Category Archives: Video Game Writing

Craft Sessions: Developing Meaningful Player Character Arcs in Branching Narrative

My article “Developing Meaningful Player Character Arcs in Branching Narrative” is now up at Gamasutra.com. This is by far the most in-depth discussion of games writing I’ve engaged in publicly, and it covers a subject I believe is underappreciated.

The article has a somewhat convoluted origin. At BioWare, I’d hoped to start running occasional “craft sessions” where writers could make presentations on subjects of interest–essentially, a regular advanced class on game writing where the lecturer would rotate with the students. I never did get the program up and running, and I’ve been left with these scattered thoughts ever since. Rather than let them go to waste, I figured I’d send them out into the world.

I’m opening comments on this post, in case anyone wants to debate. Whether future long-form articles on game writing appear on this blog is up to you. Readers, speak up if you find this stuff interesting. Fellow game writers, please say so if you find this useful–and if you’d like to contribute something similar, maybe we can get these craft sessions going yet.

Of Course No One’s Paying Attention: Subtlety and Narrative Design in Video Games

One challenge writers face when moving from traditional media into video games is learning what, exactly, qualifies as “subtle” in the new medium. What works as a understated plot thread or gentle foreshadowing in a film or novel won’t necessarily work in a video game; and rather than examining why, it’s easy for a new writer to dismiss game narratives as obvious and hamfisted. (Many are, of course–there’s a difference between understanding a theory and executing it well.)

I’m speaking from experience, here–I had a hard time learning how to present anything subtly in games. Below, I try to save someone else from going through what I did. Continue reading →

Eight Ways to Accommodate Violence in Action Game Stories

You’re making a first-person shooter or a third-person action game. Your gameplay centers around combat, but you don’t want your protagonist to come across as the sort of person physically and psychologically capable of massacring hundreds over the course of a day.

That’s okay! I’d love to see more nonviolent games, but violence is exciting, dramatic, and we know how to support it with solid game mechanics. Here are eight simple options to help keep your protagonist from coming across as a monster–just the first eight that came to mind, but I’m sure you can think of others. Some of them can work in combination while others stand alone. Some focus on game mechanics, some focus on art, and some focus on writing. But most–so long as they’re considered early on–are pretty easy to build a game with. Continue reading →

Why It Worked: Wing Commander II

Will I drive off my newly forming audience by waxing nostalgic and overanalyzing a twenty-year-old game? Or are there insights to be gleaned here about the simple interactions between story and gameplay? Consider this a beginner-level essay on game narratives.

At the start of his 1991 review of Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, Alan Emrich wrote in Computer Gaming World #88:

For several months now, Wing Commander has reigned as the number-one game, as rated by this magazine’s readers. Clearly, there must be a lot “right” with this game. Even though Wing Commander is, at least at its most basic level, something of a glorified arcade game, there is also something that sets it apart. Perhaps it is the inclusion of a believable, evolving storyline, full of sympathetic comrade characters and vain, vile villains that bring a certain je ne sais pas.

He was absolutely right. Wing Commander was a fantastic game by any measure, but it was an attention to narrative that propelled it into its position as a multimedia franchise. The game would spawn numerous sequels, expansion packs, spinoffs, novels, an animated series, a feature film… some better than others, admittedly, but the quality of the core series started high and remained so.

In 1991, Origin Systems (shortly before the company’s acquisition by Electronic Arts) published Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, which would prove to be one of the franchise’s high points. With the exception of adding then-rare voiceover content in a limited number of places and the sheer quantity of cinematic sequences, it is not an especially innovative game from a standpoint of storytelling mechanics. The dialogue, while more than acceptable for its time, reads as less-than-stellar today. But it is a game that excelled at the execution of its story, particularly in how its narrative elements supported and bolstered the game’s mechanics–and how the mechanics and mission design, in turn, supported its story.

It is, in short, worth examining as a case study. Let’s talk about why it worked. Continue reading →