Another journal

This was originally posted on Patreon in 2018 and I sometimes want to reference stuff from it so I’m back-dating it and posting it here as well.

A bit ago I went to a panel about writing for games. I took a lot of notes, talked enthusiastically about story theory with pals for a bit then forgot all about them until I was cleaning and found them again. “Can’t lose these,” I thought and typed the notes up so I could forget about them with a clear conscience. I kept feeling like I should share them, even though they’re notes and not that clear or comprehensive, but there’re some good game recommendations in there and dang it, I like thinking about game narrative and technique. So here are some notes from the IGDA Epic Game Writers Panel in late August 2018. I’m going to try and consolidate them into whole thoughts the best I can.

The whole thing was super interesting, both because it’s neat to listen to folks discuss theory and mechanics in game writing and because a lot of the audience was TV writers. I hadn’t thought about how I am in Los Angeles and of COURSE, there will be TV writers curious about turning their skills to games. The panel regularly brought up the differences between the process, both generally and through the direct experience of an ex-Telltale writer who was now in a writer’s room.

The quick difference between the two is this: TV is character-driven and games are driven by gameplay, specifically in that it is a non-passive experience. Game writing offers a unique kind of fluidity as a game develops because ideally, the writing grows along with the game, symbiotically, as gameplay and assets are developed.

How gameplay and game mechanics interact with the story

There was some good talk about tools like “robo-voice,” which is what it sounds like and works as a placeholder pre-voice actor so a writer can see if the dialogue they’ve written runs too long or too short for the action or space it needs to slot into during a scene. The overall theme really was balancing story with gameplay, about making the story flow well with what the player can do and using that gameplay structure to create a fleshed-out story.

Of course, if the gameplay sucks then there is only so much story can do. One of the panellists mentioned they’d never thrown a controller in disgust over bad gameplay, only bad storytelling, and boy am I jealous. I’m not an expert gamer and some gameplay is just physically difficult to do. I have definitely given up on games where I ended up stuck at a stage because there was no way I could punch buttons in the right pattern fast enough to get out. Even an amazing story can’t keep me going if I can’t get to the story.

Writers who can work around bad gameplay and explain away glitches and control problems are blessed beings and also probably ones who work well with the whole game team so they’re aware of where the issues are. That’s the neat thing about games. The story you want to tell is fleshed out as assets are built, voice actors are hired, the devs iron out game mechanics, etc.

Manipulating player choices (or lack of choices)

With linear storytelling, it is easier to create a “forced fail” situation that introduces conflict and a chance for character growth. In games, your player wants to succeed (since we don’t play games to lose) so it takes a bit of manipulation. The suggestion put forth was to look at how the arc of a wrestling match plays out. You basically know who is going to win a big wrestling match. The crowd favourite, the one that all that season’s story arcs are pushing towards the title belt, they’ve got to win. But you can’t just have them win, that feels empty. So, there’s a point in the match where they’re at their lowest but the power of the crowd or some magic stone from their valet or an urn of ashes or whatever gives them a second wind and they crawl back up to utterly destroy their opponent. The crowd goes wild, your babyface is the winner and we’ve all had a nice little emotional release. And yes, way too many wrestling promotions actually suck at this, just feeding jobbers into the machine, but when they do it right it is perfect. Whether you take this into a game situation by using that match low point as your forced fail or taking the pattern of match storytelling and flipping it so your player character almost wins but doesn’t is your choice.

How much a player’s choices do or don’t affect the story can be hidden with writing. The more complex a game is, the more each player choice changes actual play variables, the more has to be done in the hidden meat of the game to make all those choices play out. But it’s also frustrating to a player to feel like you’re talking to a void, where nothing you do matters. Games should be a way to escape the things you experience in everyday life.

A compromise is offering a robust dialogue tree that paints the different story rails in enough of a spectrum that the player feels their actions are valuable. Often most scene dialogue is just delivering story or reaction that doesn’t affect narrative. It acts as flavour and can pretend to be or look like it affects story without actually doing so. They also recommended three rails as the right balance of control on the game creator’s part that still allows the player to feel like they have control over the narrative

Ideally, you also do this while saying things as economically as possible. I don’t know if you’ve had the particular experience of having to click through an excess of dialogue windows in a game where that’s not expected (not you, visual novels, soliloquy queens), but It. Is. A. Drag. 

Spicing up the choices

An audience question, or the answer to it, used the phrase “two piles of crap” for when a player has to make a choice between two terrible things. Though the panellists suggested maybe not making your player do that, they also said that hard choices should be deployed near the end of a game. That way, one panellist said, the player is then “crying as you choose [between two piles of crap].”

Making those big choices difficult can be a challenge. Three of the panellists there were ex-Telltale employees and it reminded me of something I’d heard about how Telltale wanted close to a 50/50 split on their choices. That’s an admirable goal and an interesting one to keep in mind when trying to create a story with actual choices and not just a basic hero story with a couple alternate endings tacked on. Difficult choices don’t have to be “two piles of crap” they can be difficult because a player is invested in all aspects of the world you’ve created.

That said, a 90/10 split doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It makes me think of a particular “ones and tens” way of looking at scriptwriting. If folks either SUPER LOVE or TOTALLY HATE the story you’ve made, then you’ve successfully hit an emotional nerve, for better or worse. Taking that into game writing, if you make a choice that 90% of folks take A on and only 10% take B, you can add something fun in for those who chose B or have it create a bigger end effect than one would expect.

One way to increase choice difficulty and create enjoyably difficult decisions is to put the player character’s internal and external needs in conflict to “create a juicy choice space.” At its simplest that’s like, Batman wants to save Catwoman because he loves her but he also needs to do his Batman job, so which thing does he choose? Remembering that also means you’ll write a character who has internal needs.

Some general things about story, etc

If you’re feeling tangled in your story rails, try working back from the endings. It can be a clearer way to see the steps needed to get there.

Keep the large story simple. Simple story, complex characters. Put the narrative complexity into the scenes. The example given was for the new God of War, where the large story is “get up the mountain.” The scenes on the way there held the actual story complexity and character development.

I wasn’t surprised to see that a good thing to have in your game writing portfolio is that you’ve made something. That’s basically the thing any portfolio for any industry wants because it shows you like to make things and have the drive to Make A Thing. They also suggested a solid scene, which makes sense as that will show a lot of skills in a go. But I was surprised to learn that nobody likes writing combat banter? Half-jokingly the panel said putting combat banter in a portfolio is desirable because nobody likes doing it and it’s the hardest part. I know it’s my years of eCom talking but writing dozens of iterations that say the same thing is so enjoyable. I forget not everyone feels the same way.

The moderator finished up the panel by asking everyone for two tips. Somehow I only have eight here, despite there being five panellists, but whatever.

• Depart from genre in the media you consume.
• Develop your voice.
• Scene writing and subtext. Between conflict and tension, favour tension.
• Play games.
• Learn to collab and “yes and.”
• Observe how games are made.
• It’s about serving the game and the team, not you.
• In VR, backstory is not important, and things are keyed of sound and sight.

They also recommended games with something to give narratively:

• God of War (game experience, good voice)
• Inside (take note of feelings)
• Edith Finch
• Uncharted
• Last of Us (Salmon Henry story part especially)
• Star Wars VR: The Void
• Pixel Berry
• Season 1 of Walking Dead
• Wolf Among Us (good flawed character)
• Florence (mobile game)
• Beyond Good and Evil
• Journey
• Treasures of Infocomp

That nobody recommended Fallout: New Vegas or Hatoful Boyfriend made me suspicious, but we all have our individual tastes.

I’m really glad I went, even if I’ve been a laggard on finishing the Twine game I’m working on. I feel like it’s really important to look at and think about other methods of storytelling—like think about game writing even if you are writing short stories, look at how comics tell stories although you’re writing scripts, etc.—and I am 100% the biggest sucker for how well a game can manipulate your emotions with what boils down to a bunch of spreadsheets.