The Advanced Game Narrative Toolbox

Tobias Heussner

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351014373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

The Advanced Game Narrative Toolbox continues where the Game Narrative Toolbox ended. While the later covered the basics of writing for games, the Advanced Game Narrative Toolbox will cover techniques for the intermediate and professional writer. The book will cover topics such as how to adapt a novel to a game, how to revive IPs and how to construct transmedia worlds. Each chapter will be written by a professional with exceptional experience in the field of the chapter.

Key Features

• Learn from industry experts how to tackle today's challenges in storytelling for games.
• A learn by example and exercise approach, which was praised in the Game Narrative Toolbox.
• An in depth view on advanced storytelling techniques and topics as they are currently discussed and used in the gaming industry.
• Expand your knowledge in game writing as you learn and try yourself to design quests, write romances and build worlds as you would as a writer in a game studio.
• Improve your own stories by learning and trying the techniques used by the professionals of game writing.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Contents

How to Use This Book

What It Is About

Alexander Bevier

Heidi McDonald

Brian Kindregan

Danny Salfield Wadeson

Craig Sherman

Cash DeCuir

Matt Forbeck

Tanya DePass

Toiya Kristen Finley

Tobias Heussner

References

“Once upon a time, there was a little lonely writerling. A writerling, one of those creatures that roam the world armed only with a pen and paper. He wandered through the forest, desert and fields. Lonely, he filled his pages, lonely, he journeyed, until one day he saw a small glimmering fire in the city they called Austin. He walked toward that fire and to his surprise, other writerlings were there, sitting, talking, drinking around this fire that felt like home, like the place to be…”

This is how some of the most well-known tales begin, and, ironically, most careers in writing start in a very similar way. We all started to write one day, by accident or out of pure determination, our first story. We usually did this alone, in front of a piece of paper or our computers, and slowly the worlds in our heads formed into something living and breathing, something that wanted to be shared, something that became a living being on its own. However, the more we worked on our stories, the more we began to understand the difficulties of being a writer and, like the writerling, we felt the loneliness of our craft. It was at this point that we started our quest for help, feedback and a search for others from whom and with whom we could learn and grow.

With this book, we invite you to join us on this journey of constant learning that comes with the craft of being a game writer. The authors of this book gathered to share some of their experiences during their journeys as writers. These experiences may be specific to each author’s situation, but regardless of how specific these experiences are, they all convey a piece of general learning, and we hope that these pieces will be helpful on your journey and that one day you’ll join us at the campfire, sharing your very own experience so that we can all learn from each other.

How to Use This Book

The aim of this book is to make you think about narrative design. Whether you agree with any of it is not an issue, as long as you advance your own thoughts on the subject (based on Bartle, 2004).

This is how we want you to use this book. We can’t tell you what challenges your career will bring, but we can share our experiences and hope you think about them and find something useful for the challenges on your writer’s journey.

What It Is About

In this book, we talk about advanced narrative design techniques such as how to approach diversity, how to develop believable relationships among your characters and how to work with transmedia sources.

We assume for the content that you have at the very least a basic game literacy and that you are familiar with the basics of writing and storytelling. If not, we recommend that you pick up Robert McKee’s Story (1997) and one or two books on game writing such as The Game Narrative Toolbox from Ann Lemay, Jennifer Hepler, Toiya Kristen Finley and Tobias Heussner (2015) or Evan Skolnick’s Video Game Storytelling (2014).

Each chapter in this book will end with exercises and sample solutions to these exercises. We hope that this will help you to practice and compare your approaches to the problems discussed in every chapter.

So much for our introduction, but before we jump right into the content, let us introduce ourselves and share what brought us to the writerlings campfire. For this introduction, we asked ourselves the following questions.

•How did you break into the industry?

•What are your fields of expertise? Why?

•What did you study? And what are you learning right now?

•What are two of the most memorable experiences of your career?

Alexander Bevier

My breaking into the industry occurred slowly. I began working as a journalist determined to write about video games. I was a young undergraduate at the time, so I had plenty of opportunities to volunteer for events. Over time, I built a large network of contacts and friends, primarily in game writing, which opened the door to my becoming a committee member for the IGDA’s Game Writing SIG. Eventually, I went to graduate school for game design and found a job shortly after finishing a second master’s degree.

My experience and expertise are very broad. I’m eager to learn and figure out what I don’t know, opening doors to understanding the history of mid-twentieth century board games. I took advantage of my English degree to figure out how to access archives to study Sid Sackson’s extensive body of work and have used that to continue to broaden my understanding of design criticism.

One of my great honors is to annually host Write Club during the Game Developers Conference. It’s always a wonder to see newcomers rise through the ranks and impress their peers, only to see them again with paid game-writing positions. There have been numerous occasions in my short career where people have told me I opened the doors for them. It’s a great privilege to already give back to my community.

Heidi McDonald

I broke into games as a second career, at the age of 41. While studying communications, film, and digital media at Chatham University, I secured an internship with Schell Games in Pittsburgh, PA, as a writer, and upon my permanent hire there after graduating, I worked on nine titles at Schell as a writer and designer. Several of these games are award winning, but the one I’m particularly proud of is the IGF Honorable Mention for Excellence in Narrative for Orion Trail, a goofy Star Trek parody game in which I gave thousands of players space dysentery. Another highlight was working on The World of Lexica for Amplify Education, a language arts curriculum game for grades 6–8 in which I got to write character dialogue for well-loved public-domain literary characters such as the Cheshire Cat, Tom Sawyer, Baba Yaga, and others.

Outside of my day job, I began to investigate questions relating to game romance, simply because I was interested in it and I’m exactly the nerd who likes to write research papers for fun when not going to school. This ethnographic research led to numerous publications and worldwide lectures on the topic of romance in games, culminating in my book Digital Love: Romance and Sexuality in Games, in late 2017 (A K Peters/CRC Press, 2017).

Most recently, I worked as senior creative director at an organization called iThrive Games, which advances social and emotional learning using games. This mission helped me to learn more about neuroscience and social psychology and how these sciences can be utilized to produce resources that help game developers intentionally design for positive practices such as empathy, kindness, and optimism. In addition to leading the development of these design resources, I oversaw developer education and outreach and did creative direction on projects that present for subject-matter expertise.

Brian Kindregan

A more definitive answer to this question can be found on my website, briankindregan.com. The short version is that in 2002, I saw that BioWare Corp was looking for writers. They insisted that in order to apply, you had to create a game mod in Neverwinter Nights. I knew nothing about scripting or creating mods, but I set out to learn. BioWare had generously shipped the complete toolset with the game, so I was able to dive in and learn very quickly. I submitted a Neverwinter mod, and they liked it. They hired me to work as a writer on Jade Empire.

Having been a key writer on character driven role-playing games, real-time strategy games, action role-playing games and a multiplayer online battle arena, I’ve had to understand and embrace the power and limitations of many different game genres. So, I think my main field of expertise is simply understanding narrative creation in a wide variety of genres.

Beyond that, I have had the opportunity to write a number of very high-profile cinematics.

I studied animation in the film school of the California Institute of the Arts. My main focus was storyboarding.

Creative professionals must always continue to grow, so I’m currently trying to get a stronger command of transmedia.

The opening cinematic of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls seems to have made a big impact on many people. We had a lot of exposition to wrap into the package and still be entertaining, even powerful. It is important to point out that I wrote the cinematic, but many other people poured their own creativity into it. It was a team effort.

Beyond that, I’ve been lucky enough to work on many moments that seemed to speak to people, but one of which I am quite proud is the Biotic God from Mass Effect 2. In a deeply silly moment, I added a volus named Niftu Cal to the game, who had chemically induced delusions of grandeur. For some reason, it struck just the right chord, and he became a meme, and even showed up in Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer mode. Sometimes you’ve just got to be silly.

Danny Salfield Wadeson

My first foray into the industry was working on its fringes: as a journalist while working a day job in online video and advertising. Eventually I got involved early with a very small, two-man proje...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editor
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Why Authentic Diversity, Consultants and Research Are Needed in Narrative Design
• Chapter 3: Writing Romance and Sexuality in Games
• Chapter 4: Building A Universe
• Chapter 5: Writing for Nondigital Games (Board Games)
• Chapter 6: From Novel to Game and Back Again
• Chapter 7: From Movie to Game (and Back Again?)
• Chapter 8: Get It into the Game: Writing and Implementation
• Chapter 9: Cinematics and Dialogue
• Chapter 10: Get This, Kill That, Talk with … Mission and Quest Design
• Chapter 11: Planning Your Work
• Chapter 12: Yes, Videogames Need Story Editors!
• Chapter 13: Freelancing in Games: Narrative Mercenaries for Hire
• Chapter 14: Conclusion
• Glossary
• Resources and Groups
• Index