Blank Slates & Scripted Decision Making

Happy new year. Blogging begins again here. Things are afoot.

In light of my recent thoughts on developing a new approach to dialogue systems (or, more accurately, thanks to a recommendation from the designer I'm working with on a nursing simulation side project) I was approached recently to produce a short interactive dialogue demo for a middleware firm based on some of those ideas.

Their core system, though, is a traditional dialogue tree, and it got me to thinking - if we're limited to the usual tools and can't factor in any procedural elements then what practical guidelines can we follow to avoid the usual problems around motivation, depth of simulation and reward? Here are some thoughts: 

- Keep character and player motivation consistent. This is the single biggest one. If the player is factoring in knowledge his character doesn't have (eg xp rewards or that all paths are valid) then the decision presented (eg talk your way in or scale the wall) isn't legitimate. Naturally this requires careful balancing with subsystems like xp and relationships.

- If asking the player to choose between expressing his personality and pursuing personal gain make it clear what the outcomes are. We've all played countless dialogue-tree-driven games, each with its own subtle differences. Does pissing off my companions affect their skill in combat? Can I talk my way into losing a quest? Whether in the form of a guide at the start or signposting within, there needs to be a careful balance between exposing the systems that float the game (thereby forming a motivation gap between player and character) and preventing the player from feeling like he's been cheated when the game behaves differently than expected.

- Signpost opportunities for manipulation. Encourage the player to read the other character and select intelligent responses separate to other decision making.

- Keep the conversation moving forward and on-topic. Don't waste text on unnecessary dead ends, encourage every decision to be a meaningful one. 

- Don't use a morality system. It's guaranteed to conflict with many players' own ideas.

- Use stats sparingly. Don't rely on skill checks to replace the challenge of choosing a particular approach, but do use them to reflect social standing and character knowledge.

- If all else fails, don't use subsystems. Subsystems like xp, relationship or personality sliders can be invaluable tools in simulating conversation, but they also threaten to separate player from character, rendering decisions unsatisfying. As long as this line only affects the next line a lot of the issues (and complexities) dissolve.

CD Projekt & Piracy

This one's probably a bit more business-y than usual, first posted as it was over at GAMESbrief.

CD Projekt's been in the news of late over its judicious mailshotting of thousands of members of the German public with demands for settlements to the tune of €911.80 for alleged copyright infringement of The Witcher 2. You can get the details just about anywhere else: basically having removed DRM from the game post-launch as a move to placate honest customers (and much  inline with the outfit's indie facade), CD Projekt have gotten onboard with a law firm, tracked torrent IPs, and demanded retribution.

Naturally enough there's been a backlash. There are a bunch of tacks here, but the basic thing is this: torrent trolling is bad, innocent people get done. It's true enough. Certainly an IP is not a one hundred percent guarentee you've landed yourself a pirate; certainly there will be innocent people who unthinkingly pay up.

At the same time, though, I want to argue in support of CD Projekt; or at least against those reasons. It seems to me that every game company is put in a position where they have to consider their approach to piracy and how they can profit despite or even because of it. CD Projekt is doing its best in that regard. The people there identified that DRM wasn't working: the games were cracked on release, everyone was complaining, and it was probably costing them more money than it was saving. So they jacked it in.

The company's new approach means legitimate customers can enjoy their game without the hoops. It also allows the company to focus attention on the people they actually want (and are legally entitled) to prosecute. Clearly there will be mistakes (unsecured LANs, false IPs etc); but there always are, and there are always processes in place to handle them. CD Projekt is working according to the law and to the demands of its customers. I think it's marginally better than the previous system.

Now, if that all sounds a bit too square, let me add a caveat. I don't think this is the right way about it. Personally, I don't take issue with the handful of innocent IPs that get lettered, and I don't try to pretend that just because piracy isn't stealing that it isn't illegal. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of the people complaining along those lines didn't either. What I take issue with is the attempt to secure the rights to our internet activity by the government. I take issue with approaches that try to control or fight the freedom the net grants people, and with piracy moves that try to plug the dam after the town's flooded. And yes, I take issue with someone telling me I can't stream an episode of South Park without getting an angry letter. A lot of people get a lot of crap for free now. Ask the Humble Indie Bundle if that's a problem for their bottom line.

My issue isn't with CD Projekt using the law to their best interest. My issue is with the law that allows it.

Christmas Looms, Work Pervades, Sega Game is Awesome

Things have been slow around here (the blog, not the studio) over the last couple of months, and that's something I hope to correct in the new year. The reason for it is that Sept - Jan has been just about the busiest period of my career. There are good I've-had-lots-of-jobs-come-in reasons for that, but I've also been teaching the story design module at Southbank uni again, as well as taking the first step towards my PhD in the form of a Philosophy MA at King's College. I actually have to be out of bed by 8am four days a week.

Of most interest, though, is probably the secret project that's taking up most of my time. I'm currently narrative designer for a major new Sega IP for Playstation Vita being developed up at Sega's new 'boutique' studio outside of Birmingham. Boutique, for once, is actually being applied quite fairly - this is a bunch of around 15 highly talented chaps and chapesses producing what Sega sorely needs: new, ambitious, home-grown intellectual property. The studio's creative team is headed by Simon Woodroffe of Simon the Sorceror and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth fame, and we're working on what is probably only the second game I've worked on which I felt might really do something great with its writing. (The first was the ill-fated Hydravision zombie game.)

The game's being designed from the ground up with narrative as its focus, and right now myself and another designer are knee deep in fleshing out the gameplay scenarios and producing a vertical slice. We're hoping to be able to announce details Q1 next year. Story development is actually in large part being informed by the aesthetics and philosophy of mind that I'm researching at King's, and I'll probably bore you to tears with some details on the latter some time soon.

In the meantime don't give up, stay chirpy, and we'll talk again very soon.

Stories in Ulikely Places: SWAT 4

Why is SWAT 4 the singleplayer game I've replayed more than any other (ie three times)? Why does it still give me the warm sense that something somewhere is right in the world (or at least was back in 2005)? Why this despite the fact my men are unable to equip anything more lethal than a paintball gun?

At the core of SWAT 4 is as rigorously designed a gameloop as you'll ever come across. Enter a plausibly detailed, open layout environment (anywhere from a petrol station to a halfway house to someone's house) with your four AI squaddies. Find a door, check what's on the other side with the look-under-the-door / magic wand gizmo, choose an appropriate tactic and storm in. Kill/arrest baddies, secure civvies and weapons, report status, rinse repeat.

The game gets a few key things really right.

Sense of Place
I enter the dining room in the halfway house. It's a large, open hall designed to feed people en masse; I have good visibility compared to the segregated cubicles of the office building I've come from, but the size of the room means a single grenade won't cut it. I order Blue team to breach from the other entry point to cover more ground.

I love games that make me feel like I'm in a real place that affects the way I play, rather than just a series of room and corridors with different body paint to run through. Think Hitman, think Thief, think Project IGI. SWAT 4 gets half of this right - while an office block doesn't make gas grenades any less effective, we are at least encouraged to take the context onboard and appreciate the bubble narrative of each level. From mission briefings and 911 calls to believable level geometry and visual detail, Irrational did their utmost to bring you into the gameworld in a way far more effective (for me) than a Half-Life 2 or Deux Ex 3. These are all locations we're familiar with and - to a degree - predict; they feel like part of a larger world rather than a themed rollercoaster, and for SWAT that's all important.


Sense of Role
The team bursts into the dining room, the pointman reporting one armed suspect and one civilian. The suspect stares at us in shock, his weapon resting uneasily by his side. I scream at him to drop the weapon, knowing I'm the only one with an itchy enough trigger finger to pop him before he poses a threat. He drops the gun, goes to kneel down, then draws a sidearm. I shoot him in the face, which spooks the hostage, and I'm forced to have my team subdue her. Situation under control I have them both arrested and report the outcome to TOC.

SWAT 4 is, I can only assume, not very realistic in any sense but the aesthetic. This being said, it remains more realistic-feeling than just about any military shooter bar some of the older OpFlashes and Rainbow Sixes. The challenge in SWAT (at difficulties beyond normal) is not to kill all the baddies - that's easy - it's to follow procedure without letting procedure get in the way of killing the baddies. It's not quite the way it's presented, but effectively you start out with 100 points, and they're detracted for every red tape slip up.

Kill a guy when you could have arrested him: -2 points
Fail to secure a weapon or report a kill/arrest/casualty: -2 points
Shoot a guy who didn't point his gun at you: -5 points
Execute an arrested criminal: -10 points
Execute one of your teammates (even by accident): death by impromptu firing squad

It sounds petty, and it can be, particularly when the game's age (and that period's lesser focus on accessibility) sees your final objective being to rescour an empty level looking for the one handgun you forgot to collect. For the most part, though, it's a stern reminder that you're not a lawless one man army. You're a guy (a faceless, characterless guy, but a guy nonetheless) with a boss, and a job, and the expectations that come with. It feels like I'm part of a system rather than the one guy allowed to break it. That's a good thing, even if it means I have to arm my chaps with paintball guns to stop them killing dudes.


Sense of Tactical Play

I stack my men up on the next door and order a breach, bang & clear. Red One opens the door and Red Two slings a flashbang. I call up the Blue One camera and watch from first person as he makes entry and scans the room, Blue Two passing his peripheral as he heads in deeper.

SWAT 4's gameloop is, ultimately, about assessing your situation, selecting tactics, breaching a room and then making a series of quick-fire decisions. This is all supported by a remarkably intuitive order system that allows quick and (when the AI isn't getting all 2005 on your arse) effective coordination of your team that's further strengthened by the animation. It's indescribably satisfying to watch the fluid machine of your squad in motion.

Truth is, tactics are more limited than they appear. The differences between the flash, gas and pellet grenades is rarely vital (are the threats wearing gas masks? is there clear line of sight?), pincer moves are often more dangerous than single attacks, and additional flavours like pre-mission loadouts and entry points similarly cursory. The combination, though, is palpable. Just like the original, top down Rainbow Six, there's the sense of a well-ordered plan that could go wrong at any moment, and an excruciating tension. The latter is, if anything, only added to by the knowledge that hearing your guys yelling to "Get down!" means there's a 50:50 chance their overly steady trigger fingers will be slower than the suspects'; unless, that is, you can get there in time. In fact, unless grenades are wisely used in incapacitating your foes your four-strong team is easily matched by a single aggressive crim.


All Told
I stack my team up on the door and loop around to the connecting room; anyone in this second room could easily avoid a grenade blast and flank my chaps. I signal them to go, hear the bang, and make entry myself. I blast open the door and come face to face with a perp. In my panic I shoot him in the face, as I am prone to do. Oh spacial awareness, you've bitten me again: there's one fewer room between me and my guys than I figured. As the perp falls I consider how strangely well equipped he is. By the time he lands I realise it's Red One. I eyeball the rest of my team and hammer the 'F' key to report a man down, and then hammer it some more in the hope its contextual function can also handle "Guys, it was a mistake, I'm sorry!" Someone, that uppity bastard Blue Two, I think, yells, "We've got a traitor!" and everyone shoots me. As the screen fades I hear Blue Two report to TOC that the "Situation is under control."

SWAT 4 is a game that tells engaging stories without the schoolboy reliance on a grand overarching narrative. Who says games should be about a ten hour story and not ten one hour ones? It's a game that intelligently combines scripted narrative (in the mission briefings and level layouts) with procedural content (in the random enemy positions and emergent scenarios), and presents it all through gameplay that reflects the both.

SWAT 4 is my favourite Irrational game. I can think of few higher complements than that.

Battlefield 3: Worth Writing Home About?

Was it always this hard? Were there always so many hiding places? Did it always take so long to go prone and take aim? I don't know the objective answers to these questions, but subjectively I'd suggest it's 'no', 'no' and 'Chuckpow! Solider down!'.

The BF series has long been dear to my heart in a way few online shooters ever have been - say hello Action Quake 2, Planetside, Enemy Territory and L4D - so I was intrigued by the third full entry, albeit less so than most of my narrative design students (half of whom didn't make last week's lecture, busy as they were consuming EA's marketing hype and review fixing).

Hit & miss respect for the consumer aside, what's always sold me on the formula is the same thing that made Tribes and the original 1942 so spectacular - the sheer volume of variables. I go on a lot about procedural narrative and Battlefield is a key, if one note point of reference. The tales of heroism and emergent play styles the game promotes will always be of far greater value than the scale of the 'splodes or the faux-realistic setting (and the less said about the me-too singleplayer the better).

So does BF3 deliver? It's honestly hard for me to say. Something's changed in a big way, either in me or in DICE: I cannot play Battlefield 3.

First off, all the movement feels wonky. My rig is a solid yet unspectacular Intel i5, GeForce GTX275, 4GB RAM (or is that 8GB?), and I'm sure that at the least the screen judder when I both move and look around is specific to my machine. This aside, though, I feel half the time like I'm playing a bad RPG.

IF [player is using prone ability] THEN [+50 Accuracy]
IF [player activates prone ability] AND [player is standing] THEN [+10 attack delay]

In essence, I remember a time when spotting someone first or implementing a smart strategy meant you had a decent chance of a kill; nowadays it seems to revolve more around who's got the bigger gun.

Which rather brings up the next usual gripe, and one I can't possibly ignore. It's sad that so many devs take it to be impossible to market and maintain interest in a shooter that doesn't have persistent upgrades, and while I grant it would not take forever to level up one particular class in BF3, the advantages gained are nothing less than significant game winners. Bottom line I find it genuinely disturbing that the two pillars of competitive FPS (you can guess which the other is) are comfortable not only allowing but encouraging unfair competition. We wouldn't take the IRB seriously if next world cup they banned France from kicking the ball until enough tickets had been sold to French supporters, and we shouldn't condone it any more here.

There are other things that bother me about BF3, but it seems reasonable to suggest most of them come down to my lack of integration with the game systems (or, in alternative parlance, how shit I am). I remember being able to jump into a jeep, play chicken with a tank, bail out just before the two go up in flames, then go prone and pick off the remaining defenders you've caught off guard. Maybe these things are still possible for the elite, but I can't help but feel the jeep wouldn't explode and that I'd get picked off before I even had a chance to bail. In short Battlefield Free4Play seems altogether more true to the series' heritage.

I find myself, while playing, genuinely wanting to say "Why is there so much stuff on my screen?" "How is it I can't actually see anyone that's shooting at me?" "What's with all this realistic foliage and destructible scenery?" BF2 was just so much simpler. You could actually distinguish between an enemy and a rock at distance. With that in mind, it seems the truth is that some of this is a genuine gripe, and much of it is an admission that, perhaps, I'm not as young as I used to be. For me, taking a 1:1 kill death ratio isn't really a satisfying experience. Likewise hitting a bottleneck where 20 players from each team trade covering fire for ten minutes may be a valid experience for many, but it's just not fun for me; it's just not Battlefield.

Battlefield 3 is an explosive war game with a huge marketing budget and a browser-based server interface. It is not, at heart, a Battlefield game. It is, however, modern warfare in every sense of the word. That makes me somewhat sad.

Polish: 1 out of 2
Tilt: 0 out of 2

Interview: Splash Damage's Ed Stern on Multiplayer Narrative, Baeckeoffe, and Living a Real GameDev Story

For the last 8 years Ed Stern has belonged to Splash Damage, the London-based developer that started out producing maps for 2001's Return to Castle Wolfenstein and wound up epitomising the genre it helped to create with 2007's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The closed in level design of this year's Brink has rattled some cages, but the free-running gameplay and world design have been singled out across the board. Ed would have it that his job title covers everything ever, so it's safe to say narrative design is right up there.

Hi Ed. What the hell do you do?
I’m very well, thanks. And yourself?

Oh what do I do? Ah. Well. You are by no means the only person to wonder that. I write game settings and backstory and concept documents for environment artists, character artists and level designers. I work with Creative Director Richard Ham and Lead Game Designer Neil Alphonso and Art Director Olivier Leonardi and many other people-persons on the narrative design and lean, pull, push and puff heavily upon the greasy tiller that is narrative direction. Occasionally I get to, you know, write dialogue and work with actors. Those are good days. Days spent in Excel trying to compare objective name-change localisation typos between three languages I don’t speak, THOSE ARE EVEN MORE BETTER GOOD DAYS. So I’m basically an embedded full-time narrative designer/director/writer monkey.

Since this is a reply-by-email thing I'll assume what you just said had something to do with writing.
Actually I just wrote in a recipe for Baeckeoffe. But now, stricken by a long-dormant voice I’m choosing to call a conscience, I have gone back and typed something else in. I’m sorry, I was interrupting you. What’s your next question?

For a long time writing had nothing to do with –

Sorry I was just attacked by a bin. Spirited brute, but I eventually o’ercame it. Threw me right off my stride, though. Please forgive me, do go on.

For a long time…
…

For a long time writing had nothing to do with shooting real internet people in the face, so how much narrative thought and work goes into the objectives and level layouts in Quake Wars or Brink, and how much of it is a case of, "Hey, we should have a bomb in a crashed spaceship!"?
An awful lot of thought goes into the levels and objectives, but the priority is always gameplay. If it’s not fun to play, it doesn’t matter if it makes neat narrative sense. Ink is cheaper than gameplay geometry, so inevitably it’s the story stuff that gets changed to match the gameplay. Alas, there’s still a basic tension between what we as writers would like the game to be about, and what players spend all their time doing in it. The plot isn’t the story of the game, the story of the game is the sum of the player’s experiences playing the game. And some of that you can shape and colour and influence in artful, craftful ways. And some of it you just can’t. Occasionally I mutter and grumble when I feel as if something’s strayed from my own PERFECT AND INVIOLABLE VISION OF WHAT IT MUST SIMPLY MUST BE. And then I’ll calm down, get over myself and get on with getting the game made. 

Splash Damage has always had a very community feel to it. The company started out, like a lot of the talent in the industry, producing maps for online shooters, and has continued to hire from the modding scene. Is that garage vibe still present, or have you sold your souls?
We got 10p each for ‘em. We certainly started out in the approved British amateur passionate and rather slapdash manner. But you can’t just keep throwing yourself at projects in a “let’s sleep under our desks until it’s done” sort of way, however endearingly shambolic it seems from the outside. You just break yourself that way, and perhaps more importantly, you don’t do good work.  And although it took a while to realise it, this is our Job now. People depend on us. We’ve had to grow up and learn about alien notions like “scheduling” and “pacing yourself”.

Certainly in terms of hiring we realised we couldn’t just restrict ourselves to the talent pool of the mod community, ingenious and brilliant though they are. Increasingly we need people who aren’t just bright and passionate, but also know how to get a game made, on time, on budget, on schedule. We’ve hired a bunch of very very good senior people, all of whom have previously shipped several AAA titles. So if we held ourselves to this standard, we original-ish members of SD, if we applied for our own jobs, we wouldn’t be sufficiently qualified to get ‘em. It’s all far too much like Game Dev Story. I fear I’m the first Writer guy you hire, with no Program stats, low dozens Scenario stats, zero Graphics, zero Sound and a pitifully short Stamina bar. I’ve certainly been tempted at times to mutter “You want me to write the proposal for another game? I’m not sure I can give it my best”…

I’ve started affecting a suit jacket, and the occasional ironed shirt. If ye have not maturity or virtue, then at least copy their outward signs. Also, if you’re of the plump persuasion, it gives your body the illusion of shape/corners etc.

It’s odd, when I started studying screenwriting more seriously, I thought it would make me more critical, that from then on whenever I saw anything I’d say to myself “Ah, well they got THAT wrong, and THAT wrong, and should have done THIS instead”. And the absolute opposite has happened. I’m now the least critical audience possible, all my sympathy is with people producing stuff. Anyone who gets anything finished, and to market, they’re a hero. If it’s any good at all in any way, they’re a genius. If I didn’t enjoy it, well, probably it just wasn’t for me, or more likely, a bunch of very talented people worked long and hard and did the best possible job they could with the resources they had available. Making games is hard. Everything’s in the way of you telling a good story with good characters and good dialogue. It makes me look enviously at radio drama, comics and prose: there’s so little to get in the way, it’s such a straight line between the heads of the writer and the reader. Thankfully my superpower-strength Inertia and Sloth prevent me from exploring those too closely.

Now I'm going to try to get you in trouble. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was Nerve Software and id in the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer who established a lot of what we now recognise as a Splash Damage game: asynchronous maps, the medic and character classes, the objective-based gameplay... How did Splash Damage come to figurehead these values in the first place?
I’m oddly inspired you call them values. I had no notion ET-style gameplay had such an ethical component. Well, a lot of that actually stemmed from Splash Damage’s work on the Q3F mod, which featured classes and a heavy focus on teamwork way back in the early 2000s. The other ingredient – asynchronous map design – came from Return to Castle Wolfenstein which was in turn heavily inspired by id’s Kevin Cloud’s experiences of board games.

So when it came to developing Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, we took our own Q3F ideas combined with RtCW’s approach to map design as a starting point, and added several new twists of our own, including experience points and command posts. I suppose Splash Damage gets associated with that objective mode stuff because we’ve kept plugging ahead with it in Q3F, Wolf: ET, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Brink. I can see why many other devs don’t, though. It’s so much harder to balance and devise objectives for.

As games go, online shooters are the polar opposite of what we tend to talk about on this blog - the artsy fartsy indie games - and yet the Enemy Territory games are some of my favourites. I think that's down to the tactical (rather than run & gun) gameplay philosophy, and the drama that's generated by an open playfield, narratively contextualised objectives, and other people. How do you see multiplayer and narrative (procedural or pre-scripted) coming together in the future? Woo, long question.
Hrm, it’s a tough ‘un. There’s a fundamental incompatibility between simultaneous narrative and interactivity in games. It’s possibly an even bigger challenge for writers than the problems of simultaneous action and dialogue in non-interactive drama. Even though the Portal games have been rightly praised sky-high, I still don’t think people quite appreciate what Valve pulled off there: what other possible setting would allow the story to consist solely of player interactivity? And be so funny? And involve no uncanny-valley-dwelling NPCs? And this from the chaps who gave us Alyx Vance in HL2, one of the most companionable companions in games. Portal 2 in particular was such a splendid union of gameplay, narrative and setting, where the story absolutely consists of the sum of the player’s inputs.

Partly, it’s down to the fact that we still describe a really enormous number of very different things as all being “games”. There are different kinds, different keys and genres and forms of gameplay, and they’re each only compatible with certain shapes and sizes and styles of story. Linear scripted SP shooters allow you to control the pacing and experiential density of the game, slow the action, block off routes, insist that players witness certain events, follow a familiar cast of characters and so on. But it’s not particularly repeatable. Or at least, unless it’s very dense, the experience of replaying it won’t be meaningfully different. MultiPlayer, with its constant chaotic player interactions, seems too busy to tell story in unless you’ve puffed and panted to set up the objectives and make the player feel like they’re Meaningful and About Something. But that’s just one kind of story: the story the writer writes.  The story of the game is not the game’s story, it’s the sum of the player’s experiences playing the game. The MP game is a toolkit, ruleset and sandpit to let players author their own unique experiences. It’s a forge for them to forge their own watercooler moments. That’s why it’s worth going back to and replaying, because it’ll never play out quite the same way twice. And that procedural narrative unpredictability, as you say, can be very satisfying, even though (especially though?) it’s completely different from the narrative immersion of (generally SP) indie interactive installations. Speaking of which, aren’t Limbo and Project Zomboid great? Some of the best bits of storytelling I’ve seen in games. Very different in tone and feel and pace of action. But aren’t they both at least partly dependent on their pacing? Wouldn’t their meaning change if you set a busy MP game in those universes? Wouldn’t you lose a lot? Why I am asking you questions? What’s the year? Who’s the baby? Where do Prime Ministers come from?

Pure MP I think is going to remain a hard nut to crack, at least when it comes to linear narrative (whether “written” or procedural). Co-Op, Player(s) v Environment, traditional SP, those are all easier forms to tell a story in. Left4Dead (Valve again, I know, I know) did a great job furnishing players with a replayable game that told a beautifully detailed and compelling story, albeit one narrated by the environment rather than the characters. People just approach MP with a particular set of expectations, and narrative isn’t necessarily one of them. The danger you run trying to make MP meaningful is that it can seem like unnecessary clutter that’s in the way of you playing the game the way you want to play it rather than a welcome, added, delightful bonus. Genre is tough. Mainstream player audiences are conservative. For many gamers, story in MP is like anchovies in their ice cream: two great flavours that really don’t go together.

Finally, what's next for you and Splash Damage?
Fire alarm! Can’t talk! Bye!

Thanks for your time.
No thank you.

No thank YOU.
OK, I’m stopping typing now.

No you hang up.
No YOU hang up.

@EdStern often tweets things, while Splash Damage often makes games. These things should interest you.

Driver: San Francisco - Post Mortem & Script Samples

So it's 18 months since I completed work, a month since release (to console, at any rate), and 48 hours since I finally got my hands on Driver: San Francisco. I have some thoughts on that topic.

First, it's my biggest and most polished release, so congratulations and thanks to the guys who did the real work over at Ubi Reflections. Thanks also to my agent, Sidelines, who put together the incidental dialogue team that I was a part of.

Despite being a big-bombast driving experience (ie the other end of the spectrum from my usual interests), Driver has my heart. I say this with what I hope to be a reasonable degree of independence - I never played the game before it's PC release, and I had nothing to do with game design or the central narrative thread - but Driver: San Francisco is that rarest of things: a game with a defined tone. I'm not the first person to say that the black humour, campy cop show theming and absurdist premise combine to deliver a world that works by its own rules and is a joy to inhabit.

But what exactly did I have to do with all this, and what did I learn? I produced a pretty significant portion of the Act 2 NPC dialogues - the flavour conversations (or barks) that occur when you shift into a car with a passenger. They were actually the topic of their very own bit of marketing, being as there are more lines in Driver than in Mass Effect 2. I'm not in a position to comment on that one, but I know I produced about 50,000 words across 30 characters and that others were doing similar. At any rate, RPS had some nice things to say about these dialogues in particular, so I hope they're worth discussing.

If the experience has reminded me of anything, it's that playing a game is essential to writing one. Stupid thing to say, I know, but it's amazing how often that principle is disregarded. In the case of Driver it was very much a priority job (which is a nice way of saying a rushed one), and though I asked for playable code I rolled over pretty quickly because sometimes a client just wants you to do the job you've been assigned, and are paying good money for freelancers so they have less to worry about, not more. I can't say I blame them, but I can't say I'd roll over so easily next time either.

The stuff I produced for Driver works, for the most part. If you're interested, a cursory play suggests to me that about half the in-car stuff around chapters 3-6 is mine, and you can find a full list here. A bit like putting a novel in a cupboard for six months, such a big gap between writing and playing lent me some objectivity, even to the extent that I was struggling to pick out my own characters. The darker ones work the best for me: the kid whose one day with his estranged father is ruined by Tanner's interference ("I think you broke my arm again, dad."); the hospital director who's terrified of winding up in her own intensive care unit ("You do understand our surgical staff are barely trained chimps?").

Where things falter a little is in the gameplay, or at least my lack of knowledge of it at the time. These scripts are supposed to be quick fire, simple to grasp scenarios that pack a funny / dark / atmospheric punch. Sometimes playing the game almost feels like a formality - after all, a scene is a scene, and a line entry marked 'Jump Land' or 'Scrape' seems pretty self-explanatory; but context is everything. How long is the delay between timed lines? How much more violent is a crash compared with a scrape? Does the dialogue reset if the player leaves the car?

The result is not that the good lines aren't good: the material still works; but a lot of it is lost in the mix. The ends are cut off of the wipeout lines; the story flow breaks in certain scenarios; lines you expect to be the mainstay are rarely heard.

I'm very happy with the work we did on Driver, and proud to have been involved in its development. Most of all, though, the experience cements for me what I've always suggested: that a games writer's job is still (and may be for some time) not so much to do what they're told, but to do what they ought. I failed to uphold that principle and at times, and perhaps only to me, it shows in the game.

If you're interested in the practicalities of writing for games you can check out a sample from the Driver: San Francisco script over at the Narrative Design Resource.

Ride the Wild Rumpus!

New London indie party game night, Wild Rumpus, is just what we need.

Gaming isn't cool. I'm as surprised as you are. Even the name, 'gaming' - sounds kinda seedy, no? Almost like the games are playing us. Sad fact is that the games we really hold up as meaningful still carry teenage baggage (yes, Planescape tells a smart, inventive and evocative story; yes the girls mostly still have big tits and can be talked into bed after you've slain a few hundred goblins), and our mode of enjoyment still tends to be cooped up in a bedroom or lounge, alone, giggling to ourselves. We don't have the same mass participation and discussion that cinema promotes, or the same celebrity culture that marks the upper echelons of literature and drama. Hell, I went to watch a girlfriend at a L'Oreal hair colouring (not dressing, colouring) competition half a decade ago and I remember sitting in the audience watching all these passionate people and wondering how haircolouring could be cooler than the newest artistic medium on the block.

Before you say it, I know we have equivalent stuff. Starcraft tournaments, this week's Eurogamer Expo etc. But they're just not cool. I wouldn't do that on a night out. Sorry.

The Wild Rumpus is cool. Not cool in an exclusive way, but cool in a cool way, in the universal way.

The debut night consisted of one of my fave Brick lane bars filled with indie party games and music and a mix of local devs, gamers and lost ravers from the gig next door. Game of the night was undoubtedly Johann Sebatian Joust, a Playstation Move game that doesn't use a display at all, and asks players to keep their controllers still while jabbing and pushing their opponents. It's all supposed to be timed to the Bach music in the background, though that was way drowned out by the party. Anyway, I'd be surprised if they couldn't box this one as a standalone party game for £40.

It was excellent. The night is run (I found out by chance on the night - see, no bias) by my mate Ricky and his chums, and apparently the best way to keep up is on twitter. The next night is up in Nottingham next month, and they'll doubtless by back to East London shortly after that.

Oh, also, 2-player Super Crate Box in an arcade cabinet.

All photos copyright Natalie Seery