The Dragon's Talon

Herein, I will go off on one about writing in a stream-of-consciousness oupouring.  Feel free to tune out, I won’t be offended.  Or hitch a ride in my fevered imagination and thought-processes…

(continue reading…)

This is something I wrote about a month ago as an example of an interactive script.  It is not great, but it was done in one night and I am quite happy with the female protagonist.  The prompt was “realistic, maybe slightly gritty” and I think I am quite happy, considering this is outside my normal style.

(continue reading…)

This is a response to a blog post on Gamasutra by a man named Steve Mallory, a designer I know through the ‘net who makes some good points about narrative design; read the original post here…

True authorial control… Now there is a scary phrase to use in front of your producer…

True authorial control is taking your player and asking them what they want to do today, rather than telling them what they are allowed to do.  Is that wise? (continue reading…)

As a bard, one single tale can be made to fit a wide variety of different uses. Certain elements can be built up or glossed over depending on your audience and the message that you are trying to convey.

This goes beyond stories having multiple interpretations and actually hinges on changing the story to suit your purpose; you reduce a tale to its skeleton and then flesh it out in such a way that it conforms to your vision.

As a writer, it is typical to build the story to meet the structure of the medium and suit your own strengths, but the story is fixed in both of these cases, with the same events being told in the same way. As a games designer, you can often drop in multiple endings or optional side-quests, but you are essentially just writing static chapters which you can swap in and out.

This is a far cry from a bardic tale, where the same story can be told a hundred ways to reinforce a hundred different moral truths or to better suit your audience. The tale of Romeo and Juliet, for instance, could be told as a bawdy commentary on the rashness of youthful love or a sombre account of how true love requires great sacrifice. Alternatively, you could go with Shakespeare’s version and put it all in.

The point is that a game requires that the developers make a single choice from the list and stick to it, but is this the only way? Can we not give the player a choice of tales and let them pick one? Since games are so interactive, why not let them change their minds as the game progresses?

As long as Verona looks the same way and Romeo does not suddenly change gender or species, we are not looking at any new art-assets. The dialogue might be problematic, but only if you decide to give the whole game VO.

Perhaps the trick is not to shoehorn this adaptive narrative into a game, but to create the game and the games story around it. Minimise or even remove dialogue and you suddenly remove a large stumbling block. Without any dialogue, it suddenly gets easier to localise too. The onus is suddenly on the writer and the narrative designer, rather than the artists. The central narrative, the skeleton if you will, is just a series of narrative checkpoints, with the player taking an equal role to the writer in choosing their path.

It sounds a little complicated, but does it sound that new?

No… The more I think about it, the more I see that it has already started. Left 4 Dead was the first step in this direction and suddenly I get the feeling that it will not be the last…

If you read this blog, you probably know me and what I do for a living.  For the last three years, I have been working on computer games, working my way up from a level designer to a mighty designer and then even specialising somewhat into Narrative Design.

I make games, I live that dream.  I even do some writing, so I must be doubly-blessed.  I have had the chance to pass on my knowledge of games and writing to students and even to other industry professionals as an expert in my field apparently.  What have I to complain about?  I even draw a wage, so I have a constant income and a secure future; my manager even mentioned that my job was more secure than his, since a games company can live without middle-management more easily than without designers.  The benefits are great too, with company sponsored paint-balling and karting, activity adventures and even paid sick leave if you happen to do something stupid like break your coccyx falling down the stairs.

(continue reading…)

Recently, I was lucky enough to win a Google Wave invitation through a contest aimed at getting Dungeon Masters running D&D 4e games over Google Wave, pitching a game called ‘The Breath of Heroes’.  The idea is not a new one, I had already seen an article on Gameplaywright called Playing on a Wave about using Google Wave for games using the Gumshoe system, but I always find that I can get my head around things more easily by getting hands-on with them; I suspect it is a result of my engineering degree.

One of my other ideas about the Wave system was that games companies end up with a fair number of living ‘bible’ documents (story bibles, art bibles, game bibles, style guides, the GDD)  and the collaborative real-time nature of Google Wave, together with the playback option, might make it easier for teams to work concurrently on these documents without endlessly stepping on each other’s toes.  After the acclimatisation phase, which would probably be about as damaging to productivity as the day Microsoft added solitaire to Windows, I wondered if it might usher in a new era of interactive working.

Well, I have been experimenting for a few days and I have to say that I am optimistic, but still unsure of the whole thing.  I have been toying with it in short bursts, having injured myself during the week, but I can see some potential there.  In the coming weeks, I hope to gain more insight and report on my successes and failures.  Until then, back on the painkillers.

For those of you on Wave, I am available at elaquine@googlewave.com and open to any advice or tips you may have.

Join me next time for Part 2

In recent years, I have noticed certain disturbing trends in the industry, the worst of which has to be the death of finesse.  In an age where time is money, it almost seems that the English language itself has become a casualty of ‘efficiency’ and has been supplanted by txtspk and just plain bad spelling.

Unfortunately, this seems to have been accepted as a fact of life, with even lead designers and producers tossing out barely-legible memos via email on the basis that ‘people know what I mean’ and woe betide the grammar-nazi who corrects them.  The trouble is that this same ‘it will do’ attitude leads to a laissez-faire attitude to communications with publishers and clients, which drags down the public image of the company.  I am not even referring to one small set of companies; I recently saw a full-page advertisement in an industry publication by a major UK PR company who managed to include any number of misspellings, Americanisms and bad grammar.  What does this mean for the industry, if even PR companies don’t proof-read before going to print?

To head off the inevitable, I will admit that the world is not going to stop turning if someone mixes up the words ‘stationary’ and ‘stationery’.  When you get an email that asks you to “please see my Note’s bellow”, most of us will just roll our eyes at the three glaring mistakes, while a few might sigh at the two less obvious mistakes.  The problem is that these are not the mistakes of ill-educated, but of those who take no pride in their English skills.  It has been said (and argued with at length) that a game designer’s most important skill is communication, something I would emphasise to all design students, but I can count on one hand the number of designers and former designers whose spelling does not make me flinch.

We have lost our love of words, we make do and move on.  Perhaps this is a sign of the times, leaving me as a solitary Narrative Designer trying to hold back the tide like Cnut sitting on the beach, but I think there is still time.  Games are not art (yet) and so maybe time is money, spell-checkers are too slow and I am a relic of a bygone age.

When all is said and done though, I would like to think not.

Update: As though I needed to sound any more cynical, I just got an email from a primary school teacher that looked like it was written by one of his pupils.  At least we can see where the trouble starts, if even our teachers fail at basic grammar and spelling.

Last week, my manager approached the design team about a game on a very short time-scale, asking what we needed.  Considering the story requirements, I said that we needed a narrative designer and a whole lot of creative freedom.  Then I put myself forward for the narrative designer role.

I expected a fight, maybe even a refusal.  I didn’t expect to be given the job… (continue reading…)