Two panels discussed the importance and state of storytelling in video games at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The first covered the place of story in the developing medium of games, and the second looked at examples of good storytelling in games.
The Future of Story in Game Design
A panel Thursday discussed the future of story in video game development, reported Gamasutra. Deborah Todd led the panel, which included Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights and Saber 3D’s Matthew Karch, as well as Tim Willits from iD Software and Matt Costello from Polar Productions.
“I think story should serve the gameplay, and not the other way,” said Karch. “In the shooter genre, which I’m in, I don’t think anyone really cares about the story. I don’t think in some genres it’s especially important.” Karch’s team recently released “Timeshift.”
“In 5 to 10 years I don’t think there’s going to be a shooter genre. It’s going to be more literary,” argued Dyack. “A shooter would just be ‘action’.”
Dyack said story will become the dominant element in game design. “Games are the eighth art form: the glue is interactivity, and that aspect is something that makes our industry unique and there’s a huge misconception at this industry is that gameplay is everything. These people are going to be mistaken,” he said. “And as this industry matures content and story, as it did in the 30s and 40s with cinema, will become dominant.”
Continue reading ‘GDC: Panels Discuss Story in Game Design’
“Civilization IV,” “Rome: Total War” and “The Sims” don’t usually make the Best Video Game Story list. Single player play in these expansive sandboxes generally boils down to a massive skirmish against computer bots, and the game ends not when you slay the last boss but when you check off the last objective.
Gamasutra has an interesting feature by Neil Sorens on turning the stale check lists and computer bots of sandbox games into user-developed storylines and characters.
“When a player creates a family in ‘The Sims,’ the resulting game — based on input from the player — tells the life stories of the members of that family,” writes Sorens. “Designers can and should do more to exploit these player-generated stories.”
The problem as Sorens sees it is that players cannot see the stories they naturally create in these massive worlds. Say you declare war on the Russians in a “Civilization IV” campaign. You might do so because the Russians are there and you have a big army in need of employment. Under Sorens suggestion, the game justify this campaign for some story reason (Russians killed your dog, you hate Commies, they abused people of your national religion, etc. etc.).
Sorrens advocates that story-driving exposition replace the bar graphs, charts, and reports that generally represent player statistics, achievements and attributes in big sandbox games.
Continue reading ‘Adding Stories to Sandbox Games’
The Writers Guild voted to end their strike today. “The Office” will return April 10. Yay, and congratulations to the writers.
BioWare’s upcoming MMO is their largest project to date, and they need your help. With one of the greatest reputations for video game writing in the industry, the creators of Baldur’s Gate II and Jade Empire are now hiring writers for their Austin, TX, branch.
Applicants should have some degree of experience, professional or in school, and must include a 15 to 30 minute module made with the Neverwinter Nights toolset that demonstrates your game writing abilities. Writing for games requires a unique brand of skill not found among all mortals.
“Just trying to explain the concept behind writing without a protagonist to someone who has never even been a dungeon master can be like showing card tricks to a dog,” said Daniel Erickson, principal lead writer with BioWare Austin, in an email to Penny Arcade.
Think a writer for the epitome of literary game developers could never come from your humble origins? Think again!
“In the history of the company, we’ve had published fantasy authors, screenwriters and editors all wash out of BioWare’s training program,” said Erickson in the same email. “On the flip side, we’ve had fantastic kids right of college, an ex CNN producer and a former gift wrapping clerk from Singapore all succeed in the BioWare writer family.”
So what the hell, give it a chance. I know I will.
See BioWare’s jobs page for more information on how to apply and on other jobs with the company.
At a pre-Tokyo Game Show conference, Mistwalker’s Hironobu Sakaguchi revealed new information about the developer’s upcoming Xbox 360 JRPG Lost Odyssey.
One of the most surprising details Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, mentioned pertains to game length. He estimated that Lost Odyssey will take 40 hours to beat and includes 20 hours of event scenes. Essentially, it’s Xenosaga on steroids.
The game has a deep backstory, with the cursed main character having lived for no less than 1,000 years, and many event scenes explore his accrued memories. Interestingly, much of the backstory is explored via passages written by Japanese author Kiyoshi Shigematsu.
According to Sakaguchi, there are 34 written passages, and each takes between 5 and 10 minutes to read. That means as much as 6 of the game’s 20 hours of event scenes are reading.
I understand that a good story needs depth, and many a good game employ writing to explore it, including the recent Oblivion with its library of history books. But Sakaguchi may be going to far with this, entirely divorcing gameplay from what may be necessary developments in the story. It will be interesting to see how this game is received.
Lost Odyssey will release in Japan this December.