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Narrative Design and Story in Games [THATCamp Games 2011]

September 13, 2012 Aram Zucker-Scharff — No Comments

Possibly up for discussion:

Reader response theory applied to games
Teaching writers as part of game design programs
Narrative Design practices
Narrative combined with game mechanics
Teaching narrative design (to help teach writing)
Teaching narrative design (to help teach everything else)


Proposed by:

Aram Zucker-Scharff @Chronotope


Present:
Bryan Alexander @bryanalexander
Gavin Craig @craiggav
Melissa Peterson @mwbtle
Mark Hebert @drphilprof
Thor Gibbins @sonofodin0913
Todd Bryant @bryantt
Gerol Petruzella @gpetruzella
Stephen Slota
Jeffrey Gruen @theblondeguywiththeblackshirton
Kevin Ballestrini @kballestrini
John Murray @lucidbard
Emily Lewis @blueathena14
Jason Rhody @jasonrhody
Bill Deal @wdeal
Matt Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum

Notes:

http://www.hacktext.com/2011/02/crowd-sourced-television-goes-to-the-next-level-with-bar-karma-and-storymaker-477/
@therealcliffyb <- I think the creator of Gear of Wars
Interactive fiction as a way to learn in a smaller scale narrative design for interactive games.
Emergent narratives – those that come out of sandbox designs that are a consiquence of the gamer’s interaction.
Vast narrative – styles of writing that work in cultural properties, recognize that the story will exist everywhere. – “Third Person”
Progression – tension between progression and emergence
Encoded practices – what may seem emergent is actually a scripted trigger
Story vs Discourse – discourse = presentation of story
Narrative of a character vs the story of the game
Player agency – the degree to which the game provides verbs to allow you to influence the world in the ways that the story suggests you can.
reader-response theory
Experience vs creation of the story
Character authorship
Tweaking notions of authorship
Planescape …

Writing in the Game Industry Q&A with Rowland Cox [WfG 2011]

September 13, 2012 Aram Zucker-Scharff — No Comments

Writing in the Game Industry Q&A with Rowland Cox.

Who is Rowland Cox? “Rowland Cox— Community Director, BioWare Mythic
Bio: Rowland Cox is the Community Director at BioWare Mythic. It is his pleasure and good fortune to communicate the direction of the Studio’s games to the player base, and conversely, listen to how this is received. Rowland joined EA in 2007, where he managed the relationship with Mythic’s European partners France Telecom and closely monitored the localization of Warhammer Online, before broadening his role as Community Director. As a 14-year veteran of the game industry, from table top war games to MMO’s, Rowland has made his career goal sharing his passion for fantasy, sci-fi and role playing.”

Have questions? Send them to me on Twitter and I will try and ask. I’m @Chronotope.

Do writers get plugged in after the fact and is this a reflection of university programs?
Talent is phenomenal
Have to be aware of increasing complexity.
Skills are almost a given … you need to have an adaptive nature. The tools you are using now are not going to be the same in 10 years time.
You need to be able to work in a group, coordinate with engineers.
Close working with designers and writers, they …

Improvisational Storytelling for Game Development [WfG 2011]

September 13, 2012 Aram Zucker-Scharff — No Comments

With Laura Packer

Descrip: “BREAKOUT: Compelling video games need compelling storylines. Traditional narrative offers many exciting possibilities, but there are other tools you can use to develop a story. Improvisation allows you to tap your imagination in unexpected ways, tell old stories with new finesse and explore narrative lines without inhibition or censors. You may just find a new tale aching to be told. This workshop includes several exercises. Participants will leave with new story ideas and tools for story development.”

Improvisational storytelling – there is no failure.

“Improv is something that really helps feed our creativity”
How to tap into it and bring it into your work, to make us more creative?
Goal: New ideas for stories, games, tools for developing new gaming materials.
Why Improv for game design?

It’s fun!
“Loosens up your image engine”
playful
new creative directions
You already know how!

What are stories and games made of?

Emotional hooks
plot
charater
cultural elements
structure
narrative
Motifs

discrete images that carry weight
Prominent in Folklore study.
Discrete recurring fragments or themes across many stories.
Elements that tell you about the story

Ex: wolf
dark forrest

Powerful because they carry implied cultural knowledge.
They do some of the work for both the story creator and the audience
Ex: how a character holds a gun, stance – tells you something about the character.

Image in the story

Connect …

A Narrative Designer’s Toolkit [WfG 2011]

September 13, 2012 Aram Zucker-Scharff — No Comments

With Ken Rolston

Descrip: The road to success as a narrative designer is long and arduous. But you don’t want to hear that. So Ken Rolston, Executive Design Director for critically acclaimed Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and former Lead Designer of Oblivion, Morrowind, and other light classics, reveals the carefully hoarded treasury of cheap tricks and short cuts that enable him to achieve respectability while avoiding Real Work. In this fast-paced and charming presentation, Rolston spreads out his tools, illustrates their use in the production of his Great Works, and shows you how to project a shallow but persuasive mastery of the craft of narrative game design.

Who is Ken Rolston?
“Internationally Celebrated Game Designer Ken Rolston designs Big Huge computer roleplaying games. Executive Design Director and “Visionary” [No. Seriously. “Visionary”] on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning™ for Big Huge Games and 38 Studios, Ken was formerly lead designer for Bethesda’s award-winning The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Previously Ken was an award-winning designer of paper-and-pencil roleplaying games, including games and supplements for PARANOIA, RUNEQUEST, WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY, AD&D, D&D, STAR WARS, GHOSTBUSTERS, and STORMBRINGER. Ken served as roleplaying director for West End Games, Games Workshop, and Avalon Hill …

Once Upon a Time I Played a Game [WfG 2011]

September 13, 2012 Aram Zucker-Scharff — No Comments

With  Laura Packer

Descrip: What is the value of story? Why does the storyline of a game matter? Stories help us understand who we are and our place in the world. When we immerse ourselves in those stories by playing narrative games we become part of the storyline itself. Story itself is a kind of meta-game, where the teller is the game and audience the player, shifting the narrative with their response and their imagination.
We will look at the history of interactive storytelling, several different narrative forms, how game designers are shaping the stories of the future and why they should still care about the stories and techniques of the past.

Storytelling


Inherent to all humans
Conveys culture and history
Allows people to talk about tought stuff safely
Persuasive
Transfers knowledge more effectively than charts and slides
Builds community
Fosters new way of thinking
We all tell stories
Basic ingredients of narrative media:

Emotional hooks
plot
cultural element
characters
delivery system
structure

All narrative is interactive
Elements:

The creator
Audience
Story

relationship between performed story and audience can inform relationship between games and their audience.
The audience needs to have their own relationship and experience with their story.
Creator to Story is a close relationship.
In some cases the audience can have an impact on the story, sometimes they can have an impact on the …

Dialogue, World Building, and Characterization [WfG 2011]

September 13, 2012 Aram Zucker-Scharff — No Comments

With Seamus Sullivan
Descrip: BREAKOUT: Form writing teams to create original game worlds, characters, and more through techniques that focus on the collaborative process.  Teams will leave with new content and ways to enhance older pieces.

 

Start with a character and have a good idea about what the character wants.
Think about all the details – what is their society, goals, interests, factions
Think out conflict, potential drama.
Simple stories can be interesting!
Keep asking questions about your world and have others ask you questions as well.
Build your world around a central theme and incorporate everything around that central theme.

Ex: Bioshock.


Think of your favorite video game character and write a short speech by that character.
People were numbered, I am number 4
1 – political speech for president
2 – asking out someone they really like
3 – trying to get out of a speeding ticket
4 – telling their child why they have to stop picking fights on the playground
5 – asking the waiter to take back a food item due to a food allergy.

 

 

Find that voice by putting the characters in different situations.
Find out how they think, that they might say and do in any given point.


New exercise – collaborative writing excersize

We are going to be given a genre.

FPS
RTS
Role …

Story Design Conception to Launch [WfG 2011]

September 13, 2012 Aram Zucker-Scharff — No Comments

With Keaven Freeman

Descrip: “An in depth look at the game creation process from a writer’s point of view, attendees will get an industry veteran’s take on moving an idea from thought to implementation in a working game.  What role does writing play once the production process has begun, and what does a writer need to be prepared for?”

Phases of Game Development:

 

Green-light – producers give you a go

Taking your idea and giving it more form for an executive
Research
Who wants to play this game? Who do I not even know about who might want to play this game?
Start prototyping, including paper prototyping.

“Here is a snapshot of the experience of playing the game.”

Sometimes you may have to go back to concept if it doesn’t work. Iteration!
Pitching – “A very Caligula thumbs up/thumbs down moment.”

If it doesn’t pass, the exec might tell you to shelve the idea for now and start all over again.
If success then: funding!

Preproduction – bulk of writing.

Story Arc

“If you do nothing else for the writing of a video game, do the story arc … everything else branches off of that”
Story of the Game
Role of the Player
High-Level Chapter Breakout

Small incremental parts of the story that propel your character through the story …