Spinning a great yarn: Webby winning developers on creating captivating narratives

Jam City, the hit-making creator of original games such as Cookie Jam and Panda Pop, as well as global franchises including Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, DC Heroes & Villains and Disney Emoji Blast, sponsors the hugely popular PocketGamer.biz Soft Launch column.

The Pocketgamer.biz team sits down with Stephen Guerrieri, lead narrative designer for Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery at Jam City to find out how the studio uses narrative to create enduring and engaging experiences for players which ‘delight and endure’.

PocketGamer.biz: What are the key components you take into consideration when developing a narrative for a mobile game?
 
Stephen Guerrieri: The great thing about storytelling is that it’s universal, regardless of the medium. And the best storytellers can captivate an audience whether they’re using a pen and paper or a massive Hollywood film budget. We just happen to be telling a large canvas story through mobile.

Sure, we must be more economical – fast-paced plotting, tighter dialogue – but in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, the narrative is the star of the show. We have to tell a compelling story to hold the player’s attention on a small screen, so for us, it’s important to do two things really well: One – understand why players love the world of Harry Potter, and Two – honour that love by giving them a story that feels familiar and authentic, but also breaks new ground.
 
We do that by creating a strong, diverse cast of original characters and crafting an exciting core mystery to hang the story on. These characters and stories need to feel right at home at Hogwarts because they share the screen with famous canon characters like Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape.

If there’s any hint of inauthenticity – Dumbledore doesn’t sound like Dumbledore or one of our new characters feels like he belongs in a completely different franchise, players will sense it and tune out. In a way, it’s high-stakes storytelling, because the only way the game succeeds is if the players connect to the characters and the story.
 
Also, lots and lots of cliffhangers!
 
How do you best involve players in the storytelling process for long-term retention?
 
We do everything we can to make the players an active participant in the journey. The story of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery revolves around the main character, and that main character is created by the player.

We have a specific story we want all players to experience, but it’s important to give everyone interesting choices and call back to them as often as we can to make it feel unique to the individual player. Everyone playing gets an ice cream sundae, but each person gets to choose their own toppings.

Keeping with the food theme, we also provide them with a buffet of constantly updated storytelling options, allowing players to choose which adventures to take their main character on.

The calendar of releases is robust, giving them the option of special monthly quests, carnivals, creature quests, and so much more that unlock not only new stories to experience but rewards and outfits so players can customise their character to their liking.

When working with beloved brands, how do you approach bringing to life the background or history of the characters within a mobile game’s universe? And the brand itself?
 
The wonderful thing about working with a franchise like Harry Potter is that even though we’re playing in an existing sandbox – fully realised through seven books and eleven movies in the original series – it’s our job to dig deeper to create a new experience within a world everyone loves.

Brand awareness gets people in the door – look, it’s Hogwarts! Hagrid! Harry! – but relying on brand awareness isn’t a sustainable storytelling device. We have the privilege of telling stories in a corner of the sandbox that’s never been explored before – Life Beyond Hogwarts. W

e’ve invented an entirely new career, lovable characters, and environments across the globe for players to discover, and we strive for those new elements to be just as good as every other Harry Potter touchpoint. It’s a lofty goal, but this team has created something we love and are passionate about, and we’re proud to share it with Harry Potter fans.
 
As far as bringing the world to life, our narrative designers are not only outrageously talented, they also happen to be Harry Potter fans. As mentioned earlier, we need to understand why players love this world; that’s a lot easier to do when we love the world, too.

But we also do extensive research to make sure we don’t betray canon. And since the game has now crossed into Harry’s time at Hogwarts, we need to know what’s happening in his story at every turn and fold that into the player’s journey in a meaningful way.

For instance, in volume two, players will get to see Harry, Hermione, and Ron visit Gilderoy Lockhart at Flourish and Blotts, as well as Harry’s infamous Quidditch match where a rogue Bludger breaks his arm – but in our game, those moments are backdrops to the story playing out for our main character.
 
What are the best ways to align storytelling elements with game mechanics?
 
In Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, the gameplay elements all lead to story reveals. The way you play a scene, you tap through dialogue, then you’re met with a project or interactive event that, when completed, reveals the rest of the scene, further advancing the plot. The gameplay doesn’t get in the way of the storytelling; it unlocks it, making the player an active participant in revealing new information.

Main Quest chapters release in a cluster of scenes at a time, and we structure each chapter to end on the most thrilling, mysterious, surprising, or shocking moment, so as a player, you NEED to find out what happens next.

In that regard, it’s a lot like traditional television models, where episodes aired weekly, and you spend the next several days speculating and building anticipation before getting the payoff. Then again, if you’re new to the game and catching up, you can blast through the story like binge-watching on a streaming service. 
 
Speaking of, we understand that people have an endless number of options when it comes to entertainment and every time they choose to play Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, it’s an honour for us to entertain them and provide a bit of escape.

You recently won a Webby for the groundbreaking content of Beyond Hogwarts. How do you follow that up?
 
Winning a Webby was only the beginning! The game’s track record has allowed us the freedom to explore a lot of places and characters in the wizarding world that have been hinted at, but never seen, and we have more than a few shocking twists planned for players in their own journey.

Our Beyond Hogwarts story is already mapped out through the next several volumes. I can tell you with certainty, what we have in store beyond Hogwarts in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is EPIC. You won’t want to miss it!

Thanks to Jam City for sponsoring the Pocketgamer.biz Soft Launch column, bringing the latest new mobile games to players worldside.