**Introduction Lore is the story given to a created world and all of its objects.

It is in almost all cases is one of the biggest draws to a game. No game will succeed if the lore is not present or shoddy. When it comes to developing a story that garners interest, there are always certain boundaries, and boundaries that can be broken. Within the medium of video games, lore plays a vital role to the believability and fullness of the story. In practice, it is one of the most essential pieces to the game's design due to its influence on architecture, morals, and content. **Literature Review long with that lore comes many new terms, either re!purposed for the game's story or created entirely fresh for the game. "his means that a common le#is is present and few terms need to be e#plained before I go any further. "o start, the basics of games and lore will be covered specific to the game $ark %ouls, which will be used as an e#ample for this research. Terms: RPG: $ark %ouls is an &'(, or a &ole!'laying!(ame. n &'( is any game or game system that allows the player or players to have a pivotal role in which they have some say in the game world. "his system gives them key decisions to make such as )$o I save their life for my gain, or sacrifice them for the greater good*+ and other choices. n &'( can also allow a player high levels of control over the personality, physical traits, and statistical traits ,-ombat style, weapon choice, etc... Dark Souls: n &'( made by /rom %oftware that takes place in a fictional medieval setting. It implements its story uni0uely by placing it for the player to find, rather than feeding it to them. AI: game's rtificial Intelligence, or I, handles all logical processes not done by the player.

nything from non!player characters patrolling an area to stock market fluctuations are handled by these I. Naturally, a good I system will be deceptively human, and a bad one can range from too powerful to unbelievably stupid ,%.-ass.. Lore: 1. -hoi, 2. 3uang, . 2effrey, and 4. 1aek discuss in The Development of a Scale for Fantasy

State in Digital Games the objects that go into creating a believable, living fantasy world. 5ore specifically, they give four parts that make up what the game world and its lore should have. "hese four parts are imagination, identification, analogy, and satisfaction. Imagination: 6ssentially, fantasy is used to stimulate a person's mind to create images and ideas that help to make the game and its content more interesting. ny good lore has no obvious failures in the construction of the games plot, history, or story mechanics, and no interesting mysteries easily solvable by anyone, even to the story's characters. $ark %ouls does this well by making the player actually have to find the story, rather than feeding it to them. Instead, they give the player a small bite of information with the linear plot, but all the other information is on the edges of that stories branches and in all the dark corners of the game world. "his creates an interesting pu77le to be solved and a lore that can be read into and formed based on opinion and still be technically right. ccording to this article, it is described as the e#perience of things that just won't happen to you. Identification: "his is summari7ed as a connection to the game world. 8bviously, a story has to connect with its followers. If it does not, the players tend to get left out and put off from the story. lore and game world that includes the players and plays on their likes or dislikes

tends to be more successful than perfect people in a perfect world. 9sually, a story has a character with traits similar to the player. "hrough the course of the story, the character overcomes their faults and triumphs joyfully. "he player feels accomplished as well because they helped the character overcome their fault and in turn overcome their own. Analogy: $escribed by the article as )e#perience related to the real world.+ /or instance, if the country you live in is having tough economic issues, you are more likely to play a game that deals with that than a game about everyone being wealthy. If the game is believable and broken just like the real world is, people are more easily drawn to dealing with those problems than they are dealing with the problems of 'everybody is rich' or 'nobody can die.' nalogy also gives

a sense of immersion, or a feeling of actually being in the game world. $ark %ouls does this by having minimal %creen elements and a fleshed out, logically built societal system and architecture design. /or e#ample, you will never see a modern merican home ne#t to one of the castles in the game, and you also won't see a surge of prosperity and happiness in an abandoned city. "hings appropriate and realistic are always portrayed in order to gain interest:immersion from the player. Satisfaction: While described as )the level of satisfaction being given to environmental factors.+ /or instance, if a given location in a game makes players really happy, then they are satisfied with that area, regardless of their reason. If it is a visually appealing place or otherwise does not matter. What does matter is that the player can continually come to that location and be satisfied with it. If you can get a player hooked and really going at the story or game, then you have gained a fan that will continue to return for at least a measurable chunk of time. Develo ing Lore to !ngage I find that, more often than not, developers like to use story to enhance flavor or add a sort of 'story gimmick' to their game. "he main issue is that the player plays the game for its mechanics, and ignores the story more than anything else. "ake -all of $uty for e#ample. It has very little story lore to go by, e#cept that you are fighting terrorism in a realistic setting. /or some this is enough, and the game's main draw is the game!play mechanics. 3owever, you don't find players immersed into the game world. Instead, you find players talking in the 5eta of the game, working around role!play to get to higher efficiency. 8ther games, such as 1ethesda's %kyrim, focus almost solely on Lore and story. In these cases, players tend to get drawn into the world and try to play it as if they were actually there rather than playing a game. In other rare cases, players create lore and a community e#isting in the lore. $ark %ouls is one of these, although a uni0ue e#ception. $ark %ouls has the lore already placed within the game world, but the player must find and piece it all together. What ends up happening is players come together to create a cohesive tapestry of lore with the pieces left for them. ;. 5oltenbrey's 89"

8/ -3 & -"6& article discusses a game where a fresh, new lore that never e#isted was created. In the original 3alo, several players came together and created a long running series of short episodes that followed a story of their devising, completely running off the rails of what the game's story already had. "he series was a massive hit, gaining thousands of fans and spawning a whole studio of content creation. What is so important about this creation of lore is how it engages the player or players. In -all of $uty, there was no engagement, and the game diffused into skill only combat with no immersion. In %kyrim, the player was fully engaged by lore and e#plored to their hearts content despite simple game mechanics. In 3alo and $ark %ouls, people went out of their way to create an interesting lore for them and others to enjoy. What I find in all these e#amples is the desire to engage in learning new things to increase the level of immersion and satisfaction in the game as a whole. I draw that a game's lore has a higher level of importance than almost any other factor in a game. Pers ectives on Lore "he viewpoint which the player finds themselves on a game falls on the shoulders of their choices. Waelchli describes that a players behavior directly corresponds to their decisions in games and their interaction with it and others through online social connections. In a game where the community is high above the game lore, a player's behavior only affects their score< but if a player can develop lore by making decisions, then their behavior can also influence the lore of a game. /or e#ample, a player who takes things slow and waits things out decides to let a dragon live so that he can sneak by unharmed may have a lasting impact on the story, whereas a player who seeks only challenge takes on the dragon and sends the game in another direction. 8f course, this only works with games that have a well designed lore. "here is one issue that cannot be easily dealt with, and that is a player who fears failure. game's lore can only be e#perienced if it is sought, with that e#perience will come failure. t times, It is a key part of the lore's construction. %ome players may try to find ways to get around finding the

lore, or even find a way to accomplish something without doing any work. "hese players are known as self validators ,-. 3eeter, 1. 5agerko, 1. 5edler, 2. /it7gerald.. %elf =alidators hate challenge and risk, so any kind of game can turn them away, and a story that has good lore that must be sought out can pose a challenge they do not want to take. Instead, they choose to research and e#perience the lore through someone else's e#periences. "his negatively impacts a player's view on the lore because they do not have the proper identification and immersion to accompany their knowledge. 5uch is lost in this situation and even the best story can fall apart at the seams. 8ne tool that circumvents the natural tendency is rtificial Intelligence. It can be used to help control the player's actions by providing barriers and rules of various kinds, but it is most effective at preserving lore. I that fits a games lore takes a lot of work to pull off. /irst, the I must follow the conventions of the game world and lore. If no one goes to the dungeon, the I doesn't go even if the player is in there. If the guards are overly cautious, then they will check every sound they here instead of drinking a beer. %o long as the I looks and acts like someone would in that situation, immersion is intact and the lore is strengthened to a greater degree. Information can be carved from in game characters in this way. /or e#ample, if one of the main characters prays to a god of luck, then we have learned that religion is taken seriously and that there is a god of luck. We can use this information to further engage ourselves in the lore and to develop it further based on other information. Time and Lore /or many, a long and detailed history tends to be favorable over a short one. I believe this is because of the level of detail and scope it gives to the lore and the player's purpose. In a game, the longer you have to do things or the longer you last in a game session has a massive impact on the player footprint on lore,2. >agal, 5. 5ateas.. /or e#ample, in -ivili7ation, a strategy game, sessions can last as long as several millennium, but only a few hours in real life. "he decisions you make in that scenario have a greater gravity than a game like nimal -rossing, which runs on real time. 1oth decisions may be e0ually important to the progress of either game, but the effect the decision has on the

player and his understanding of the game world and lore are drastically different. In -ivili7ation, researching nuclear technology for ?@ years has a certain mood to it that makes it distinctly important. In nimal -rossing, buying a shovel has the same affect on game speed and advancement, but feels much more small in comparison.

**!ntering t"e #onversation Lore is such a pivotal factor in games that it 0uickly becomes a tool for various ends. "hat end ends up being marketing most of the time. "his is an issue that causes the 0uality of the lore and its concreteness in favor of shallow, unrealistic characters and ideas. "hese games tend to have a short lifespan and do not have a large following after AB months. -ompanies make cash grabs with these games until they are forgotten, then refresh the game by making a similar se0uel. It is a very vicious cycle that dominates the game industry and it hurts both players and developers ten years down the road. When a game is developed with a lore that surpasses all the re0uirements of good lore, the game almost always is seen alive and well several years later and is considered something similar to literature if video games had such a category. 'ayout in the long term is always higher, as fans dedicate themselves to a series that continues to fulfill them and meet their e#pectations. %o while it makes sense that companies should want to create a 0uality lore for their games in order to have a greater foothold in the market, companies still treat the market with a 'cash!cow' perspective and create templates on which multiple games are created, hurting their sales down the road as people reali7e how cookie cutter everything is. 8ne of the most successful ways of doing any sort of story work, is to leave it open to interpretation. "his makes it easy for both the developer and the player to get what they want. "he developer does not have to spend countless hours e#plaining why something happens rather than focusing on more pressing issues, and the player gets to use that imagination they love so very much.

/or e#ample, during my observations, I made a few conclusions here and there based mostly on opinion and little bits of information scattered about. I concluded that 8swald of -arim, a Non!'layer character who acts as a forgiveness mechanic, must be either superhuman or in divine favor. 5y reasoning behind it was the fact that he could make people who wanted to kill you suddenly not want to kill you, and various other actions such as keeping a self updating book of the guilty, which acts as a multiplayer mechanic. 3owever, other people may disagree. 1oth =aati=idya and 6picName1ro, popular youtube content publishers who speciali7e in $ark %ouls lore and gameplay, have differing and constantly changing views on this matter, ranging from ordinary cra7y person all the way to divine cra7y person. better e#ample would be a controversial character called %olaire. 3e is the leader of the warriors of sunlight, a multiplayer group dedicated to helpful, cooperative gameplay rather than 'v'. %olaire is very powerful in comparison to many other N'-s and has a main goal of becoming )like the sun.+ 1asically, some believe he may be the lost son to (wyn, the main villian, the game talks about occasionally. I believe he is just cra7y and has no divine powers period, despite the evidence. 8thers tend to float between yes and no depending on their most recent finds and opinions. What really matters here is that the lore is diverse and it sparks both a discussion, and a search for the truth. "he players are on their own with no input from the developers, as this is what they intended. "his kind of lore development brings a whole lot to the table is it literally turns the whole story development process on its head and outsources the player to create it for themselves. 8f course, there is always a danger to going too far. If the objective of the game is so far out of reach, and every obstacle is a mountain to climb, it does not matter how well done the lore is, nobody will look for it if they focus solely on surviving the game. . (unraj, % &ui7, . 4ork say that a game's purpose is to be anti!oppressive, enabling the player to engage the game in a way that gives them control in a positive light. "oo many people create games where you can abuse certain objects, such as social structures, political playing fields, and other players just for fun. When a player does such

actions, it causes them to distance themselves from the world they are playing in, thinking they are like a god which breaks the immersion. When interacting with other players, it can cause even more separation and can even turn someone off from a game completely. "his causes the appreciation of the game to drop considerably and it reception to become tarnished. %imply put, lore and gameplay should be balanced to a point where the player looks for the lore, but also focuses on the game. **So $"at% No matter how you look at it, lore becomes incredibly important to a games 0uality and longevity. 'layers benefit from 0uality lore by being able to fairly use their imagination to create the lore on their own with the assistance of clues in the e#isting game. It makes perfect sense that lore of this caliber is something all games should aim for because of the amount of payout it gives them over an e#tended period of time. If anyone wants the game industry to continue succeeding or wants to continue to have interesting stories in video games, then they need to vote with their wallet and push developers to start implementing some process of their choosing the yields lore that is both interesting and cohesive without revealing too much.

Works -ited '. >ackariasson, 5. Walfis7, ". L. Wilson ,B@@C, pril A.. Management of Creativity in Video Game Development: A Case Study D8nline rticleE vailableF httpF::eds.b.ebscohost.com:ehost:pdfviewer:pdfviewer*sidGd@AHda?f!adIH!HA@e!Icfc! JAfaKBfb?d??LH@sessionmgrAA@MvidGBMhidGA@? '. Waelchli ,B@A@, 8ctober A. Playing ith Process: Video Game Choice as a Model of !ehavior D8nline rticleE vailableF httpF::eds.b.ebscohost.com:ehost:pdfviewer:pdfviewer* sidG?cc@AIBJ!fe?N!H?Ha!afJb!dbKKAeIAJAICLH@sessionmgrAA?MvidGBMhidGA@? ;. 5oltenbrey ,B@@?, Nov. A. "#T "F C$A%ACT&% D8nline rticleE vailableF httpF::eds.b.ebscohost.com:ehost:pdfviewer:pdfviewer*sidGebNNCbJf!?Iae!HfJd!Ice?! bBABbJNbNbC?LH@sessionmgrAABMvidGBMhidGA@? %. -ass ,B@@B. Mind Games D8nline rticleE vailableF httpF::ieee#plore.ieee.org:stamp:stamp.jsp* tpGMarnumberGA@IIHHH -. 3eeter, 1. 5agerko, 1. 5edler, 2. /it7gerald ,B@AA, 5ay NA. Game Design and the Challenge' Avoiding( Self'validator Player Type D8nlineE vailableF httpF::gel.msu.edu:carrie:publications:2anBH! %elf!=alidator.pdf 1. -hoi, 2. 3uang, . 2effrey, 4. 1aek ,B@AN, 5ay A. Development of a scale for fantasy state in digital games D8nline rticleE vailableF httpF::scholarworks.boisestate.edu:edtechOfacpubs:KN: 2. >agal, 5. 5ateas ,B@A@, ugust A?. Time in Video Games: A Survey and Anaysis D8nline rticleE vailableF httpF::sag.sagepub.com:content:early:B@A@:@K:BK:A@HCIKIAA@NK??JH 6picName1ro ,B@AB P 'resent. $ark %ouls Lore DInternet =ideo %eriesE vailableF httpF::www.youtube.com:playlist*listG'LHIB?$1 AJI616J1J =aati=idya ,-irca B@AN. $ark %ouls Lore DInternet =ideo %eriesE vailableF httpF::www.youtube.com:playlist*listG'LWLedd@>wNc?&-Qbo9s'w3s>2lQ1B-7-7 . (unraj, % &ui7, . 4ork ,B@A@, $ecember NA. Designing Games for &thics: Models( Techni)ues and Frame or*s chapter AC Po er to the People: Anti'"ppresive Game Design DE vailableF httpF::www.metrac.org:resources:downloads:power.to.the.people.chapter.pdf