After reading the topic about how most writers suck (Game writers RANT), I have come to think about whether we really need writers? Of course, we need somebody to write good stories and someone with a good sense of drama, but do we need a writer? I have seen postings where people publish some of their prose, but does games really need prose. To use prose in a game as we use prose in a book is in my opinion just as wrond as when Hollywood film makers were convinced that everybody wanted to view FMV games (such as Phantasmagoria). Players want *INTERACTIVITY*!! That means that they want to be in control of their own fate as much as possible. Of course, it is not reasonably possible to make game where the player can do anything he wnats but within the limits of reason the player should be given freedom to do as he likes. In Quake you know what you can and what you cannot so you are never dissappointed about what is possible. Often though, games set up an environment but let a lot of things be unused. Be preventing the player of using those things you are preventing interactivity and thereby annoying the player. So my current hypothesis is that we don''t need writers. Writers are for books and movies which by their nature is non-interactive. We need a whole other kind of breed of people. Not neccesarily someone good at spelling or good at writing short stories but someone understanding the dynamics of discourse and how to limit the story reasonable. There is (as far as I know) no education that teaches people to write interactive stories, so who says that the people who is good at writing non-interactive stories also are the best at writing interactive stories, as many people here seem to assume? So maybe Geoff Howland was right when he turned down the "Writer" forum idea. Maybe we need a forum for interactive story writing instead? And when I say story writing I mean the flow of actions - not prose. Am I wrong? Jacob Marner

Not all writers write prose. I never touch the stuff.

Writing, scripting, or designing a really good interactive script is arguably harder than writing for any other medium. You have to give some control up, which means that you have to be really good for your story to make sense. Or to have a story at all.

I never issued the call for old-style writers to come into gaming and write good prose for RPG text. We need a new breed of writer, one who knows the rules of storytelling in a divergent medium like games. This is not easy. There is not way an artist, programmer, or even designer can claim to be able to write convinving divergent dialog (for example). No way. No human being is that talented.

Landfish,
If you don''t write prose then fine. In that case this topic isn''t directed to you.

But what about all those people writing samples in the samples topic? Most of those are written like prose. Somebody is getting the wrong idea of what a writer for computer games is.

By the way in that other topic you said that

quote:
Games are NOT and interactive medium. Try as you might, you still cannot add something to a game that is not there to begin with, no more than in a book or movie. Your experience, or potential experience, is still entirely determined by what you are given to work with.

This really depends on what we really mean by *interactivity*.
I don''t agree with the definition that everything put into a computer by definition is non-interactive.

In my book interactive is about being able to effect the outcome of what is going on. A simple story with two branches is interactive, although in a very limited way. The Fighting Fantasy books (you might remember those from the 80''ties) are even more interactive.
At the current state of the art of AI (and probably for the next many decades) we will never reach total interactivity but until then we will be somewhere in between.
When we look at games most people seem to think (including myself) that the more interactive a game is the more fun it is. If I wanted non-interactiveness (and some times I do) I would read a book or watch a movie.

Jacob Marner

I''d like to see the dialog and exposition in games better done, where they are called for. In this case, professional writers would probably help.


But I think you''re right, felonius. For those games that require story in order to make the gameplay more meaningful, we need someone who understands the limits of the medium. They should understand as much about computer science as they do about literature.

Imagine having a designer who comes back to you and says, "Let''s use combinatorics to get more content in our dialog trees. I know how to do this..." I''d fall over dead for someone like this.

When I was in the industry most of the writers I encountered treated the computer as an irritating limit. They could not have the control they were used to, and definitely disliked taking a back seat to gameplay. (So with that, and being a coder, I admit I''m biased...)

I agree with what you said about interactivity. The soul of the game is the doing, and the why and what that comes from story and writing is often secondary.

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

felonius,

Yes, I agree w/ your definition of interactive. If the only thing we consider interactive is when the game reacts to a situation in ways other than what the creators scripted, we''re talking about AI further than what we have available. We''re talking about the computer reacting to your decisions through AI rather than scripted reactions.




"NPC's are people too!" --dwarfsoft

"Nazrix is cool." --Nazrix first, then Darkmage

I would go for a half-interactive-half-scripted story. I would prefer to give the player multiple experiences, but I would also want to tell MY story to them. This is why we need writers and just not have a 100% interactive game. If it was 100% interactive, it would be life, and life sux (well, some of the time ) !

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I agree dwarfsoft. The way I see it, the beauty of interativity is not so much the effect of the player's choice, but the player's choice itself. When the player examines a situation and reacts to it as he/she sees fit is what is interesting. What happens because of that decision would be scripted. IMO the reaction should be pretty well-associated with the initial decision.



"NPC's are people too!" --dwarfsoft

"Nazrix is cool." --Nazrix first, then Darkmage

Edited by - Nazrix on September 6, 2000 9:11:05 PM

There's a pretty good article in one of the recent issues of 'Game Developer' that talks about story vs gameplay, and how not all games should be story based, and how games becoming more linear to mold to a storyline (see: Final Fantasy, which completes its transformation into complete linearity next year, at a movie theater near you) can be a bad thing.

Of course, as always, your needs depend upon the goals of the game you are trying to produce.

And, you should also note, that its not entirely clear that 'players' want a lot of interactivity. Sure, that's what "gamers" want...But check out the monster sales of the last 2 FF games and Myst (best selling game of all time) for examples of highly successful games with very little interactivity and a lot of linear storytelling. Again, it depends upon your goals..If you want mass market appeal, some amount of beating the player over the head with the story seems to work.


Edited by - gmcbay on September 6, 2000 9:19:50 PM

Believe me you NEED us*...

You want interaction? Unless we talk about an on-line game, the player must have lots of NPC''s to interact with, the more the better in normal conditions, right? The writer is the one who says how the NPC looks like, how does he behave, his connection to the player character, NPC background etc. Now, if you are a VERY good programmer with lots of time, and you can find a really patient writer, you can even create random answer-caches for each NPC. (But you can''t really do this, can you? I really should have learned Visual Basic 5 when I had the chance...)
The point is, you want to create our world in a game? You need a writer to say "The Federation is the biggest nuclear power" or "The football-team-captain hates your guts, because you dated that cheerleader". You need a STORY. You need a WRITER...

Help fight unemployment in your country!
Hire a writer for your computer game!

*I am the author of the famous poem "Big Brother and the Punch and Judy (sp.?) democracy".





We Shall Overcome!

quote: Original post by BigBrother

Believe me you NEED us*...

You want interaction? Unless we talk about an on-line game, the player must have lots of NPC''s to interact with, the more the better in normal conditions, right? The writer is the one who says how the NPC looks like, how does he behave, his connection to the player character, NPC background etc.

No, that''s the designer.



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