There is no standard for game scriptwriting but screenplay and comic book scripts are good formats to use. One major difference between movie script and game script is that in a game script I would put tons of stage descriptions and visual descriptions unless you expect to actually have a talented and experienced person designing that part for you.

In terms of length, a 60-hour jRPG like a Final Fantasy is about the same length as a commercial movie or a novella, or 2-3 volumes of graphic novel. An adventure game like a Myst is more like 1 graphic novel volume. The average platformer is only a short story.

Oh, and there is actually a standard movie, or rather several templates describing a standard movie are available. This standard plot features a hero protagonist and a villain antagonist who face off in a climactic fight at the end of the movie. Before the climax the hero's supposed to go through a moment where all seems lost and he doubts himself. Earlier there's a refused call to adventure, crossing the threshold to a non-normal world, being tested, and given some sort of foozle or power. It's that archetypal hero's journey plot first identified by Vladimir Propp, then developed by Campbell, then turned into a how-to-write book by Vogler, and there are several versions of the theory specifically adapted to producing a movie script, all the way down to what should be happening on what page of the script.

sorry for the confusion. There isn't anything I could think of to be specific. And I wasn't talking about Game Design. Just story development.

Anyhow, SunandShadow answered my question.

Thanks for the links, Tom.

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Original post by sunandshadow There is no standard for game scriptwriting but screenplay and comic book scripts are good formats to use. One major difference between movie script and game script is that in a game script I would put tons of stage descriptions and visual descriptions unless you expect to actually have a talented and experienced person designing that part for you.

In what scenario would you not expect this?

If you did this in a film environment, the first thing the art director would do is cross out everything but the outline. I'd expect the same in a team games environment, too. Unless you don't mind artists telling designers how to do their job?

I could see this being useful if you're working alone, but only as a personal reminder. If you're working in an amateur team environment and don't trust your artist(s), replace them. If you're working professionally and don't trust your artist(s), that's a big problem.

Descriptive text is good for game-play and narrative pertinent information, but otherwise should probably (in a team environment at least) be kept to a minimum.

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INT. CREEPY HOUSE - NIGHT The protagonist enters from the front door. A rotting, ancient stairway ascends into the dusty darkness. The creaking of floorboards from somewhere above permeates the deathly silence, as a thin rain of dust falls from a crack in the ceiling. There is a hall table against the left wall with a vase, a bowl, and a set of keys. Doorways to the left and right lead into a deeper gloom.

That would be okay, but I'd refrain from anything that didn't convey the mood of the narrative or key gameplay points (which should be included in a separate gameplay map anyway). The goal is to communicate a sense of the space to the lead artist (art director, concept artist, whoever your team has on board) rather than smother them.

[Edited by - faultymoose on March 25, 2010 3:24:05 PM]

There's no standard because it's really only in the past 3-5 years or so that the game industry has actually been hiring writers to help actually write the plot & dialog. For a long time it was (and still often is) the designers and producers on the team doing the "writing" for the game. For instance, on an RTS I worked on we had an in-team competition to "write" the call out lines that the units would say when you clicked on them. We would also have collaboration/consensus meetings on what the plot would be, etc. There was no writer involved at all.

In short: writing in video games is in its infancy. There is no formal process, a lot of games/companies don't hire writers. Those that do often already have the main plot beats "written" and the writer is essentially hired as a consultant to give the game better narrative structure. This is something that is changing/maturing for certain genres: games like Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, etc which are becoming much more of a narrative experience and where the role of an actual writer is considered valuable and is a position filled during pre-production instead of later on in production (the current typical case).

-me

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Original post by faultymoose Quote: Original post by sunandshadow There is no standard for game scriptwriting but screenplay and comic book scripts are good formats to use. One major difference between movie script and game script is that in a game script I would put tons of stage descriptions and visual descriptions unless you expect to actually have a talented and experienced person designing that part for you. In what scenario would you not expect this? If you did this in a film environment, the first thing the art director would do is cross out everything but the outline. I'd expect the same in a team games environment, too. Unless you don't mind artists telling designers how to do their job? I could see this being useful if you're working alone, but only as a personal reminder.

First scenario is if the writer is the designer - personally I'm a designer first, writer second so that's the setup I'm used to. Second scenario is if the writer's work is being given directly to an artist because the designer doesn't care/have any opinion (this is usually a designer/programmer who isn't interested in the creative side). In this can less experienced artists appreciate having verbal descriptions of what they are supposed to be drawing.

Personally I hate the way film directors don't want to hear the artist's ideas about what things should look like. If I'm in the role of designer getting a script from someone else, of course I'm going to make changes but I want the writer's ideas to use as raw material. Running one person's ideas through a second person's editing always results in a higher quality project than one person working from scratch. I understand why they do it that way in the film industry but in most game-related cases I think it's a bad decision.

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Original post by sunandshadow Quote: Original post by faultymoose Quote: Original post by sunandshadow There is no standard for game scriptwriting but screenplay and comic book scripts are good formats to use. One major difference between movie script and game script is that in a game script I would put tons of stage descriptions and visual descriptions unless you expect to actually have a talented and experienced person designing that part for you. In what scenario would you not expect this? If you did this in a film environment, the first thing the art director would do is cross out everything but the outline. I'd expect the same in a team games environment, too. Unless you don't mind artists telling designers how to do their job? I could see this being useful if you're working alone, but only as a personal reminder. First scenario is if the writer is the designer - personally I'm a designer first, writer second so that's the setup I'm used to. Second scenario is if the writer's work is being given directly to an artist because the designer doesn't care/have any opinion (this is usually a designer/programmer who isn't interested in the creative side). In this can less experienced artists appreciate having verbal descriptions of what they are supposed to be drawing.

Again, the designer is usually not an artist. I can see the need for gameplay-pertinent information being communicated, but not artistic information. That's why you have art leads and art directors and concept artists - because they're considerably better trained in developing mood and aesthetic with a visual palette.

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Personally I hate the way film directors don't want to hear the artist's ideas about what things should look like.

A film director almost always has a trusted art director who makes the final decisions. Again, because the art director is probably going to have considerably more talent and training in visual aesthetics than the writer. It's also important to have someone who is able to maintain consistency in visual design.

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If I'm in the role of designer getting a script from someone else, of course I'm going to make changes but I want the writer's ideas to use as raw material.

Absolutely, but the more raw material you give an art director, the more they're likely to throw away. If you try to do their job for them, they won't appreciate it any more than if you were the designer and had to deal with an art director telling you how you should be designing combat mechanics.

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Running one person's ideas through a second person's editing always results in a higher quality project than one person working from scratch.

This is absolutely not true at all. It CAN be true, in some cases, but it is more often the opposite, especially when the second person doing the editing thinks they know a lot more than they actually do. And this is what happens when you have - for example - designers mistakenly believing they have the same knowledge of visual design as artists, or vice versa.

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I understand why they do it that way in the film industry but in most game-related cases I think it's a bad decision.

Fair enough. I disagree, and having seen the insides of both industries, I think that the lack of focused talent is one of the biggest problems with the games industry. My 2 cents.

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Original post by faultymoose Quote: Original post by sunandshadow First scenario is if the writer is the designer - personally I'm a designer first, writer second so that's the setup I'm used to. Second scenario is if the writer's work is being given directly to an artist because the designer doesn't care/have any opinion (this is usually a designer/programmer who isn't interested in the creative side). In this can less experienced artists appreciate having verbal descriptions of what they are supposed to be drawing. Again, the designer is usually not an artist. I can see the need for gameplay-pertinent information being communicated, but not artistic information. That's why you have art leads and art directors and concept artists - because they're considerably better trained in developing mood and aesthetic with a visual palette. Quote: Personally I hate the way film directors don't want to hear the artist's ideas about what things should look like. A film director almost always has a trusted art director who makes the final decisions. Again, because the art director is probably going to have considerably more talent and training in visual aesthetics than the writer. It's also important to have someone who is able to maintain consistency in visual design. Quote: If I'm in the role of designer getting a script from someone else, of course I'm going to make changes but I want the writer's ideas to use as raw material. Absolutely, but the more raw material you give an art director, the more they're likely to throw away. If you try to do their job for them, they won't appreciate it any more than if you were the designer and had to deal with an art director telling you how you should be designing combat mechanics. Quote: Running one person's ideas through a second person's editing always results in a higher quality project than one person working from scratch. This is absolutely not true at all. It CAN be true, in some cases, but it is more often the opposite, especially when the second person doing the editing thinks they know a lot more than they actually do. And this is what happens when you have - for example - designers mistakenly believing they have the same knowledge of visual design as artists, or vice versa. Quote: I understand why they do it that way in the film industry but in most game-related cases I think it's a bad decision. Fair enough. I disagree, and having seen the insides of both industries, I think that the lack of focused talent is one of the biggest problems with the games industry. My 2 cents.

See, you're assuming this is an industry project. Most game development projects which are discussed on gamedev are indie projects. An indie team may not have a producer/director at all, the lead designer often wears a second hat as either a writer/concept artist or a programmer, and the team as a whole is inexperienced, and probably has a more democratic structure than an industry team. If you don't have a full staff of experience people you shouldn't be throwing anyone's ideas away without even considering them.

On an indie team I've been the concept artist, I've been the writer assigned to describe something which a concept artist is then assigned to sketch, I've been the art director receiving the script and handing out the art assignments, and I've been the designer trying to make the gameplay, story, and visuals fit together. When you're begging people to donate labor, you really have to work with the people you've got and the particular skills and experience they already have, as well as what they find fun to do.

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Original post by sunandshadow See, you're assuming this is an industry project. Most game development projects which are discussed on gamedev are indie projects. An indie team may not have a producer/director at all, the lead designer often wears a second hat as either a writer/concept artist or a programmer, and the team as a whole is inexperienced, and probably has a more democratic structure than an industry team. If you don't have a full staff of experience people you shouldn't be throwing anyone's ideas away without even considering them. On an indie team I've been the concept artist, I've been the writer assigned to describe something which a concept artist is then assigned to sketch, I've been the art director receiving the script and handing out the art assignments, and I've been the designer trying to make the gameplay, story, and visuals fit together. When you're begging people to donate labor, you really have to work with the people you've got and the particular skills and experience they already have, as well as what they find fun to do.

You make some good points, but I should point out that I did make a couple of caveats in my original post in this thread acknowledging the difference between a professional and an independent project - I'm not assuming anything.

I don't think any team should be a dictatorship. That's not what I was saying at all. Neither do I think people's ideas should be thrown away without consideration.

My point was one of context, rather than a generalisation, and that is: trust your team. If you have an artist on board, and they're no good, then maybe you should replace them? Otherwise you should trust your artist, versus give them explicit instructions, because it can be frustrating as hell being on a project where your talent is not utilised. Especially if you're donating your time.

As an artist, if I were to volunteer my time for a project and then face micromanagement and be treated like a monkey with a second job, I'd leave. But of course, some people might prefer a greater degree of guidance.

But you're right, you shouldn't ignore opinion just because it comes from outside your field of expertise.

It's good if you're not one of them, but there _are_ people out there who think ideas should be thrown away without consideration unless they come from the person who officially has the job of providing that kind of idea. And this kind of prima donna director or producer (or worse, bureaucrat) is largely responsible for the recent trend that scripts are not allowed to contain stage directions.

To some extent it's a matter of personality too. Some people, artists or otherwise, are happiest with explicit instructions, others like general guidelines, and some don't want any outside input. There are wonderful artists who want lots of directions, and terrible artists who hate being given directions, as well as the other way around. Then there's the fact that most people on the team are specialists - just because you can trust them to create good art, doesn't mean you can trust them to create the art that's best for that particular game. Pieces that are great out of context can be poor in a context they are not appropriate to. So trust in your team has to be balances with guidance, communication, and someone has to have a guiding vision to keep all the small pieces consistent.

There is no standard for proper writing of code.
There is however, a recommendation from everyone that you make your code
as fast as possible so that it does not take up resources that it doesn't need to.
EG, rather then writing a section of code over and over in different areas of your code, you could put it in a function or class accessible to all other functions.