The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

Weefz — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:41:55 GMT

Series of potentials? Almost all games I play nowadays are a series of linear, pre-determined events punctuated by violence.

The one game I remember that really felt like my actions made a difference was Wing Commmander 1 (maybe 2). [I bring this up a couple of times a year, apologies if it was elsewhere on this site]. You'd fly your missions, usually succeeding and sometimes failing. The cruicial point that was different from every game I've played since was that the game world would continue to progress even when you failed.

My memory is slightly hazy but here's how i seem to recall it going:

If you failed to (e.g.) protect the cargo, you'd get a different post-mission debrief talking about your failure.

If you lost your wingman, they were never seen around the flight deck and you'd fly later missions with less help or even solo.

Fail often enough or in crucial missions and you'd be shunted off the "save the universe, humanity wins!" path, retreating into a series of [extremely old game spoiler alert!] increasingly desperate missions eventually culminating in the loss of the Tiger's Claw (think BattleStar Galactica) and possibly even the destruction of all humanity.

IIRC once you fell off the winning path there was no way to get back on it which, IMO was rather harsh but considerably braver than the standard linear "You Lose, Game Over, Reload" scenario that seems ubiquitous today.

THAT game was a series of potentials. Are there really any on the current generation of consoles?

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

supergg2k — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:38:36 GMT

@Weefz

In Morrowind or Oblivion I think it's possible to do things that will prevent you from finishing the main quest yet allow you to continue to explore the world.

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

Patrick Dugan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:16:18 GMT

Coming at this as a game designer with a creative writing background, you can take the character driven approach if you think of characters as sets of processes. This isn't as counter-intuitive as it might seem, every character is marked by pathologies, habits and speech patterns, and perhaps most importantly by their roles relative to other characters. A system of roles in this manner allows character writing and game design to <i>fuse</i>.

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

Patrick Dugan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:16:50 GMT

This blog isn't fond of tags is it? :P

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

N'Gai Croal — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:08:11 GMT

@Patrick Dugan: It would appear as though Level Up is tag-phobic.

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

Weefz — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:03:47 GMT

@supergg2k

That's true and I did love the open world nature of both games. The issue I'm getting at isn't exploring outside the main quest though. It's actually derailing it to get entire alternative pathway. I know that some games give you the options of alternative endings - Mass Effect for example. Thing is, they are a) limited to just the endings and b) mostly superficial. Talk the villain to death instead of shooting him. It's a start, but ultimately unsatisfying since the other 40 hours of gameplay are practically the same no matter what you choose. Intimidate instead of charm - woohoo!

The KOTOR games could have had some fun with sith and jedi storylines - going through the same events but fighting on opposing sides depending on who you choose to side with, perhaps? Sadly, your choices were limited to going through the fixed subquests choosing to negotiate or threaten/kill and ultimately only affected your alignment and options, not the actual game world. You were limited to training with the Jedi in KOTOR I and IIRC being trained into the Sith way in the sequel.

BioShock was lauded for it's supposed moral stance but AFAIK (having played it for 3 hours and gone "Hey, this is just an FPS with steampunk atmosphere" I'm relying on other people's writings here) the choice is again, protect or kill, good or bad ending. It's still a series of set pieces shown in the same order.

From the missions I managed to play, I believe Deus Ex: Invisible War attempted to provide alterative storylines. I know each mission had 3 different factions vying for my loyalty and there was promise that supporting one or the other would have an impact on the world. Problem was, I was in the middle of moving house when I started. By the time I got back to playing, I'd completely forgotten which factions I'd supported previously and the barely-there journal system wasn't giving me any clues :(

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

N'Gai Croal — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:25:27 GMT

@Weefz: Exploring outside the main quest has continued to become a more popular way to "open up" a game than providing entire alternate pathways. Why? Because as PCs and consoles have gotten more powerful, 3-D art assets have become more expensive to produce. So it's extremely expensive to properly support multiple story branches from a production perspective. Especially when you're talking about AAA games with big budgets. It's much cheaper to give a player multiple ways to achieve the same outcome than to give the player similar ways to achieve multiple outcomes.

If I had to predict, I would say that the types of games that you're talking about will have to become the province of smaller developers and independent developers, working in 2-D or much simpler 3-D art styles where it's cheaper to produce the amount of art assets required for genuinely different narrative paths. The AAA commercial development houses, I believe, will for the most part continue to opt out.

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

Weefz — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:06:10 GMT

@N'Gai

I agree. I know it's so much cheaper to build lots of little FedEx quests and Mass Effect's uncharted-world-style repetitive gameplay. Still, I hold out hope that some theme-exploring visionary writer/designer will one day make a game that has more than one viewpoint on events (and a decent journal to keep track of it all).

That being said, sidequests aren't all bad. Oblivion had some absolute gems among the standard kill-10-rats side-quests. The world in a painting was fabulous, as was the quest through an NPC's nightmares. Pity about the procedurally generated Oblivion Gates.

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

Ginger Yellow — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:28:03 GMT

I'd have more sympathy with Maxwell's argument, which I do think makes some valid points, if he wasn't so horribly wrong about Bioshock and San Andreas. Bioshock just wouldn't work as an open-world game, or rather it wouldn't be Bioshock, it would be GTA Rapture. The story, or more specifically specifically the narrative technique, aesthetic and atmospherics, are Bioshock. If he doesn't like that sort of game, then that's his prerogative, but it seems silly to blame it on Irrational. And not only that, but the best level in the game wasn't created by a writer, which undercuts his multi-tasking argument. Conversely with San Andreas, the characters are developed to the extent that I really don't see how the writers could have taken character creation much more seriously. Big Smoke's betrayal, for example, really hit hard.

re: The Big Idea: The Case Against the Case Against Writers In the Game Industry Gets Personal--and Profane

Dbeech — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:04:53 GMT

In many ways I can't help but wonder if this debate could get any more blown out of proportion. People writing knee-jerk responses to their misunderstandings of Adam Maxwell's now infamous article is as bad as Roger Ebert arbitrarily appealing to a term like high art without bothering to qualify it.

Maxwell's conclusion was simply that writers as they exist in the industry today are not necessary for the creation of a good game. This is clearly true. Maxwell's biggest mistake is to argue this from the difference between video games a movies. Maxwell is not the first person to make a bad argument from these differences simply because they fail to take into account the fact that the movie industry has had many more years to be conventionalized than the video game industry. Writing is very important in movies, but it is not necessary for a good movie either. Or did we forget about the existence of documentaries? I'm not saying that documentaries don't require some writing ability; some modern documentaries actually do have teams of writers. But in most of them all the 'creative' elements are taken care of by the filmmaker without requiring the necessity of a writer.

It is the same with many video games. In many video games the designer or even some other member of the dev team will take over these creative roles. That's not to say that a writer can't contribute to elements of a story outside of the linear plot development - Maxwell's assertion to this effect was also a little screwy. The problem that video games often face is that writers as they exist now are quite frankly not always very good at this part. Far too many writers come from a background of linear writing in other mediums and don't understand the particular peculiarities of writing for video games. Maybe in the future the employment of dedicated writers will become more viable, but as with the movies industry and just about any industry that has gone through the process of a professional writer injection the people who understand the medium will always retain control of it. Well at least all the control that the people who gave the people who understand the medium their money and like to pretend that they understand the medium better than the people who understand the medium despite their constant and massive failings give them.