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BS: I feel like
writers are always writing to specific points they're trying to get to. But
whether they create them, or whether it's created in concert with someone else,
it's a different thing. But I think in a way it's better to have this kind of
different scenario that you're talking about because, in that way, at least if
the writer cares, they're involved in creating the game. They don't think, "I'm
going to write my story, and you're going to lay it on top." It's not like
icing; it's like flour. It's part of the cake.
PR: That's a good way of looking at it. Yeah, I know, and I 100%
agree, and I think there's a couple of things that have to change, not only in
terms of how we, as developers commit resources and prioritize story, but also
in terms of how writers make themselves available to work on projects.
Okay, Susan is a great example. She's a contract writer.
She's incredibly prolific. She is in amazing amount of demand. She's an
award-winning writer that everybody wants working on their project. And for
her, she has zero incentive to be a staff writer, because why would she? It's
less lucrative, she gets to work on fewer types of projects, it's much more
restrictive, she doesn't get the freedom to take time off if she wants to and
work on other things. Like, having worked as a freelancer on my own, I know
exactly why she would choose to go down that path.
Speaking as a narrative designer, in my fantasy world, what
I have is a room full of writers that are on full-time. You know what I mean?
And literally, I bring them in at the beginning of the project, and I release
them when we go gold master.
Now, I don't... there's probably no producer on
earth who would be willing to pay for that, outside of maybe the guys at
BioWare, but even then it's because their approach toward story isn't the same
as the approach that I would take. They're really about generating this
encyclopedic quantity of dialog and trees, and kind of allowing the player to
make their way through that. And they make a serious investment in that.
And I think that what we need are the writers that are
willing to start out at the very, very beginning, become very literate in the
game systems, like really procedurally literate, and therefore have a kind of
innate understanding of the types of dialog, and a style of writing, that they
need to be delivering in order for it to work in that pipeline. And I really
think it puts an enormous amount of pressure on writers to be very adaptable
and very flexible in their approach, but I think we're going to start to
generate a generation of writers that have been brought up thinking about it
that way, right?
CR: So one of the
things that I can see as a long-term evolution... when you look at novels,
obviously the person who writes the novel is the complete author, one hundred
percent. You go to films - their screenwriter has a huge impact on the creative
end, but everyone refers to it as the director's film. And that means the
writing is in service of what the director's doing.
It seems like what
you're describing is almost going one step further than that, and saying you've
got the creative director, you've got whatever you have on the game. Games are
different. They're more collaborative than a film, but the idea is the writing
even, again, without being derogatory, takes another step back and becomes even
more embedded into the overall fabric of the end result.
PR: Yeah, I see what you're saying, and my response to that
is it might seem paradoxical, but I believe that the more that writers are
implicated in the on-the-floor production process, the more they become part of
that larger symbiotic sharing of disciplines, and knowledge, and considerations,
and expertise that I think most game developers are familiar with.
I don't happen to buy into the auteur theory of game design.
I just don't believe in it. I think our medium... it's an interactive medium,
and also a medium that demands the input of so many disciplines, and so many
different areas of expertise, I expect that our art director, and our lead
tester, and a junior level animator, and the head of AI programming are going
to have just as much impact on the way the story unfolds in the game as I do. I
really believe that.
And I think that, as writers who are on the floor, who can
walk over and have a conversation with a level designer, and help the level
designer put into context all the challenges and things that they're trying to
put in, all the game play they're trying to integrate into their maps, suddenly
the writer has a much bigger impact than they would if they were like, "Oh
hey, I'm just the guy who works on the story."
I think that by trying to sequester yourself in that kind of
story box, that little, "No, I'll be in my scriptorium working on the
storyline," I think that that is what isolates writers, and tends to kind
of marginalize their input into the game.
I think that writers that are brought
in and function much the way that every other developer in the game production
works, who take an interest in all these others aspects of it, are going to
find that they're contribution becomes that much greater. It just might not
happen in exactly the way they thought it would. You know what I mean? I think
it could be just much more layered. As you say, they could be the flour, as
opposed to the frosting.
BS: Writers are
often, in a way, kind of like the enemy of the team in many contexts, in the
traditional structure, because they're writing something, and somebody's got to
compromise. And so there's conflict there. It's kind of like trying to be the
continuity director in a film, because you're like, "No, but in the last
scene it was like this," and the director's like, "Don't care.
Doesn't matter."
It's good to have
them integrated, because then they are part of the team. They're not the enemy
anymore. And taking your auteur thing to probably an extreme where you didn't
want it to go, but do you then think that BioShock
could have been made without Ken Levine, or Super
Mario Galaxy could have been made without Miyamoto, or whatever?
PR: No. I mean, I don't know. I still think, yeah, there's
always going to be exceptions, and it's hard. At the risk of pointing at
specific... because the problem is like, it's friendly for me to point to those
guys and say, "Well, those guys are exceptional. You can't make Spore without Will Wright." Yeah,
that's the easy, low-hanging fruit. What I don't want to then have to turn
around and do and say is, "Yeah, but look at so-and-so who tried to be an
auteur, and how badly it failed." Right?
BS: See, well, the
thing is, some people are auteurs, and some people aren't. We don't fire people
in this industry, so people can just work their way up and be in charge of a
project, even if they suck.
PR: Yeah, but I think it's a cultural thing, though, within
the developer. I think that people who are accustomed to thinking of what we do
as a subcategory of software development will tend to quickly neutralize
people's ambitions at being the next Steven Spielberg of game development. I
think that they'll say, "Look, dude, that's cool. It's nice to have a
vision. It's good to be ambitious. It's great that you want to be a lead
designer, or a creative director."
But I think Clint put it very, very well. His job is not to
take credit for the parts of the game that are good. His job is to take the
blame for the parts of the game that are bad. Because ultimately he's the guy
that's got to sit there as big strips of the game are being de-scoped, and make
sure that what's left is still true to the vision of the game, and is still
going to feel like that game to the player. Right? He's got to hold that
experience, that model of that experience, in his head. To me that's very
different from an auteur, who's kind of coming in and occasionally
micromanaging every detail as required.
BS: I think we have
different definitions of what an auteur is.
PR: Maybe so, but I also believe that no matter what, it's
still software development. If I'm a film director, just to use that example,
like, if I'm Stanley Kubrick, I can say, "I don't need any fucking
storyboards. I'm going to sit here for eight hours if I have to with my
viewfinder until I find the shot I want.
And then after that? I'm going into my
trailer and retyping the script." And getting twenty takes of my actors,
or whatever. Right? I don't think in game development that's even an option. I
think people have tried to work that way, and I think unless you have unlimited
amounts of money to sort of placate people, I don't think it's possible. I just
don't.
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And I fully - given the number of talks on narrative that were happening - I fully expected to have somebody show up and go, "Hey, look what we did." And totally just render moot everything we've been working on. And it never really happened."
I didn't attend that talk, but I've been working on modular and systemic storytelling since 1995. I taught it for six years at one-day tutorials at GDC beginning in 1997, and continue to present it at conferences today. My book, Character Development and Storytelling in Games, published in 2004, goes into detail on how to create stories in the way Mr. Redding describes.
In the beginning I was told by people who thought stories must be linear and strictly authorial that games and stories didn't mix. Then when I started talking about modular storytelling, I was told it wouldn't work. Then I was told okay, maybe it would work, but it was too hard. Now that I've moved my systemic storytelling to virtual worlds, I'm told that narrative-driven virtual worlds won't work, especially worlds with on-going stories. We're building one now.
And for the past two years at Indiana University I have been teaching the techniques Mr. Redding describes, and other skills, to the next generation of videogame and virtual world storytellers. They get it.
The next step is to convince the majority of game companies that hiring 70% programmers , 30% artists, and 0% writers may not be the best way to build games that transcend, challenge, and inspire.
"The sense that we must push the medium toward a form of interactive narrative that is as strong and vital as the innovations in other areas of gameplay and technology has taken hold with many creators."
I guess my reaction is: "It's about time."
Even with modular storytelling you'll probably get a better experience by letting a group of people drive the creative process, and just acting as a guiding force to this group (creative director?). You might be pleasantly surprised to find that many of the programmers and artists have very good insight into what makes a great game play experience, what constitutes a great story, and in general, what interesting characters are all about.
By the way, I should mention, I'm one of those 70% programmers you mentioned, and yes, I often feel like my creativity is not being put to its full use. :-)
"You might be pleasantly surprised to find that many of the programmers and artists have very good insight into what makes a great game play experience, what constitutes a great story, and in general, what interesting characters are all about."
They'd better be able to do more than have insight. They'd better be able to write, too.
My point was that the practice of creating a game development team composed of 70% programmers and 30% artists guarantees you aren't going to have any dedicated writers around.
I have several friends who are equally good at programming and writing, but it takes more than insight. I have insight into the jobs programmers and artists do on my games, but nobody in their right mind would hire me to code or draw.
I guarantee the actors at the Globe Theatre had insight in all of those things. Only one of them was Shakespeare.
And those aren't my percentages. Those were given publicly at a conference I attended in June by a senior HR person who works for a huge game publisher.
I look forward to playing Far Cry 2 and witnessing the degree to which it drives me to emote. While working on "COH Opposing Fronts" I was able to do some user testing in relation to narrative and it proved very helpful, though in post. I imagine more robust narrative related user-testing during production would be tremendously valuable, to understand just what a particular narrative element, narreme, is conveying to the VUP and how that narreme might be improved to encourage concinnity with the intended metanarrative.
Speaking just as a lowly critic, the way I think of these kinds of games is that they are a series of inter-operating vignettes. Moments or scenes that are created by a writer are activated based on the actions allowed by the game design and given meaning by the art and speech.
In other words, the writer doesn't create events. He creates reactions.
I too echo Stephen Dinehart's remarks that it's nice to hear from a narrative designer in the trenches. It's always a good thing to hear about the work of game writers who "get" games.
As freelancers, Anne Toole and I are lucky that Writers Cabal does get the chance to work with developers at the earliest stages of game development.
If you have a bad day, there are any number of events that could make it a bad day.
You can go through these even in any order and still have a bad day.
You could even have the same dramatic "This is the last straw -- worst day ever" moment regardless of which event happened last.
The theories behind it have essentially already been in a lot of games, but those games have described them in a far more abstract way... Civilization, Total War and X-Com (as mentioned), feel more like emergent, player owned sets of events than guided narrative. Those games have never represented themselves as if they're *trying* to tell a story, and so they aren't landed with the criticisms that most conventional literary figures point at game narrative.
Instead, they create something *new* - a medium unto itself. A player's generated story is not necessarily going to be Dickens every time, sure, but the important fact is, it belongs and responds to them. That creates a completely different relationship with the audience. They're not an unpaid actor in a scripted world anymore. They're being listened to, responded to. While designers still have the "hands off" control through systemic design, the players forge their own path through possibility. I think that that, alone makes it a unique medium worth pursuing. We're growing up as a medium, and realizing that this whole interactive storytelling thing is NOT about self consciously, cow-towingly trying to make a perfect generative Dickens with every play-through, or trying to ape narrative conventions of fixed storytelling in order to justify the endeavor. We're discovering that we're making something brand new - something different from what the movement set out to create.
FPS game productions have typically had to be more focussed on their own core gameplay - the moving and the shooting. So much focus is required just to get those fundamentals right that higher level things suffer. Focus on the higher level things instead, and you get pretty clunky core gameplay (I'm a deus ex fan, obviously, but seriously... its combat is not what you'd call "fun").
Because of this deep focus required, the scope for adding this extra layer of *deep*, granular narrative interactivity on top of an FPS is rare, to say the least. It requires a lot of guts to back, from the money men all the way down to the devs in the trenches. I salute you!
I'm so glad we're over the notion of Branching Plot structures being the be-all and end all of interactive narrative, by the way.