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Hollywood Sound: Part Three Production: Story, Character and Gameplay Emotional Objectives The different types of story and character requirements vary greatly based on the genre of game being created. Linear, story based games are far easier to make cinematic than an open world game, as they are gated, closed world, mission by mission based games. Much of EA's non-sport output, for example, relies on this linear progression in order control the cinematic flow of the story. There is currently a move to a gameplay where both open world and linear story concerns need to be met. In the GTA series of games, we see the co-existence of a two-fold story mode: a linear story which can be picked up at any stage is surrounded by open world gameplay and ancillary missions. There are clearly greater concerns with connecting gameplay with story than there have ever been: a story and its characters must makes sense at all times, the player must be aware of motivations, and also of game objectives. There is certainly a cinematic trick for doing this, and that is to pair both the informational with the emotional. If a game objective must be met the player will be given an emotional, character-driven motivation for doing this. If done well enough, characters and story will be strong enough to give the player an emotional motivation to action. Production Timeline Understanding what needs doing and when is crucial in developing voice content in any game, whether it is a 50,000 line epic or a 1,000 line platformer. Each project will represent a different challenge in terms of dialogue, both structurally and also technically. Platform-specific issues such as RAM and media type will determine the amount and quality (sample rate) of dialogue files the developer will be able to use. Not only this, but the style of game will also have expectations which will more than likely push those limits with each successive project. Generally speaking, an era of greater content and greater interaction is expected to occur with next generation consoles. With game play, story and characters needing to be so closely interlinked, there is evolving the need for a closer link between writer and game designer. It is one thing having a game with no story, and quite a different thing when you have a story but need to design a game around it. But, more often than not, the development cycle of a project places demands on both story and game play. Going back to the model of development first mentioned in Part One of this feature with regards to music (figure 1), we can see how the story and game play development needs occur in parallel:
Adaptation Writing for Interactive Media An area now rapidly expanding is the incorporation of big name writers to provide the story line for video games. What the writers currently provide for games is, of course, based on what they would provide for a film or TV script, with much of their language and direction of the former media still intact. This is comparable to a film-only composer delivering a linear score if they did not first understand the interactive structure of the game. However, being able to understand the game content and to craft a script that satisfies all the ancillary character dialogue, cinematics and gameplay demands of an interactive title is something that perhaps writers for traditional linear forms may not yet be prepared for. In film or TV a screenwriter is usually employed and given the job of adapting the story content into useable and filmable dialogue and stage direction. The 'adaptation writer' for interactive entertainment is a role that quite simply does not yet officially exist. This person would fill in the gap that currently exists between integrating the story and plot into the game design and being able to make changes in both. The person also needs to be able to rework character's dialogue to create lines for them to say that are story and character related. Such typical content would be generic lines that the character says when standing on a street corner, doing nothing in particular, or in a more extreme example, being shot at; these are key areas in games where dialogue often fails, and where it often becomes annoying. Some of the more successful titles in terms of ‘film style' adaptation in dialogue are heavily scripted and linear in that they use dialogue as a scripted ‘game moment'; EA's Lord of the Rings trilogy is one such example. This suggests that it is easier to adapt a pre-existing story into a linear game. However, the challenges involved in creating both a story and an open non-linear world require an extra special writing talent. The adaptation writer would be heavily involved in facilitating the script between the design team, sound director and the storywriter, making sure that the content that is created by the writer fits into any particular game mechanics that have already been defined. They could also find themselves adapting already existent content, from a novel for example, in which a story and characters are already clearly set out, yet creating the in-game dialogue and cinematic assets from that content to fit into exciting and dynamic game content. This is a job that at the moment is being done by a wide group of stakeholders, usually falling onto the designer's or game director's plate. Where these personnel will come from remains to be seen. It could equally be conceived of as a job a designer with a particular penchant for dialogue and writing could rise to and specialize in, and equally it could be a role that a film or television screenwriter could adapt to as a freelancer. What is essential, in wherever they come from, is that they both understand games and have experience with the high caliber of talent and performance expected by Hollywood . Multiple Script Views In Figure 1, the ideal situation, the overall story arch is figured out before production begins, in the first two stages of pre-production and proof of concept. One of the key production tools throughout the whole process is the script. Character dialogue is not adapted for production until the end of the tertiary phase. The actual script will require several different people to be working on, or from, it. This implies that the information should be viewable in several different modes. View 1) story writing mode, which may be a simple linear story with character names and action description; View 2) character mode, which would be a view where each character's dialogue can be viewed and worked on; View 3) VO Production view mode is a printable view of the sheet that allows the dialogue to be read and recorded by an actor. For this they will need to see the context of their cinematic lines (i.e. be able to see the lines other characters say before or after their line, and also any exclusive lines their character has; View 4) A final view mode would be for subtitling and translating of the content into different target languages. A flexible system that allows all these different views and crafts to be easily applied to the same content is essential if the game is to feature large amounts of dialogue. VO Recording Hollywood Style
In terms of actual recording, many film studios now cater for game audio recording sessions as well as film. Typically under used in film, ADR stages are ideally suited to be used as the venue for the production of mammoth amounts of game dialogue content. Game audio is an interesting market to film post-production executives. They see the amount of lines required and the caliber of acting talent involved and they see the revenue. This is another positive move for Hollywood into video game production, as the higher end studios are far more suitable environments to record star voice talent as they already have the high-end client service culture worked out from their work in film. They are also already geographically situated in areas celebrity talent can easily access, such as Soho in London, Burbank and Hollywood in LA. All these things put established film VO companies in the leading edge position for marketing themselves towards ‘Hollywood Game Production.' Performance Capture With the advancement of animation streaming technology and hard disk space on next generation consoles, not only will the sheer amount of voice content increase but so too will the ways in which they are produced. A qualitative production element to consider is the fact that voice-over recording is starting to become entrenched as part of motion capture shoots (and vice versa), and is therefore bringing together the artistic disciplines of both physical visual performance and audio performance. The separate disciplines that were once covered by a dialogue director and a motion capture director will eventually become the remit of one director who will direct both the visual physical performance and the dialogue performance. Whether a ‘director of performance' or a ‘character director', this person must have experience, skill sets and understanding of both fields, technically and aesthetically, and cannot neglect either field at the expense of the other. The key is understanding that the actor's performance is being captured as a whole, both sonically and physically in one session. It is easy to imagine the flip-side to the trend for the removal of star actors with poor speaking voices when sync-sound film arrived: those actors who are not able to physically act in motion capture situations may require a stand-in to do redo physical work. It is safe to say, productions will more than likely favor actors who can do both at once. The voice in video games is entrenched in filmic techniques, aesthetic approaches and production models; however, there will always remain specialization in terms of integrating and conceiving of the content for interactive media. The more the people with the specialist skills can make use of the established talents of Hollywood, the closer the two media will become in terms of ‘production values.' However, in terms of production and implementation itself, the models will always remain distinctly different. It remains to be seen whether this initial relationship with Hollywood will last in the game industry. Provided there is still a strong return in revenue, the sinews will go from strength to strength. The future certainly holds change in both linear and non-linear media production environments; however, one thing is certain: the dominance of the Hollywood mainstream model is set to continue. -- Notes 1) Jet Set Willy (c) 1984 Software Projects Ltd by Mathew Smith ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-info/j/JetSetWilly.txt 2) (C) DURELL SOFTWARE 1985, SABOTEUR by Clive Townsend ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-info/s/Saboteur.txt 3) Richard Abel, Rick Altman (eds) ‘The Sounds of Early Cinema', Indiana University Press, 2001.
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