Quote: Original post by Wai
Re:

This is how I read your prompt:

"Imagine that you are about you start a game and you are creating your character. Suppose I give you the liberty that the gameplay could be whatever you happen to be imagining, then: 1) Who would you want to be in the gameworld? 2) Who would you want to interact with in the gameworld?"

1) I am engaged with my current design so my answer is: I want to be a group of people of different age, gender, appearance, race, culture, job, personal goals cooperating in the same mission to take care of old, discarded, forgotten stuff.

2) I want to interact with old things in the gameworld, such as antiques, obsolete technologies, and old ways of life.

Yep, that's a good interpretation of my prompt. Would you want the group of people to represent anything (for example a cross-section of society illustrating some problem of that society), or have any particular relationship between them?

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: Original post by Cpt Mothballs
Why are we doing this exercise when clearly, the responsibility of a game for writers is squarely on the storyline and actual game content.
As a scribbler (I'm not a writer, nobody can read my writing), I'd have to say that I don't want to play amazing story based games if their settings and their content (aside from the story) suck.
I'd rather just go watch a movie rather than sympathise with a character that is dealing with issues I don't understand, or play a game that's only saving grace is it's story (I'm looking at you Force Unleashed).

Think of this thread as a survey; imagine I was designing an interactive story and I wanted there to be a character, setting, plot that every audience segment would love. You being one of the audience segments. I want to know what kind of character you would really sympathize with, what issues they could be dealing with that would really catch your interest and seem important and meaningful to you.

You can't. For every violence loving man, there's a pre-menopausal woman.
And, let's face it, you can't make a game that pleases both.

Quote: Original post by Cpt Mothballs

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: Original post by Cpt Mothballs
Why are we doing this exercise when clearly, the responsibility of a game for writers is squarely on the storyline and actual game content.
As a scribbler (I'm not a writer, nobody can read my writing), I'd have to say that I don't want to play amazing story based games if their settings and their content (aside from the story) suck.
I'd rather just go watch a movie rather than sympathise with a character that is dealing with issues I don't understand, or play a game that's only saving grace is it's story (I'm looking at you Force Unleashed).

Think of this thread as a survey; imagine I was designing an interactive story and I wanted there to be a character, setting, plot that every audience segment would love. You being one of the audience segments. I want to know what kind of character you would really sympathize with, what issues they could be dealing with that would really catch your interest and seem important and meaningful to you.

You can't. For every violence loving man, there's a pre-menopausal woman.
And, let's face it, you can't make a game that pleases both.

Even if it's an interactive story game where the player chooses who to be and what kind of story to live? Practically, I agree that you can't please everyone, but in theory everyone who would play an interactive story game at all would have some identities and roles that would appeal to them, so taking a survey of what identities and roles everyone finds appealing ought to suggest some playable character options and plot paths an interactive story game could have, such that diverse audience members would all enjoy at least one. It's the same basic idea as designing class and race options for an MMO or courtable NPCs for a dating sim.

How about just giving everyone the choice of character, including backstory and personal goals, then making the story something that doesn't focus on the characters directly?

That way, you're making a game for writers and a game for gamers.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
You think a goal of writing is to create something typical of the genre? To me that's kind of a disturbingly commercial view.

Yes. If you stray too far, you will not live up to fan expectations, and will do poorly financially because you turned off the target audience.

By trying to please everyone, you please no one.

Re:

Quote: Would you want the group of people to represent anything (for example a cross-section of society illustrating some problem of that society), or have any particular relationship between them?

I want each member to have a contribution to the mission, but not necessarily be presented as an archetype of a sub group. The members have particular relationships, and they illustrate some aspects (not necessarily problems) of society.

Quote: Original post by Cpt Mothballs
How about just giving everyone the choice of character, including backstory and personal goals, then making the story something that doesn't focus on the characters directly?

That way, you're making a game for writers and a game for gamers.

Except that, at least half of writers think character-focused stories are the only ones worth reading/playing? I mean, I personally love romance, and romance by definition focuses directly on the main and love interest characters.

Quote: Original post by Daaark

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
You think a goal of writing is to create something typical of the genre? To me that's kind of a disturbingly commercial view.

Yes. If you stray too far, you will not live up to fan expectations, and will do poorly financially because you turned off the target audience.

By trying to please everyone, you please no one.

Well, every well-written story will please someone. If you're talking about a game which isn't part of a series, it has no fan expectations to live up to, unless you create some with marketing, and then you can more or less shape the fan expectations to be appropriate to whatever the game turned out to be.

The type of interactive story game I'm talking about could actually be considered to be several stories (6? 10?) each of which would be aimed at a different target audience. For example, let's say I represent target audience #1 and Servant of the lord represents target audience #2. There's no way the same story could please both of us. But possibly a story which would please me and one which would please him could exist harmoniously in the same game world and use mostly the same gameplay, settings, and NPCs.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: Original post by Cpt Mothballs
How about just giving everyone the choice of character, including backstory and personal goals, then making the story something that doesn't focus on the characters directly?

That way, you're making a game for writers and a game for gamers.

Except that, at least half of writers think character-focused stories are the only ones worth reading/playing? I mean, I personally love romance, and romance by definition focuses directly on the main and love interest characters.

Who says there can't be?

You have a character with goals, but those goals don't have to be detrimental to storyline advancement.
Who's to say raising a family can't be part of those goals?

I think you're forgetting there are a lot of options when it comes to videogames and storylines.
Not all stories need a hero.

What if your character is in the shadow of the hero? What if you're living in the aftermath of their decisions?

Couldn't piecing together the main hero's story, following in their footsteps or cleaning up their messes be a new perspective, while still offering gameplay elements and that little bit of freedom that we as players need to stay interested when advancement in the storyline is a bit tedious?

I mean, it's not as if every story is "Billy the farmboy finds a magic sword, saves a girl from almost-rape and they fall in love and defeat the evil emperor."

Personally, I think you should think more and generalise less.

I think your use of the phrase "story that doesn't focus on the characters directly" was misleading - I assumed you meant a plot-driven story where the details of the protagonist's identity could be left up to player choice because they were irrelevant to the plot. Which sounds like an awful story to me. But then from your follow-up post it seems that you intended the phrase to mean something different?

I'm fine with stories that aren't about a hero. Although if you're talking about a game with a single playable character, as opposed to a group of characters, that playable character does pretty much have to be the main 'doer' of the cast, whether that means exploring, killing monsters, growing vegetables, rescuing somebody, looking for clues to a mystery, managing a growing personal empire, sneaking past guards to steal treasures, or whatever the gameplay is.

If you're treating the storyline as something different from the playable character's goals and activities, that's what puzzles me. The whole reason for choosing one character out of a story's cast to be the main character is because that one character is the one who is uniquely able to solve the overall plot problem. In cliche fantasy this is because he has a special ability, or special ancestry, or ridiculously huge potential as a warrior, or destiny on his side. In a less cliche set-up it might be because he has the right personality, or because he is one of a group of people with a special ability but the only one of that group with the right motivation, or because he accidentally ended up in some totally alien place with different knowledge than the natives. But for whatever reason he's the main character, it does have to be him whose actions eventually resolve the main storyline. If it was someone else it would feel unsatisfying, like the writer cheated.