Six Metrics for Better Game Narrative
Understanding your audience will make your writing better. That’s not a statement that should need much explanation, but in brief: Storytelling is communication. It’s about reaching out to strangers...
View ArticleCharacter Differentiation in a Cast of Thousands
I’ve totally neglected my game writing posts, of late–I’ve got a number of articles half-composed, with titles like “Writing for Failure” and “Complex Stories and Atomic Narrative Theory.”...
View ArticleThe Family Thing: Why Killing My Wife / Husband / Child / Dog Doesn’t...
We’ve seen it over and over again: Our wife dies in our arms, or our brother is brutally gunned down, or our mother is eaten by monsters. This tragedy provides the impetus for our journey into...
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Gameplay, Challenge, and Narrative Integration in Adventure Games
This post isn’t about adventure games. It only reads that way. For four decades, the adventure game genre has been practically synonymous with “story-driven” video games. In the early 1980s, Infocom...
View ArticleEmpathy and Responsibility in Writing
Generally speaking, I try to focus this blog on “how you might write” rather than “what you should be writing.” We’re about craft here, not art–not because one is more important than the other, but...
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“Story Engines” and Content Development
How do you deliver narrative to a player in a content-rich, nonlinear game? This is neither a purely mechanical question (“non-player characters scattered through the open world will offer quests,...
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In Defense of Didacticism
While watching reports and live-tweets come in from the recent East Coast Games Conference, I was intrigued to see a number of speakers independently touch on the same point. Warren Spector advised,...
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Writing Romance in (non-Romance) Games: Linear Romances
Ah, romance. Compelling romance subplots are tough to write at the best of times. Consider their place in linear media–how many otherwise strong films or novels suffer from an unconvincing,...
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Writing Romance in (non-Romance) Games: Branching Romances
Here’s where it gets complicated. Or… well, more so. This post is a companion to Writing Romance in (non-Romance Games): Linear Romances. You’ll find a number of assumptions about our overall topic...
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On Cutscenes and Viewpoint Changes
It’s been a while since your game’s scheming villain has actually shown up. There’s a good reason for that–you know the player will try to kill her as soon as she appears, and there’s only so many...
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