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 Features
Book Excerpt and Review - Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames
 CREATING STORY
The act of story creation is the most important creative task game writers face, as the story simultaneously makes up the bulk of the narrative and arranges all the game elements. The story describes what happens, when it happens, what order it happens in, and what results. As such, the game story needs to be crafted in careful collaboration with the rest of the team and the game designers in particular. It must be built in conjunction with the aims of the design and the vision, in awareness of the limitations of the engine and assets, and with the understanding that it is a game story, not a novel or a movie.
In many ways, creating a game story is about creating opportunities and effects. The opportunities are for gameplay, moments in the story where the player takes heroic control and succeeds in action. The effects are chiefly those experienced by the player: moments of emotional intensity. The story, then, must be created with more than its artistic component in mind. It also needs to serve as a framework for gameplay to be hung upon, and a road map to reward and catharsis. No game writer can afford to lose sight of this.
Story Arc
The story arc is essentially the curve described by the intensity of the action. In story terms, the action rises, growing more and more intense, until the climax, at which point it starts to drop off and the reader gets rewarded with the denouement. In gaming, the challenges, fights, and puzzles get more and more intense until the climax, which is often rendered as a boss fight. After this, the player is rewarded with denouement and, possibly, power ups. Crafting the story arc maps the narrative to the design and the level of challenge to the player contained within.
Pacing
Pacing in a narrative is as much a function of asset as it is of story. A story comprised solely of endless melee quickly grows dull, as does a game built from nothing but endless waves of enemies. Pacing is the art of spreading out the action to appropriate moments, saving it for when the player is ready, and pulling back when the player is likely to have had enough.
In story terms, this means introducing enemies or obstacles when the player is ready for them and not before, and providing revelations and rewards sufficient to keep the player encouraged.
Climax
The climax is the big showdown. Because of their length, videogame stories often have a series of multiple, rising climaxes that culminate in the game’s ultimate challenge. In general terms, everything in the game story needs to lead to this moment, when the player must use everything he has learned through the course of the game in order to triumph.
The onus falls on writers to make climactic scenes worthwhile. The villain (if the narrative calls for such a character) needs to be sufficiently threatening, evil, and villainous that it does indeed feel like the ultimate challenge. The threat must be sufficiently intense in its potential emotional impact to leave little doubt that this is the culmination of the story. In other words, the stakes need to be high enough that the players will feel they have accomplished something by winning—something other than just making it to the end of the game. And, of course, all the narrative threads, and all the clues and hints and revelations must lead naturally to the final encounter.
Often, a game story climax offers few opportunities for actual writing. The player is too busy playing. The trick can be letting the player make the final leap to what must happen, sliding effortlessly into the desired outcome and borne forward on the story’s momentum. The climax should feel like the character has been working relentlessly toward this moment, just as the player has been. Conversely, a game climax that is detached from the story, bringing in a new enemy with no connection to the previous story, can weaken or destroy a game’s effect entirely.
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