Marketing

When presenting content to game marketers, be sure to convey only that information which they require. They may be interested in the core outline of your story, and in the major characters. A twenty-page document outlining the plot and characters in great detail may create additional work for them.

One approach that has served me well is the inverted pyramid of journalism. If you read the first couple of paragraphs in a newspaper article, you've got the basic facts of the story. Subsequent paragraphs add more explanation and detail, but the first lines will tell you what you need to know. This format works well when presenting content to the marketing team. A terse, fact-driven synopsis, followed by a longer document that explains the story content, will deliver all appropriate content to the marketing team in a way that's easy to read and understand.

It's also important to separate types of information. For example, some information is necessary to contextualize the game's action. This data appears on the back of the box, or in magazine articles. Lead a team of fierce adventurers into the land of the Orcs. Drive, fly, and shoot your way through a modern battlefield. And so on.

But if there's privileged information, such as spoilers, it's imperative that you label them as such. If the design documents are haphazardly furnished to the marketing department, and they're left to pick and choose which elements to emphasize in the ad campaign, the developers might not be satisfied with the decisions that are made. For instance, I know of a company whose developers were furious to learn that the marketing team had spoiled the surprise ending of their game in the marketing copy on the back of the box. But why was the information presented to the marketing team? Was it labeled as a shock ending? Did the story synopsis simply present the identity of the game's villain as a fact, or was it presented as something that was better left for the player to discover while playing?

"If there's privileged information, such as spoilers,
it's imperative that you label them as such."

Production

When presenting story content to your producer, first determine the producer's needs. Are you writing a document that's intended to motivate the team, and to contextualize the game's content for them? Or are you putting together a list of characters and locations that will be used to determine the number of artists needed to create assets for the game?

A story document intended to inform the team of your game's storyline can help get everyone on the same page, but that's only if everyone reads the documents. While working on a game a couple of years ago, I printed up a series of mission summaries for each of the levels. The summaries included the characters featured in the mission, the location, the major events, and the significance of the action in terms of the storyline. Character artists, level designers, and other developers noted that up until that point, they hadn't really been sure what the game was about. This proved to be a useful tool for inspiring the team.

But if your task is to furnish content whose focus is the determination of necessary budget and manpower, you may want to present your story documents as a series of spreadsheets indicating general locations (Swamp of Dread, Caverns of Despair) as well as specific mission areas (Lord Krygul's Palace, Lair of the Green Dragon). A similar document citing character models that will need to be created will also be useful.

Conclusion

The recurring theme in this article has been the notion of delivering content to the audience in the format that is most desirable for the reader. In this case, the craft of the writer is in great part the ability to determine what the audience needs, and to calculate how best to furnish that data.

In the next installment of Screen/Play, we're going to take a look at the process of scripted cinematics, and some of the pitfalls of this particular story delivery method. Until next time, good luck.