Blog - On Zombies in Games
Wednesday, October 1, 2008It's somewhat of an unofficial rule in SCAD's game development major to not make games based off of topics that... well, game development students typically use.
This includes zombies and ninjas and that sort of thing.
The reason behind this is that when you invest all that time in, say, your zombie shooter game... you are then competing with hundreds of other generic zombie shooters just like yours.
I'll agree with that.
But one problem with, say, a zombie game is that shooting zombies is probably the least interesting part of the genre of George Romero brand zombie-lore.
On the surface level zombie films are violence and gore, but it's not a very good surface level.
Based on my love of the post-apocalyptic genre, someone recommended to me the comic/graphic novel series The Walking Dead.
The friend knew just the way to sell it to me, and the introduction by the author at the beginning of book one confirmed that the series was at least attempting to be exactly what I wanted.
I unfortunately leant my copy to a friend, so I can't quote it verbatim, but basically the author described just what I said above about how zombie movies aren't about the violence and gore. Like all horror genres, they're about something deeper. They're about our very psyche.
An afterward in book two covered a few great points on how zombies represent our fear of death. They are literally death personified, death in people-form. The metaphor is not just in their visual appearance, but in behavior: they are slow, and you can easily outrun them... but not forever, and you cannot hide from them for long. The classic George Romero zombie always gets you eventually. No matter how well protected you think you have made yourself, they will overpower your defenses, break through and you too join the ranks of the dead. They are the personification of our knowledge that we will inevitably die. Great stuff.
It also added, however, that they're compelling because they're so inept that it gives us hope of escaping our fate nevertheless. Anyone and everyone can easily outrun, hide from, or defeat a zombie or two. They're slow, dumb, weak, and can be defeated with just about anything you can get your hands on. But yet, they will never stop coming for you and that is why they're terrifying.
The forward of book one continued though, saying that more than that, the best zombie films hold up the mirror and show that we (humankind) is the monster. Admittedly that is not the most mind-blowingly original revelation and zombie stories not alone in using it, but there you are. The post-apocalyptic nature of much contemporary zombie-lore reflects this man-as-monster idea all the more. In post-apocalyptic worlds, desperation and lawlessness leads men to do awful, monstrous things.
I posted earlier my interest in designing games where the primary motivations are based around fear and the desire to just survive. Post-apocalyptic fare works beautifully for that.
In The Walking Dead the undead mainly serve as only a catalyst to make sure the main characters are never comfortable. They're always around to be that much-needed conflict that drives narrative. But the narrative is about the living, not the dead.
Therein, I think, is a major failing of many zombie-based games, particularly amateur student ones. Being games, an active medium, they go too much for the action. In the heat of the graphics war, they go for splatter. Both elements are the superficial gloss over something much more fascinating. We get the frosting without the cake.
Instead, a game that took some of the principals the author used to craft The Walking Dead, if done right, could be really amazing.
A game that lets you safely explore moments where you must decide exactly who and what you're willing to risk in order to save yourself and people you love.
Even if it's not the happiest fantasy, there'd still be a great power-fantasy to be had in playing someone like The Walking Dead's protagonist, Rick Grimes, acting as the tribe leader of a small band of survivors and trying to figure out how to keep your people alive the longest. In general I find myself drawn to the negative fantasy of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. A friend of mine once said heist movies make you associate with the protagonist so you can feel deviously clever as though it was you who pulled the heist. For me, post-apocalyptic fiction is the same. I really love thinking about how cleverly I could scrape together resources to live as one of the cowboys of the new lawless land. You will never fully understand exactly how many such thoughts I have to suppress when I'm near canned food or other useful supplies. ;)
And now I'm further fueling this interest/passion brewing inside my head by reading World War Z, thanks to my former design partner David McDonough's review of it.
So, one of my side projects this year is a zombie game. I'm just hoping I can make one that defies the SCAD "no zombies" policy and make one that stands out ahead of the rest. After all, it won't be a "zombie-shooter"...
Labels: survival, writing, zombies
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 11:11 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Celtx/Writer's SIG Partnership = Game Writing Tools!
Thursday, August 21, 2008Nice!
The IGDA Writer's SIG now has a partnership with Celtx, maker of software for all kinds of writing projects.
That means a game writing tool is in the works, ladies and gentlemen!
I'm taking a look at Celtx's software so far, and I am impressed. Their program already has templates for writing in nearly every other medium you could imagine. It will be great to see game writing take its place next to them. I've already well learned the power of having good tools in development, so I'm glad to see tools being specifically created for game writing. Of course, it will also be quite handy having a universal writing tool for anything I'd want to write.
I see this especially beneficial for students like myself. Writing for games is a bit scary at first because generally when you're a student you don't get to see the kind of docs you need to write as samples. It's a bit intimidating to be asked to write something you've never actually seen before. So having a tool that not only provides samples (one of the Writer's SIG's other current operations is collecting a database of game writing samples for students, which would work well in collaboration with this collaboration with Celtx) but also helps guide the development of such docs.
I'm terribly excited by this, if you couldn't tell.
It's like two geeky loves of mine coming together at last: game writing and game tools. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 4:26 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Borrowing Structure, Even in Games
Monday, August 11, 2008My best friend was in town for a little while and just before he left we decided to collaborate on another writing project.
I won't spill too much information on this one at the moment, although I will say I'm super excited by the project at the moment.
I'm at the stage of creation where I'm so excited by my own ideas that every time I sit down to write I'm so hyper that I have to get up and walk around or something until I calm down. I'll consider that a good place to be.
In any case, I'm going to talk today about structure.
The current piece I'm writing is a short story (currently taking the form of a one-act play) entirely taking place during a police interrogation of a suspect.
While trying to research a few things on how interrogations are done so I could get my details straight, I ended up finding a list of the steps actual investigators use for conducting interrogations. It's actually a meticulously structured ordeal designed to psychologically weaken the suspect at just the right times.
I'm attempting to use that sequence of stages as the plot structure for my scene.
For one thing, that seems the most natural thing to do. My scene is an interrogation, and so when I discover that interrogations themselves have an internal structure, why not use it?
More than that, I just love playing with structure, using all kinds of unconventional systems as the structure for plot. I guess that's the game designer in me, loving to play with systems. ;)
The first one-act play I wrote (coincidentally, the only serious piece I've written that has actually been produced and shown to an audience) used the stages of death as the base of it's plot structure, for example. For a time my best friend and I were considering writing film of short vignettes using the structure rules for various forms of poetry (villanelles, etc.) but using filmic language (shots, transitions) in place of literary ones. In other words, where you'd normally have a word repeat, we'd have a shot repeat, etc. But like the poetry forms, it'd have to be stitched together in a way that not only followed all the rules, but actually made sense and in fact had it's meaning deepened by the adherence of said rules.
I'm thinking though now that such play with story structure would be much harder to pull off with a video game. Story structure is a tricky matter in games, because the player is this rogue element that you can't control. The player is often the trickster god of chaos working to bring down the neat and tidy order that the story wants to lay down as its structure.
I considered this problem relative to the current use of borrowed structure: my example of the interrogation process as a plot structure.
I've been thinking of ways to make that work in a game.
And it seems to quite well. After all, games are pretty good at representing processes.
Just make interrogation itself as a game. It very nearly is already.
There's two sides with opposing goals. Either get the confession out of the suspect if you're the investigators, or if you're the suspect then your goal is to make it out of the situation the best you can. The psychological weakening techniques used by investigators leads to an intensely strategic game. It's a battle of wits, although an admittedly fairly one-sided battle. You'd have to admit that it is a pretty emotionally intense experience though, to a degree most games would kill to achieve.
Given as there's already a process laid down for what investigators say and at even at what time they say them depending on how psychologically weakened the suspect appears, an interrogation would make for a pretty amazing dialogue-tree puzzle. Especially if the game informs the player in advance of what the process is and how the system works.
For example, playing as police investigators, during some training portion the player is taught the techniques, then later in the game has to use them to say just the right lines at the right time to break down the convict and make him confess.
Or, playing a caught criminal, the player could have been warned by someone of what to expect, and the player has to try and use that information to avoid being psychologically weakened and being lead down the wrong path - the one that leads to you being caught in the trap of confessing.
By structuring the gameplay, you ARE structuring the story. Gameplay is perhaps our medium's most powerful means of conveying story anyway, and as the only medium that can use that means at all I'd say it's one we should continue to explore.
Consider another process easily turned into plot structure: a 12-step program.
The primary character ("player", in the case of a game) certainly has a clear goal: get through all the steps, and end up clean. The twelve steps are the roadblocks on the path, the trials she must prove she can pass. Twelve levels maybe?
This was just an example off the top of my head so I haven't exactly thought through how to make the twelve steps a fun game to play, but I won't say it couldn't be done.
Borrowing structure like I do can inspire and enrich writing, and I wish to both inspire and enrich writing in games.
Labels: game design, structure, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 3:06 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Constructing The Sample Adventure:
Friday, May 2, 2008I'm currently tasked with the job of making a sample module for my team's tabletop RPG.
My lead gave me some pointers on how to construct the module in such a way as to actually teach the players how the game works, easing them into the systems in increasing complexity.
I noted, along with Brenda, how closely his advice rang true to the Valve model of game design.
[Here's my brief summary of the Valve model, for those unfamiliar: 1.) Show the player something new they'll need, often letting them see it used by someone/something else. 2.) Let them use it in a no pressure, sandbox-like situation 3.) Have them use it under light pressure 4.) Expect mastery of the new technique/tool.]
I guess I had never thought of the Valve model as being relevant for use in a tabletop RPG, but it is indeed brilliant.
Especially so, as at least currently our game is on the over-complicated side.
The system is still quite elegant, but decidedly over-complicated, particularly given the target market for our design goals.
Having the sample mission that comes with the game designed in a way that cleverly, subtly, gets players comfortable with their character sheets, then role-playing, rolling for skills, and finally upping the ante with some light combat...
...well, that'll be a very useful tool indeed in getting our potentially tabletop-n00b players comfortable with the game.
This is, for the record, another instance where writing and design collide in a particularly fascinating way. I'm tasked with writing the events of the story in such a way that its organization eases the player gently into increasingly more complex systems. Ah, narrative design...
Labels: design, tabletop RPG, valve model, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 8:03 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Writing Characters
Thursday, April 17, 2008Today it occurred to me a way in which my writing has improved:
I've gotten much better at writing characters.
This is due to a shift in how I write, I think.
I was for a long time in a big kick about writing stories set in everyday reality. I did so under the exploration of the idea that there's enough drama in our lives that there is no reason to enhance it with the fantastical.
I would base characters on friends of mine, people I knew, or very often: me.
The result? They were pretty bland characters.
Even my best completed piece suffers from characters that aren't as interesting as they perhaps should be.
I don't mean to imply that my friends or I are uninteresting people.
I built characters around what I found interesting in them, after all...
I just don't think I was good at capturing their soul, if not also their voice.
A guy in my screenwriting class at the moment is attempting a biopic, and our professor pointed out that it is very difficult to make biographical films that have a strong sense of personality in their characters, due to the fact that the writer must inevitably invent on their own the inner secret souls of real life people. That's a difficult risk to commit to.
I suppose the same is true when writing my friends into characters.
That doesn't excuse me for writing bland characters based on me, though. Perhaps I do imagine myself as a bit of a dullard... ;)
For a screenwriting class I took earlier this year, however, I had to write a spec-script episode of 30 Rock. When reading it a couple weeks back, a friend of mine said I had totally nailed the voices of all the characters.
This may have been the first step in my recovery, although I didn't see it at the time. I couldn't rely on my old tricks when I wrote that episode. Again, I can champion the wonder that is constraints.
For a class I had last quarter in writing for games, I created a main (player) character for my game project, which pleasantly surprised my professor.
She expected the protagonist of my game, which was set in the early Paleolithic era, to be your stereotypical hulking, brutish caveman. Instead, I asked the player to step into the role of a curious little adolescent girl.
Granted, I'm still not especially proud of that character, as I perhaps didn't invest as much time into developing her "voice" as I should have (voice might not be the right word as none of the characters in my game can actually talk...)
It was, however, an example of being given a world far removed from reality, forcing me to actually make up an original character.
Now I'm writing a sort of epic fantasy piece: a challenge I gave myself as I've never really written fantasy before. (Dark secret revealed: I'm not a fan of fantasy fare!)
As an aspiring game writer though, I figure I shouldn't let that stop me from writing it well, given how many games would fit under the fantasy umbrella...
In any case, it seems the experimentation with a completely out-there fantasy world has allowed me to play with some very fun characters. My inner dislike of the fantasy-genre has caused me to create a world and characters that take the clichés of fantasy trappings and turn them upside-down and inside-out.
Apparently the results are good: everyone in my class has been raving about how fun the characters in the story are.
...
Of course, maybe I'm just over-thinking all of this, and in reality my character-writing has improved simply because I've written more and more and improved over time. ;) posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 9:11 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Theme Vs Core
Monday, March 24, 2008Spring break is over for me, and it is the start of a new quarter.
Today I had an art history class (being at an art school does require one to take quite a lot of art history courses) called "Digital Art and Culture" which looks to be very thought-provoking.
It may well influence much of what I write here!
It did in fact nearly inspire a post I was going to write for today, but I'll save it for later until that idea becomes more unified in my mind.
Tomorrow, however, I will have the first day of my other two classes: Advanced Screenwriting, and Abstract Systems Simulations.
The former will be what is likely my final screenwriting class of my academic career, and I believe its emphasis is on the feature length screenplay. That is something that I will bet is much more applicable to games than my past writing classes in television and short screenplays, as games tend to be a longer-form medium.
in Abstract Systems Simulations, from what I gather, we make a tabletop RPG.
In any case, the writing class has got me thinking on the subject of theme.
I know from past experience that it really helps going into the class with an idea for what I'm going to write already fairly formed, so the bulk of the class time can be spent actually getting it down and more importantly refining it, rather than flailing around for far too long grasping for an idea of what to write.
This idea is also encouraged in my game development classes. My development team for Abstract Systems Simulations, for example, has already been formed.
In any case, for my screenplay, I wouldn't say I don't have an idea yet... but it's not as ready as I would have liked by this point.
Like everyone, I have plenty of stories in my head, and the capability to pump out more when necessary.
My problem has been in selecting which idea to go with. This requires finding one I've already slightly formed that has the ingredients necessary to make it to a longer-form work like a feature film.
None of my story ideas at the moment have anything more than the suggestion of a B or C plot yet, which becomes of much greater importance in a longer-form work.
The one that seems ready to form side plots the most, however, is a sort of frantic jumble of ideas at the moment. To fix that, I need a theme. A theme could be used to unify this jumble of story ideas into a unified story.
This got me thinking about core game design, and how it is used in a similar fashion to how a writer can use theme.
Much like defining the core for a game, I need to decide what this story is to be about.
Then, as writing is the art of rewriting more so than writing, the theme can be used to determine what to cut, what to add, and what to change.
In a similar fashion, game design is a process of iteration (rewriting is crafting new iterations of a written work, after-all) and having a well defined core can help define what to refine in upcoming iterations.
Of course, games can have a theme as well which is usually separate from their core.
The core is the "theme" of the game's mechanics, but if the game has a story, that story can have its own theme.
It is important to note that this theme is then expressed through the core.
For example, whatever you might want to argue is the theme of what little narrative Super Mario Bros. has, it is told through having the player jump.
Granted, I don't know how well jumping, as a core, is at expressing a theme, which might be why Super Mario Bros. has so little in the way of narrative content.
This is not a fault of the game, certainly. Jumping made for a great core for an absolutely classic game.
I just find it kind of strange in retrospect that so many games feature an odd lack of unity between their core and their theme.
Can you think of instances where the core and the theme of a game were ever the same?
Or if not directly the same thing, then a game where the core and theme compliment each other in a logical and artful way?
Labels: core, design, theme, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 5:55 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - On Marketing Interactive Fiction
Sunday, March 23, 2008As he'll be speaking at GDX this year, I decided I should actually finish reading Chris Crawford's book on interactive fiction that I started a while back. I had plenty of time to sit and read as long render-times on one of my projects kept me from using the computer all day anyway.
I'm not quite done with the book, and I admittedly skipped around a bit, but in the book's conclusion, Crawford predicts how interactive fiction is going to come about.
He argues against "true" interactive fiction coming out of the game industry, and fair enough. There's likely quite a bit of truth to that claim, although I certainly feel like the game industry is going to be involved in at least some degree. Even if games and interactive fiction (as Crawford defines them) are different animals, they are certainly similar enough that the developers of each can benefit from feeding off one another. Game developers have already well learned that story can help sell games, and anything to give the player more agency over not only the game play but the story as well is something they're going to drool over and invest in.
I'm fairly sure game developers will hijack story world engines and hack in game mechanics as soon as a suitable story world engine comes along, making hybrids between the two media. I don't think the line between them needs to be so starkly drawn if there even is one at all, much in the same way that there is not much use in the end to arguing over whether a software title is a "game" or a "software toy" like Sim City.
He later goes on to claim that interactive fiction titles can't be marketed in the same way games are. In many ways, I'll agree with his arguments there.
The typical channel of going through producer, distributor, and retailer doesn't seem likely. I'll certainly give him that.
I also agree he's definitely right that if interactive fiction titles appeared on the same shelves as video games, they'd wither out and die, as their market isn't necessarily anything like the market that typically goes to look at those shelves.
However, there's one problem I see with his argument here, and that he's forgetting about the non-hardcore gamers out there. He's forgetting the whole rest of the game industry that doesn't make first person shooters. Sticking with my theme of late: what about the casual game developers and their audience?
From what I gather, this is a much larger industry than the game industry as he defines it (and how many define it, in his defense...)
So what if the interactive fiction market would not define themselves as gamers? Neither do most of the people who play Bejeweled, and that's a hell of a lot of people. Is Bejeweled having a hard time selling, and having trouble finding its market? No.
Granted, Bejeweled is one of the casual titles that have actually made it onto real world store shelves, but the casual industry in general seems to be doing fine without going through traditional distribution chains.
Crawford claims the game industry has too narrowly defined its market, and in some ways, yes, it totally has.
But Crawford has also narrowed his view as to what the game industry is and who the people who play games are as well.
Games are, I believe, a bit more mass-market than people think.
No, we still haven't reached his vision of what games should be right now. That too, I can lament. That is why I was interested in his book and the work he's doing in interactive fiction. Because when the technology for interactive storytelling does arrive in a workable, acceptable form, and game developers adopt the technology in their own way, well that's a day I want to see.
So keep being a pioneer, Chris.
Even if I'd argue with every third thing you claim. ;)
Labels: casual, interactive fiction, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 2:53 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Games: Life with the boring bits still in it?!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008In most narrative forms, you cut out all that is irrelevant and tedious. 3 Years of a person's life can be cut to 2 sentences in a novel.
Hell, most of my student writing was done for the medium of television which by necessity of only having thirty minutes to an hour to tell a story requires the writer to cut out pretty much everything but the most crucial "spine" elements.
Stories usually jump right in to the important stuff, and cut down on the back story.
Games are often fine at this part of the concept.
Games, however, also let you do fantastic amounts of tedious actions that would never fly in any other story form. Sometimes, I wonder why this is true.
It's one of the huge problems when considering constructing narratives for games: games are paced really oddly.
Now, I can in some sense see why. First of all, we must consider that just because something is tedious relative to plot doesn't mean it's not fun.
As Craig Perko mentions in numerous articles on his site, just moving in a game should be fun.
Okay, yes, a good plot should be active, but although movement is active by definition, a film where people just ran around and jumped and nothing else would have to be considered an "art piece" or be booed out of theaters for an appalling lack of a storyline. Action films have a lot of running around and jumping, but they thread that into at least an attempt at a story, usually. Running around and jumping provides the obstacles and the character's means of overcoming said obstacles, which make them an element of the story, sure, but the story of an action film is never about running and jumping, though. Even films about a famous runner aren't about running, exactly.
In games, however, sometimes just running around and jumping works fine. As every child knows, running around and jumping can be really fun, and fun is generally all we ask of games.
In the GTA series players tend not to give a hoot about the actual story mission mode. The fun of that game is generally in just driving around and blowing things up without consequence. Although in some sense, these moments can be considered story as you can certainly recount, in the form of a story, some of the crazy stuff you've done in this fashion in GTA, like intense car chases, crazy stunts you pulled, etc. When telling people about a play session you had of GTA these are usually the stories you tell.
But on the other hand:
1.) This kind of story is completely hit-or-miss. Sure, you'll occasionally have moments of extreme tension, or something thematically interesting will happen randomly and accidentally, but there's also a lot of dull bits in the meantime.
2.) Being as there are basically no consequences of any importance involved, this kind of "story" doesn't make for any sort of overall narrative. Narratives require character actions to matter, which means consequences.
Is making movement fun a gimmick used to make the game fun, or a gimmick used to just make the act of moving not suck as much?
That, I think, is a valid question.
As one of my favorite books points out: moving sucks. Space sucks. People like to go to and experience new places, but the act of actually traveling from one place to another is something we humans think is a tremendous bother.
That's why those "go here and fetch me this thing" Hub-and-spoke quests suck.
Does making how the player moves into a more fun activity solve the problem, or just hide its odor better?
And that's just physical travel. Pacing is a matter of temporal travel. Admittedly, yes, when you travel through physical space you tend to travel through time as well, so they're nearly the same thing. In any case, temporal pacing is the real root of the overall problem of pacing.
As I see it, the main reason games leave as many moments available to the player - as uninteresting as they may be - is because it's the easiest way to not rob them of potential choice. As game designers we're reluctant to rob a player of choice. Of course, games always inevitably do to some degree anyway. Until we have a game that can procedurally generate any content and can respond to any insane whim of the player, there will always be some limitations of choice for the player. We place barriers for where they can't go, for example. How many games are set on islands, with the player fresh out of boats? A lot. Does that rob the player of, say, the choice to escape the game's setting and go to Australia and start a kangaroo farm? Well, sure, but who cares? It might sadden you a little if that's what you really wanted to do in the game. Most players just accept that that's not possible and move on. Limitation on player choice can be handled elegantly enough that players won't mind, within reason.
But then again, I look at the phenomenal success of The Sims - a game which is life with almost nothing but the dull bits - and it leads me to believe that there's something here I'm missing.
If the best selling game involves you largely making your character sleep, pay her bills, and use the toilet, then maybe there's something to those dull bits after all that I just haven't figured out yet. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 12:25 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Harmonizing Narrative Depth with Episodic Play
Tuesday, March 4, 2008This starts off as almost a tangent, but eventually I ramble my way around to my point:
Thanks to Brenda and Sheri Graner Ray, I've enjoyed being involved with (volunteering for) WIGI at several conferences I've been to. Making our industry more diverse and welcoming has interested me for a while and it's great to work with some people also devoted to those goals.
So, at SIEGE I saw Ernest Adams' presentation on women in games. In his lecture, he mentioned that women, at least generally speaking, prefer more character depth than most games are able to provide. Hollywood can much more easily tie us emotionally into a character, whereas only a good handful of games seem to ever manage that.
In order for the depth of a character to properly manifest, it should follow that they're placed in a narrative of some kind. Ergo, story-heavy games attract deep characters, and deep characters should attract more female players.
I, however, also know that casual games are doing wonders for drawing women into gaming, to the degree where the industry is even targeting them.
So, I asked what was nearly the only question asked at the end of his presentation. I asked how those two forces can be reconciled. Casual games attract women, but by their very nature cannot realistically support a heavy enough narrative to support deep characters. Conversely, games with enough story to support deep characters have trouble being anywhere near "casual".
Adams didn't have an answer that satisfied me, instead merely agreeing that both were great forces at work in the issue.
Sheri's Book Gender Inclusive Game Design, however, addressed this issue at one point, as I discovered.
When discussing puzzles in chapter 8, she says that players -particularly female players- like having an emotional tie to characters, yes. In particular to their avatar.
However, she says this is not true in casual games.
The argument is that people will not want to invest time in a character of a game they already don't want to invest that much time in.
I can see that. I'll agree that that's true in most cases.
I have to wonder if there are exceptions, however.
What about episodic games?
Each particular episode is not much of a time investment, yet you still get the benefit of an overarching narrative and characters. For example, Telltale Games' Sam and Max episodes are great little games that come across to me as fairly casual. They only take about as long to play as watching an episode of your favorite television show, and the game play is pretty accessible I feel. Back to characters: Sam and Max are fantastic characters! Okay, maybe they're not that deep... but I don't see why a similar game couldn't be made that did have more depth to it.
The biggest problem I see as standing in the way is that the player would have to keep the ongoing story in their memory. Craig Perko had a pretty interesting little entry on that problem a while back.
The Sam and Max episodic games might only work because they have little in the way of depth: you don't actually ever have to remember what happened in a previous episode. If you do, great. You'll get more out of what little overarching plot to the series there is. But it's not critical.
Have deeper characters, however, and it might come up. It might be critical for a player to remember that, in an episode they played two months ago, they rejected a character, crushed someone's spirit, offended another, etc, if the lingering emotional aftermath from that erupts back up to the surface. Depth is all about what is bubbling underneath the surface of a character, and players will have to remember and track that, somehow.
However, television dramas manage this well enough. Why can't we?
Of course, on the one hand television has the benefit of being on a schedule, usually a weekly one.
That's much less downtime in between episodes, less time for the audience to forget.
But television dramas also tackle the problem with a "Previously, on..." pre-teaser montage at the start of each episode. This was suggested in Perko's player memory entry; however he used it in the context of a more traditional style of game. The thing about 'Previously on..." segments is that they don't just recap what has happened (or at least, they shouldn't), they recap specifically only what the audience needs to remember for that particular episode.
To put in a "Previously, in your game of Civ..." segment wouldn't be nearly as effective by that logic. There's little way to tell upon loading a player's game what he/she is going to do in that play session, so you can't find the particular elements to say "remember these specific details about the previous play session, as they'll become important during this one."
You can't, because you have no idea how long the player is going to play in that sitting.
But in an episodic game, this kind of "Previously, on..." segment is more possible.
Because it is broken down into episodes, you know exactly what occurs (or rather, can occur) in that particular episode, and thus can point out to the player specific past events in the overarching plot that they'll want to know for this episode.
Add in a system that keeps track of game-to-game data, building ever larger databases of what happened in the player's episodes so they can affect the plot and characters of future episodes, and you might have something really fascinating there.
Labels: design, episodic games, women in games, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 3:32 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Pronouns and the Female Protagonist
Sunday, March 2, 2008I met Sheri Graner Ray, author of Gender Inclusive Game Design, at the first game development conference I ever attended. I figure as I am pursuing a career in design, checking out her book was a must.
One point mentioned in it is that most men are willing to play as a female avatar, but most women are not inclined to play as a male one. Therefore, to potentially get more women playing your game, it should feature a female protagonist if not the option to chose either gender.
Knowing that for one of my projects this quarter that I'd have to make a very story-heavy (and therefore fairly character-focused) game, I knew I wanted to try and put these ideas into practice, and experiment with using a female protagonist.
First of all, this created a really unexpected and refreshing main character for my game which was praised by people who have been privy to the game's development. People knew I was doing a game set in the Paleolithic era, but when I revealed my protagonist wasn't at all the stereotypical "cave-man" they were expecting, but instead a thirteen year old girl... well, it got some recognition from my peers.
However in having this female protagonist, I've found it solves another problem in creating games designed to be open to a larger female market: it makes me more likely to consider pronoun use in the docs! When designers default to male pronouns in the design documents (i.e. "If the player does X he may then..." etc.) it may make one lose sight of potential female players. It could also turn away any women who'd happen to read the doc, as it subconsciously signals "this game isn't for me" to them.
Well, having a female protagonist makes it that much more natural to write in female pronouns, because that's what the character is.
Of course, whenever possible I also try to refer to the character as "the player", in order to ensure I'm always thinking about the player and what they can/want to do.
Labels: design, women in games, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 3:11 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - There's Drama in a Haircut
Wednesday, February 20, 2008A while back, a friend linked me to this video of Fred Rogers (of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood fame) speaking at a US senate hearing to try and keep PBS's funding from being cut.
In it, he has one line that I loved:
"We don't have to bop someone over the head to make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut."
First of all, this is already a great message for game developers, as, well, games are often very violence heavy, and it's a huge criticism of our art. So is the fact that, as games are all about violence and power fantasies, so too are the stories in games, which makes them, well, kind of lame to many non-gamers.
He actually has a later line where he says that showing two men working out their anger can be far more dramatic than showing gunfire. That's another powerful line, and one that, seen through game developer eyes, can make one wonder what values we're teaching in our art.
But one of the things that struck me most about the line about the drama in a haircut, is that I was talking about this video, and that line, to my mother, and she said that's why she loved having me watch his show when I was a kid. She pointed out a memory I had completely forgotten, that when I was a kid I was terrified of getting my first haircut. So, as a mother, my mom loved that Mr. Rogers had that amazing power of empathy and insight to find things like that in a child's life and disarm them.
As an adult, I had completely taken haircuts for granted as a non-terrifying thing. I'm assuming most adults would. I realized that as a parent I probably wouldn't have even thought about that when my hypothetical kid would be getting their first haircut.
Its a case of assumed knowledge, something that plagues game designers often.
I have heard children are a hard market to develop for...
Coincidentally, back on the "what values are we teaching?" question, I don't know if I can think of a children's title that does teach kids that haircuts aren't terrifying.
Maybe the game industry could use its own Fred Rogers.
I'll have to work on developing my own insight into the minds of children...
Labels: audience, design, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 6:13 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - More on Jericho and Games...
Wednesday, February 13, 2008So, now having seen the first episode of the new season of Jericho, I've got some further thoughts that I'll toss out there as relevant to games:
I don't want to spoil the major cliffhangers from the end of season 1 for if you haven't seen the show. However, let's just say the town is gearing up for a big, high-tension event full of potential conflict.
Well, the new season skipped ahead and starts us after said event has already occurred.
This bugged me:
1.) Stories feed on conflict, and the show just gave away a huge well of conflict without even really using it. They draw conflict from the event's aftermath, certainly...
But dude, they could have really pulled an entire season out of this one event. Instead they skipped it entirely. That's a damn risky move for a storyteller to make, but for the most part I can see that the show has enough directions to still take and enough new conflicts that it won't matter. THAT brings me to:
2.) In film/television, there's the saying "Show, don't tell", and although they showed at least bits and pieces, overall by jumping ahead in time, they essentially just told us what happened rather than show it.
Even though the show is doing fine enough despite skipping that event, I was dying from anticipation waiting for the show to return so I could see where they would take that particular plot twist. I wanted to see the action. And... I didn't get to see it. I got to see SOME action, but it wasn't the action I was looking for. It was like if someone was reading you a story and skipped over the part you most wanted to read.
In games, the saying is changed to "Do, don't show," or in other words "Let the player do it."
If this was a game instead of a TV show I would have wanted to PLAY that action. Games tend to get so wrapped up in being stories that all too often they forget to let the player do the cool stuff. To continue my metaphor from above: Nobody wants to play the game where the game plays the fun parts for them.
So game developers, remember: the more conflict you can find in your narrative to draw from, the better. Stories and even non-narrative games benefit from and feed off conflict.
And let your players do the cool stuff. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 8:08 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - A Line About War
Tuesday, February 12, 2008Over the holidays this winter I stumbled randomly upon the DVD set of season 1 of Jericho, and got very wrapped up in the show (What can I say? I love me some post-apocalyptic fare, which likely explains my obsession with the Fallout RPG series...)
In any case, the show is on my mind once again, because season two premieres tonight. Huzzah!
For those not familiar with the show, it follows a small town in Kansas through nuclear attacks on the United States and the resulting aftermath.
How am I getting to the topic of games from this?
In one episode from season 1 (I don't exactly remember which episode exactly it was, but I'm going to take a wild guess and say maybe number 5?) there was a scene in which some of the characters were playing the card game War.
This scene began with a terrible line that was something along the lines of: "I hate War. Nobody ever wins."
Now, two things strike me about this line that are relevant to game development:
1.) It's an interesting example in pop culture of an abstract game system expressing an idea. Even though the card game never claims to be a terribly realistic simulation of warfare, the characters in the show have made the observation that the game nonetheless (by accident or by design) expresses messages on the nature of war.
2.) The line is awful because it's an example of on-the-nose writing.
If you are ever given the task of writing dialogue for games (or any media, really), then please for the love of God know what writing on-the-nose means and then avoid doing it at all costs.
Labels: expression, writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 4:09 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - "Give your villains a face"
Monday, February 11, 2008"Give your villains a face"
That's a great line from a lecture on game writing I heard at AGDC this year (although maybe I'm slightly misquoting it. It might have been "Give your antagonists a face".)
It means that a single iconic antagonist is more powerful on an emotional level than just a generic evil hoard. So, if you have an evil hoard as an antagonist: give them a leader to be the face of the organization. An evil mascot, if you will.
This was done pretty well in the new film I am Legend. The film is not quite a zombie film, but pretty similar to one. In any case, this one stood out as unique to me in the fact that it did "give a face" to the zombie-like creatures with (spoiler alert?) the big, strong, "leader" one that was cunning and almost human-like. It was a really interesting twist on the zombie genre that seemed to prove the "Give your villains a face" rule as true.
(although, to play devil's advocate: that character had extra appeal for providing an ethical dilemma, as it makes you wonder if these creatures are developing their own culture, and to what degree they are still human. The film didn't really explore any of those topics directly, though, which is a shame.)
In any case, I bring up this up because I'm currently struggling with giving my villains a face in one of the games I'm working on, and may well borrow the way it's handled in the film. My game is set in the early Paleolithic era, and as the characters are therefore fairly primitive creatures, they're not too far off from the zombie-like creatures in the film. Making one iconic, cunning and scary "leader" of the enemy caveman tribe is something I feel would benefit the story greatly. I just have to figure out exactly how to implement that... and soon, as the docs for it are due shortly.
Labels: writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 5:20 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Improv Acting in Games
Friday, February 8, 2008I happen to run my school's improvisational comedy club.
I used to be in a touring improv troupe many years ago, and when I got to this school was glad to find a student group for that. I worked my way up and got promoted to president of the club eventually.
In any case, I've been thinking about this recently because on the IGDA Writer's SIG mailing list, someone mentioned machinima, which I can at least claim to be knowledgeable about, so I piped up with a discussion on that.
I mentioned that although machinima is not interactive in its usual form, hypothetically speaking one could combine the machinima live-actor-controls-avatar aesthetic using a trained improv actor in order to run interactive stories in a virtual world.
This lead to a discussion on live teams in smaller MMORPGs doing just that, which I was not aware was done (admittedly, I'm rather behind in trying MMOs...) In most MMORPGs, it would be wildly impractical. WoW is just too huge to afford enough actors per server to cover all the users. Apparently the Matrix Online used the technique, however, to great success until they were bought out and apparently the practice was no longer continued at the new company. It's especially interesting as one of the team members was there to give first hand experience on writing for the actors. Neat!
Admittedly, even I have had the opportunity to use my improv acting skills in game development. Because of my role as head of the improv club, I was contacted by Urban Interactive and did an acting gig for one of their games they happened to do down here in Savannah (I was a pirate who gave players riddles to solve.) It was likely a great connection for the future, particularly as they're based out of Boston, where I have some ties to now thanks to my work with Emagination. Particularly as now thanks to Project Loyola, I'll have ARG experience which is sort of like what they do... and hey, they do hire game designers!
In any case, I find it interesting that having a background in improv is a skill that is actually applicable to game development, despite what one might first think. And admittedly, until AI vastly improves, improv actors are likely the only way to get true interactive storytelling in games. So there's potential there, although it does require the game to have a rather small user-base.
Coincidentally, as I'm also interested in narrative design, having a background in improv helps immensely, as in improv one of the best skills you can adopt is the ability to tell a story on the fly. Doing so requires you internalize story structure in your head in order to actually, completely off-the-cuff with other people, take the audience through a complete (if very brief) 3-act story.
Expect more from me on the topic of where improv and game development coincide. I think about it often. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 3:15 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Out of Work Writers Flocking to Games?
Wednesday, February 6, 2008As mentioned in my previous entry, the game industry is in some ways in a unique position with the writer's strike affecting television. Today I found an interesting example:
As I have come into games from a film/television production background, with an emphasis on screenwriting, the idea of writing for games is something that has interested me for a long time. And I figure I'd do well as I've been studying both writing and game design for years now, so I've got a leg up on Hollywood writers that don't know game design, and the game designers out there that don't know writing (Although in fairness, there's certainly plenty of designers who do know their stuff when it comes to writing!)
Anyway, as such, I joined the IGDA Game Writer's SIG's mailing list, although I mostly only lurk there as, well, I'm just a student so I feel I don't have much to contribute yet. Also, most of the questions I have are being answered by either my narrative design class, or the Writer's SIG's upcoming book.
In any case, someone recently wrote a comment on the SIG mailing list that someone had contacted them asking how to pitch a game based on a script they had originally written as a movie. The SIG member gave as much advice as he could, but mostly explained that it wasn't really likely to go anywhere.
He concluded the email with the line: "Personally, I think some of the Hollywood writers might be getting a little strapped for cash right about now..."
So perhaps, with the strike going on, we'll see more out of work writers might try to find a place in game development. A medium that they may not understand, but has not yet slighted them.
I can't say if any of these writers would do well, as who knows if any of them know much about how games and game development work. That tends to be the complaint with Hollywood writers among our industry, and one I'm hoping to avoid by having as much of an educational background in game design as I do in writing.
(Note that the person mentioned above wrote the pitch to originally be intended "as a movie", so that sounds like a sure-fire sign that it'll do well as an interactive work, with solid game mechanics, no? Ha! Then again, I remember quite liking The Dig when I was younger, and that was intended to be a movie first...)
Labels: writing
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 8:17 AM 0 Comments Links to this post