 |
|
|
| |
When Designers Have Story Problems
by Jeff Spock on 09/21/09 10:31:00 am
|
|
| |
|
Posted 09/21/09 10:31:00 am
|
| |
I attended a great panel at the Austin GDC where Chris Avellone and
Christian Allen (designers) discussed game writing and game design with
Andy Walsh and Rhianna Pratchett (writers). It was a good debate with a
few barbs on either side, presenting the problems that games developers
have dealing with game writers.
However, at one point, I got
really annoyed. One of the designers made a comment about the problems
they have when the action has to stop so that "the writer's" story can
be told at a specific point in the game.
Why was I annoyed? Because
either: 1) Your game needs a story, or 2) It does not. If you are in
the former situation for whatever reason (the market wants it, the IP
has always done it, the producer insists on it, etc.), your job is
pretty simple as a designer: Work the story into the game design.
So,
let's look at the moment where, in the middle of some exciting
gameplay, the designer feels that they are being made to stop the fun
part to advance the story (Mary de Marle did a great presentation about
this as well at the Austin GDC). Here is why I don't see this as
'writefail:'
1. It is unlikely that the writer suddenly walked
in the door, handed the designer a story outline, and said "Change your
level design because at this point in the action we have to have a
cutscene." What is more likely is that the story documents have been
laying around for weeks or months, either halfheartedly skimmed or
largely ignored by the design team. In effect, the writer might be
saying: "Remember this?"
2. It is equally possible, if designers
find themselves in this situation, that the story is something that has
been tacked on late in the development process. Not, shall we say,
'best practice.'
3. Story, if done well (and I assume we all
want to do things well), is pervasive in a game. The environment, the
audio effects, the character designs, the dialog, the level design, the
tools or weapons, everything is part of the story. The story is
not text and cutscenes; it is atmosphere and NPC actions and quests and
marketing and everything else. A designer must know what the story is
supposed to be doing in their game, because the story should be everywhere in their game.
4.
Also, like the rest of game development, story is collaborative.
Writers understand that changes in level design will require story
changes; no one expects things to be otherwise. However this cuts both
ways; the level design may have to change to accommodate the narrative.
Admittedly it is rare, as on a per-hour basis writing is cheaper to
change than level design, and it should only happen early in the design
process. But it can, has, and will happen.
5. Last but not least, the story is not the writer's story; it is part of the game design. It is the team's
story. If there is a sense that the story is some foreign entity
infecting the rest of the design process, the whole project has a
problem.
The simple fact is that level design and game design
cannot be done in a vacuum. Just as the designer's work dictates other
parts of the game, there are other parts of the game--like the
story--that influence what the designer's limits may be.
It
should never happen that story elements parachute down to take the
designers by surprise and force them to change their design and their gameplay and generally make their life miserable. That's not 'writefail,'
that's 'gamedevelopmentfail.'
|
| |
|
|
