Quick Update

Here is what has been happening for the past couple months.

Yesterday I did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. Last time I did one was three years ago, and I'm pleased to say the number of questions fielded this time was roughly triple, and ran the gamut from the usual 'How do I do your job?', through practical questions about the future of Subnautica, all the way to rather sillier ones. Here's a quick excerpt:

Tom, it turns out that I love every game that you and/or your pal Jonas Kyratzes have worked on. So, I have to ask...

Which would you rather fight: 100 small, brightly colored, six-legged, horse-like animals, or one horse-sized mantis with max ranks in combat?

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[–]tjubert[S] 3 points 16 hours ago 

I've waited my entire life to answer this question, and I'm afraid it's easy. I would rather fight 100 small, brightly coloured, six-legged, horse-like animals than one horse-sized mantis with max ranks in combat because a horse is a horse and a horse is not a threat, especially when it is small, even if it is six-legged and brightly-coloured and there are one hundred of them; however regardless the size or the species of the horse-sized mantis it still has max ranks in combat, and I always specialise in INT, CHAR, WIS.

In other news I am continuing to develop the general plotline for Subnautica (which will likely be true until a couple months before it ships), and next week I'm hoping to move back onto doing a proper redesign of the intro sequence and first 30 mins of story. Should be a big jump forward for the next update.

Finally, let's have a quick celebration of the fact the UK for the first time in decades has a prominent left-winger leading one of the two main parties, who believes in things like thinking before shooting, abolishing the monarchy and giving everyone an equal share of the things in life that really matter: health, education and political involvement.

Plot is Gameplay's Bitch: Most Popular Posts

So here, because I saw another, better blog do it and it seemed like an easy way to generate content, is a quick rundown of the most popular posts on this blog from the last year... or so. This said, I've just noticed that when RPS does it it's a collection of other people's writing on their blog, which now makes me feel a bit self-conscious. I guess I'll just throw some classic interviews to help assuage my guilt.

2013

1. FTL Advanced Edition Announcement - In case you missed it, more FTL, more Chris Avellone, more platforms. I have been playing this for the last four months. Out of fairness, I should mention this post is at the top mostly because Subset linked here from their announcement, so don't expect rocket science.

2. The Swapper Postmortem: What Went Right - The second part of this is still coming at some point. There are some announcements to make before then.

3. Little Inferno & Plato's Allegory of the Cave - I was hot off a Greek philosophy module and raring to go.

All Time

Technically the Ir/rational Redux walkthrough is the most popular post on this blog, but that's mostly newgrounds traffic.

1. What I did on Which Projects - I have literally no idea why this is the most popular post I have written. While I think a large part of my audience is probably people interested in the trade, I wrote other posts far more cynically targeted at you guys. Maybe if you clicked that link before you can tell me in the comments why? My best guess is it got picked up somewhere high traffic largely at random.

2. 10 Tips for Becoming a Games Writer - Like this one, right? I wrote this fully hoping it would pull in some hits (and do some good, naturally), and in fact most months it still nets more clicks than any other single post - but still not enough to pip the top spot.

3. A Voyage to Ice-Pick Lodge - I think the odd times that RPS picks me up probably contribute about a quarter of my all time clicks, and this was one example. It is, also, one of my favourite stories.

4. Top Indie Stealth Games - This is a bit out of date now, but it's still a sound list of 7 great stealth games you can play right now, despite what some of the text may tell you.

Top Interviews

1. Brian Mitsoda - He of 'Vampire Colon The Masquerade Hyphen Bloodlines' and Dead State, which is almost upon us despite being only just announced via the medium of time travel available to you by clicking the link.

2. Zachtronics - They of SpaceChem and Ironclad Tactics.

3. Chris Avellone - Enough said.

Honourable mention: Brendon Chung on Quadrilateral Cowboy. One of my absolute favourite developers, a fantastic game that's almost out, and this deserves your clicks right now.

The Chris Avellone Interview

I don't know what I could possible write here about Chris Avellone that isn't already implicit throughout the writings on this blog. Chris' work on Planescape, Van Buren and KOTOR II was instrumental in inspiring me to do what I do, and I am not the only one. Without further ado, here's what came out of a night in the pub with Chris a couple of months ago.

Planescape was one of the games that made me get into games. Is there a substantive difference in the complexity and flexibility of Planescape's narrative as compared with modern RPGs, or do we just have rose tinted glasses applied to some cleverly hidden linearity?

I’d say it’s the rose-tinted latter (although adding rose tints to design like this is a good skill to have, imo). Torment may have felt free, but there were some clear narrative chokepoints along the way that were necessary for the critical path. I’d argue that the context of these chokepoints could change - and not just narratively, but systematically as the flexibility in the alignment system allowed for additional opportunities. Still, there were some linear segments. We’ve tried to use this methodology in future games, however – you can get a lot more bang for your buck in terms of reactivity by tying as much reactivity as possible to the “gates” the player is going through in the game or major NPCs you’re definitely going to meet (Fhjull, Ravel, Annah, Morte, etc.).

To play devil’s (baatezu’s) advocate to the linearity point, however, we did consciously design larger game hubs that allowed the player to choose and approach quests how they wanted, which we felt was important for a role-playing game. Also, one of our design mandates was to make sure we had a lot of variation in the dialogue interactions based on the abilities and alignment shifts of the Nameless One. We wanted every conversation to have many options for any style of player – smart, strong, fast, wise, companion interjection (like with Fell, where it was critical), good, evil, lawful, chaotic, etc.

Also, the companion characters added a lot of optional content. A lot. That was a conscious design choice and went against the studio’s wishes at the time, but I felt it was important that the player be allowed to form an attachment and explore these companions in a way that allowed the player to bond and understand them on a deeper level if they wished. And in many instances (especially Dak’kon), this proved to tie into the endgame quite well and give the endgame a much different context depending on the companion interaction.

What makes a torment game what it is? Is it just what arguably every fantasy RPG should be doing: not relying on tired Tolkien tropes?

That’s a good question – I suppose it’s a mix of things: doing reversals (puritan succubus, lying angels, truthful demons, incredibly powerful rats, sympathetic undead, enslaved githzerai), defying conventions (who cares if you die - no need to reload if you don’t want to and it advances the plot and solves puzzles, you get to guide your alignment over the course of the game, bending D&D rules to serve the narrative, no elves, dwarves, minimal swords), and a personal, selfish story that doesn’t pretend to shift the focus from the player. Your personal journey’s what’s important. Sure, what happened to you as the Nameless One may mean a lot for the planes, but ultimately, it’s all referring back to you.

For me, when developing Torment I had a long list of things I didn’t care for in modern RPGs, so I re-examined all of them to figure out how to approach them differently. I feel this process (I admit I’m assuming here) worked well for Ronald Moore when he moved off Star Trek: Voyager and examined where sci-fi should go in the Battlestar: Galactica reboot. Reading his vision statement for where BSG should go was really liberating.

Planescape blew me away primarily because it had that strong character thread throughout. It wasn't about saving the world, it was about discovering things about yourself, and the nature of mankind. That's still a powerful idea mostly ignored by today's AAAs. How did you develop those ideas, and what if anything is the philosophical takeaway from Planescape for you?

It’s a selfish one, and it comes from many long years of Gamemastering: players are selfish. They want to shine. They want to stand out, be special, and be recognized for it. One of the things I detested about a number of RPGs at the time was that these RPGs seemed driven to make you care about some crappy nation or nebulous figure to be saved, to force some kind of relationship and worse, try to force you to care about that relationship, when what a game designer should consider is simply focusing on the player’s own desire to play the game themselves. Make it solely about them. It’s fine if EVERYTHING in the game revolves around them. In fact, make that their story, their narrative journey, and you’ll likely have a much better game for it by stripping away all the bullshit.

What weren't you happy with in Planescape, and how is that influencing work on Tides of Numenera? And how do you say 'Numenera'?

It’s NEW-MEN-ERA. I could telepathically feel Monte Cook wincing every time I mispronounced it (which was a bonus), and I actually mispronounced it in one of the best takes of the Torment endorsement video. ;)

I thought the combat in Planescape was poor, there weren’t enough Planes to explore (we wanted more), and it could have used more fun dungeon and adventure locations as well. That said, Planescape taught me that you don’t always need to one-up the companion roster, one-up the inventory list, spell list, or any of the systems you’re being compared to as long as you set up the narrative and the world context to explain why and you’ll likely have a much better game for it.

Was I worried about the number of companions in Torment vs. Baldur’s Gate? Yep. Was I worried about the lack of inventory items and weapons you could equip? Yep. Was I worried about the character creation and lack of class options for the main character? Yep. But in the end, if you’re staying focused on making sure you’re providing a reason for all these elements (the companions only like certain weapons or can only logically use certain weapons – like teeth, it’s a more personal journey, you don’t become a priest because there’s a chance you were once a god yourself), no one really cares. And as long as you’re doing one thing really well (I’d argue in Torment’s case, that was the story and some of the game mechanic convention-breakers), that helps you stand out and carve out a game identity all its own.

In Numenera, Kevin Saunders (Project Lead) and Colin McComb (Lead Designer) are conscious of the original Torment’s shortcomings and its strengths, and combat and adventure are not downplayed in any of the design documents and discussions. I’ve also added my cautionary tales as well about player motivation and companion design, but Kevin and Colin already seem to grasp those points well, so it’s like preaching to the choir, really. Which is a good sign.

You've made a name with RPGs and dialogue trees. Do you ever want to try alternative narrative mechanics, or is this a path you're set on? If the latter, are further experiments like Alpha Protocol's dialogue system where you'd like to be, or are you content to further push the boundaries with the systems you have?

I think cinematic dialogue and menu-driven systems has put us in a dialogue cul-de-sac of diminishing returns on gameplay, and there’s more that can be done with dialogue systems, depending on the genre (Brian Mitsoda’s tension-driving, branching-but-linear-with-no-takebacks in Alpha Protocol I think very much complimented the espionage mechanics of the title).

Also, with our Aliens: Crucible dialogue system, we made a conscious effort to make sure the player could never take “refuge” in a talking head conversation – they should never feel safe, they should never feel like they couldn’t be attacked at any time in the environment... because, hey, that’s what Aliens is all about.

Usually the franchise ambiance or engine specs have been our guiding principles for dialogue system design, but there’s more room to grow. I’m really interested in helping develop the dialogue mechanics for Tides of Numenera, as the Numenera ruleset allows for some interesting speech–related applications that would work well in a new dialogue system.

You're working on the South Park RPG. How have you been involved, how is it working with Matt and Trey, and how were you affected by the publisher switch?

My involvement on South Park has been minimal, I worked on it for about 2-3 months helping assist with the cut scene pipeline, and that’s the extent of my efforts.

What games do you think have made interactive narrative a more interesting place to be over the last five years, and why? What blew you away, or expanded your horizons?

Walking Dead. I didn’t know if a largely narrative reactive title would work. It does. Now I know. BioShock: Infinite I thought took some brave narrative challenges (the context of Columbia and their moral compass in an otherwise beautiful world... and the fact it’s a beautiful dystopia is really interesting) in addition to the pre-existing strengths of the narrative design in previous titles (the big ones are visual storytelling, not letting the story get in the way of the player freedom to explore it).

And finally, since I've no doubt a bunch of my readers would like to know, what's the best way for someone to get a writing gig if you're hiring? Are technical level design skills a must, do you care about qualifications, which skills do you expect writers to bring to the table, and which do you think can be learned on the job?

That is (another) good question. So... technical design is helpful, but not required. So is programming, 3D art, animation knowledge, quality assurance training, web design... all of these additional skills beyond simply writing are helpful in game development, but not mandatory. That is not my way of saying you shouldn’t investigate and learn about supplemental careers, as all of these things make you a better narrative designer and a better developer.

The answer on how to approach being a narrative designer is a really long one, so let me try and highlight the big ones:

- Be accommodating. Your job is to support systems, not dictate them.

- Be helpful. Narrative is a powerful tool to explain away what would otherwise be considered a game’s limitations and problems. Make everyone’s life easier by volunteering ways to do this.

- Scriptwriting is a better focus for your time than novel or short story samples. Those are good skills to have, but scriptwriting (especially with regards to VO-centric titles) is more important.

- Graphic novels, imo, aren’t bad either. They teach how to use background visuals and camera and character placement to set up a scene, which is a good skill for a narrative designer to cultivate (and your storyboard artists and cinematic designers will hopefully appreciate this as well).

- Whenever possible, a narrative designer looking to get a leg up in the industry should shamelessly find a way to help Chris Avellone contribute to FTL2 because that would make Chris Avellone happy. If any narrative designer can do this, then the aforementioned Chris Avellone would be happy to help their narrative career however he can. Just saying, Tom, just saying.

- Narrative designers should look for ways to tell the story through visuals first, words second. Graffiti, prop placement, and vista-conscious level design are often more effective than listening to a talking head or a handler give a 3 minute exposition of what’s ahead.

- Story is not the most important thing unless you’re doing a Walking Dead/Telltale game. Don’t be stubborn, demanding, and insist that games are there to tell stories. You’re there to let the player have a cool experience, let them have it. Let them “mess up” your story. Let them do a non-ideal path if they want... and make it equally ideal, even if it isn’t the path you took. Your job is to entertain. Respect your audience and respect the fact you are making a game first, and your story supports that experience.

- Every time you interview for a writing gig, they will ask (or should be asking) about a story you liked or a story you hated or a story you felt indifferent about in a game. Then they will (should) ask you why. It helps if you have specific answers in advance. Keep a living post-mortem on your computer with critiques of the story of each game you play, and be prepared to speak intelligently about these story critiques in an interview at the drop of a hat.

I have one more bit of Chris-related news to share with everyone when the time is right. Stay tuned.

What Would You Ask Chris Avellone If You Had the Chance?

Because we do! I met Chris here in London the other night which - apart from being quite surreal (Planescape is like the bible around here) - gave me the opportunity to flagrantly abuse my position and tie him into an interview.

I'll be firing some questions at him tomorrow. If there's something you want to know, put it here.

Interview: Blendo Games on Quadrilateral Cowboy

Brendon Chung of Blendo Games has been responsible for some of the smartest, most varied and distinct indie games of the last few years, including Gravity Bone, Flotilla, Atom Zombie Smasher and Thirty Flights of Loving. I caught up with Brendon at PAX last month where he was exhibiting his new game, Quadrilateral Cowboy.

So, to start us off, tell us a little about your new game.

Sure. It's a cyber-punk 20th century 1980s low-tech hacking game.

Excellent. I've played it, I love it, it's I think my favourite game here. So your games, more than most, are incredibly varied. You've done a turn-based space sim, a zombie strategy game, more surreal things... and now you're doing a first-person stealth hack'em up. Is that a conscious decision on your part to try to nail as many genres as you can, or is it just the way it happens?

I'm not trying to nail as many genres as I can, it's more me trying to get out of my comfort zone. I'm a big fan of when people get out of their comfort zone and do something they're not used to doing. I love seeing when dramatic actors do comedies, I love seeing when comedians do dramatic roles. So for me, that's why. Flotilla was my first turn-based strategy game. I thought - I might as well give it a shot, see what happens.

So there's a theme across a number of your games and it's certainly got a surreal feel to it. How much of that is because you want to have control of your world, how much of that is to give you leeway in the gameplay, is it your style, is it just the way it comes out - tell us what goes on behind that.

So these are just things that I'm interested in like when I read books or watch movies... Woody Allen or the Coen brothers, they influence me a lot in that they have these worlds that are real, but at the same time be wildly fantastic about them.

OK. We talked yesterday about the writing. You said you wanted to keep the text in the new game minimal if even non-existent outside of the computer terminal system that you use; but I got the impression that you like to write, even if you like to keep it out of the games. Tell us a bit about your relationship with the writing.

Yeah, so I love reading, I was a film major in college and writing was one of the things I most enjoyed doing. But then when I play video games I am the type of player that skips past all the text bubbles and cutscenes because if I want to read a good story I will pick up a good book. So I feel like games are best served when  you're interacting with them, not reading pages of text. Although I will say, Planescape: Torment - best game ever made.

I love in that game because they didn't have that detailed animation it was prose, right? You know, "So and so looks at you with a steely gaze and says...". Seems very strange nowadays. So playing Cowboy, you've obviously got a world that functions according to a set of rules, and I love that because it makes the world feel more thorough. It feels real because everything functions independently, you put some stuff int he level and then it goes off and does its stuff, just like in the real world. How do you go about conceptualising that world and what do you think the game rules bring to the game? 

Thirty Flights of Loving and Gravity Bone are very narrative based, very experimental in terms of story. This one's the opposite of that. It's about really high player agency, letting the player run around a simulated cyber-punk world. I was kind of inspired by... Recently I've been a simulation kid. Games I've really liked have been Day Z, Dwarf Fortress, and those are games where it's just pure simulation and they let people be creative within them. That's something I want to support.

I went to the Erik Wolpaw and Tim Schafer talk earlier today about gameplay vs story and someone asked Tim, "How do you feel about games that express their meaning through mechanics rather than pre-authored script?" and he was kind of quite dismissive about it.

In what way?

Something like: "When I interact with a piece of art I feel like I'm communicating with another person, and if all I have is a bunch of mechanics and no pre-authored story then there's no communication." It sounds like you're saying the opposite and I think I'd probably be on your side. Um... that's not really a question...

*Laughs* Yeah, what games I feel excel in is interactivity, and being able to crunch a billion numbers behind the scenes. So an authored story is a form a lot of media can do, but player generated stuff - that's what's so unique to video games. 

Well done, it's almost like I fed you that. One more question . Stealth. I love it, I think you must enjoy it.

Thief is my favourite game of all time. Next to X-Com.

Why?

I like that it makes you roleplay a certain type of character. I think a lot of games now you're some muscle-bound guy and have 20 guns strapped to your back and that's fun, I enjoy that. but I like having variety in my gameplay, so when I played Thief I suddenly played this guy who had one hit point and a guard just looked at me the wrong way and I would drop dead. I'm hiding in a corner and I'm breathing shallowly and hoping he doesn't see me. There's something wonderful about that experience.

Good answer. Brendon, thank you.

You can keep up with Blendo here, and Quadrilateral Cowboy right here.

I'm on the Unlimited Hyperbole Podcast

This week another brave soul has sat me down for an hour and grilled me - this time it was Joe Martin's turn.

The topic of this season's Unlimited Hyperbole is horror in games, and Joe's cut down about 60 minutes of me going on about just about anything, to just over ten minutes of fairly sensible chat about the development ethos on Penumbra, my favourite horror game (L4D2), and what I'd like to be doing with interactive narrative (more and less at the same time).

Do take a look.

Beefjack Has Slow News Day, Interviews Me

Not about anything particular, you understand, but in more of a desert island discs kind of a way. I talk about The Hunt For Red October on Gameboy, and the most embarrassing moments of my career. Also features a photo of me either getting over-excited about dialogue systems, or coming down from a 24 hour rave - I don't recall.

It's over there.

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.

Interview: Jenova Chen on Bondai-gate, Cultural Boundaries & Journey

Jenova Chen first came to public attention with Cloud - a free download in 2005 following a soaring child interacting with a the clouds in a surreal dreamscape. Jumping on that success and founding thatgamecompany, Jenova's team moved into a three game deal with Sony which has seen similarly inventive and zen-like offerings fl0w and Flower released on PSN, and which will culminate with this year's Journey.

Hi Jenova. There's not a lot of writing in your games, and yet you clearly put a lot of stead in expressing drama and - to my mind most successfully - evoking emotion in more fundamental and perhaps less immediate fashion. Is the absence of words a conscious decision, and if so why?

I decided to do that mainly because I had a hard time at my screen writing class in the USC film school. While I did manage to earn an A in the end of the semester through some ridiculous amount of work, I realized that I can’t really write solid dialogs considering I didn’t grow up in the western culture and English is my second language. I can only write fictions, things that’s not heavily rooted in the local culture. So as a way of avoiding this problem, I figured it’s best for me to focus on things that is more universal, things that can cross the boundary of culture and language.

I remember playing Cloud on release. It seems to me the sort of time that the indie community was really starting to flourish on the PC. How has the community / market changed since you started out, and do you miss the PC?

It’s a time where online download-able game is only accessible through PC. And all console games have to be sold through retail, which adds a huge budget to the cost of a video games. At that time PC is the only way a small budget indie game can be distributed. Now the world has changed so much that every device seems to have an online access to games. And the distribution cost is so low now that anybody in a garage can make an iOS or Android games. I don’t believe the personal computer will exist in 10 years. We are in a post PC device era. So I don’t miss PC :)

Journey was well entrenched in my most anticipated last year, and it seems we're finally being drip fed some details. One thing I'm still slightly in the dark on is what sort of interactions two players will be having. Are they puzzle solving together? Are they simply there?

Journey is not a co-op game in which player has to work together to solve a puzzle. The other player is there more about sharing the experience. With that said, there is subtle benefits being close to the other player. In Journey player can recharge their energy by touching things made of cloth, so is the remote player. Veteran players probably would show you secret areas and short cuts they’ve discovered in the past.

Auteur theory. I know you've been asked about it before, but particularly in light of the recent LA Noire scandal (in which Team Bondi Boss Brendan McNamara uses his self-professed auteur status to justify appalling working conditions) I wanted to ask how responsible you feel for thatgamecompany's output, and whether you think the auteur has a place in our industry?

I certainly would support auteur theory, since that’s how Cinema evolved so rapidly from limited content controlled by big production studio into an indie film movement supported by a wide range of content and memorable names. While Mr.McNamara used that status to make everyone else work extra hours for him. At thatgamecompany we don’t encourage crunch time on our team members. Any extra hours are completely volunteered. As the director for the game, I felt obligated to putting the extra hours to make the game perfect. While I believe I work just as hard as Mr.McNamara, I don’t want to enforce others into a crunch without their own will.

For all the energy I expend on topics like emotion and drama I still let loose in APB Reloaded or Left4Dead 2 every once in a while. Which games are your guilty pleasures?

I still need a daily dose of games like Street Fighter 4, DOTA, League of Legend for my male competitive satisfaction. Recently I’ve been trying to follow up with the social games, I played Smurf Ville, Tiny Tower and Zombie Farm for quite a while.

Thanks for your time.

You can keep up with thatgamecompany very easily.

Interview: Zachtronics Industries on Dynamic Puzzle Solving & Trout

Zach Barth operates under the name Zachtronics Industries. He's responsible for the outstanding puzzle game with the so-so name, SpaceChem, which is probably the best puzzle game I have ever played. It's a molecular programming game whose solutions are dynamic, that never fails to respect your intelligence, and is impossibly challenging without ever turning you off. It tests logical problem solving in a far more immediate and mature fashion than my own attempt. On top of this he's infamous for developing Minecraft precursor, Infiniminer (which we're not going to talk about today because no doubt he's bored). Anyway, grab the demo and be in awe.

Hi Zach. I realised as I planned this interview that you're the first person I've talked to for Plot is Gameplay's Bitch who might not list 'writer' as their first job. On top of this, I can't claim puzzle games are regularly at the top of my play list. Why do you think SpaceChem has captured me - and other players - so thoroughly?

I think that the allure of SpaceChem for many players is the way that it approaches puzzle / problem solving. Instead of requiring you to reconstruct my contrived solution, every puzzle allows for a very large number of possible solutions, each acceptable but with different performance characteristics. This gives players a clear goal, but an unprecedented amount of room to be creative, innovative, and iterative in creating their solutions.

I usually found that I could come in above average in play cycles (time efficiency of the solution), but way over the top on symbols (the complexity of the solution). Maybe I'm trying to be too clever for my own good, or maybe I'm just not as smart as I think. I'm fascinated by the metrics you collect on players - any interesting insights? Are there traits certain types of players share?

One of my favourite experiments we’ve run is SpaceChem: An Average Solution, where we used some clever visual post processing to average out hundreds of solutions for the “research” puzzles in SpaceChem. It allows you to see how solutions for different kinds of levels (tutorials versus simple levels versus hard levels) converge and diverge based on the constraints of the puzzle, which I think is very neat.

With regard to how players respond to the graphs, I think that many take to them the same way that you do. The first time you beat a level you’re almost certainly not at the top, but the graphs invite you to find a dimension of optimization that interests you and improve it in that aspect. The fact that the dimensions are mutually exclusive helps to make players who choose to optimize feel awesome, as graphs are filled both with people who wanted to optimize that aspect and people who chose not to optimize that aspect to optimize another.

You've been working on this basic programming play through a series of games, but SpaceChem displayed an unprecedented level of polish in its visuals, soundtrack and narrative. Do you want to shout out to your contributors?

Without a doubt!

I had two programmers, Collin Arnold and Keith Holman, who handled a majority of the coding tasks and freed me up to focus on tasks related to design and production. The remaining tasks were outsourced to talented individuals: Ryan Sumo for the majority of the artwork, Ken Bowen for sound effects, Evan Le Ny for the soundtrack, and Hillary Field for the narrative. Without them, there would be no SpaceChem!

You've spoken previously about how the emergent nature of the solutions is a strong point of engagement, and I think that's what interests me here where point & clicks or LA Noire (for example) fail: in building a solution within the game logic, rather than just discovering the pre-authored one. Is that an approach you'd consider expanding to subjects other than molecules and engineering systems? Narrative linearity seems jarring by comparison.

Yes, definitely, although I think it’s far easier to apply the principle to games like SpaceChem that are highly mechanics-driven. If I had to explain why this was the case, I would guess that it’s because this kind of system fundamentally expects and requires the player to design something as a solution, which translates into a strong sense of agency, which in turn drives engagement. I’m not sure how it would work in an interactive story like LA Noire, but I certainly don’t think it’s the only route to take.

Finally, what's next for you? Can you spill any details that I can spin into a headline? "SpaceChem dev turns hand to Facebook trout farming sim" would be ideal.

I wish I could tell you something that exciting! We’re focused right now on the transition to being a full-time studio and wrapping up SpaceChem development. Trout farming does sound kind of interesting, though…

Thanks for your time.

You can check out all Zach's games at http://www.zachtronicsindustries.com/

Interview: Rhianna Pratchett on Games Writing, Diablo Lust, & Not Entirely Hating David Cage

Rhianna Pratchett is probably the highest profile freelance narrative designer in the UK. Starting out at the hallowed PC Zone, she was invited to be the story editor on Beyond Divinity (2004), and has since worked on major titles like Heavenly Sword and Mirror's Edge, and defined the anarchic humour of the Overlord franchise. On a personal level, Rhianna was one of a posse of writers who took me under their wing in the early days, and have continued to be supportive influences in my career to date.

Alright Rhi. Before we start, let's make a pact not to talk about how writers need to be better integrated into teams earlier in development. We always complain about that. Deal?

Deal.

The first time we met was at Develop 2007. I saw that you, Andy (Walsh) and Jim (Swallow) were giving a talk, and I dropped you an email to see if I could exchange booze for career advice. Then Starbreeze wined and dined us (emphasis on the former), I wound up wandering Brighton 'til 5am looking for a hostel, and I was late for my graduation in Southampton the next morning. You've never apologised for that, have you?

Oh button it, Jubert. It was summer! Plus you got a great introduction into the UK games writing scene *and* a free dinner. Think of how many beer-fuelled games writing rants that led on to.   Totally worth it.

Tell us a bit about the early, post-Divinity days of your career. Was it difficult finding work? How was the climate different to the one I entered eight years later?

I utilised some of the contacts I’d obtained working as a games reviewer on the late, great PC Zone magazine. A lot of it was just down to fortuitous timing. I ended up doing level dialogue work on a couple of small licensed games via a script and game design company called International Hobo. I met them through joining their forum after I’d greatly enjoyed one of their previous games – A very underrated titled called Ghostmaster. I then work on Stronghold Legends after I mailed the developers (Firefly) letting them know that I was setting out my stall a script-writer. I had good connections to them because I’d been a big fan of the Stronghold series and it just so happened they were in the market for a wordsmith. I guess it helped that I had quite eclectic tastes and I started small, so I wasn’t going knocking on the doors of Valve, Epic or any of the other big boys. 

My big break was definitely Heavenly Sword and again industry networking came into play. I’d met the Creative Director (Tameem Antoniades) at a screenwriting workshop, where I chatted to him a little about Heavenly Sword as it had just got some industry coverage. I then met him again at a London IGDA lecture where he was talking about the process of getting Heavenly Sword a publisher. We bonded over JD and a mutual dislike of the obnoxious fellow who ran the screenwriting course. Booze and hatred cements a lot of ties in this industry. Tameem talked to me about how Ninja Theory were about to enter their second round of writer testing as they’d been unable to secure one. I put myself forward; four months later got a test via Sony, then got an interview and the rest is history.

It’s difficult to make a call on whether it was easier back then. There weren’t really people like me around to ask for advice (well, there were, but they weren’t as visible as games writers are these days.) Consequently, I sort of had to make it up as I went along and learn on the job. So there’s a lot more information out there (books, interviews etc.) which is undoubtably helpful for wannabe games writers. However, the economic climate makes job searching hard for everyone. Belts have been tightened everywhere and some places still consider a writer a luxury, rather than a necessity.

Whenever we do talks and interviews I tend to differentiate myself from you guys as being very into indie - partly because I am, and partly because my AAA credits aren't nearly as impressive. Is it fair to do that? Are you into the whole art game scene, would you be keen to work for a smaller, more experimental developer, or is the big stuff what gets you going?

You also differentiate yourself from us with your varied collection of hats and facial hair! But I think we’re all in it together. Working with a small developer can be just as interesting and challenging as working with a much larger one. In fact I’ve had some of my most positive experiences working with small studios, such as Triumph who I did Overlord and Overlord II with. Larger companies can sometimes mean that there are more layers of people wandering into the narrative kitchen and fingering all the pies.

I’ve had some hugely diverse projects, which has been wonderful and I don’t regret any of them. Even when things don’t go the way you want, you always learn from it. The titles I choose to work on aren’t really about status, but about whether the project grabs me as both a writer and a gamer. I’m pretty open to whatever direction that comes from.

What interactive stories have excited you recently, and what are you looking forward to?

I’ve just got a PS3 so I’m stacking up a fair few games to play on that, including Enslaved and the original Uncharted. I’ve just started on Batman: Arkham Asylum (yes, I know I’m a little behind.) It took a little while for the gameplay to ramp up, but the story telling and performance capture is fantastic. Hats off to Rocksteady.

I’m really looking forward to Diablo III, not especially for the story, but because I’m searching for that obsessive *need* to play a game, that I felt with the first two titles. I nearly lost a boyfriend due to my excessive Diablo playing. In retrospect I should’ve ditched him and stuck with the game.

We have a love/hate relationship with David Cage (it's tempting to say I love him, you hate him, but I know it's more complex than that). He suggests, however, one future for game narratives is for the designer to be closer to a stage setter, with characters and stories behaving dynamically according to rule sets rather than a script. I think that's a long way off, but I do believe in the idea. Even if we have to simplify our dramas, ala The Marriage, it seems like the only way to really deliver on what games as a fiction medium can do. It's incredibly hard to fool a player into thinking he has freedom with traditional branching / linear narrative. Do you feel there's mileage in the idea behind procedural story?

I don’t hate Mr. Cage, I’m very glad that games like Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit exist, although I find the preoccupation with sex and ‘titillation’ scenes in his games verging on creepy. The differences in how Ethan’s shower scene is depicted (in Heavy Rain) versus the way Madison’s show scene is depicted, is a good example of this.

I’m certainly interested in his suggestion for the future, but like you I think that’s quite a long way off. Is he suggesting that designers become writers? I think it’s probably more the case that writers should become designers, since being a game writer is about so much more than the ‘word bits.’ It’s about creating a world, atmosphere, tone and narrative logic. It’s like being part writer, director, cinematographer and set designer all rolled into one.

Finally, can you either give me a controversial sound bite I can take out of context and use as a header, or give me any juicy details on something you're working on now?

I’m pretty sure that you’ll find a controversial sound bite somewhere in this! Sadly I can’t give any juicy details about what I’m working on now, otherwise bad men will come and kill my pets. The best I can come up with is that they are both great projects, both franchise games (which is rare for me) but I don’t think people are going to be too surprised about my involvement. 

Right, "Playing Diablo nearly lost me my boyfriend" it is. Cheers Rhi.

You can find Rhi's official website right here.

Brian Mitsoda Talks Vampire: Bloodlines & Newly Announced Dead State

I first heard Brian Mitsoda's name attached to an interview he did with Rock Paper Shotgun back in 2009 (meaning I've just had to google 'rock paper mitsoda', which makes me smile), discussing one of the games that most influenced my career, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Brian started out in QA at the infamous Black Isle, before taking on writer's responsibilities and moving over to Obsidian. In his own words his 'cancelled project resume is stunning', and despite working on an early version of Alpha Protocol, Bloodlines remains his only narrative credit. Brian and new wife Annie VanderMeer Mitsoda founded small independent DoubleBear in 2009 and have since been working on a zombie RPG that more than registered in my list of games I'm excited about last month.

Hi Brian, thanks for talking to me today. First up, we have to do some Bloodlines chat, and in particular tackle the Malkavian character who, as you know, was no small influence in my character design on Penumbra: Overture. The Malkavian was a taut combination of nonsense poetry, startling insight, hilarity and depravity. To what degree was he (or she) based on White Wolf's existing template [Bloodlines is based on a table top property], and from where else did you draw inspiration?
I read most of the source material – all the core and clan books. While I might have written the majority of the Malkavian dialogue, the idea to have Malkavian-flavored responses came from Chad Moore (who also wrote a few characters, including Strauss). One of the things I wanted to do with the Malkavians was not just make them “crazy” because I think that’s too easy. I wanted them to tap into the Malkavian “insight” – somewhat like having ESP without really knowing why you know these things – and also make them sound like people that would make you uncomfortable, rather than be over-the-top zany.

People tend to make madness hilarious, and I wanted to try to get into the head of someone without impulse control or rational thought patterns. Sure, sometimes they could say things that were amusing, but if you were to actually have a dialogue with someone who spoke like a Malkavian, you might first think they were weird or putting you on, then you’d be a bit creeped out, and finally you’d try to find ways to get out of the conversation because you had no idea what this person was capable of. They were usually some of the last dialogue I did to finalize characters, so at the point I was writing them, I was probably a bit out of it myself from deadline stress and lack of sleep. Whenever I have a chance to do mental illness in a character, I want to portray it closer to reality than comics or movies – it’s just a cop-out when a character’s motivation/antics are hand-waved because “they’re crazy!”


Bloodlines embodied, for me, a very Fallout vibe, in so far as it took the now entrenched western RPG template and without drastically changing the mechanics pushed the boundaries beyond what they could arguably handle. As anyone who played the game out-the-box will know, it was a rough edged diamond. I know you've said that game overpromised, but would you really rather be working on a Dragon Age where arguably the biggest advancement over the past decade has been the engine?
Well, working on successful games is nice because you have the money to keep the lights on for the next game, but I loved working on Bloodlines, despite all the problems and challenges we faced and its lack of (immediate) success. It was a smaller team and I think we felt real ownership over our contributions. That’s something you don’t really get on larger teams and it’s somewhat a trade-off for large scale projects – you either get better compensation or more control, but rarely are you going to get both. Some people want stability and a small piece of a gigantic machine to work on, and that’s fine. I’d much rather work on projects where everyone knows everyone and where we don’t have to have several meetings to decide on the color of the hero’s shoes. I don’t necessarily think every project should be the most ambitious ever, but it would be nice if more games took some risks. I completely understand when projects with $50 million+ budgets play it safe, though it would be nice if there were more $500,000 projects that made you felt like you were playing something unique.

I often feel a little as if I've walked into my role as a writer without too much formal training - on the job or otherwise - and I've learnt my trade by trial and error. It must be very different starting out at a studio with a couple of experienced senior writers. How did you learn to write games, and how would you see things ideally?
Good question...  I didn’t stumble into my job so much as pursue it and get really lucky in regards to the projects I was assigned to write to. I trained as a fiction writer, then worked on becoming a screenwriter, then applied both to the very demanding and frustrating realm of game writing. Game writing is really exciting from a gameplay/story perspective, considering it (ideally) reacts to the way the player is making choices in the game. HOWEVER, my biggest problem as a game writer is making sure every possible path through a dialogue/character arc is top-notch and memorable, which is like coming up with a screenplay with ten times the good lines per character. You’ve got to pay attention to the flow so the player doesn’t feel like any one path is the “boring” path or that the character isn’t acting out of character to close off a logical path of dialogue. You run the risk of putting in too much reactivity and bloating your dialogues to the point that 1 out of 100 players will actually see a line of dialogue. It’s really a balancing act, and if done right, it is both good dialogue and good design. It’s a challenge and it’s a form of storytelling I feel is still in its infancy. There are simple ways of building reactivity that would be easy for more teams to implement. Ideally, people would pick a few important ways their game could respond to player choices and throw in some simple story branching/reactivity to reflect that, but since games and cutscenes/VO takes so much time and money, I understand why so many companies go the linear gameplay with cutscenes route.

Okay, let's talk about Dead State [previously known under codename, ZRPG]! The reason I'm excited by the project is you guys seem to really know what should make a good zombie experience. It's not about explosions and mad professors; it's about the small scale, that-could-be-me tales that put human nature under pressure to see what comes out. Though maybe some explosions help too. You guys move fast, can you give me a quick run down of your goals and where the game's at now?
Dead State is coming along pretty quick these days, because honestly we have an amazing group of people working on the game – I’m really excited for players because I’ve seen what they’re going to experience. The quality of the work the team is turning out pleases my manager, designer and gamer sides, and that’s just such a good feeling to have when you’re working on a game. Really, if you’re following the game right now, go onto the forums and thank the team in advance – you’re going to love what they’re doing.

Our goals for the game are lofty, sure, but we’re designing around our limitations, so if people interpret our goals as “the most ambitious game ever” it’s mostly just smoke and mirrors. We planned this out carefully and thought of the easiest way to implement our systems with tech that had already been used for another game, so we’re not trying to go to Mars here.  Our main concerns are that the combat is fun (rather than “good for what it is”), the game is reactive, the characters are memorable, and that players each have different experiences. We want them to be able to go through the game again and have a different set of challenges and different interactions with the characters each time. We picked a setting that allows for a lot of structural freedom – the world’s falling apart, law is what you make it, and morality is based on survival. It’s a really easy contrivance to make the game bend to the player’s whims and for dramatic situations to arise.


You guys are really into the indie community, open development thing - you're posting design updates to your forums every week. You talked about the morality system recently: no ethics slider, no bonus powers, lots of possible scenarios. You make it sound like a lot of elements of the game are procedural - is that the case?
We’re hoping that subtext, subtlety, paying attention to your surroundings/allies is going to be enough for people that they don’t need it popping up in the middle of the screen as a floating number. Most of the game is dependent on your decisions and how you’re leading the other survivors. It’s not a very linear game, though there will be certain blocks of time that events may occur. How you respond to those events, that’s up to you. There are also areas and NPCs you’ll discover at different times and it’s still up to you in regards to how you want to deal with them. We do have an end to it all, but I imagine each player is going to have a different journey there and even a different end to their game. We could fall horribly on our face in this regard, but again, I think we’ve got a solid system in place and it’s going to allow for a narrative freedom that players may find kind of novel.

Okay, let's try and get into some theory. I've been thinking a lot about the difference between providing the player agency, and providing the illusion of agency. As game designers our job traditionally is to pull the wool over players' eyes, but sometimes it's difficult to do convincingly. Take, for instance, the scenario where a player's decision looks like it has in-game repercussions but in truth - should the player reload and go down both paths - it's just a cleverly disguised spot of linearity. Is that somehow analogous to real stunts vs CGI in the movies (provided it looks real it may as well be)? Or is there some value to be found in simplifying interactions in favour of true open ended narrative?

Quite frankly, if we didn’t simplify certain interactions, we’d be writing thousands of lines of dialogue to anticipate player whim. You have to control it. The best way to do this – figure out the decisions that are the most important, that are going to divide the players into certain camps and write the branches to react to that. There are a lot of little flavor replies in most of my dialogues, but every once in a while there’s something where I anticipate the player trying to game the system and respond in a way they didn’t expect. For example, when the player decided they’d had it with LaCroix in Bloodlines, they could say they weren’t going to work for them anymore and they’d get dominated. If they “joined” the anarchs, they could report to Damsel, but they were still working for LaCroix (conveniently) so that we didn’t have to do an entirely different set of dialogues.  There’s ways of managing scope, the writers just have to be creative and use the designer side of their brain.

Finally, let's talk a little about being a writer, because I often find I'm considered a writer first and a games developer second - as if it's in some way an external skill set. I love the fact that as a human being we can be as well, if not better represented by our writing as we are by anything we might say or do. What do you feel your 'style' is, and do you get adequate opportunity to express it in our medium?

Hmm... what is my style? Tenacious sarcasm? Reticent optimism? Self-flagellating ego? That’s a tough one.  It’s a hard sell in most gigs where participants are looking for ultimate, unfailing triple-A badass, but fortunately I’ve got the freedom in my current role to create something that doesn’t make me lose sleep at night. Most writers, as I’ve come to understand, are mercenaries, hired to turn out whatever is asked for them. It’s probably not ideal for them but I feel very fortunate that I’ve been given the chance to write some really incredible parts in my career. I don’t think I’ve had to compromise much, or I’ve refused to, to the detriment or benefit of my career. Up to last week I’d say writers/publishers were underestimating the intelligence of our audiences for good reason, but now I feel like maybe we haven’t been giving them the benefit of the doubt. I think writers need to express more complexity and depth to their audience as time goes on – you can only ride with training wheels for so long before you wonder why they’re still on there. We really hope to deliver a game that doesn’t underestimate the intelligence and expectation of the player, and I don’t really think that’s a huge risk at this time in game development.

Brian, thanks for your time, and best of luck on Dead State.
DoubleBear will next be appearing at PAX, 3rd - 5th September 2010.
www.doublebearproductions.com