GDC 2008 Game Writers’ Roundtable Notes
These are the compiled notes from three days’ worth of writers’ roundtables at GDC. I’d like to thank everyone who attended and contributed, and I hope folks will find these useful.
You’ll notice that these go on for a bit, and they’re in outline format. I think that’s A)indicative of healthy discussion and B)evidence that there’s a lot to dig into here that’s difficult to boil down to a paragraph or two. Please also bear in mind that these are transcribed from conversation. They reflect the participants’ opinions and experience, and should be taken as such, not as any sort of guideline or conclusion.
In some cases, commenters’ names are called out. This is due largely to those being comments that drove larger engines or discussion, or cases where the individual’s name and/or experience lends context to their comments.
If you have any questions about the material, please feel free to contact me at blacktorc@gmail.com.
The initial topic of discussion: Do the games you work on have a writing staff, or a single writer?
General consensus: Very few companies have more than one writer
Some people are hired in a writer-plus role (writer + designer, writer + QA)
This leaves the game with less than one full-time writer, instead of more than one
Bioware – their current game requires 44 man-years’ worth of writing
Biggest gap for Daniel Erickson is time to do the actual writing
A motion picture screenplay equates to 1 area for 1 faction in a Bioware game – and there are a lot of areas and a lot of factions
A screenplay gets a full year for write and polish
One area for one faction gets…a lot less than that.
Nobody’s giving their writers the time they would have had on anything else.
As games get bigger, the roles of writer and designer are separating, and people need to realize that if they want either task done well.
All the writing on DeadHead Fred got done nights and weekend
Radical – 2 full writers onsite & contract writers
The lead designer works back and forth.
The writer does the core script (plot, key dialogue & cut scenes, etc.)
Designers do the fiddly bits (background dialogues, barks, etc.)
The scope of project determines who does how much of what.
Harmonix - Rock Band had a different approach
There was a small writing team, recruited last minute and in part from other departments.
They’re now down to one dedicated writer, which means their biggest issue is matching the tone of the writing in various sections
Matching tone is a serious issue.
One approach is to have individual writers get individual characters and write them all the way through, instead of having writers do sections of plot and then hand the next section off to someone else.
Daniel Erickson now views his role as more of an editor in chief
He looks for tone and consistency
Will players understand a lack of consistency in the writing, or will they just get that it’s somehow off? It’s a big question
Working on licensed games is a great exercise in matching tone – the property is already out there to work from.
This lead to the question of the quality of work that a team can do versus an individual writer.
Can you have a team achieve a “film” level of artistry?
It seems likely - writing teams do it in Hollywood all the time
Most television shows are written by teams
So much of writing in games is based on the premise that writing = dialogue, when character and structure should come first
There needs to be one or two guiding creative types controlling vision…
Radical – They start with the writer doing “exercises” and “scenarios”
They have the writer on board from beginning to give feedback on writing elements besides dialogue
Writers need to know at least basic design in order to write effectively for games.
If they don’t know what an if/then statement is, they’re not writing a game..
What you can achieve at the end (if you’re not doing a rail story) is related to how much your writer knows about games.
Witness the horror story about comic writer trying to do an MMO. Aiiieee!!!
(Note: “Aiiieeee!!” was confirmed as an accurate reaction to the horror stories of what happened)
A question: Whose job is it to be Editor-In-Chief?
With a licensed game, it’s potentially the licensor.
A good licensor with smaller brand that’s not a geek brand is potentially the best combination
The biggest thing you need to demonstrate to a licensor is that you’re going to treat the license with love and respect
UbiSoft has Alexis Nolent keeping an eye on story from Paris, with a small team working for him.
Editors – are they needed? Wanted?
Consensus is that an editor is a good thing to have
Additional consensus: Most folks would love opportunity to script doctor/tighten
Getting other eyes on your stuff is vital when you’re doing comedy
On Leisure Suit Larry, they had to do round table script readings constantly
Hollywood writers were miserable failure
They ended up getting it done with two guys on staff, with students doing “shotgun” responses
This raises the question of in-house versus outsourcing
This often turns into “Writer that someone in the company has decided to hire vs. the writer whom marketing loves”
Question: Where do we find writers/How do we raise the profile of game writers?
(OK, technically that’s two questions)
Daniel Erickson has never filled his team
RPGS and adventure games are critic fetish food, and they talk about story first
At the same time, they remove the protagonist and the hard-and-fast story to make room for the player, making them that much trickier to write.
Ubi has worked with a variety of approaches
Pirates of the Burning Sea was mostly two guys writing
Tabletop gaming is a great place to find writers
Your moderator humbly agrees.
The MMO format is so big that you do have scope issues
Time of composition can have much to do with voice matching
Getting game writing into the spotlight could potentially help with recruiting new writers into the industry.
How do young want-to-be writers get into the industry?
Do you care about resume?
Relic has two young kid savants, and they’ve been lights-out
We need to get better exposure for game writers and respect as a discipline
Part of that is longevity of exposure
People are starting to get used to talking about game writing and game writers.
Still, it’s a slow progression…
As long as we keep looking at movies for approval, we’re in trouble…
Bringing in a “name” writer may win cred with rest of team, but not a long-term win
Voice Recording Issue - Do you take actors’ advice for line readings/word choice?
Feedback can be useful, on a case by case basis
“There’s nothing more exciting than when a good actor takes your writing and makes it sound better than you could imagine”
Animation actors are often the best game voice actors – they’re used to doing this…
Lengthy anecdote from Ian @ Relic about Bai Ling, the moral of which is “if it’s the right actor, their input can be invaluable to the writing, but not everyone is the right actor.”
Closing concern – “A movie isn’t made until the script is there – we do the script last.”
The initial topic of discussion: Do you have low-level processes that people have found useful in writing, documenting writing, and sharing writing with the team?
Bioware – It’s a given that people hate documentation
Then again, they have a 1200 page world document
Since they’ve got to disseminate stuff, they have different approaches
Scheduled readings & assimilation sessions
Also, they bribe people, possibly with liquor
Understanding that not everyone is going to read everything (or even something) and building that into the process.
Silicon Knights – They have the same issues
They do a story “presentation” pitch to people
Help the designers find the boundaries of what they’re writing
In other words, writing things that are useful, that are accessible, and that aren’t going to end up being read by no one but the designer
Need to build stuff that people are able to read
Don’t write it solely as a record for yourself
Documentation should be as exhaustive as it needs to be but can’t be overwhelming.
Because if it’s overwhelming, it’s going to be unread, and all of that writing time has been wasted.
Unfortunately, you can’t rely on people reading
If you can get a quarter of your team reading, you’re good
Are there other methods of making story & world docs readable?
Hyperlinking is one good way to go.
Storytime with the team can work really well
You get real-time reaction
You know the team is hearing it
You get to see which bits don’t work, and some bits fall out as a result
It is worth considering making a game of the story for the team?
It can help people come on aboard
Interactive learning for interactive folks…
Getting feedback from the end users is important
“Here’s what I wrote, you translate it into English for me”
Remember your audience
Get feedback on structure as well as content
Story docs became design docs for world designers
All of these ideas are great for writers in house, but what about contract writers?
After all, these ideas are all based on the premise that you have access to the team full-time.
With contract writers, it varies by project how much interaction you have with the team
Document sharing is a big help for out of house writers
From a freelance point of view, it’s about asking questions
Starting with characters is a good way of getting the team on board with the story
Identification with characters seems to be the quickest way to draw people into the storyline
Tone is good for getting a sense of character
This is especially helpful with artists
Explaining your ideas up front helps make the process go smoother….
Key point - Writers have writerly concerns, and we try to write our way out of trouble
Which means that we write more, which is a problem when the issue is “there’s too much writing.”
Writers shouldn’t allow themselves to be turned into necessary evil
We should be more forthright in expressing concerns and showing how gameplay integrates with writing
Do what you need to do BESIDES use text to tell the story
Remember, you are not the audience for your documents
Question: What’s the one thing that helps the team get it?
Focusing on goals works better with artists than focusing on details
Don’t give direct feedback – it seems like aesthetic judgment, instead explain what you’re trying to accomplish
Don’t tell artists how to make art – give them an idea of what you want and let them do it. Everyone’s happier that way.
Figure out which details are important and which ones are not
Remember that you are writing, not directing/casting/location scouting/etc.
Sketch stuff out as you’re writing
Even rough sketches help get the point across.
Start at the end – with the payoff
That gets them interested and they can kind of work backwards
Sometimes starting at the beginning leads to tedium…
“Here’s how it’s all going to pay off” draws people in immediately
Drawing a diagram helps to explain relationships
Stick figures with arrows can do a good job of getting the point across.
They may never read the bios but they still get the idea
Question: How do we write for so many audiences? Our stuff is read by the team, marketing, fans on web sites…how do we put it together so that it works and is read in every context?
Leave the printed-out documentation on the back of the toilet
That gets it read
(Editorial note – that wins Moderator’s Choice as best comment of the conference)
Force of ideas gets it read
We tend to present ourselves with the wrong credentials
It should be how we’re going to organize & present
Mary DeMarle did a great job in pitching herself to Eidos
“You need a “narrative designer”
We need to present ourselves in terms of showing that we know what we’re doing
Bioware’s automatic documentation feeding system works great for them in getting the right docs linked to the right stuff and in the hands of the right people.
Witness what Damien Schubert did in terms of doc organization
Having a tech writer on board to help organize and distribute documents was a happy thing.
Why don’t we have the appropriate tools for the size of our teams/projects?
What about writing the meta stuff? (Web site material, marketing material, etc.?)
Write the stuff for the web site, teach the story to the players
You almost need different background to do “meta” thing
Marketing can’t do it well
One thing that people find useful for this kind of writing is having a journalist background
It’s almost as if they’re reporting on the game
Obisidian – There’s a shared responsibility for text the public will see
Making sure that the form the writing takes on the game’s website is different for the form it takes in documentation
Make sure that PR/Web folks are in communication
There has to be a level of review
What about the format of game writing? What is it there for?
The primary purpose is to facilitate agency of the player
Choice & writing drive the player through the content…
This raises the question of characterization versus first person perspective – what do you do when your main character never speaks and is a player- shaped hole in the narrative?
In movies & books you identify through central character
In games, the voice is about the player, not the character
Hal Barwood – First person games are “head simulator” games
If the first person voice doesn’t jibe with the player, there’s a disconnect
“I wouldn’t say that” is harder to overcome than “this character wouldn’t say that”.
Characterization works better in third person because you’re not inhabiting the head of the character
In first person, there’s no drama
You have to agree with the characters’ choices because there’s nowhere else to go
In a mission-based game, you’re ultimately playing a “grunt” whom the world tells where to go.
You’re not writing drama, you’re writing mood swings
Identification & characters – what’s the amount we want to identify with the characters?
Yahtzee Croshaw – Look at the example of HalfLife
Characterization worked better with projection in HL1, because the player was alone
The issue for him was with HL 2
A lot of the characterization shifted to other characters talking about Gordon Freeman, and you were suddenly aware of the Gordon Freeman-shaped hole in the game.
When you have a character with no voice, Character with no voice, you end up shaping the characters around them to define the space the first person character inhabits
Gaming is, in large part, linear stuff
A lot of the ancillary material never makes it into the medium
This is material that would be exposition in a novel, for example.
We have to define the shape of the boundary for player in closed systems, and figure out where to put the information within those boundaries.
Triggers provide agency
Dan Greenberg – it’s a design choice that the main character in an FPS character doesn’t talk or interact. It doesn’t have to be that way?
Training up new game writers: How do we get people into writing for games when they learn the literary method of writing?
Dan Erickson notes the irony of working in RPGs
It’s where people want the most story, but you start by removing the protagonist & replacing it with “anything they want to be”
Gaming is non-linear fiction, down to the dialogue level
In many cases, “regular” writers don’t want to admit that they’re not in control
We can’t do Citizen Kane, but neither can ballet…
What might the player want to do and how do we constrain that?
Take a look at Katherine Isbister’s characterization talk
She talks about the split between ciphers and very heavily detailed characters
There are games that can do movie-style stories (Devil May Cry 4)
But it’s very different doing Fallout (only three key sequences in the entire narrative) versus Devil May Cry versus…
Start with the idea of relaxing control
Literary training is all about polishing the gem. In journalism you’re collecting data
Evan Skolnick – The quality bar on non-linear writing might be lower because the player is in the experience, not observing it
It’s like hearing a D&D campaign story
Interesting to the guy who was there/played it.
Not quite so interesting to the outside observer
Keeping side stuff in tone with main quests
Backing up to the academic question, we have to make kids comfortable with “if-then-else”
They need to understand at least the basics of game design to write stuff that will work with a design.
Interaction between writing and game elements helps add to quality of writing…
Pauline Lim – writer of first Philippine game - Is it feasible to study in the US (MA program) to become a better writer?
Is there a place with active game writing as part of their degree?
There are only 2 MA programs, and neither involve writing
Playing D&D is suggested as a help
An MFA can be useful, but if you’re interested in game writing you need to make that space for yourself.
Initial topic of discussion: What tips and tricks do you use to make your writing better?
Richard Dansky – I come up with a list of ten words that a character will use and ten words they won’t use, and let the word choice help define the characterization.
Susan O’Connor – It helps to clarify in what way all the characters’ desires are the same
There’s some good storytelling when it’s a question of “who’s going to get there first?”
More character tools
Use a psychology book as reference for character traits
Find a random issue in DMSV-IV and use it…
Explore idea of having all the characters want the same thing
At the very least you always want to ask what the characters want, but there’s always the “opposite” as well.
Can’t stories come from where orthogonal motivations intersect?
Abstract out the characters’ goals – why do they want it?
We’re trying to get to structural level of storytelling & see the scaffolding underneath
Hal Barwood – We’re looking at phenomenological perception of the world
In other words, if you see a couch, it’s a sitcom
In most FPS games, there’s no actual character reason to take the mission, so you’re writing a soap opera
A 3rd person character has internal goals (that are not the player’s) and so you can write a dramatic story
Example: Drake’s Fortune
Any time you have a few moments to tell story to advance characters, you can use it to tell great story
It comes down to techniques
One example - Striking lines of dialogue that can be told in another way…
Bioshock note from Ken Levine’s talk…linking all the characters to the world helps build depth and characterization
Is it always going to be a dynamic that’s at most a polar opposite? Is there room for more complex desires to be displayed?
The way stories are told is organized from groups being created in opposition
That’s a game-specific structure
RPGs have room for text & thus potentially more complex motivations
FPS, not so much
Games have to be based on what you’re doing, not what you’re sitting around talking about
Example: The Saw game
The NPCs all want the same thing (to get out) but want them in different ways
It depends on the design
If you’re just blasting dudes, why bother?
Fleshing out the character and the world is not just a nice thing to do, it’s a way to make the job easier.
The interaction between characters in zombie movie is more interested than fighting zombies – to us.
How do we deal with that?
“Story material never has to be mandatory”
Bioware – Technology is getting to the point where we can do non-text storytelling and we should take advantage of it
Think of writing with as few words as possible
Susan O’Connor – Try to do it with no dialogue in first pass
If you do have to use dialogue, think of it in a musical sense
Melody dialogue versus Harmony dialogue = essential vs. Flavor dialogue
Use dialogues to tell your narrative as a last resort”
Relic guys can’t write dialogue until they have a couple of treatments done on the story/missions/scenes
Drake’s Fortune – every line of dialogue had both an overt message & subtext
Thoughts on flat characters:
Corvus Elrod – One reason for flat characterization is that the character is often handed to you as a writer.
Blow characters over the top when writing and then scale back
Sometimes, what looks OTT on the page…isn’t.
Bob Bates – when someone hands you a flat character, it’s because they’re thinking of that character in a functional way – it’s your job as a writer to give them a layer of interest
Characters tell you about the world…you can’t develop characters too far without dialogue because dialogue is intrinsic to characterization
Actual research helps
The dorm example: Find someone in real life who looks like your character and follow/talk to/observe them
What about layering dialogue
You don’t hear people talking about that a lot
Body language/overt text/subtext – use them all
Let gameplay inform story and character to a certain extent.
Example: ICO
The game equates an emotional tie to gameplay tie
Lose the princess, you lose the ability to save
It’s a gameplay loss & an emotional loss
What does design need a character to do?
Bang your characterization around that…
”You’ve got to bleed a little” to get the character to where the game needs them to be
Ian Christy (Radical) – He finds difficulty with “do the missions and then they can make the dialogue pretty” writing
Wants writer on earlier so there’s mutual investment and buy-in.
What about “Irony”?
You don’t see much of it in games
It’s an unused tool.
The best performances are when the words aren’t as important as the thought behind them
In other words, we can inject a layer of subtlety
Dramatic irony is “Player ordnance”
Think of what the player knows versus what the audience knows
To implement irony, the team has to limit the solution set for what the dialogue is doing in the game. Once the team commits to ways to tell the player how to play, the story can be story and not a traffic cop
“It’s a layering problem”
65% of the world doesn’t play these games, but they do respond to irony
If you want to find irony, look outside big games.
Question: What do writers prefer – just to do spec work or to be involved more from the beginning?
Writers should be in house – one point of view (Drake’s Fortune)
Josh Mosquiera (Relic) – Writers need to be embedded (under the design team)
Chris Bateman – It’s professional prejudice to say that you can’t deliver good stuff unless you’re in-house
It’s better to work with folks to define the gestalt…
Stephane Bura – His team brought writers in
Writers and gameplay worked together
Wow do we get the team to read stuff?
(See the notes from Day 2)
“How can you incite emotions through gameplay and not writing?” - see the piece at http://www.stephanebura.com/emotion
The article is going to be published on Gamasutra
Evan Skolnick – embedded vs. contract writers (and the spec)…this has led to the rise of the “narrative designer”
How do I get story into gameplay vs. creating the words?
Look to AGDC for programming on the role of narrative design
Lee Sheldonwants to talk to Susan and Evan about Narrative Design because he thinks it’s a horrible thing
The name, anyway…
Writers must go to designers and demand material that is embedded in a practical, playable way
In other words, the correlative objective
Story elements that can be played.
Desdemona’s handkerchief as symbol…
Time pressure is an issue in composing writing
Example: Skate
The producer became writer became voice actor because he knew the lines the best
Contract vs in-house – things work well when there’s someone keeping an eye on narrative perspective
“I don’t think the office is a particularly creative environment”
Working outside the building can work
It just takes time & listening & organization…
One company (unnamed) had serious issues with their writer being out of house
Some/all of these were due to the fact that the writer was inexperienced
Hollywood approach/expectations versus game experience can lead to a mess
Embedding means that writer plays the game every day and gets ideas which can be communicated
Rhianna Pratchett – “Out of house does not necessarily mean not embedded”
Depending on complexity, can you do it off site? How did it go?
Chris Bateman – “Yes. Well.”
Contract issues – when do you do rewrites because the game is constantly changing (for example)? How do you do the contract? Is it wise to go with an agent?
Bob Bates – “As a writer, a lot of times my job is to introduce the client to himself”
Lee Sheldon – Games is an immature industry
We’re reinventing ourselves as we go along
The worst thing we can do is get involved with a Hollywood agency
The writer has to be clear as to what they can deliver and when BEFORE the agent gets involved
Find the right writer and contract is irrelevant.
And always remember scope…
How do you put a sense of drama into a studio
(See some of the day 2 material here…)
Give the engineers & artists an improve workshop and you see dramatic improvement
Also, the writer needs to know something about logic.
Ian from Radical gets the closing words:
Writing came first and the industry is fledgling
You take what you’ve got and make the best of it
Compiled by Richard Dansky Page 1 3/4/2008