moment of tension when the player is setting up the strategy.
Or think about this - when do we start sweating over a fast DT strategy? When the first DT pops out? When we can see the DT building? When we can see the Templar Archives? No way. It starts from the moment we see the Citadel of Adun. That's a LOT of tension!
SC was quite lucky because it wasn't actually meant to be a spectator sport but managed to get the right ingredients to be one, a bit like how Casablanca turned out to be one of the greatest movies of all time. Hopefully the SC2 team will replicate that success, no just by making a good game, but by making a good spectator sport.
EDIT: Okay, if you haven't watched Prison Break, here's the typical means of building tension in season 1:
Michael Schofield is trying to break out of prison, so every week he has to do something that brings him closer to his goal. These usually involve him leaving his cell through a hole in the wall. Usually, he only has a short time to accomplish what he needs to, like the five minutes between lights out and a check by the guard, or whatever. So the camera shows Michael Schofield leaving his cell and accomplishing what he needs to do. He starts to return to his cell. The camera then cuts to the approaching guard. The camera does not cut back to Michael Schofield, it remains on the guard. The guard reaches his cell and looks in. Now we do not know whether Michael Schofield has made it back to his cell by this time. Michael does, but we don't. Therefore, we know less than the character. Therefore, tension is built.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
As a small aside, would you argue that things like mineral counters, unit counters etc are actually detrimental to the viewing experience?
(great post btw)
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Mineral and unit counters are interesting because they change the sort of tension going on. Before these came about, we could only guess at how many minerals the players had. But was he playing some game of deception where he had a buttload of resources stored up to unleash hell? In effect, we knew less than the players.
When mineral counters came out, we knew more than the players and the tension switched to "we know that this is player A's last push, but does player B know that and will he react accordingly, or will player A show so much strength that player B will be taken in and gg?" (Like Yamshita invading Singapore) I mean, that's an extreme example, but that's basically what happens.
Personally, I think that mineral and unit counters don't really change the tension of SC as it is now, because most of the time, both players more or less know when the other is on his last legs, and so do most experienced viewers. It might help inexperienced viewers, I suppose, though my guess is that they don't know enough about unit costs to understand what the counters mean e.g. he has 5,000 minerals and 3,000 gas left... is that a lot or a little? New viewers can't quite work it out.
It might have a big impact on SC2 if the gameplay was changed, though.
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'Think about Prison Break....'
stopped reading there
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On February 02 2009 17:20 ixion wrote:
'Think about Prison Break....'
stopped reading there
You should've continued. It's a very nice post indeed.
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On February 02 2009 17:20 ixion wrote:
'Think about Prison Break....'
stopped reading there
If it helps, Desperate Housewives does this too.
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Great post, though I haven't seen prison break I know what kind of tension you're talking about, and it's good. I wonder, what of the inexperienced viewer and tension? As people playing starcraft, we know what the citadel of adun means, but they often don't, so what kind of tension would get them hooked to begin with? Would the commentators in fact be a necessary ingredient here to clue them in?
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Very interesting post about observing Starcraft. I suppose it's something we all know but never realize. =)
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On February 02 2009 17:20 ixion wrote:
'Think about Prison Break....'
stopped reading there
I don't like Prison Break either, but, you must ask yourself, how has it been so popular? Clearly they are doing something right. Perhaps the OP has figured it out, and is explaining to you how it is applied in starcraft.
I think the OP makes some very good points, thanks for the perspective on this StoryTeller.
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CA10828 Posts
On February 02 2009 17:20 ixion wrote:
'Think about Prison Break....'
stopped reading there
we don't need posters with an attitude like yours here.
anyway, thanks for the post. good read and i agree with it. although i hate the feeling when i see a toss go DT and T has no clue... T_T
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On February 02 2009 17:51 Osmoses wrote:
Great post, though I haven't seen prison break I know what kind of tension you're talking about, and it's good. I wonder, what of the inexperienced viewer and tension? As people playing starcraft, we know what the citadel of adun means, but they often don't, so what kind of tension would get them hooked to begin with? Would the commentators in fact be a necessary ingredient here to clue them in?
Spot on observation. We all know what a big bad man with an axe in the shower means for our blonde heroine, but the problem with SC, as well as pretty much any spectator sport, is that there's a learning curve. The commentators are really important, as you've pointed out, to talk about what things like the Citadel of Adun mean.
That's why most sports commentators use words like "if" and "is he going to..." a lot.
"He's going for the home run! Can he make it? Can he make it? He's going to make it! No wait... if they can get that ball in time they can stop him... no... no, he's too fast... too good..." I don't even watch baseball but that sounds exciting because the commentator is basically laying out the meaning of all the actions.
From SC, it's common to hear, "He's going for the DT! Can he make it? Can he make it? He's going to make it! No wait... if he can get that turret in time he can stop him... no... no, he's too fast... too good..."
or
"This is XXX's last push! This is it! If YYY can block it it's going to be all over! There's no way he's coming back from that!"
And from WC3, the unfortunate commentator has to try to build tension by saying, "Hero down! XXX has to try to do damage here before the hero comes back! If he can build up a big enough lead he's going to be unstoppable!" And then maybe half an hour later "Finally, the hero is back! Did he do enough damage? It looks pretty bad..."
BUT one thing SC has going for it is that it's very intuitive. In WC3 you can jump up and down about a bear dying, but unless you're from the World Wildlife Fund, the new viewer just cannot grasp the significance of that fact, and honestly, the significance is not going to be apprent until 40 minutes later. There's no obvious connection between the dying bear and losing the match.
On the other hand, in SC, almost anyone, with a bit of prodding from the commentators, can understand that an invisible unit destroying masses of probes is BAD. So once it happens a couple of times, the viewer makes the connection between the commentators jumping up and down, the Citadel of Adun and the probes dying.
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Well, I'd say it's pretty obvious that a dying bear is a disadvantage because your relatively small army (in comparison to starcraft) just got smaller so it's not as obfuscated as you make it sound. A skilled observer might know more about the importance of that very unit and a skilled commentator should be able to explain it to the audience, however I have to admit that those are pretty rare.
The problem in Warcraft 3 is that you don't have to counter anything and practically have no real tech tree, it's a trunk with one or two branches at best. Not only is everyone getting the same multipurpose army in every game but you wouldn't even be able to tell if he's going for a different tech route because the only thing you can see is his main building upgrading. So there's no real point in commentating on that.
In the end there are no real surprises and it all comes down to timing and micro which have their tension as well but are way harder to understand, especially for a casual viewer and I have yet to see a commentator that was able to explain those in a reasonable fashion except for a few guest appearances in commentating by progamers.
As you said Starcraft has the advantage of being more intuitive but also of having quite a lot of commentators who have a pretty good grasp of the game.
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Great read Storyteller!
And about WC3 I think you and ven_ did a really nice job describing why it is so boring to watch/play. The only sort of tension in WC3 is really: "Will the hero die? ...Will it, will it???". No interesting decision making required by either player, making the tension very shallow.
Now I would like a desciption on why I feel so disappointed after watching an episode of Prison Break or 24 Hours, even though there was lots of tension. Or maybe after reading Dan Brown's Angels and Demons...
Any clues from a documentary producer's point of view?
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Damn, this is a great post!
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Good post. For me BW is the greatest spectator sport. I've seen great soccer, rugby and cricket games but the really good ones are few and far between. In general, there's far too much 'downtime' in the games where not much is happening. Starcraft matches are generally far more fast-paced.
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You are a genius Storyteller. What have you said is a very important and difficult thing to understand. I completely agree with you.
Congratulations for the post, you said a revolutionary notion about the game!
gg
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Really good post, but i actually think that for most of the game real tension is around 3 min <-> 12 mins. After it is usually boring macro wars because the players can't cheese anymore and have almost their full tech tree, and have/can scout the whole map without too many problems.
I would like Sc2 to be more interesting after 12 minutes.
Of course there are always few great games which are amazing until the very end but that doesn't happen really often.
Take a look at PvP or PvT.
The only cool and "surprise" after 12 min is recall or storm drops.
Before 12 mins there are all the different build orders ( cheese, macro oriented or standart ). And it is quite funny to see how the terran counters the protoss bo.
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@The Storyteller
I hope blizzard development team read your post.
Many people enjoy FPvods because they want to learn more about how to play starcraft, hence when I watch FPvods with the learning mind set, there isn't nearly as much tension as when I watch Boxer cheesing oov.
your post makes me wonder about fpvods, since it is in first person view, the other player is completely unknown until the fpv shows what's going on. Is there tension being build? if so how could a narrator intensify this tension that's being build? usually in fpvods the commentator talks about that's happening at the moment and what he has planed. and the Comments are done after the game was played. Would comments during the game being play bring out more tension than after the game for the viewers?
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United States12240 Posts
I'm a little confused, maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't really see the point of this post with regards to SC2. SC2's tension factor should be largely unchanged from the original SC, because the dynamics are much the same: there's the same fog of war, the same cloaked units, the same hidden proxies or expansions. These exciting contributors have been preserved, and intentionally so by the design team. It's really such a fundamental design concept, and it doesn't take much to identify these causes as keys to excitement from an observer's perspective. Many of SC2's units and racial features may be more convoluted than SC, and therefore perhaps more confusing to the average viewer, but the underlying feel of the game is maintained for players and spectators alike.
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But like Boblion said, it would be nice if SC2 has even more points of tension, more things to go "OMG!" over in between the inevitable macro wars.
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EPT
