Notes from The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design

“Eleven Video Game Survival Commandments” (Dille, Zuur Platten, x-xi)
1. “We’re in the Entertainment Business, Not the Game Business”
2. “Build Your Design and Story to Break” – be ready to have things cut due to production, budget, and other realities.
3. “Somebody Always Knows Something You Don’t” Learn from it.
4. “Dialogue is the tip of the Dramatic Iceberg” Characters and situations are the real foundation of a story.
5. “You Are Only as Good as Your Relationship with Your Team”
6. “Be Willing to Kill Your Babies” Do not marry your ideas.
7. “Protect Your Vision” But don’t lose sight of what is meaningful for you.
8. “Make Your Deliverables”
9. “Don’t Shine a Spotlight on a Turd” Don’t highlight the game’s failings
10. “Choose Collaboration Over Compromise”
11. “Making Fun Should be Fun”

-Beginning with the PlayStation, we are now in the “Sophisticated Era” of Video Games (Dille, Zuur Platten, 11)

-Types of Narratives in Video Games:
-Limited Branching – “A series of ‘yes/no’ or ‘black/white’ objectives: (Dille, Zuur Platten, 20)
-Open-Ended – “The player may be faced with a multitude of storylines to follow in the game, and each of these may have multiple permeations” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 20)
-Funneling Narrative –Get’s the player back on the main quest of the game.
-Critical Paths – “One success path” with small deviations (Dille, Zuur Platten, 21).
-Nodal Storytelling – “Are either location and/or objective dependent” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 21).

-“Video game storytelling primarily exists to give meaning to game play” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 49). You are not writing a movie – the quicker the action the better. Structure your story with levels/quests and sub-levels/side quests.

-Create something that represents money and/or experience in your world. Example: Credits in “Mass Effect 2” and “Bottle caps” in Fallout 3.

-Avoid long cut-scenes – it’s a game not a movie. “Game logic is often more far-fetched than film logic because of the structure of the medium. The player always needs an objective or challenge, so in many cases reasoning behind areas of story are flimsy” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 50).

“World Questions”
-What is valuable?
-“What does the hero need to do to win?” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 62)
-Who is the villain? What are the obstacles in the way of the player’s victory?
-Can the protagonist fail? What happens then? What happens if they succeed?
-What are the borderlines keeping the player on track – are there any?
-Is time an issue?

Five Character Types:
-Player Character (PC/Hero) – “This is the character, that you, the player, control as you play the game” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 65). Example: Shepard in Mass Effect 2.
-NonPlayer Characters (NPCs) – “The other characters that populate the worlds of the game” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 66) Example: Butch from Fallout 3.
- Ally – “A character that either helps you or has to be helped by you” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 66). Example: Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins.
-Enemy – “An enemy is a foe that will actively attempt to thwart whatever you are trying to accomplish” (Dille, Zuur Platten, 66). Level Bosses – “Uber-enemies that the player will encounter throughought the game” (Dille, Zuur Platten 67). Example: Ogre, Broodmother, Branka in Dragon Age: Origins.