I have created a working minimum viable product for my game and I have roughly outlined the story for the main portion of content. I am now realizing that I can't continue working on content or level design, because I have a story driven game -- I have to write my script. I guess it makes sense though if you compare game development to movies: You never start shooting a movie without a completed script. In story driven games, the script helps define what the scenes need to look like, who the actors are going to be, and ultimately, dictates what assets need to be created to properly tell the story. If you are working on a budget or tight timeline, writing the script first will help you gauge the scope of the project and the amount of work required. There will be constraints that the creative narrative needs to work around (unless you've got millions of dollars and years of production time), so it's better to identify the major costs early and either adapt the script to work around it, or plan and prepare ahead of production. Anyways, I think the costs of script writing and adapting are much less than production costs, so you should try to write your script as soon as you can and know what constraints you're working within and adapt the script accordingly.

34 minutes ago, slayemin said:

I have created a working minimum viable product for my game and I have roughly outlined the story for the main portion of content. I am now realizing that I can't continue working on content or level design, because I have a story driven game -- I have to write my script. I guess it makes sense though if you compare game development to movies: You never start shooting a movie without a completed script. In story driven games, the script helps define what the scenes need to look like, who the actors are going to be, and ultimately, dictates what assets need to be created to properly tell the story. If you are working on a budget or tight timeline, writing the script first will help you gauge the scope of the project and the amount of work required. There will be constraints that the creative narrative needs to work around (unless you've got millions of dollars and years of production time), so it's better to identify the major costs early and either adapt the script to work around it, or plan and prepare ahead of production. Anyways, I think the costs of script writing and adapting are much less than production costs, so you should try to write your script as soon as you can and know what constraints you're working within and adapt the script accordingly.

One way to go about it. 

On 9/7/2017 at 4:47 AM, Matthew Birdzell said:

How do most game devs create their narrative rich games? Is it combinations of predefined narratives before production? Or do they write as production goes, making refinements and edits along the way, until they arrive at what they think works best?

even if you say you're going to have a 'pre-defined' story rarely doesn't one stick to its roots till the end. I usually go with a template I created early but its bound to change as the dev proceeds. this is because we always tend to a see a little bit ahead of us while we write and sometime we do forget our limitations.

Pre-defined is always the way to go because you will have a certain depth to your world and you won't fill like you're blankly filling in the gaps. 

I never make it up as I go. Throughout my education as well as events in  my own of life as stream of consciousness narratives were discouraged. I like to sit down, with a basic outline of my narrative, and script to make those points meet or "connect the dots" if you will.