Writing for Guild Wars 2
This fan blog for GW2 talks with Bobby Stein, Peter Fries, and Angel McCoy about the process that went into writing the story for the game.
While I don’t agree with some of the processes and tactics used by the writing team, this is a great insight into the writing process for ArenaNet.
Is your game an instrument? Or a song that the player must play note by authored note?
The Story of Save Points
This blog’s name is meant to describe the type of content which its own pages contain. Snippets of insights or observations about a game between the times we press Save Game and Load Game. The time is like a breath - a moment to reflect on the experiences you’ve had and the memories currently being processed into your long term databanks.
A conversation with a co-worker yesterday about what it means to actually save your game has prompted me to record the thoughts which emerged from that encounter here.
We live in an age freedom when it comes to saving. Most modern RPG’s will allow you to save wherever you please - and that’s just dandy. This blog takes its name from a previous iteration of this feature, however - the Save Point.
Google Image search has a wealth of Square-Enix games
Of course, we can go further back in the timeline and look at codes which you had to write down every time you beat a level so you could go back to that level. Or, even further, when you had to beat certain games in a sitting or start all over again. But … let’s not. For now.
The save point has elongated our gaming experience. Once you’re able to stop your progress and start it back up again from where you left off, games were allowed to be longer. But that’s not all Save Points did for gaming. In time, they became an actual mechanic of the game - and had an effect on the mind of the player.
First - the long and grueling labyrinth which has taken you the last hour and a half to navigate. You search, nay pray, for a Save Point sometime soon. Your mom is calling you down for dinner and she doesn’t understand that you can’t just stop. It’s imperative that you continue to - THERE! There it is. Ah, sweet mercy of God, what a beautiful sight. You take a breath, you stop frantically playing, and the tension releases as you press Save.
Second - you’ve been casually slaying goblins for the better part of an hour and you’re feeling good about this play session. No deaths, no hardships, some good - wait, what’s that? A Save Point? Why do I need … oh, no. What in God’s name is about to happen to me?
Both of the scenarios are products of the expertly placed Save Point. Think of the crafting that goes into placing these things - it is the developer communicating with the player, literally.
“Hey, player, things are about to get rough, just letting you know. Wanna take a little breather?”
“Hi, player - good job getting through that labyrinth - that must have taken forever! I know, I designed it. Booya! Here’s a Save Point.”
Save Point locations are the designers dictating play sessions. It doesn’t give them complete control - but how many times have you played from one Save Point to another? Just a quick romp. That play session’s length was designated by the developer.
So next time you decide, “Eh, I’m gonna go watch Big Bang Theory,” and press START > SAVE - remember that we’re missing out on the joys and frustrations of talking to the designers through Save Points.
Once it’s in the game it’s polluted, and then there’s this distasteful element to it.
Learn to Fly
I’m not rabid about Angry Birds. I don’t 3 star many (any) levels, nor do I own all incarnations of the addictive bird flinging experience. I do, however, enjoy it and love the implementation of various design techniques throughout the game. One in particular is a real standout - the tutorial.
First wonderful tutorial element - no text. Not all games can get away with this, but they sure as sugar should try. First rule of tutorials is show the player how (preferably within the game), don’t tell them how. There are a lot of other rules … I don’t really know them. Just that one.
Angry Birds shows you how to fling birds in two ways. First, the graphic that pops up and shows a finger doing what your finger should be doing. But second, and more importantly, the birds are in a slingshot. The game assumes the player knows two things: they are playing a touch based game and that you pull on slingshots to fire them.
If you know those two things, you know HOW to play Angry Birds.
As new birds are introduced, you see more graphics, but again, more importantly, you are given levels that emphasize the unique quality of each new bird. Got the Bomb bird? They setup a juicy stone layout that needs blown to the Angry Sky.
This is also a great example of how story helps inform the player of their objectives. You see those green bastard pigs steal all your precious eggs. So when the question is posed “At what should I be flinging my birds?” and you see their smug, sometimes mustachioed, faces sitting inside their stupid houses - you know exactly where you’re flinging.
You could argue that the simplicity of the game is the reason it requires less instruction than games of a more complex nature - but to that I would say there’s a lesson there too.
Maybe every game, in its first moments of gameplay, should be as simple as Angry Birds.
The Sting of Abandonment
If ever there were a treasure trove of magnificent narrative and design, it is Journey. It creates a synergy of story and gameplay approached only by that of peanut butter and chocolate - and it does so without ever saying a word.
I have a weakness in the knees for games that can make you feel their worlds. I’m not just talking about the scenery here - I mean the way the world operates, the way it breathes. In Journey, you come to understand your surrounding on an intimate level and those sandy dunes begin to feel like home.
That’s a result of the storyteller knowing their world on a disgustingly detailed level. And the result of that attention is that you become immersed as a player - you become invested in the conflict and you want to complete the objectives laid out before you. And the sole objective of Journey is to get to that mountain. You don’t know why - but you know that if you could only reach that luminous summit, you could remedy what ails that world.
This duo works together to complete their Journey. Must be nice.
The other requirement of creating immersion is not beating your players over the head with your world. Journey does that - but that’s I want to talk about. I want to talk about how I believed so much in my setting, that a bout of griefing, or general douchebaggery, made me feel something unexpected.
In Journey, you travel with a real life companion - some other eager player elsewhere in the world, sharing your vision of a beautiful mountain holiday. You work together to get to that mountain. At least, that’s the idea.
Toward the end of the game, I was paired with a person who, for whatever reason, decided that he/she didn’t need me to reach the top. In a moment when I desperately needed their assistance, they abandoned me to the elements and my own doomed fate.
I’m no stranger to friendly fire in shooters, in betrayal in co-op games - and usually, my response is “What a jerk.” But not here. I was so involved in my quest for that light - I didn’t even realize I’d been the victim of a player who just didn’t care. I felt abandoned … I felt alone.
The entire game, I’d traveled this world with another and now, in the last moments of the game, I had to do it by myself. I completed the game alone, no one with whom I could share the glory and revelations.
This is what happens when you connect with your players. You give them the story of companionship, friendship, cooperation, and shared victory - and it becomes so abundant that when it is missing, it leaves a vacancy.
The Illusion of Me
This is the ever present problem I have with the MMO genre - this is supposed to be my story but all of these other people are in it. Not only are they in it … but they are me. I’m the special hero of the galaxy, but so are you - so I guess we are all the special hero of the galaxy and if we are all special then none of us are.
I would be slightly less concerned if I were asked to ignore it but I’m not, I’m asked to embrace it by the designers of many MMO’s. When I am asked to fight the dark wizard in the cavern, I need a team of others to fight alongside me. All of those other players have the same quest and the same objective - and yet we are lead to believe by the narrative that we are the only ones participating in that battle. We are being lead by the story and lied to by the design. This is “narratively” broken.
But what can you do? By definition, an MMO is a multi-player game in which thousands of other people are in this world with you and they all want the same experiences you do. In games, we are the main attraction, the center of attention. Some MMO’s ask you to share that spotlight in order to help the narrative congeal with the design. In games like Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) - the design and narrative acknowledge the fact that there are many heroes. FFXI is based on just that fact.
What SWTOR does, and does well, is attempt to solve the problem by fully acknowledging that the story does not revolve around just one person … some of the time.
You undertake quests in which multiple people have say in the outcome. That system recognizes that the story of that quest does not single you out as the protagonist but gives everyone the opportunity to fill that role.
Player roll to see who in the group gets to have the voice during a dialogue option
This is fantastic - it’s the best solution to the problem we’ve seen. But the quest structure is not consistent. We also experience quests where the player is very obviously filling that “hero” role - affecting the world in a way only they can. But in a world where we all communicate with one another, we are immediately reminded that countless others have filled that role before us and countless more will do so when we have moved on. From that quest … not moved on as in died. Though that’s also true.
The thing I loved most about the “Roll to Speak” dynamic of party quest dialogue was that sometimes someone would say something with which I did not agree. Simple awesome. If the story were real, not everyone would always get along and choose the same thing. So even though it was not what I wanted to say - I still wanted it said.
Listen, there is no answer here. Everquest just sent us off to kill monsters together and we made our own deal with the story as to why. That was enough for then. But now, we want to experience a story while we play (well, most of us do) and we want that story to involve how completely awesome we are. And special. And how we’re the only who are special. But that mentality will always be at odds with the way the game is played.
Maybe that’s okay. I look forward to the day when someone solves this problem with an enjoyable experience.
Working with Design
This article is an amazing read on how the Narrative Designers of Wildstar are sticking to their guns when it comes to quest description text. They want to keep all their quest text to “Tweet Size” (140 characters) which, as they show, can be quite the struggle.
Take a read on how writers can work with design to really create a better game through the narrative.
It’s you being so invested and immersed in the interactive mechanics that you can’t help but feel so sucked in that it becomes a narrative. It becomes a narrative after the fact.
Making Story Matter
Since we’ve heard from RA Salvatore on the writing process in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, I thought we could take a look at an example from the game. Insisting that players hear your story leads to jaded players. Incentivizing players to hear your story leads to immersed players. And immersed players like to play your game.
First things first - Reckoning does not have a codex/story bible/narrative log which you can access from the main menu, at least not in what we have come to know as the traditional sense. This is a welcome departure from the presently established norm. In theory, I love a massive codex filled with every song, story, religious text, and history lesson the world has to offer. I eat that stuff up. Except when I don’t have time to eat it up. When that happens, that codex sits in the menu like a pile of broccoli. I use broccoli because I hate broccoli and I assume most of you do as well - because it’s disgusting.
There’s also a drop off rate. You start the game and in your wide eyed excitement, you make the decision to read every single codex entry you come across. You will be the master of this world’s lore before you finish and people of all nations will respect you for it. But that doesn’t happen. After a couple dozen entries, you detest breaking your flow - you hate having to stop raiding this dungeons, killing these ogres, so that you can pause and read about how ogre killing was a royal past time back in 600 BCEAG. And designers hate it too. We don’t want to see you have to stop playing to understand the world. It pulls you out of the game.
So the menu codex is poor design and you end up not using it all that much anyway. Some of you do, and I applaud that. I wish I had your fervor for the intricacies of the world’s history.
Or maybe I do. Enter Reckoning. Enter Lorestones. Enter me seeing a Lorestone from a distance and making a mad dash towards it, unconcerned with the troll standing nearby or the treasure chest a few feet away. When I see a Lorestone in Reckoning, nothing else matters.
Lorestones are big stones out in the world that give you a bit of story when you interact with them. They are, for all intents and purposes, a codex entry. The difference is that they are completely voiced - a la Bioshock’s recordings.
Fair enough - we all know Bioshock got that right, so that’s nothing new. I can continue playing my game while hearing the story of the world around me. However, there’s more. I get Experience Points whenever I interact with a Lorestone. So now I am being rewarded for experiencing the story.
All that is well and good, but a little XP and a little narrative would make me use them when I find them - but what makes me actively seek them out? The fact that if I find every Lorestone in a given area, complete the set, I am awarded with a permanent stat boost to my character. The Old Republic did this with the Holocrons, but the frequency with which Reckoning places Lorestones makes it so much more enjoyable.
A Lorestone in the world of Reckoning, ready to be plucked for its sweet XP juices
There are plenty of areas and plenty of stat bonuses to go around. And for you codex lovers out there, you can go back and listen to any entry all over again from the menu.
Does this seem a little cheap? Maybe. It’s like offering a child a candy bar if they clean the dishes. The candy bar has nothing to do with the dishes - it’s just to get you to pay attention. That comes down to a matter of theming these rewards to fit the activity. But when someone has finally discovered a way to get me to want to hear hundreds of snippets of lore about their world, I can forgive a little pandering.
Day[9] has amazing Starcraft video blogs and tutorials but he is quickly becoming the voice of the gaming community. Listen to his interview of R.A. Salvatore talk about how writing for games is different than writing for novels and how it all comes together in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Salvatore has always been one of my favorite reads and seeing him wrap his head around the interactive space is really compelling.
Gameplay vs. Immersion
In terms of chronology, this post is a little late. Though, considering the topic of discussion, I think that can be excused - with the utter sinkhole of seconds that Skyrim is, one can be excused for delaying just about anything.
If you’re reading this, you are either one of my family members or you know Skyrim is amazing. So I won’t belabor that point. What I want to address is the consistency of the combat system between Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim - why people hate it, and why it should not be changed.
First - why people hate it. Well, because it’s frustrating. If ever there was a ‘thing’ to embody the word ‘clunky’, Skyrim’s combat system would be that thing. The feeling of storming a fort and taking out a band of outlaws is dampened by the fact that you miss half your attacks because you can’t judge distance from sword to throat. There is very little finesse when it comes to attacks - usually devolving to a hackfest with the nearest meatbag - though the inclusion of power attacks and finishing moves was a nice touch. Unfortunately, they are the gravy on an otherwise tasteless porkchop.
Next, the system itself is a little imbalanced. Have you played this game with a bow? Why in the nine hells would you ever do anything else? I tried using swords for about 10 seconds and then decided I hated not killing everything before they even know I’m there.
Despite these and other flaws (horses attack whether you like it or not, bears are stronger than most dragons, etc.) the combat system should not, in any way, change. It’s wonderful. That’s right, it’s frustrating and it’s wonderful. And one word explains why.
Freedom.
Bethesda works really hard to keep the game out of your game play. This creates a sense of immersion unlike any other product out there. You do not see damage numbers popping up on the screen, you don’t see lock-on target reticles, and there are no attacks that take control away from your player (aside from the finishing moves) to make you feel more awesome. They leave that up to you.
At the most, you’re going to see when you’ve done critical damage or a sneak attack lands - but those things aside, you are free to immerse yourself in your character, believing you are actually in a battle. Do you miss a lot because you can’t target an enemy? Yes - but so do real combatants. Do you lack a button combo that will unleash an ultimate finishing attack? Yes - but doesn’t that make you feel like you’re actually swinging that sword? Do horses really come to your rescue regardless of your orders? No … and that should stop.
The truth of the matter is that in order to make this world feel as real to you as possible, Bethesda has made the intentional decision to keep combat clunky. Why do I think it’s intentional? Because they’re not deaf - and we’ve been complaining about it for years. They know it isn’t optimal - but they also know that the world of Tamriel would not be the same if you didn’t believe in it. And that belief is enforced by the immersion of making combat real rather than flashy.
Every time I write a game, I think I learn how to write less — how to get an idea across with less text. How to rely on the visual space, whatever the visual elements you have in the world, or in the characters. People saying stuff is the last resort in a video game, especially if it’s going to constrain the player from acting.
A Chat with Mary DeMarle
Stephen E. Dinehart’s interview series, “Game Writers in the Trenches” is one of the best writing focused blogs you can possibly read. A great writer in his own right, he has the connections to get other writers in the industry talking and the result is insightful and gratifying. Take a look at his most recent with the writer of “Deus Ex: Human Revolution.”
Daniel Erickson talks about Writing for SWTOR
I link to Daniel Erickson a good bit - he must seem like a personal hero of mine. Maybe he is.
This is one of the most enjoyable articles I’ve ever read because it is an in-depth look at the nuances of writing morality, immersion, and giving choices. You don’t often get this kind of perspective from interviews so enjoy this article’s rare look into a large writing team.
Jared is a Narrative Designer at Schell Games in Pittsburgh. This is a blog of observations on writing and design in video games.
