The Narrative Design Exploratorium™

Dramatic Play - towards a new form

2009-07-01T01:56:54Z

My article Dramatic play was published recently on Gamasutra.com and has created some interesting discussion on various sights and forums.

What is Dramatic play? Dramatic play is a new niche, a paradigm that is the focus of interactive narrative design, the craft that meets at the apex of ludology and narratology and conjoins the theories into functional video game development methodologies. To the right is a model I created based on Aritotles Dramatic Thoery as adapted for video games.

If you'd like to read the article it is available @ http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4061/dramatic_play.php

I think the article was best rephrased by AJ Glasser for Kataku as "You sorta owe Dead Space to Aristotle." Read the thread @ http://kotaku.com/5302557/you-sorta-owe-dead-space-to-aristotle

Transmedia Franchise Development

2009-06-29T03:40:27Z

Having developed franchises ranging in genres and game types, I've become versed in writing and designing transmedia narrative delivery within the rules of a given property. Like any creative endeavor blank slates can be harder to fill than a penciled page. Restraints based on franchise rules can be both detrimental and freeing. Balancing these concerns and knowing when to stick to a rule, and when to throw it out is vital to successful franchise development. At the end of the day it's about pleasing fans, and surprising them too.

Pre-Production
This is a vital step, often truncated or overlooked in scope, but it is a large part of the process which can be time consuming.

Step 1: Study the Franchise
This seems easy, but it's can be quite time consuming and difficult. You need to know a world well enough to author in it. This takes a balancing of your subjective take on the franchise with a more objective view of how the fans perceive it. Sure you can jump in renegade style and bang around until Batman is wearing skates and Dr. Freeze is a beef cake, or you can take care knowing you are stepping into sacred ground. Yes franchises are the place of fairy tales and make believe, they are intellectual properties which exist in the imagination. When you take the task of altering and or adding to a franchise you get a chance to contribute to the imaginations of thousands if not millions of people. It's an opportunity best not squandered on sophomoric fearlessness. That said, some people know franchises too well to author in them, they become fearful of breaking the cannon of fiction for sake of damaging their nostalgic glamorization of what once was.

Step 2: Identify the Pillars
Look at the Franchise and ask yourself "What makes this strong." "What does The Marvel Universe mean?" or "What is Harry Potter?" "What is Halo?" I find this is best done in a team setting. Key players a good team will have talents and likes which bring them focus on certain aspects of the franchise. Coming together to narrow and nail the pillars will be much more fruitful than if you where to attacked it yourself.

]]> Step 3: Characters, Locations, and time lines
Who is acting within this world? Where are they and how have their pasts affected the present. You need to know this stuff. Think of these as inventory lists which you can later harvest for inspiration and function within your fiction design.

Step 4: Identify the holes
The story will have holes, it's inevitable; sometimes BIG holes, ones you can't cover up. That is, things will be unanswered for the audience, and some questions will beg to be answered. By no means are you required to address these holes, heck you might want to ignore them altogether, but you need to ask yourself and your team which ones are important to expanding the franchise and compelling it forward?

Step 6: Narrative Delivery
Just how is a player going to experience your story? Or how will they create their own? Looking at narrative delivery in the previous installments and entry points to the franchise can help you identify key systems for development. This is true for any medium your transmedia franchise is covering. You need to study and identify these methods as both a historical and competitive analysis. Identifying the parts which deliver your narrative allows you to design the 'narremes', or story elements within a particular media, to fit just right within your transmedia sphere. A transmedia sphere is a collection of the media types you are using to execute the transmedia property. Your story content will be delivered with designed precision, your writer(s) will be more happy, and ultimately the player will be able to understand and experience more of your story as designed.

Step 7: Throw it all away.
Really; burn it. I was talking to a design director recently and asked him about some narrative design techniques that were used in the franchises last installation. What the team and I thought were pillars were in fact a patchwork of fixes put together to fix a poorly delivered story. People are human, and their creations are too.

Step 8: The Transmedia Plan
Map your transmedia sphere and created supporting documentation for rollout. What media elements are you using? Are these elements to be released at the same time? Do they focus on particular aspects of the franchise? What do you expect to achieve with them? Understanding the media elements, marketing and distributions channels that will be used in you transmedia roll-out is vital information. Information which you need, both for yourself and your team.

Step 9: Core Documents
I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen the whole of a franchise being housed within a slide presentation created by an assistant producer from viewing media artifacts. If those who came before you were not wise enough to document the franchise during development, and to update it after development, please put everything on hold until this you have at least a first iteration, if not a solid alpha. You shouldn't be 2 years into production without documentation about your product. It's wrong and wasteful. Sure these documents will need updated and iterated upon, but this is a vital first step for organizing and developing the franchise.

Step 10: Write
This is a whole process unto itself, both vast and mysterious. A whole business sector has developed about writing instruction, so I won't get into it. That said, it is a vital and time consuming process with no right answers. Listen to your gut, and to the critiques, no matter how harsh, of people you trust.

Production
Again here is a long and time consuming process which may involve 10's of millions of dollars and teams ranging into the 100's. It takes a lot of planning, talent and time. What is below is brief overview. Since your franchise might be staged, this pertains more to particular media elements rather than your entire transmedia sphere.

Step 11: Phase Alpha
The Alpha Phase of development needs to be directed at creating a first draft of all you media elements. Once completed you and your team will need to play, watch, listen and read. Testing these products and presenting them is a task unto itself

Step 12: Focus/User Testing
A vital step to any media production is testing, anyone whom has been on the team since the beginning with be saturated, and as such the quality of their opinions diminish relative to fresh eyes. Test the quality of you media elements, and their interrelation, by asking viewer/user/players questions which will provide you insight to how your media elements are lending to their 'reading' of the franchise. This will help you to restrategize for the next step.

Step 13: Post-Alpha
This is the time to update you documentation, and ask yourself where the most focus needs to be aimed to get your product finished. In all hopes it is brief and directed so you can move smoothly into Beta.

Step 14: Phase Beta
The Beta Phase of production is a time of sweating it out. If you've planned well, you shouldn't be crunching, but polishing. This is when you are aiming at a final draft, your gold.

Step 15: Gold
This is when you media is ready for pressing, printing and distribution. It's not a phase, but the end of Beta.

Post-Production

Step 16: Roll-out
This is a task which moves beyond franchise development and production, and into marketing and distribution, I've got my thoughts, but I'll leave that to experts.

Step 17: Keeping it live
In today's media landscape it's possible to keep new content in production at all times, feeding your fans, and maintaining their loyalty and interest in the franchise.

Step 18: Documenation (again)
This is a great time to once again, update your documentation! If you stick with the franchise you be thanking yourself, and if you move on, the next team will be too. Documentation is the most key and overlooked aspect of any franchise I've worked on, giving it the focus and importance it deserves will pay out ten-fold as you franchise matures over what every creator, and investor, hopes will be decades.

Transmedia franchise development is a long and resource intensive process, making sure you are planned and directed in you execution will ensure quality in your franchise for years to come. For the Narrative Design Exploratorium I'm Stephen Dinehart; thanks for reading.

Game Writers in the Trenches™ 6: Micah Wright

2009-06-16T20:08:18Z

This is an ongoing NDE series featuring interviews with Game Writers in the Trenches™. The game industry is riddled with the unsung heroes of interactive storytelling. As game developers are increasingly looking to create meaningful virtual narrative experiences, listening to the real-world wisdom of these writers can help everyone on the development pipeline understand their trials, tribulations, and needs, in hopes of enabling them to do their job as they know best. Today's game writer is Micah Wright, I'm hoping to see what we can learn from his experiences in the trenches of writing and game development.

Stephen Dinehart: First off congrats on your continued success; between comics, books, games and more I'm wondering where you get the time. The first project I'd like to address is your propaganda remix project. It is highly compelling from multiple perspectives. How did it get started?

Micah Wright: It started in early 2002... I saw a series of new WWII-era styled posters regarding "information security" that the National Security Agency commissioned, and something about them didn't seem right. After staring at them for a while, I realized it was because at least one of them was a direct repaint of a Nazi propaganda poster, and all of them included a lot of techniques more commonly associated the social realism posters of Russia or China... military figures staring not at the viewer, but up and away to the glorious proletariat future. It really angered me that after 9/11 our government's first instinct was to pass the USA PATRIOT ACT and strip us of our civil liberties, and here suddenly was a poster with Nazi imagery on it. I didn't like the implications. I blogged about the image, and a reader suggested that I make fun of it, so I did. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I had about 50 posters that I'd repainted, so I posted them all onto one page and started getting crazy amounts of hits solely through word of mouth. That's when I knew that there were a lot of people like me... people who saw which direction the Bush Administration was leading the country and weren't on board with their plans.
]]> SD: While things may have settled a bit with the new administration, you began the project at a highly controversial time. Did you have to shop the material long to find a publisher?

MW: Strangely enough, they found me. From the beginning, I'd allowed people to wheatpaste the images as they saw fit, and one day a guy who would eventually become my editor was walking down the street and saw one of my posters pasted onto a light pole and spent the next couple of days tracking me down.

SD: What additional hurdles did you have to overcome?

MW: Other than George Bush having an 86% approval rating when I started? Oh, the hate mail, the death threats, the usual. It was weird being so against the grain of society, but as the pointlessness of the Iraq War was realized by more and more people, only the die-hards were left to castigate my un-American-ness.

SD: Do you see the project expanding into other media formats?

MW: I never really thought much about it... I did the posters, they became a book, I've made cell-phone backgrounds, but other than that, I don't know where it'd go. What's sad is that lately I've been coming up with a lot of ideas for new posters. It seems like a sign of trouble that six months into the Obama Administration, I still see things to make posters about. I really hoped Obama would do away with all of this post-9/11 scaredy-cat baloney at the airports and spying on America and close Guantanámo, but he hasn't. The national security behemoth continues on its lumbering path completely unaffected by the changeover between administrations.

SD: You are truly a writer with a broad breadth, of all the mediums you've worked in why do you continue to work in video games?

MW: Well, Games is a pretty fun place to work. There's a real sense of being in on the development of a great new artform, which is exciting. The money's okay... not as good as television or film, but better than a lot of other fields. No one's getting rich writing comicbooks these day.

SD: Having crossed the divide even further, you are now writing "Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid" for the iPhone game publisher ngmoco:). Is that a full time gig?

MW: Rolando 2 was a really fun job. It was a freelance job, as have been all of my videogame jobs. I've never worked full-time at a developer, much as I'd like to... the opportunity just hasn't presented itself yet.

SD: What is unique about writing for the iPhone?

MW: For a writer, it's a bit constricting... but the limitations make it a fun challenge. It's essentially reductive, like writing Haiku instead of a full script.

SD: ngmoco:) is made out of a world class team of talent, yourself included. What about working with the team there is most compelling?

MW: The team is great... good communication, fast decision making... all the things that you dream of in an employer. Simon Oliver, the creator and writer of Rolando, was a great guy to work with and bounce ideas back and forth with... truly accepting of new ideas and concepts for the game. It was a great experience and I hope to be involved if there ends up being a Rolando 3.

SD: What do you like about the iPhone? Does it offer unique video game storytelling potential?

MW: I don't think we've seen even the surface of what's possible on the iPhone. I've only seen one story-driven game for the iPhone so far. I'd love to see a lot more. It seems uniquely built for a choose-your-own-adventure type game.

SD: What does game story mean to you? How does it differ from other forms of storytelling?

MW: Right now we're in a weird place in the evolution of games & story where the sales push is slowly shifting from graphics to story. Ten years ago, it was enough to just come out with a new WWII shooter or a new game where zombies chased you down a hallway. The promise of ever-better graphics was the publishers' sales tool to drive people to new machines and new games. Now, however, we've reached a plateau as far as graphics and realism go... how much MORE real do I want a WWII shooter to look? Do I really want to subject my audience to realistic combat wounds? Most of them would probably vomit if they shot someone and their brains came cascading out. Then there's the danger of desensitization to realistic violence, which I never want customers to fall prey to. Then there's the cost... the more graphics ability we add, the more expensive these games become to produce. Added to which, we're right on the verge of the Uncanny Valley with regards to game characters... have you seen the Heavy Rain previews? Those characters almost look real, but our reptilian hind-brains quickly pick up on the fact that there's something wrong with them and so we violently reject them. No, we've reached the end of graphic realism as the primary sales tool for our medium. So what's next? It has to be story. WHY am I running down this hallway shooting zombies? WHO am I in this game? WHAT is my goal, other than just getting to the next level? This is where writers come into the process, and why more and more game companies are hiring writers to participate in game design earlier in the production cycle.

SD: As member, and chair, of the WGA New Media Caucus are you seeing changes in the way game writers are being contracted?

MW: I think we're seeing more outside hiring as game companies realize that perhaps their lead designer is the best guy they could hope for to design the game, but maybe not the best writer to execute his own ideas. It's just a matter of specialization... I'm hiring the best level designers, the best lead designer, the best musician, why am I letting the writing be taken care of by the janitor after he's finished emptying the trash cans? That was the old system: let whoever wanted to do it write the dialog, it doesn't really matter, anyway, etc.

SD: Do you believe adopting a Hollywood style model would help video game writers and their stories?

MW: I think adopting a Hollywood production model would help videogame companies get their costs under control, and I think likewise, it would help them come up with better, newer, more innovative ideas. In Hollywood, with some exceptions, your Director isn't your Writer. Sure, there are a lot of guys who do both jobs, but generally, they were writers first and became directors to realize their vision onscreen without interference. I'd love to see a Hollywood-esque system where a company calls me in as a writer and the lead designer says "we have a gameplay concept that's all about fighting in zero-gravity. Can you pitch us a great story to go with it?" That way you'd get the best of both worlds, instead of just slapping a generic story on top of your cool new shooter.

The other good thing about Hollywood is that they have two seasons: Summer Blockbusters for the part of us which likes to watch stuff explode, and Winter Dramas for the erudite, discriminating viewer in us... but in games, it's all Summer Blockbusters, all year long, with the odd Japanese freakout like Katamari Damacy slipping through the cracks to freshen things up. The oldest gamers are now in their late 40's and early 50's... why are there no games for them? In Hollywood, the Producers see the money and make cheap, simple films to appeal to those viewers... where's the equivalent in games?

SD: What do you seek to accomplish in your game stories?

MW: To enhance and support gameplay. If possible to make the audience feel something about what they're experiencing, other than just the catharsis of killing the enemy or whatever. To push myself as a writer, to push the medium.

SD: Do you believe game stories create catharsis? Have you experienced it?

MW: That's an interesting question. I think gameplay certainly creates a form of catharsis... I felt like a ten-foot-tall god the day I beat the "protect whats-her-name" level in Goldeneye way back on my Nintendo 64. I've experienced a number of really moving moments in games, but I've never, say, cried at a game, whereas I've wept like a baby at several films. Does that mean the interactive aspects of gaming means the format is essentially distancing? Or does it mean I've just not played the right games? Or have those games just not been invented yet? I'm not sure what the correct answer is, and I feel we'll be debating it for some time.

SD: Does narrative structure help you write? How?

MW: Well, every game I write has a 3-act structure. I think it's pretty much a mandatory requirement for Western entertainment. Even the worst videogames tend to have a beginning, middle and end... sometimes those aspects are better executed than other times. Now, that said, there are tons of differences between a film structure and that of some games, and a traditional 3-act structure doesn't always lend itself to some types of games at all. World of Warcraft, for example, doesn't have much of a standard narrative structure, but its players seem to fill in those missing pieces for themselves via the story of their character and their guild or what have you.

SD: What place will writers have in the interactive entertainment of tomorrow?

MW: More and better. What differentiates GTA III from GTA IV if not the writing? They went DOWN in the number of character customization abilities from 3 to 4, not up. There were fewer odd jobs (no taxi missions, for example), no haircut changes, fewer clothing choices, you couldn't get fat or work out to make yourself a megabeast any longer... what was the last sequel with fewer gameplay options? No, what made GTA IV a better game than GTA III despite the sandbox gameplay losses, was the better story and better writing. On many levels, it was a real breakthrough. I would love to have seen more forced character choices and options, but for the first time, those types of branching storylines existed in the GTA franchise, even if there weren't a lot of them. The Rockstar writing teams are getting better and better with each game, and they were already some of the better people in the business. Heck, look at their game based on The Warriors... a great brawling game, it utilized the major story points of the film, but extended them and expounded upon them, coming up with a completely original prologue to the film's storyline which explained some of the mysteries of the film. That's something I think games do very well... expansion and exploration of Intellectual Properties from other mediums, and you need writers to accomplish it properly. Transformers 2 cost $200 million to create and is only two hours long, but the five games Activision is releasing day and date with the film didn't cost half that and provide many more hours of gameplay experience. If they weren't tied to the film's storyline, I bet they'd sell three times their eventual numbers. Once we've run dry of Harry Potter films, I could easily see someone making fantastic games which take place in that universe, the stories for which are just as good as the books. Look how great the first Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game was, for another example. I'd love to write a game set in the Lone Wolf & Cub universe, or a crime game set in the comedic milieu of Donald Westlake's Dorfmunder books.

Typically games has been a business where the Publishers believed they created the best ideas themselves... but that opinion is breaking down, and as we go forward, we'll see it loosen up more, and you'll see more games based on non-obvious IP. Like games based on non-current movies, like the upcoming Ghostbusters game, or more games based on books. In 2002, I pitched Warner Bros. Interactive a game called "Turner Classic Videogames" which would use the storylines from three old black-and-white films to recreate the best parts of those films. My theory was you couldn't make an 80-hour game out of the black-and-white version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" but you COULD make an exciting 20-hour game out of it, then re-use the props, game engine, costumes and background scenery for a 20-hour game based on "I Was A Fugitive From a Chain Gang" or "On the Waterfront" and ship them on the same disc. The WBIE producer looked at me like I had just grown an extra head, but I guarantee that there's a market for a game based on Logan's Run or The Dirty Dozen. Not some lame remake of those great films, but an immersive experience set in those "lame" and "old" movies which somehow manage to get played every day on cable. I noticed the other day that there's a major game coming out based on Dante's Inferno. How great is that? Things are changing every day in games, and that's one of the things I enjoy most about working in the field.

Micah's work spans from controversial political remixes, to light hearted hand-held fun. As one of today's most prominent game writers, and forces of change in game writing I know we will see him having an effect in the industry for years to come. I hope you've learned something from this interview straight from the trenches. For the Narrative Design Exploratorium, I'm Stephen Dinehart, thank you for your time. Remember it's only through play that great stories happen!

Reading Video Games

2009-06-16T18:08:59Z

The 'game system' fires up, the fans roar (or hopefully not so much), and the once black screen ignites. Immediately the player engages the video game and encounters stimuli; text; main menus, loading screens, cinematics, play mechanics, player characters, non-player characters, etc. They take witness and navigate the system using designed actions, play mechanics. Using these mechanics, the player acts as an agent within the participatory dramatic spectacle. An agent is a person or thing that takes an active role. The player moves forward through a series of events acting with designed mechanics to bring about change in the system in order to achieve some desired outcome. To act is to cause or experience events. An event is a transition from one state to another. As a player acts he assembles a series of logical and chronologically related events, a fabula. This is the story, a series of events cognitively assembled and perceived by the player. The player authors this story through the reading of the text; the video game.

"A narrative text is a text in which an agent relates a story in a particular medium" [Bal 1994]. The video game is related, or narrated, by the video game engine to the player through both active and passive means. Text, imagery, feedback, sound, and temporal sequences are read, perceived and judged. The game engine presents a narrative text to the player and says read me; understand what I am; and immerse yourself in the simulation.

Some are better readers, better players, but all the players read and absorb the experience. As the player progresses in his play these judgments about the events, experienced as a result of his actions, cause him to modify his play to produce desired results. Reading allows the player to determine the next action needed to achieve a specific objective, or 'object of desire.' The story is needed by the player to convey the subjective meaning associated with the narrative read in the video game. A dramatic pattern that when assembled by the player creates a [player] story; a communication about the way things are within a particular system.

Defining Interactive Narrative Design 2

2009-06-09T11:40:01Z

Interactive Narrative Design is a craft which focuses on creating dramatic play meaningful participatory experiences with interactive systems. An interactive narrative designer seeks to craft systems which deliver narremes, narrative elements, to a player in such a fashion that the player may craft a story cognitively based on their navigation within said system. When narrative design is successful the player believes that they are experiencing a story driven out of their own agency within a navigated dataspace or played video game. While the aims of Interactive Narrative Design are similar to Game Writing and Game Design, and surely involves the crafts, this hybrid craft aims to allow story to take center stage so that the systems engaged by the player are centered around the core thematic aim of the writers story.

Interactive Narrative Design is a craft that meets at the apex of Ludology and Narratology and turns the conjoining into functional interactive entertainment development methodologies. Ludology being the study of play that has become very fashionable in the game design community within the past 2 decades. Narratology is the theory of narratives, of spectacles, cultural artifacts that 'tell a story'. Video games allow the player to witness data as a navigable, participatory dramatic spectacles, unfolding before their eyes in real-time.

The aim is to transport the player through play into the video game by all means of his visual and aural faculties, so that he may forget the confines of reality and live and breathe in the video game which seems as life itself and on the screen which seems the wide expanse of a whole world. The craft to bring about that paradigm shift is Interactive Narrative Design.

The Inherent Drama of Game Play

2009-05-15T11:32:32Z

Drama is defined as "A serious play of human conflict." This is especially apt for video games.The basic conflict of protagonist (player 1), deuteragonist (player 2) and the antagonist is at the core of life, drama, and games. Whether it's a Wii bowling game or a online multiplayer strategy game, conflict, and it's resolution, is also at the core of game mechanics.

It is the same mechanic that has driven mankind forward in the religion, sciences, arts, and humanities. It is this innate conflict of life which has been at the core of human pondering for almost as long as recorded history. The ancient Chinese drawing a dualism in approaches to conflict resolution between Sun Tzu, with life as a series of conflicts which can be overcome by a skilled tactician to achieve his object of desire, and Buddha, with life as suffering (conflict) and the way to overcome it as a secession of desire.

Conflict renders life in the present. Through it's being mankind gains purpose and meaning through the chaos of change. Too in the realm of story, in the realm of drama, conflict acts as the very catalyst which drives human life forward. A classical 3-act narrative structure is driven by an active protagonist seeking to achieve an object of desire, and the conflict which arises out of action to achieve that object. The pattern repeats until a final climatic conflict occurs that drives the protagonist to a penultimate action to achieve his object of desire. This is resolved in the denouement, which gives or takes the object of desire to the protagonist, in all or part, depending on the degree of irony.

In that, games become systems to understand conflict and it's resolution in the drama of real life. An old friend of mine once told me that his British father would say: "We don't have wars in Europe anymore, we have soccer."

On Murderous Video Games

2009-04-18T17:49:01Z

There was a interesting discussion on the the IGDA's Game Design Special Interest Group about the necessity of gore in games. In any other genres but action, horror and war, I would say no, gore is not needed. That said, I do not believe in the "gore-wars" to one-up the "real" nature of violence in games. To me this is a childish enterprise for a grail which is never realized. Do you remember when the Mortal Kombat arcade game series seemed truly violent? Watching it now reveals it's almost comic interpretation of gore.

The pleasure of horror is to become, for a while, wired to your subconscious mind. I'm subscribed to the "life is scary enough without horror" group, but for the player whom is engaged in a violent game, he is experiencing in himself as a human being, what is often buried in the subconscious, now in the conscious. It's a rush of identification with great power, with the life-force. We live in a society which chooses to ignore the "elimnation of life" our tax dollars pay for in the day, and glamorize brutality in the night, amongst the shadows of the 10 o'clock news. We bring real horror to the door steps of our unwilling global neighbors, but we seek to regulate the fantasies of adults though censorship of the arts. I ask why? We cleary have bigger issues. ]]> There is a reason most horror and war games are rated M, or 18+, they are not for children. I watched Friday the 13th when I was way too young, and I wish I hadn't, it scared the living crap out of me. Parents need to do their best to regulate the content their kid ingest, and I realize this is no small task. With that in mind, gore in the arts, and the desire to inflict harm in human beings, are two natural phenomena. It's when overt suppression of these desires leads to a breakdown in social order that problems arise.

The life-force which is buried with your mind is a force of great power, it is ruthless, and only seeks to survive. The conscious mind put a lid on that and allows us to live in the "real world". The desire to harm, the action to harm, and the pleasure in the suffering of other, these are the three steps of evil. Studying the Horror genre in one of Robert Mckee's seminars recently, I adapated his philosophy to video games and am presenting it here.

Sadism is rooted in dread, the fear of death, a sadist with a sadistic impulse, feels powerless and that dread builds, to cope with that fear they cause death in another living thing. The power of taking life allows the killer to feel the power of life and death, this sadist tendencies are in all human beings. That moment of suffering empowers us, it makes us feel good. The desire to harm, the action to harm, and the pleasure in the suffering of other, these are the three steps of evil. From cutting off heads, to fragging strangers in Halo 3, to cutting of cars in traffic, it's a matter of degrees. The masochist is someone whom acutely feels dread. They seek out powerful people to live in their shadow, and through them they feel safe. Naturally the person in power demonstrates their power over the masochistic individual, and so beings the cycle of safety and power of the sadomasochistic.

The player firstly seeks to identify with the victim, and puts us in a masochistic point of view. Secondly we then seek for the player to identify with the predator in a sadistic fashion, and it is through this contrast of masochism and sadism that we bring our audience to horror. I would agree that children should not engage in such play, or that gore belongs in certain genres. But Horror, and in so gore, is mentally healthy.

Horror games here becomes an emotional therapy whereby players excersice thier own unspoken sadomasochistic desires. The catharsis of feeling these desires makes us feel alive, and hopefully prevents someone from doing evil acts in real life. It's dark, sort of Fruedian, but I think this relativley cold and clinical perspective holds a lot of truth.

2 Reminders to the Metaself

2009-03-30T11:51:49Z

Why make games?

I create games to make meaningful emotional experiences, not to further puzzles or to encourage the slaughter of hordes of trolls. It's not that these puzzle slaughter games are wrong, but they aren't meaningful for me, and that's why I work in games, to try and make these shoot 'em up, dry puzzle mechanics into something the player can draw emotional, and maybe even spiritual, meaning from. The hope is that Interactive Narrative Design can do just that, if not now, then within my lifetime.

Why focus on narrative?
In the design of interactive story, actions (player agency), characters, setting and plot and the intermeshing of characters and events is the hardest work I've done, and to create a playable ending that is inevitable, but insightful and provoking. I craft narratives that provide insight into life, ones which are satisfying; emotionally gratifying. They are tests for how much one really understands life. I want to make and play games that end, and end well. Ones that when finished provide the player with insight about the very real human condition.

Game Writers in the Trenches™ 5: Richard Dansky

2009-03-16T12:30:05Z

This is an ongoing NDE series featuring interviews with Game Writers in the Trenches™. The game industry is riddled with the unsung heroes of interactive storytelling. As game developers are increasingly looking to create meaningful virtual narrative experiences, listening to the real-world wisdom of these writers can help everyone on the development pipeline understand their trials, tribulations, and needs, in hopes of enabling them to do their job as they know best. Today's game writer is Richard Dansky, I'm hoping to see what we can learn from his experiences in the trenches of game development.

Stephen Dinehart: First off, congrats on being named one of the top 20 game writers most recently by Gamasutra! How has the recognition of your craft changed over the pas 15 years of your career?

Richard Dansky: Thank you! It really is a tremendous honor, particularly being listed with some folks whose work I've always looked to as a model for what I've tried to achieve. I think the list itself is indicative of how much game writing has grown and matured as a craft - fifteen years ago, I don't think you could have gotten folks to name twenty game writers, and now there are energetic debates on message boards as to who else deserved to be on the list. The fact that game writers are getting known for their work - not just within the industry, but by the fans as well - means that there's more of an understanding of what good writing brings to a game. And that can only be a good thing moving forward.
]]> SD: Have you also seen an evolution in the game writing craft, both external and internal to your own writing and story development process?

RD: Absolutely, and with every project. Obviously every project and studio's process is different, but we've definitely moved away from "here's our levels, make a story out of them" or "Oh, the lead designer can write the game when he's not busy." There's more attention being given to writing, there's more assets being given to writers to tell stories with in terms of time and iteration, there's tighter integration of story and gameplay in ways that reinforce both - it's great to see.

SD: Can you tell me what you do at Red Storm Entertainment?

RD: At Red Storm, I serve in a management role as opposed to a direct production one. I guess you could say that a lot of what I do is making sure that the design staff at Red Storm, which is made up of some crackerjack folks like Jeff McGann, Chris Bray, and Jay Posey, has the direction and support they need to do what they do best, and serving as a gut-check on the management level for the design concepts that the team develops. SD: If you don't mind we'll leave the management aside. What about writing for video games is most challenging for you?

RD: The hardest part of writing for games is, I think, not getting the number of iterations to polish that I'd like to do. My last novel, Firefly Rain, went through something like fourteen drafts before it was done. With a game, you don't get that. It's for very good reasons, mind you - any studio that can afford to write-record-implement nine or ten times to make sure that everything is absolutely perfect has my utter respect - but trying to sync up dialog and gameplay and level construction and mission scripting simultaneously on a schedule and a budget means that something potentially has to give.

SD: What does gamestory mean to you? How does it differ from other forms of storytelling?

RD: I've always contended that there's a giant player-shaped hole at the heart of game stories, which is something you have to recognize in order to write a good game story. If you don't allow room for the player's actions to feel meaningful and decisive, then you're denying the heart of what makes a game a game - the idea that players have to make choices with consequences. If the player's not making choices - and those choices can be as simple as "bazooka versus submachine gun" - then it's not a game, it's an occasionally interactive movie.

So I guess that means that a game story is the combination of what the creator/writer/narrative designer/team puts into the game in terms of narrative elements, assets, and narrative structure, and the actual actions of the player to realize those elements in an actual flow of events. It's the two of them together that makes a game story.SD: As a gamewriter how does well-crafted gameplay affect your work and vision?

RD: Better gameplay makes for a better experience for the player, which makes for better immersion in the narrative. It's that simple, and it works from both ends. Strong gameplay helps craft strong stories - ideally, you want characters doing interesting things in your stories, after all - and if the gameplay is involving, then the player's mind has less time to wander and nitpick other things.

More seriously, a strong vision for gameplay really helps in the crafting and tuning of game narratives. If you have a strong sense of what the player is going to want to do - because that's what's fun to do - you can craft the narrative to take advantage of that player desire. Story and gameplay end up reinforcing each other, the player feels like they're driving the action and doing cool things, and everyone wins.

SD: What do you seek to accomplish in your gamestories?

RD: Ultimately, my goal is the same as that of every other member of the team working on the game - to ensure that the player has a good time with the game. Everything else is details. No matter how good the narrative or dialog or characterization or anything else might be, if the player isn't enjoying playing the game, they're going to stop. And if they stop, then none of that work ever gets seen, and none of that story ever gets told.

SD: Does narrative structure help create a better game?

RD: Narrative structure absolutely helps create a better game when it's developed in tandem with the game structure. The game and the narrative need to be aware of what the other's needs are and support those. If the player's not going to get the BFG until level 12, then it makes sense to develop a narrative that allows for the discovery of the BFG at level 12, and not before. At the same time, if the narrative depends on a twist reveal about a particular NPC, then the game structure should probably put the player in a position where he's got a chance to blow that NPC away too soon. It's the synthesis of narrative structure and game structure that creates better games.

SD: When did you first decide to write for video games?

RD: I came to video games from tabletop RPG writing, specifically from White Wolf Game Studios. I'd worked there for four years and worked on over a hundred projects in that time, and I found myself running out of things to say, as it were, in that medium. Around that time, a friend of mine named David Weinstein contacted me and let me know that Red Storm was hiring and they needed a game designer who could write. The idea really appealed to me (and also, Dave is very insistent, in a good way) - I was looking for a new challenge, and video game writing more than fit the bill. It was definitely a tremendous shock

SD: Can you tell me the story of your first game writing gig?

RD: The first professional game writing I ever did was a freelance project for White Wolf - two chapters of their supplement "Haunts" for the game Wraith: The Oblivion. A friend of mine from college, Jennifer Hartshorn, had taken the job as Wraith line developer, and she knew I was A)interested in horror and B)trying to break into writing, so she was kind enough to commission me to create a couple of settings for the game. I ended up writing a good portion of it while sitting at a desk designed for 8 year olds in the basement of a church in suburban Boston while proctoring practice SAT tests for the Princeton Review. Mind you, the church didn't have air conditioning, which gives a whole new meaning to the term "fevered prose"...

SD: Wow; that is a compelling setting, who ever said limitation don't help! What is Snowbird Gothic? What does it mean to you?

RD: Snowbird Gothic is a term I coined to try to sum up my personal take on the Southern Gothic. I confess, I'm a carpetbagger - grew up in Philadelphia and went to school in New England - but I've lived in the South for better than a third of my life, and if I haven't absorbed it, I've at least observed it. So "Snowbird Gothic" is my shorthand for the intersection of my Yankee ways with my experience here. It's something that's manifest in a lot of my fiction, whether it's overtly like in Firefly Rain or Shadows in Green, or just sort of under the skin of what I'm doing.

SD: As an experienced writer for 'pen-and-paper' RPGs what part of that skill set has carried over to video games?

RD: The most important shared trait between the two is the recognition that the player has primacy. Traditional storytelling media - fiction, movies, etc. - has the storytelling going in one direction, from the author to the audience. With games, everything depends on what the player does to make the minute-to-minute action of the story, and that's true for tabletop RPGs and AAA first person shooters alike.

SD: You also have plenty experience writing fiction in the Horror genre, can you tell me what about the genre fascinates you?

RD: I blame Ray Bradbury, honestly. I was given a copy of his book The Halloween Tree when I was a kid, and it just caught my imagination.

Reading - and writing - horror is very much a way of asking yourself the question, "Where do I not want to go? What are my boundaries?" And it's a way to test the answers you have to that question, which allows for some really fascinating possibilities for character development and, of course, writing.

For my part, I'm much more a fan of things like Charles Grant's "quiet horror" than I am of stuff where it's all about the arterial spray. Gore doesn't really move or interest me. It's what's going on between the characters' ears, how the extraordinary circumstances of a horror novel that forces them to confront how they act every day, that hooks me.

SD: Now that I think about, you have written a lot in all the types of writing you do, fiction, RPGs, Video games, and instructional writing. Is there a place you seek to go with your writing that you haven't accomplished yet? A ground yet unbroken?

RD: Really, I just like writing. It's fun for me to put words together, whether it's fiction, game writing, book reviews, essays or whatever. Hopefully I have something interesting to say in each of those formats. I haven't really tried screenplays or comics yet, but someday, if I get the opportunity, it might be interesting to take a whack at them. The real limiting factor is, of course, time.

SD: How much classical story structure do you use in the creation of your gamestories?

On those projects where I'm involved in the creation or development of the story, I'm at least as much about gameplay development as I am about the classical structure. Because of the demands of gameplay - increasing challenge, the risk of alienating the player with forced failure conditions, ramping up the player's capabilities in a way that's compatible with the narrative - you can't just say, "Right, who's read Joseph Campbell?" and stamp it out chockablock from there. The introduction of gameplay and the player experience really forces me, at least, to rethink everything about story structure every time I start work on a game's narrative.

SD: What writing format do you prefer for your gamestories?

RD: I'm very lucky in that Ubi has developed a fantastic internal tool for gamewriters that lets us interface extremely well with other disciplines, and which gives me a lot of versatility as to how I compose dialog and so forth. Obviously, different projects have different demands, and you don't necessarily need a full cinematic script format if you're just writing a few thousand generic lines. That being said, I've worked in everything from spreadsheets to dedicated scriptwriting software to proprietary project-specific tools, and what the folks at Ubi has cooked up is really the best thing I've had a chance to use.

SD: Mmm... I'm drooling; propitiatory game writing tools. I just like the sound of it! What is the most emotionally effective game you've played? Why?

RD: Usually when people talk about "emotional" games, they're talking about a pretty limited subset of emotions, the "higher" ones that get engaged when you read Jane Austen or go to the opera or whatever. Let's face it, Halo engages the emotions - they're just not reflective, contemplative emotions, they're visceral, aggressive, red-meat-chewing ones. So I'm not sure "emotionally effective" is a great way to measure games. If I feel drained after doing my best one-legged Ian Anderson impression playing Rock Band 2, is that not emotionally effective?

That being said, in the more traditional sense of the question, I'd have to go with Grim Fandango as the best I've played so far. It's wonderful storytelling, with that overlay of humor helping drive home some of the more serious questions the game is asking.

SD: Agreed, just like any number of other mediums games can affect and engage the player with any range of emtions. It's a strong signifier with various interpretatins, where people draw the line always says something interesting about what the thin games could or should do. With that in mind, do you believe video game stories create catharsis? And if so have you ever experienced such catharsis? How and why?

RD: I think any storytelling medium has the potential for catharsis, and that games, by the nature of the player's actual involvement in the events of the story, have the potential to be very, very powerful in this regard. Have I experienced it? Certainly, in games ranging from Ico to God of War. Do I think we'll be able to invoke even greater response in the future? Probably, and I think that's more a function of the storytelling tools we have at our disposal than of the medium itself.

SD: What do you envision for the future of gamestories?

RD: In a word, more. As game writers, we're getting so many new toys to play with which each development cycle. Better AI lets us tell better stories. More emergent behaviors lets us create worlds that feel more natural. Better animation and facial expressions on characters - and being able to direct those animations, as Bioware did in Mass Effect - means that we can start thinking about getting out of the Uncanny Valley in a way that lets our stories be more emotionally resonant. The more ways we have to put what we see in our imaginations on the screen, the closer we can get to that imagined ideal, and the better the narratives we can create and share with the player.

SD: How do you see story fitting into the interactive entertainment of tomorrow?

We're human beings. We're storytelling creatures. Every time a new medium has come along, we've found ways to use it to tell stories, from Lascaux to Gutenberg to Twitter. As interactive entertainment evolves, our ways of using to tell stories will evolve, too. Can I point to specifics? No, because the technology is exploding in so many different directions. But I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where it goes, and hopefully, to being a part of moving it forward along that path.

Richard has laid a lot on the table for us and I certainly enjoy it. As one of today's most prominent game writers I know we will see him having an effect in the industry for years to come. Be sure to catch his Game Writer Workshop at the Austin GDC. I hope you've learned something from this no-nonsense interview straight from the trenches. For the Narrative Design Exploratorium, I'm Stephen Dinehart, thank you for your time. Remember it's only through play that great stories happen!

Writing for Video Game Genres - Released

2009-02-28T13:20:49Z

The International Game Developers Association's Game Writing Special Interest Group just released a book with A k Peters, called Writing for Video Game Genres: From RPG to RTS . I was fortunate to have contributed the chapter called Writing for Real-Time Strategy Games. The pages are graced by many popular game writers, including Haris Orkin, Richard Dansky, Tracy Seamester, Lee Sheldon, Andy Walsh, Sand Chen, Evan Skolnick, and that's just the start! The book can be orderd online, and should be on retail shelves soon. This is the third book released by the WSIG and could be a helpful a part of any game students or aspiring game writers collection. It can also serve as a good resource for those of us in the field.

An Interview by an Aspiring Narrative Designer

2009-02-17T13:00:04Z

I was contacted recently by a curious mind, it belonged to a student named Margaret A. Cogswell. I asked her to tell me a little about herself and her program. "I am a sophomore at Savannah College of Art and Design, and a game design major. I recently discovered that I am really passionate about narrative design and storytelling in general. I'm in a Survey of Interactive Media class right now, in which we study the emergence and progression of digital and interactive media and the effect it has on the art world (gaming industry included; it is, after all, an art form). I am required to do a presentation on a specific area of the gaming industry, and I teamed up with two other people who are also interested in narrative. The Interactive Media and Game Design department is pretty ruthless and intense at SCAD. As a general rule, if your work isn't excellent, it doesn't pass the test. I was looking for resources on the internet when I came upon The Narrative Design Exploratorium... I'd really like to ask you some questions that may help me in my project..." Ask away Margaret.
]]> Margaret A. Cogswell: Do you have a specific source of inspiration?

Stephen Dinehart: Many I suppose. I'm tempted to speak of my earliest. I used to love the stories in pen-and-paper RPGs, I would sneak into the family office and hide out just to listen to my brother Grant and his friends play Dungeons and Dragons and Gamma World, not to mention Avalon Hill games like Axis and Allies. Comic books are also a big inspiration for me, my pops had a sick collection from the 50's-70s. Then there was this one I got into in the 2nd grade called ElfQuest which for me was the subject of many imaginative play sessions with my friends. Once I remember so vividly running over a hill and seeing an army of trolls coming at us. I knew it wasn't real, but my imagination was on fire. It was like living the most impossible dream. Saturday morning cartoons, and film also rank high on my scale. The most powerful media experiences for me are those transmedia experiences, which allow me to engage with story on multiples levels, and build my own subjective beliefs about characters, plot, and motivation. It's what I call Transmedial Play.

MC: Is there a set process that you go through when you develop an idea into a concept for a game? If so, what is it?

SD: That's a great question. It depends on many factors, like the team, time-line, resources, and expectations. Media production has been a full fledged force now for over 100 years, there are great processes that already work. The illusion that interactive entertainment is somehow so 'different' from other form of media that it demands a entirely new development methodology is not a idea I would embrace. For the most part I see it as my job, like any professional artist, to be able to create on the spot without warning. It's part of what separates hobbyists and dabblers from professionals. That said, as Hemingway said "The first draft of anything is shit." Ideas come a dime a dozen, it's only through refinement, practice, failure, and iteration that you can do your best. I start with a nice pen, and a blank piece of paper. If I'm not inspired enough, I go out and live life. I read, love, paint, and laugh.

MC: Since you've been in the industry for a while, can you tell me how the role of the "writer" has changed over the years in the game industry?

SD: I have only written for games as narrative designer, but the writing credit is very important. This is why in my current role I also have the title of Lead Writer. Part of how I sell the position is as a solution to the problems both writers and game developers have with contracted talent, too often brilliant, or not so brilliant, material is inadvertently butchered by the iterative production process, which is itself in constant flux. It can leave both writers and developers angry, hurt, and frustrated with their end product. The only solution is to have someone, or a team, whom work alongside a production as it changes and insures that the story content is managed and developed in such a way that it maximizes the potential positives of that interactive fluctuation in production. That's part of what a narrative designer does, manages the fluctuation in story as is demanded by the tangles of the iterative production process which plagues the industry.

MC: How do you think the role of the "writer" will change in the future?

SD: A writer is a writer. I wouldn't mess with that. I write, I love it, it is an art wholly unto itself. What will change is the demands of interactive narrative, which is why being an interactive narrative designer is so much fun, and at the same time so challenging. We are wrestling with the past via the present to define the future.

MC: What games do you consider to have good writing?

SD: There are plenty, I really enjoyed Black, Jade Empire, Prey, Dead Space. I could nit-pic in a critique what worked and what didn't, but what I'm more interested in is interactive experiences that tell good stories. Bioshock is a typical example, but what was done well there was utilizing the lessons of Disney Imagineers. Go to a Disney park, walk down Main Street, go on the Pirates of the Carribean ride and I think you will instantly know what I mean. They are highly crafted interactive experiences, story spaces as it were, ones from which we still have much to learn.

MC: How do you feel about the increasing significance placed upon graphics versus narrative in games?

SD: It's both empowering and daunting. Narrative in interactive entertainment still has a lot to prove. I do think the shifting attitude is really going to help our field see some groundbreaking work in the next decade. I hope and pray that we might be done with the race that has brought the industry to cherish higher polygon counts over believable characters. Nintendo has done a lot to shatter this illusion in recent years. I hope it means that narrative development starts getting budgets allotments like engineering. Ok, so that might not be realistic, but I would really love to see more developers put their money where their mouth is. It's something I have had the pleasure and pain of being on the forefront of. Some developers get this, "we didn't need that dude before" attitude, which just isn't helpful. My favorite comparison is that of engineers back in the day saying "artists? Who needs 'em? I did all the art on our past 3 titles."

MC: What are the advantages and disadvantages to both linear and non-linear storytelling? Which do you feel is more effective in games?

SD: I am of the school that your average player from a mainstream audience doesn't need a "non-linear story" to have a great experience. What matters is that feeling of catharsis. If you can bring a player to the point where they get that "jenkies" moment. That's what matters. I also am growing tired of the phrase "non-linear story" it's a very misused, and misunderstood term, you can throw it in with "emergent" and "procedural". Fact is all experiences we have as human beings are rendered as linear by the simple fact that we cognitively perceive reality in just such a fashion. What is important is player feedback, and providing them with the enough degree's of agency that they feel free, or as free as the system requires to provide a rich experience. Even life has limited agency or the perception thereof. How often do you feel like you have freewill? Most of life, sadly, seems deterministic from one day to the next. Any good story should come to an ending beyond which the audience couldn't imagine another. That's what makes it a good story, it's complete. It's only academics and forum lurking super-geeks that argue about linearity vs. non-linearity, and frankly they are both delusions.

Thanks for the questions. If you find yourself with a thirst for knowledge, or a curiosity about interactive narrative design, I'll do my best to share. Take this as an open invite to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer.

Defining Interactive Narrative Design 1

2009-02-01T19:48:59Z

Interactive Narrative Design is a craft which focuses on creating meaningful participatory story experiences with interactive systems. Just like as a designer of artificial intelligence crafts systems to give a viewer/user/player (VUP) the perception of intelligence in virtual beings. So too a narrative designer, working in a interactive medium, seeks to craft systems which deliver narremes to a VUP in such a fashion that the VUP may craft a story cognitively based on their navigation within said system. When narrative design is successful the VUP believes that they are experiencing a story within a navigated dataspace, or played videogame.

"After the novel..the computer age introduces its correlate - database." Manovich [1] As Manovich defines the database the fiction form of our age, I too argue that a videogame is a database of multidimensional arrays containing audio, visual, and gameplay elements which when experienced in a concinnity via narrative systems creates a believable storyspace in the mind of the VUP. The then living dataspace has a depth of content which often relates to the depth of the experience as rendered linear to the VUP when navigating said dataspace with gameplay systems. Similar to my definition of Narrative Design, "a narratological craft which focuses on the structuralist, or literary semiotic creation of stories. Narremes, or story elements, are formulated into a cohesive narrative structure in such a way as to create a metanarrative or archnarrative..." Dinehart [2]. Interactive Narrative design seeks to accomplish this via VUP navigated databases.
]]>
Interactive Narrative Design is a craft which has it's roots in the philosophy outlined in Richard Wagner's essay The Artwork of the Future, Pen-and-paper Role Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons, and the experimental works of groups like the Labyrinth Project. Wagner's ideas began the revolutionary idea of removing the "fourth wall" and involving the audience in the play. I ask you to again look at that sentence, but to think of the word play as a signifier for interacting with video games rather than a sequence of stage craft. Play is the method by which the audience is invited to participate and author within an interactive storyspace or video game. Therein the audience member becomes a player, or actor, in the video game or play.

"Thus the spectator transplants himself upon the stage, by means of all his visual and aural faculties...forgets the confines of the auditorium and lives and breathes now only in the artwork which seems to it [the participatory audience] as life itself and on the stage which seems the wide expanse of the whole World." Wagner [3] Building from this legacy video games are now the newest territory for the experimental craft of Interactive Narrative Design, or the future art, to spread it wings. Now is the time of the Gesamtkunstwerk [Total Artwork] which Wagner so elegantly described, that future artwork is modern video games. While I'm sure that term will die when another better signifier emerges, the story of video games lives and breaths through Interactive Narrative Design, the blended craft of fiction and play design which is surely producing one of the most innovative Arts of the digital age.

1. Lev Manovich. Database as symbolic Form. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.
2. Stephen Dinehart, Defining Narrative Design, The Narrative Design Exploratorium 2008
3. Richard Wager, The Artwork of the Future 1849

Masters of Narrative Design 8™: Bob Bates

2009-01-31T17:44:06Z

This is an ongoing NDE series featuring interviews with Masters of Narrative Design™. While 'narrative design' is not a term in common usage, the design of story experiences is nothing new. As game developers are increasingly looking to create meaningful interactive narrative experiences, looking at the lessons learned by these masters becomes increasingly valuable. Today's master is writer and designer Bob Bates. After being inspired by the text-based adventure ZORK, in the mid 80's, Bob began looking into blending traditional fiction with video games and started writing his own text-based adventures. He was contracted by Infocom to write his first two titles. Since then he has been credited on 38+ titles (!) and is author of the best-selling book Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games. Bob is also a co-founder and organizer of the Game Designers Workshop, an invitation-only conference of storytelling game designers. I'm hoping to see what we can learn from his wealth of knowledge and wisdom.

Stephen Dinehart: You currently list yourself as an independent writer? Has this always been your role in game development?

Bob Bates: Not at all. In 1986 I started a small company to design and write games that would compete with Infocom, the reigning king of text adventures. Very quickly we ended up cooperating instead of competing, and the first two games I designed and wrote were published by Infocom. When Infocom closed down in 1989, I co-founded Legend Entertainment with Mike Verdu, and while at Legend I wore many hats for the next 15 years, including administrative duties as studio head, operations, finance, sales, etc.
]]> Along the way, I managed to continue designing and writing and producing games, and even learned enough programming to implement the game logic for a few of them.

I've been a freelancer for 5 years now, and these days, I am mostly back to design and writing, which is why I got into the business in the first place.

SD: As a game designer and writer, how do quality gamestories help you make a better gameplay experience?

BB: The human brain is a story-making machine. Stories are how we make sense of the world, and if no story is present to explain unrelated events, our brains will make one up anyway. If we do not supply a good story to our players, they are likely to invent one on their own and then yell at us because it wasn't very good and it ruined the game. Delivering quality gamestories helps us avoid that problem!

Good stories engage players' emotions and give them a reason to care about what they are doing. A well-designed story will drive gameplay choices, and likewise, various elements of gameplay may also suggest different bits for writers to put into the story.

In any game, the range of actions that the designer makes available to the player will vary at different stages of the game, and often the driving force behind which choices are available is simply a matter of where the player is in the story. Designers always try to deliver different kinds of fun as the game goes along, and a quality story will create those opportunities for the designer.
SD: Do you believe there is a correlation between sales numbers and gamestory quality?

BB: Only a weak correlation, unfortunately. As a writer, I would like to believe that the quality of the story is the single most important factor in a game's sales, but in reality I believe it is well down the list, easily falling lower than gameplay, graphics (in AAA titles), level-of-bugginess, and license, not to mention marketing and distribution.

However, when games have checked off several of these other boxes and are competing on an otherwise-even field, I do believe a superior story can make one game sell better than the other.
SD: What about writing for games is most challenging for you?

BB: The most difficult thing is the tension between allowing players to do whatever they want, while keeping them within the bounds of a dramatic story.

Beyond that, there are the challenges that all writers face - creating interesting characters, putting fresh dialogue in their mouths, and stirring different emotions in the hearts of the players.

Game writers also face a unique challenge in that players always need to be grounded in what they need to do next -- and so we have to tell them. There is little room for ambiguity and subtlety. If a reader misses the point in a novel, he can always read on and catch up. But if a player misses the point in a game, he is stuck and unable to move forward. That leads to the kind of "on the nose" writing that we so often find in games, where we feel compelled to tell the player "go here" and "do this." Avoiding that kind of writing is a huge challenge for game writers.

Game writers also must recognize that players will almost certainly encounter certain lines of dialogue more than once. It is a real challenge to write lines that will stay fresh despite repetition.

SD: How much classical story structure do you use in the creation of your gamestories?

BB: I don't pay attention to structure at all while I am first creating the story. I just create what I think I need to get it told. Afterwards, I will go back and use structure as one of many tools to fine-tune the narrative. If something feels wrong or out of place, a structural check-up can sometimes reveal the problem. Looking at a story through the prism of structure can also sometimes suggest opportunities I might have missed. But I'm not obsessive about it.

SD: You are credited a range of titles that span over 20 years, what has it taught you?

BB: The basic challenges we face as writers of interactive stories are the same today as they were 20 years ago. We have figured out a few solutions to some problems, but we are still are severely limited in many areas. For example, we still have no good way to let the player conduct a dialogue with an in-game character. We still have difficulty limiting the scope of the player's actions without suggesting that the limits are actually game obstacles to be overcome. We still cannot evoke a very wide range of emotions in our players.

The range of genres I have worked in has taught me that each is different, and that the devotees of one genre have certain things they care about that players in other genres don't. For example, action gamers want the story to come to them, while RPG players don't mind going to look for the story. Pace is also different from genre to genre.

But one thing that most players seem to have in common is that few of them are fans of the "big information dump" cutscenes that unduly interrupt gameplay. Over time, good writers have learned to distribute the story elements throughout the environment, so that they come to players in small pieces that they assemble in their heads to understand the overall story.

SD: Are you able to experience more creative freedom as a contract writer?

BB: The increased freedom I have comes from being able to figure out whether or not I'm a good match for a project before we start. I think most in-house writers have to work on whatever their company is doing, whether they are suited to it or not. In my case, I can talk with a developer ahead of time about what the project is and what they want done, and if I don't think I can do a good job, I can refer them to someone else.

Once I have taken on a project, I don't feel any different degree of freedom than when I was working in-house at Legend. The writer always operates in service of the needs of project, and those needs are generally determined by the designer and the producer. I always try to work with them to be as creative as possible in interpreting their ideas in fresh, innovative, and unexpected ways. But theirs is the final word, and if they disagree with my ideas, then I write it the way they want it.

SD: What format do you prefer for writing your games?

BB: The format truly doesn't matter to me. I've worked in all sorts of formats including Excel, Final Draft, and several proprietary systems, but it really doesn't matter. For virtually everything I write, Word is my primary tool.

My methodology is simple. I start a "spew" file for each project, and I call it that specifically to free myself up to blat out whatever I want to, without regard to form, beauty, or in some cases, even comprehension! It's just thoughts streaming onto a page with as little interruption as possible.

Once I have that, I start to refine. I use cut-and-paste extensively, never throwing away a single draft of a line or paragraph. Instead, I copy it endlessly down the page as I make even minor changes. In this way, I never have any paranoia about "losing" some particularly felicitous phrase, or forgetting some important idea that might otherwise get lost in revision.

Once I have the piece revised within an inch of its life, I simply cut-and-paste the final version into whatever document format the client wants.

SD: As a creator of original IP with a habit of working in licenses do you have a preference?

BB: Each has its advantages.

With an original IP, you have the freedom that every writer wants - the chance to create a world from scratch, just the way you want it. On the other hand, creating every single aspect of a world and its characters is hard, not to mention risky.

With a licensed IP, you are already handed a world and characters that have been proven to be popular. Your challenge becomes creating something new and interesting that fits into that world. That's often a worthwhile challenge to undertake, although of course you are always bound by the licensors - or their representatives - which can get difficult.

But to answer your actual question , if I were given a choice on a new project, presuming money and risk were not a factor, I'd probably choose to work on an original IP.

SD: How do you sell yourself as an expert in storytelling?

BB: I don't know that I am an expert in storytelling. I think I understand many different aspects of telling stories within games, but there are huge chunks that none of us has figured out yet. As for selling myself, it's more like a conversation with the developers to see if we agree on what the game needs, and whether I'm the right guy to provide that.

SD: What do you see as an ideal future for storytelling in games?

BB: I suspect my hopes for the future are the same as most gamers. I hope we will figure out a good way for players to talk to in-game characters. I hope that stories will be deep and rich and compelling, and that players will encounter them naturally, without any interruption in gameplay. And I hope that our stories will enable our medium to take a place alongside the other art forms that matter so much to people everywhere.

SD: Last but not least, can you explain what the Game Designers Workshop is?

BB: The Game Designers Workshop is an annual two-day, invitation-only, mini-conference that is run by Noah Falstein, Steve Meretzky, and myself. We try to identify experienced people with multiple game-design and game-writing credits, and gather them for a weekend session that's a cross between a writer's workshop and a GDC roundtable. We cap attendance at 30, and each of the attendees gets a slice of time to present a specific problem to the group, or to discuss some general issue related to game making, or to demo a product they think is important for the group to see, or simply to lead a discussion on any topic they think is important. We find that tapping into the collective knowledge of experienced writer/designers is an effective way for individuals to get practical advice for problems they are facing.

SD: Bob, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to interview with the NDE.

Bob is true veteran of video game storytelling. His humble honesty, and experience make him a incredibly compelling person to speak with. He remains committed to gamestories and is surely an inspiration to us all. I know I have learned, and I hope you can say the same. For The Narrative Design Exploratorium™ I'm Stephen Dinehart.

What is a "Master of Narrative Design"?

2009-01-30T13:10:17Z

Most recently I was asked by a rather famous game writer, whom I've been trying to interview, how I decide who is a candidate for the Master of Narrative Design series, rather than a Game Writer in the Trenches on the Narrative Design Exploratorium. It was the first time I was asked, realizing ego, not just my own, was at stake I did my best to cushion the response. Apparently to some being a game writer in the trenches is inherently less sexy than being a master. I suppose understandably so. That being said, it was a great question, and it got me thinking.
]]> USC's School of Cinematic Arts in Interactive Media, I wouldn't call myself a master. Though I intend to be one day, but the decision of my qualification will certainly not be my own. I've been wrestling with the Interactive Narrative Designer position for 3 years now, and do a good amount of game writing, but a game writer alone I am not. Therein, I don't know if I'd qualify for either series!

Masters are people that have been writing, designing and/or producing interactive narrative experiences for 20+ years. Secondly, they are individuals whom have made a serious contribution to the video game industry in their tenure. It's a bit false in the sense that few people have been Interactive Narrative Designers for more that 5 years, let alone 20, since the position was only established recently in the industry. That being said, there have been many people drawn to games and immersive experiences over the past 50 years because of the potential associated with participatory, or interactive, storytelling. I select these individuals because of their passion to create top-quality video game experiences that are imbued with the kind of meaning previously only associated with other arts. Yes, to me interactive narrative is an art. Lastly, they are individuals whom inspire me, and that I have most likely met in my time in interactive media.

Game writers on the other hand are just that, folk that have been working in games for less than 20 years and are still in trenches of development trying to make a name, and some damn good games while they're at it. For the most part these are freelancers that work as contractors in games, and they only write, staying away from other roles like design and production. They are passionate, talented people whom are pushing the media forward.

With all this in mind, the differentiation is by no means meant to be a judgment call on the caliber of these individuals or their work. It is simply a way for me to create more content and scope the nature of the content. Sometimes my questions might be similar for the two series, but, it's the answers that should seem different; as naturally masters have a slightly different perspective, one which is provided to them by the wisdom of their tenure. I hope all my readers continue to enjoy the series, and that anyone I may have offended will forgive my apparent judgment calls. All I seek is to remain in a quality, cutting-edge, dialogue with my peers and mentors in the interactive entertainment industry. Thanks for your time.

Game Writers in the Trenches™ 4: Jeff Spock

2009-01-09T00:49:10Z

This is an ongoing NDE series featuring interviews with Game Writers in the Trenches™. The game industry is riddled with the unsung heroes of interactive storytelling. As game developers are increasingly looking to create meaningful virtual narrative experiences, listening to the real-world wisdom of these writers can help everyone on the development pipeline understand their trials, tribulations, and needs, in hopes of enabling them to do their job as they know best. Today's game writer is Jeff Spock, I'm hoping to see what we can learn from his experiences in the trenches of game development.

Stephen E. Dinehart: How did you become a game writer?

Jeff Spock: I have always been two things; a video game player and a fiction writer. I started playing games back on the Apple platforms in the 70's, and have been writing something roughly resembling fiction ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon correctly.

These two passions came together in a perfect storm of coincidence; I met Marc Laidlaw while I was doing the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2004 in Seattle. Marc is the brains behind the Valve writing (the Half-Life series in particular) and has been writing excellent speculative fiction since the 80's. Chatting with Marc was an epiphany: "You mean, you can get paid to write stories for games???" Through Marc I met Raphael Colantonio of Arkane Studios, and he introduced me to the Ubisoft Third Party group. Since then I have probably done 80% of my game work with Ubisoft.
]]> SED: Now that you have been working for a number of years in the industry, do you remain as passionate?

JS: Absolutely. Both sides of my fascination are evolving; games are getting increasingly sophisticated and storytelling is getting increasingly rich. As new platforms and tools evolve, we gain new methods for developing and presenting stories.

There is also the state of game writing in general (mediocre) and certain comments in particular that are like red flags to a bull. As long as there are people out there who denigrate game writing and gamestories I'll be in the trenches, fighting the good fight.

SED: Do you work mostly as a contract writer or do you have a staff position writing for games?

JS: I have always and only been a contract writer. I may some day end up on staff somewhere, but I am currently living far from most European studios so I can't do the kind of daily commute that would be necessary for a staff job.

Contract writing also fits my temperament and lifestyle; as a writer I'm more of a project-oriented person who does better with short stories than novels. I'm not sure that I would want to spend three years on a mega-project running a writing team of twenty people. I've done my time running IT departments; I changed careers to get away from that!

That being said, Ubisoft is one of the companies that "gets" game stories. I tend to be brought on early in the project, and have the good fortune to track and even sometimes influence the way the gameplay and story evolve together during the project.
SED: How do you see game writing as unique?

JS: There are elements of game writing that make it very different from traditional fiction (prose or screenplay) writing, though in a surprising number of ways the creative process is similar. Common elements would be developing the characters, creating the throughline (to prose writers) or spine (to game writers) of the narrative, and doing the dialogue writing. Even though a game may need a lot of dialogue options, it's still the same process. Most prose writers rewrite dialogue scenes so many times that it's almost identical to doing five different versions of an encounter to account for player choice!

The real differences from my point of view come from the fact that the game writer has little control over some major elements that may have been fixed by the design team, such as the theme or "meaning" of the game as well as the setting. The big one for me is what the game is about, in the way that the Lord of the Rings is about sacrifice and loss or in the way that Huckleberry Finn is about racism and maturity. Too many games are sequences of incidents and set pieces with the obligatory betrayal / hidden identity / deus ex machina event. But what are they "about?" Too often it is nothing; they lack the quality of "aboutness."

The example I love to use is the Sword of Shannara - it's almost a scene for scene imitation of the Lord of the Rings, written by Terry Brooks when he was starting out. Same story, same characters. And yet one is a literary classic while the other has faded into obscurity. One had resonance and theme and meant something, as it was written by a man who saw all his best friends die in the trenches of World War I. The other was a beginning author trying his hand at second world fantasy. Q.E.D., dude. As long as game story imitates rather than innovates it will suffer the same fate.

SED: Was this years' Austin Game Developers Conference a pay-off for you?

JS: It was an enormous pay-off. On a personal level I got to meet some old friends plus make the acquaintance of people that until then had only been names on the Game Writers' SIG mailing list. Professionally I found out what the best and brightest in the industry are doing, and attended some amazing sessions. I'll be going every year as long as finances and professional commitments permit.

And then, of course, there was the Ginger Man...
SED: Can you describe your writing process?

JS: It's more than anything a shotgun approach. I throw a lot of ideas at a project and see what sticks; I'm definitely reliant on a good producer or editor to act as an intellectual sparring partner. While I tend to develop my own fiction while sitting alone staring into space, the team-oriented nature of game development and the brainstorming that goes along with it are critical to the process for me.

Once the bare bones of the gamestory are down I get really, really old fashioned; I break out a huge roll of butcher's paper and start laying out the scenario, the subplots, and the character arcs and tying them into the design of the levels/missions/campaigns.

Seriously. If you've never tried it, grab the butcher's paper. It gives a one-shot view of everything you're doing, plus it impresses your friends and makes a great mural when the project is over.

SED: When do you tend to become involved with a Ubisoft's Tom Clancy Franchise?

JS: That's really Richard Dansky's turf; he's the Lead Clancy Writer (yes, that title exists in an org chart somewhere). I only get involved in projects like that when there is additional development work being done in Europe and they need a resident anglophone. For Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 I actually did quite a bit of work; the PC version was done by GRIN in Stockholm and during development they made a lot of changes to the levels. Ubisoft brought me on board to do the entire prologue/tutorial mission as well as update the levels where there were significant gameplay changes. That was a lot of fun - it got me out of the medieval fantasy world of the Might & Magic brand and into some modern military slang. I played a similar role, though on a smaller scale, for GRAW 2.

SED: What writing format do you prefer for your gamestories?

JS: As I've now worked with six different studios, I have gotten used to pretty much anything. I normally do pitch, character, and scenario work as normal text documents, but I do 100% of my dialogue in spreadsheets. I learned fast; I did the entire Heroes 5 script - about 200 pages -- in screenplay format and then had to laboriously cut-and-paste it, line by line, into spreadsheet cells. Never again!

Spreadsheets seem to be the form that developers prefer, and all of the VO actors I've worked with in Paris and L.A. are comfortable with it.

SED: What is the most emotionally effective game you've played? Why?

JS: Hummm... I ask this question often of myself and of people I meet. The first game that really got me for atmosphere, for heart-thudding tension and sudden gasps, was Thief: The Dark Project by Looking Glass. For me that remains a benchmark in creating reaction to ingame events. Half-Life 2 is still my barometer for language -- as a writer it's worth reloading the game just to hear the opening propaganda monologue as you enter the train station.

On the other hand, for human emotions of sadness, affection, joy, etc. I have yet to be moved by a game. The character death in Final Fantasy VII I found to be mostly annoying, the love stories in Baldur's Gate II lacked resonance and credibility, I thought that Mass Effect had so many errors in story structure and storytelling that I was just as happy that the EA DRM killed my game when it was bugged and I was trying to fix it.

I'm still waiting for that emotionally effective game. I have a short story out in an on-line anthology called Tumbarumba now, and it's the most powerful and emotionally affecting thing I've ever written. But what I really want is to put that sort of power into games and so far, I just don't know how to do it.

SED: As a contracted writer are you able to have influence on the design of a game?

JS: I have enormous influence over whatever design changes I suggest... does that answer the question?

Joking aside, most developers are smart enough to listen to good ideas wherever they come from (though it's true that ideas from a non-designer are often viewed with condescension). The simple truth is that on a game project no specialty has an exclusive on creativity. In fact, writers have even been known to listen to story suggestions from designers...

SED: Why is that important?

JS: Personally, I don't try that hard to influence the design. I do not view myself as a narrative designer in the technical sense; I don't work with story engines on a technical level (in spite of a Computer Engineering degree gathering dust in a drawer somewhere). I view myself as a story guy; I work closely with the designers to figure out how the story can be delivered in gameplay or with traditional methods - cutscene, voice over, in-game event, text box, camera control, etc. - but I don't worry myself overly with game design. The exception to that is when game design changes too much and starts to contradict the story or make it irrelevant; at that point it is critical to use whatever leverage I may have developed to try to get things back on track.

SED: Have you ever been contracted to fix a broken gamestory? If so, is that a challenge you see often; how does it effect or limit your creative abilities?

JS: That is a very, very common occurrence. I love getting projects like this for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's short-term work that changes my obsessions and thought patterns for a while; a breath of fresh air. It also gives me detailed insight into other writers' and developers' styles and tools, which helps me learn and makes me better at what I do. What I like the most, however, is the pure artistic challenge. It's the confrontation, the obstacle, the WWF cage-brawl tag-team smackdown with your muse and your keyboard in one corner and the story and development constraints in the other. It's the defiance and the dare of taking those constraints and limits - time, characters, budget, gameplay - and still wresting something better, something you can be proud of, out of them.

SED: What do you envision for the future of gamestories?

JS: There are a number of parallel futures for gamestories, all of them equally valid and largely inevitable. I think that the MMO space will continue to rely on quest chains, with most of the 'big picture' stuff being left to the players. In this case the development studio provides an environment and a lot of content, but the story becomes the story of the players and the guilds, what they did, and how they did it. Multiplayer, DLC, and expansions are all part of this - story in discrete and related nuggets, rather than single epic arcs.

There will also continue to be more traditional narrative games like BioShock or Half-Life, where the story is integral to the player experience and the gameplay. This is the "Hollywood" game; the linear and immersive entertainment package that takes you on a ride and spits you out, exhausted and exhilarated, ten or fifteen hours later. It's an entirely different type of play and therefore of story from the casual or MMO style.

I don't think that these two game styles are compatible, story-wise, as a tight spine and plot-heavy narrative does not lend itself well to open world exploration. Sure, you can do it, but I think that you lose something either in story impact or in story credibility if you try to mix them.

There will also be the technologists' game story; people like Chris Carter and Andrew Stern will continue their efforts to make story self-generating and automated, driven by AI in response to player actions. That lends itself well to the MMO type of arena; why not have self-generating quests and world extensions that grow as the player explores them? I'm not convinced that you'll get a great cinematic experience that way, but you could get incredible world depth and immersiveness if it's done right. On the other hand that means that the computer will have to auto-generate snappy (or even comprehensible) dialogue that is coherent with the character profile. I'm guessing that this will probably take a few years at best...

SED: As a gamewriter how does well-crafted gameplay affect your work and vision?

JS: It simplifies my life. If there is a clear vision of the game mechanics and the style of gameplay, it automatically suggests characters, plot events, settings, dialogue styles, etc. A game that evolves too much over the course of development often ends up with plotlines and story events that no longer meld seamlessly with the gameplay. That's when the story turns into a distinct and dissociated layer pasted on top of the game; it's the worst possible outcome. I should know; I've done that.

SED: How do you see game development changing to meet the growing expectations of today's audiences?

JS: The most interesting developments from that point of view are outside the entertainment sphere, I think. Games in the Ubisoft / BioWare / Take Two sense of the word will keep getting better, but the end is near - let me give you an anecdote.

Margaret Robertson (the founder of EDGE magazine) gave a great keynote at the NLGD in Utrecht this year. In it, she commented that programmers to whom she has spoken say that they are maybe a year or two away from "doing light." Real light, like your eyeballs see when you make up in the morning, or step out of the tent at night, or stroll down the pavement. That's pretty stunning. As an industry we're close to the point where we have to look in the mirror and say, "Okay, dudes, what's next? We got light, we got physics..."

So there are two places that I see we can go: Story and real life. The story part is self-explanatory; live the life of Kipling's Kim or Zelazny's Corwin of Amber or Dickens's Oliver Twist. Deeper emotions, more credible NPC's, more immersive environments - these things will eventually lead us to something that is close to an interactive movie in intensity and presence and intent.

The real life part is maybe more interesting, but not at all about story. It's about harnessing games to explain global warming, to deal with drought, to make education more interesting, to improve training, to replace your night out with the boys. I'm serious about the last one; twenty years from now when gas is eight bucks a gallon we'll all be pretty happy that we can sit at home and still wander through a virtual world, have a virtual beer with our buddies, open a can of whup-ass on a couple of dragons, read the headlines, poke fun at our siblings, help the kids with the homework, and do it all wearing our epic loot because we're level 250 feral druids in World of Warcraft.

SED: What does gamestory mean to you? How does it differ from other forms of storytelling?

JS: To me the excitement in gamestory comes from the idea of choice. That's why the future of the industry excites me so much; real choice that drives real consequences. When you sit in a movie you might see a character do something and you think, "Oh my god, he's gonna pay for that." The power that games will start to have is that the player will be sitting there, faced with either going down to the basement or up to the attic to investigate the sounds, or maybe running out to the shed to grab more ammo which means leaving the kid alone in the house, or maybe calling the local police chief for help but he's the guy who married your ex-wife... Pretty soon we'll be able to tell stories that cross Stephen King and Elmore Leonard that can really play out in any one of a number of directions. That is when game story will really come into its own, and Roger Ebert is going to have to grit his teeth, suck it up, and take it like a man ;-)

SED: What do you seek to accomplish in your gamestories?

JS: I can't help it; though I'm not a churchgoer I was raised in a Quaker family and have a pretty firm point of view on good and evil, right and wrong, responsibility and consequence. Though it didn't start out as something conscious, in all my stories I find that I'm trying to explain something about integrity, responsibility, and standing up for what you believe in.

So there is the inevitable desire of the writer as extrovert and class clown to be an entertainer and write great dialogue. But there is also a deeper and more subtle, maybe even more powerful drive, to say things that I feel are important and to maybe give an insight to the player about love and life and loss and hope.

Yeah, it's that "aboutness" thing again...

Other than that, it mostly comes down to character. Credible character motivations that drive their actions, interesting character profiles that make them believable, accurate character personalities that differentiate their dialogue. Henry James was pretty much right on the nose when he said "Character is plot," regardless of how unreadable his books are.

SED: How does narrative structure help you create a better game?

JS: Gameplay structure and gamestory structure have to be looked at like Siamese twins joined at some critical organ; separate them and one will die.

The worst thing you can do is to put together a narrative structure and gamestory that aren't in lockstep with the gameplay; on the contrary, having gameplay events and game elements upon which you can hang key story moments is what really makes this so fascinating as a storytelling medium.

This is of course the reason why the most gratifying moments are the ones where at the end of development the team delivers something that makes people go "Whoa, cool!" When the gameplay and the story come together in something seamless it's like sex, like a rock concert, like winning the lottery.

SED: How do you see story fitting into the interactive entertainment of tomorrow?

JS: It ties in to my answer on the future of gamestories. I think that there will be an enormous wave that combines MMO and virtual reality into The Place Where You Go To Hang Out With Buddies And Vanquish Evil. That will be a gigantic entertainment arena, a space where any and all of your social activities (other than procreation) might happen. Story will be less important here; what will be important is the atmosphere, the quality of the environment, and the quality of the people you meet. Writing will still be critical, but only from the point of view of world bible development, world design, and NPC creation. Story itself will be anecdotal and episodic, delivered via a "pull" format by a consumer who takes it when they want it.

Then there will be the other interactive entertainment; the game industry continuing to do those things that it does so well on the occasions when it manages to tie great world design and great story into a package delivered by great gameplay. That'll be the future blockbuster, the future Holly/Bollywood extravaganza of money and scope and immersion. Story will have the role it does in a movie or play - good luck without it, pal. It will be a "push" form of story, like TV or a movie, with the bonus of interactivity and player freedom.

SED: Jeff, your time is appreciated. Thanks for interviewing with the NDE.

Jeff is a fine example of a freelance gamewriter, he is smart, creative, and driven. His work and participation in the game development community is an inspiration. I hope you've learned something from this no-nonesense interview straight from the trenches. For the Narrative Design Exploratorium, I'm Stephen Erin Dinehart, thank you for your time. Remember it's only through play that great stories happen!