Clik here to view.
Dragon Age, Comics, and Writing Collaboratively
In March, the first issue of Dragon Age: Until We Speak will be published by Dark Horse Comics. Until We Speak is the final part of the trilogy that David Gaider and I have been working on since...
View ArticleWhy It Worked: Wing Commander II
Will I drive off my newly forming audience by waxing nostalgic and overanalyzing a twenty-year-old game? Or are there insights to be gleaned here about the simple interactions between story and...
View ArticleEight Ways to Accommodate Violence in Action Game Stories
You’re making a first-person shooter or a third-person action game. Your gameplay centers around combat, but you don’t want your protagonist to come across as the sort of person physically and...
View ArticleOf Course No One’s Paying Attention: Subtlety and Narrative Design in Video...
One challenge writers face when moving from traditional media into video games is learning what, exactly, qualifies as “subtle” in the new medium. What works as a understated plot thread or gentle...
View ArticleCraft Sessions: Developing Meaningful Player Character Arcs in Branching...
My article “Developing Meaningful Player Character Arcs in Branching Narrative” is now up at Gamasutra.com. This is by far the most in-depth discussion of games writing I’ve engaged in publicly, and it...
View ArticleWhat Editors Do
Not all editors do all the things below. This isn’t an all-inclusive list. (I’m not even touching line- and copyediting.) But it’s a start. Patricia C. Wrede has a lovely post touching on some of this...
View ArticleEditing in Video Games (A Discussion, Not a Manifesto)
We established in this post the ideal role an editor should play. Again, we’re ignoring line- and copyediting (improving the quality and consistency of individual lines of text, correcting grammar and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why it Worked: Wizardry VII, In-Game Text, and a Fantasy of Ideas
Even in the early 1990s, Wizardry was something of a throwback. Both the Wizardry and Ultima series–the two great and venerable franchises of computer role-playing games–had begun in 1981, but while...
View ArticleLove What You Write, Don’t Write What You Love; or, Be a Hack, Take Every...
There are writers who go their entire careers writing nothing but original, creator-owned material that they’re deeply passionate about. Most of these writers never earn enough money from their writing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dragon Age, Comics, and Writing Collaboratively
In March, the first issue of Dragon Age: Until We Speak will be published by Dark Horse Comics. Until We Speak is the final part of the trilogy that David Gaider and I have been working on since...
View ArticleWhy It Worked: Wing Commander II
Will I drive off my newly forming audience by waxing nostalgic and overanalyzing a twenty-year-old game? Or are there insights to be gleaned here about the simple interactions between story and...
View ArticleEight Ways to Accommodate Violence in Action Game Stories
You’re making a first-person shooter or a third-person action game. Your gameplay centers around combat, but you don’t want your protagonist to come across as the sort of person physically and...
View ArticleOf Course No One’s Paying Attention: Subtlety and Narrative Design in Video...
One challenge writers face when moving from traditional media into video games is learning what, exactly, qualifies as “subtle” in the new medium. What works as a understated plot thread or gentle...
View ArticleCraft Sessions: Developing Meaningful Player Character Arcs in Branching...
My article “Developing Meaningful Player Character Arcs in Branching Narrative” is now up at Gamasutra.com. This is by far the most in-depth discussion of games writing I’ve engaged in publicly, and it...
View ArticleWhat Editors Do
Not all editors do all the things below. This isn’t an all-inclusive list. (I’m not even touching line- and copyediting.) But it’s a start. Patricia C. Wrede has a lovely post touching on some of this...
View ArticleEditing in Video Games (A Discussion, Not a Manifesto)
We established in this post the ideal role an editor should play. Again, we’re ignoring line- and copyediting (improving the quality and consistency of individual lines of text, correcting grammar and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why it Worked: Wizardry VII, In-Game Text, and a Fantasy of Ideas
Even in the early 1990s, Wizardry was something of a throwback. Both the Wizardry and Ultima series–the two great and venerable franchises of computer role-playing games–had begun in 1981, but while...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Craft Sessions: Character, Viewpoint, and Audience Sympathy
This is the second in a (very occasional) series of articles dissecting challenges and techniques in game narrative. The first, “Developing Meaningful Player Character Arcs in Branching Narrative,”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dragon Age, Comics, and Writing Collaboratively
In March, the first issue of Dragon Age: Until We Speak will be published by Dark Horse Comics. Until We Speak is the final part of the trilogy that David Gaider and I have been working on since...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Player and Player Character Motivation in Video Games
We’ve touched on player motivation before, but let’s briefly give it our full focus. Boiled down to a simple statement, bridging the gap between player motivation and player character motivation is one...
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