MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
Did anyone here play Enslaved? It was console-only and most of the media just made it look like just another puzzle platformer/beat-em-up, which, in fairness, it was. But it also had some really really innovative storytelling elements. (though I was only able to play the first seven chapters, I haven't bought a copy for myself yet)
Cutscenes are a rarity, and exposition is almost completely eschewed in favor of visual cues that slowly reveal more about the world you're living in. Here's a good example:
The very beginning of the game you're restrained in a cell of some sort, and the PA system starts calling you "slave." When things start going wrong, you realize you are on a ship of some sort. When you get outside, you realize it is an airship. You've got to make your way to the escape pods. So far we know: you're really strong, it looks like the future considering your equipment, and some very angry robots are trying to use you as a slave.
An essential piece of context comes hurtling out of the sky at you at like four hundred miles an hour, and then is gone. It's using a simple film technique of the establishing shot and bringing it into a video game in a really incredible way.
i really wanted to play enslaved because of the whole alex garland thing
but it was awful. intensely frustrating and uninspiring to play, and the story, while pretty good, wasn't nearly good enough to make up for that. i probably made it around halfway before putting it back in the case. it's one of only two games this generation i've bought and regretfully decided not to finish because of how unenjoyable it was
(the other one's ffxiii)
edit: perhaps it was punished for the stupid fucking design decision of not being able to drop the difficulty level mid-game.
With a big sandbox where anything could go, I guess triggers could make for interesting storytelling when used right. Not in the "individual character grows as a person" sense, but in the classic Fallout-esque summaries that outline the fate of communities - and, preferably, some way of seeing those changes gradually happen.
In this tiny village you killed the shop keeper, kept the town elder in charge, and ate the bandit's face? Well then, its traditional values were shaken but held firm in the long run despite a psychopathic stranger who killed a local merchant and disgustingly (but effectively) intimidated local brigands.
Oh, on this playthrough you made the shop keeper the village leader and helped the bandits in their escapades? Then the place is a goddamn vice den, turns out that merchant was a collaborator all along.
But ultimately, tying all those little side locations together would be the big trick, otherwise it's just a list of unconnected side quests presented to you before the credits. If a core narrative isn't traditionally scriptable because of all the myriad options that the player is presented with, some sort of broad overall goal involving the unification (or whatever) of the game world could at least determine the final outcome.
The final march of the gigantic invasion force is described- or perhaps witnessed. You didn't fix up the forts in the mountain so no deadline delay for you but you did repair the dwarven plot monkey so they come swarming out of their tunnels and die by the boatload.
Games often have a lot of triggers and switches that contribute to the end, but actually experiencing those changes is a different matter. Too many titles give you a binary choice at the tail end of the game, limiting any impact it could have on play. Conversely, games like Dragon Age had gigantic intro sequences with content that might not ever be experienced by players unless they choose a completely different character type...
I can give you some pointers, Romanian, though I'm not a writer (I'm a Cinematic Designer). Still, originally I was looking at becoming a writer so I can drop some knowledge bombs.
Well, in your case, I would settle for how to effectively match script to cinematics.
I think telling me about every cinematic in ME3 would be a good way to accomplish that.
Honestly, I'll take any help I can get, especially from someone who's working for a design company right now.
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Your point against that sort of game represents what's holding it back. The brute force method of branching narratives, where you just create 30 separate storylines worth of content, is never going to be an effective way of going about it.
sadly the only method to genuinely engaging narratives is to script them. there is no procedural recipe for meaning, no design for an emergent world that can insert its own figurative imagery and cohesive denoument. art just doesn't work like that - it's like expecting to be able to program an add-on for photoshop that takes a few cues and turns it into a subtle, interesting and noteworthy impressionist painting
and stories are art.
it's a big question. this thought is what's led me to decide that in an open or procedural videogame environment it's going to be much, much more satisfying, as a developer, to not play the role of storyteller but the facilitator of stories: to focus on narrative only by giving your users toolsets to create their own. a huge part of this is sharing. stories are about communicating, but there are so many games - especially now that sandbox is very do-able and very trendy - where stories do arise emergently, yet there's no way to share them
At this point, I guess all I can say is that I sort of disagree. I think there is room to tell your own story (as a developer-storyteller) and also let the player's story emerge.
sure, it's possible, but the thing is that neither can gain anything from the merge. stories are as much about being given their own space as anything else: a story can actually vanish pretty easily if it's not given the right frame, mainly because the best stories are subtle ones.
To me, the ideal storytelling in a game would come from the designer setting the stage, and then letting the player loose and having the world react to them. Mount & Blade does this to a limited extent, but I feel it's at least headed in the right direction. Even if the player does nothing at all, the world continues around them, with the various nations going to war, forming alliances, etc. Granted, in the original game the AI's limitations (either intended or otherwise) keep this from having too large an effect on the political landscape - one nation cannot conquer another, but I think some mods have addressed this.
In my ideal emergent-story sandbox, the designer would influence the story primarily through the setting, and the characters. I've seen "worldbuilding" treated as a bad word by some writers when taken too far, but in the context of allowing stories to emerge, the setting is the soil in which the seeds will grow. Depending on the type of game it doesn't need to be a 300 page setting bible with concept art, but it needs enough for the player to feel a sense of place.
The characters are more important, and where someone clever with a gift for AI scripting could make some magic happen. Fill the setting with interesting characters with their own goals and agendas, and give them the ability to actually try to achieve them, and stories will start to happen. Make them able to adapt to disruption both from each other, and from the player and you've got my dream game. Granted, a game like this would need to either be limited in terms of dialogue/VO, or have the dialog abstracted to a large extent (threaten/bluff/negotiate/etc).
But a smart and savvy dev team could take the old staple of the background of 0 and 1 yes/no inputs and use it as a basis to add a fuck-ton of variety to a plot
Where's Orikae, he'll remember our talks about that Masq thing and its ilk
I really loved Enslaved, it was one of my favourite games last year. Some serious missteps, and some overly simplistic and repetitive gameplay, but its approach to characterisation and storytelling (especially regarding the production values of the facial animation, motion capture and voice acting) was sublime.
Yeah, but doing it again at normal speeds the everyone dying was slightly less traumatic.
When i say flashes i mean literally a flash. less then a second on screen, i didn't have time to register a dying animation it was just flash of ground, scream, flash more screams. EVERYONE IS DEAD. And i was all "well, fuck."
Rye at lunch? man, i put that shit in my tea.
I have had a TFTD mission that lasted and was failed in one turn.
yeah, plot is a massive driver of story, especially in a genre-reliant industry like videogames. but that doesn't mean an interesting plot is all you need for a satisfying story. focusing on all the neat tricks you could use to ermergently affect plot only is for me a big step in the wrong direction for the medium. plot is just one thing, and it's one of the easiest things.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
i really wanted to play enslaved because of the whole alex garland thing
but it was awful. intensely frustrating and uninspiring to play, and the story, while pretty good, wasn't nearly good enough to make up for that. i probably made it around halfway before putting it back in the case. it's one of only two games this generation i've bought and regretfully decided not to finish because of how unenjoyable it was
(the other one's ffxiii)
edit: perhaps it was punished for the stupid fucking design decision of not being able to drop the difficulty level mid-game.
I set it to the normal difficulty and found it just about the right amount of challenging from the few hours I played it.
I could, however, have made do without a closeup of the main character's o-face every time you clear the last bad guy in an area
yeah, plot is a massive driver of story, especially in a genre-reliant industry like videogames. but that doesn't mean an interesting plot is all you need for a satisfying story. focusing on all the neat tricks you could use to ermergently affect plot only is for me a big step in the wrong direction for the medium. plot is just one thing, and it's one of the easiest things.
The thing is I actually strongly agree in some respects, because a "plot" of the village X is now exploded kind (that is, a mere series of interconnected events) could play out like a dry historical documentary with no player investment or character interest and ultimately be utterly pointless
But at the same time, a lot of the existing mechanics that are abused as cheap ways out from actual storytelling could do great things in the right hands
Then again you and NaS have basically treaded this ground nice and thoroughly so I'm being redundant
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
While I love X-Com as much as the next guy, it is not the game that has produced the best emergent gameplay stories I have read.
That title goes to EVE, which neatly solves the problem of "how do we get NPCs that react as believably as humans?" by making them humans. Having the narrative be so largely player-driven makes the game much, much more interesting than that other MMO, which relies on the designers churning out new content to tell a fairly average story to the players rather than letting them create their own. And I've got to say, the defection of a corporate executive taking apart the largest alliance in the game is a much more interesting story than "killing the fallen prince that was corrupted by an evil sword."
The problem I have with EVE's storytelling is while the best stories are very interesting to read about, unless you're one of the select few directing the wars or infiltrating the enemy corps, you're often a character in someone else's story. (Though the flipside could be said, your tale could be the story of an upstart pilot, and the people giving directions questgivers.) I'm not sure if there's a way to have a multiplayer game where everyone is the hero in their own emergent story, but if there is I'd like to play it.
sadly the only method to genuinely engaging narratives is to script them. there is no procedural recipe for meaning, no design for an emergent world that can insert its own figurative imagery and cohesive denoument. art just doesn't work like that - it's like expecting to be able to program an add-on for photoshop that takes a few cues and turns it into a subtle, interesting and noteworthy impressionist painting
I fully expect we will be able to create excellent procedural narratives within the next century, actually.
yeah i had it on hard, based on the mistaken premise that i could notch it down if i was frustrating myself
nope
(apparently there's a way to do it, but you have to leave the game and restart the chapter, which is of little value to a person who's struggling at the climax of a chapter)
Yeah, but doing it again at normal speeds the everyone dying was slightly less traumatic.
When i say flashes i mean literally a flash. less then a second on screen, i didn't have time to register a dying animation it was just flash of ground, scream, flash more screams. EVERYONE IS DEAD. And i was all "well, fuck."
Rye at lunch? man, i put that shit in my tea.
I have had a TFTD mission that lasted and was failed in one turn.
One turn.
This was on the first alien turn, but i could see it happening on xcom turn as well if they were set up.
I'm not imply that the game isn't hard or whatever. the reason why it left an impact on me because the game was running roughly 77 times normal speed so everything was moving incomprehensibly fast.
Yeah, but doing it again at normal speeds the everyone dying was slightly less traumatic.
When i say flashes i mean literally a flash. less then a second on screen, i didn't have time to register a dying animation it was just flash of ground, scream, flash more screams. EVERYONE IS DEAD. And i was all "well, fuck."
Rye at lunch? man, i put that shit in my tea.
I have had a TFTD mission that lasted and was failed in one turn.
One turn.
This was on the first alien turn, but i could see it happening on xcom turn as well if they were set up.
I'm not imply that the game isn't hard or whatever. the reason why it left an impact on me because the game was running roughly 77 times normal speed so everything was moving incomprehensibly fast.
A Tasoth reaction fired a rocket into my submarine when I opened the door. I cried.
sadly the only method to genuinely engaging narratives is to script them. there is no procedural recipe for meaning, no design for an emergent world that can insert its own figurative imagery and cohesive denoument. art just doesn't work like that - it's like expecting to be able to program an add-on for photoshop that takes a few cues and turns it into a subtle, interesting and noteworthy impressionist painting
I fully expect we will be able to create excellent procedural narratives within the next century, actually.
Sburb, here we come!
Give me increasingly intuitive and responsive methods of crafting worlds and DMing roleplaying games and I'd be home free
When the day comes that I can write "the party emerges into a rusty antechamber awash with blood and bones" and the game can render that on the spot then I will die happy
Unfortunately that day will be 2100, one year after I am already dead (I plan to be a centenarian... and beyond)
Yeah, but doing it again at normal speeds the everyone dying was slightly less traumatic.
When i say flashes i mean literally a flash. less then a second on screen, i didn't have time to register a dying animation it was just flash of ground, scream, flash more screams. EVERYONE IS DEAD. And i was all "well, fuck."
Rye at lunch? man, i put that shit in my tea.
I have had a TFTD mission that lasted and was failed in one turn.
One turn.
This was on the first alien turn, but i could see it happening on xcom turn as well if they were set up.
I'm not imply that the game isn't hard or whatever. the reason why it left an impact on me because the game was running roughly 77 times normal speed so everything was moving incomprehensibly fast.
A Tasoth reaction fired a rocket into my submarine when I opened the door. I cried.
vsove/taky, would it be rude and/or inappropriate to ask a question about how hard it is to get a job writing for games?
I want to know how much soul-crushing disappointment I'm in for after I finish college.
It's hard.
Also, there's more than one kind of games writer.
I'm technically a Story Designer. That means that I'm working with a team that crafts the narrative and helps figure out where fights go and what happens and all that. I'm also doing work on things like the incredibly awesome journals and the Persuade system.
As I understand it, on other games, you'll have the game designers make the game, and then they bring the writer in and say, "Write the dialog that tells the story so that we get from here to here." They're not developing the game as much as writing the script once the game is already developed.
To be the first, you need a good game-design background and a strong writing background of some ilk.
To be the second kind of writer, you need a strong screenwriting background.
The first is more likely to work in, say, action games with fairly linear storylines. The second is more likely to work in either sandbox games or RPGs of some sort.
RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
edited January 2011
I totally get to design and build a game in Unity this semester. We have a team of seven to do it, but all of us are artists, which means all coding and scripting, most likely, falls on my shoulders because I was the one who brought up that I know where to look for tutorials. Damnit.
But I'm ridiculously excited, we've already come up with a game idea that should be do-able and is interesting. We're doing a third person exploration game based around a guy in a haunted house. Unfortunately we don't have UnityPro so we can't use dynamic shadows, but we've got some neat ideas and I've got a few friends I can rope into helping program it.
The key to procedural narrative is to have enough canned tools for the system to use that it takes the player a long time to notice the strings.
If you made procedural fetch quests, where different items would spawn on the map, with requests to deliver them to people, and everyone always responded with, "Thank you for the ____," it would take the player about two quests to see the strings. "Aha, they always say the same words. It's a bot!"
If you can add a specifier to each item, a collection of four additional responses, then it feels a little more natural.
"Thank you for the ____. Now I can feed my family."
"Thank you for the ____. My wife was going to kill me if I didn't get it back."
And so on.
The more canned tools you have, and the more plot variety you've got, the longer it will take the player to see the strings of how your rules-based plot generation system works, and the longer they will be engaged on an emotional level. I don't know if we'll ever get to the point where a procedurally generated plot feels great all the way through, but with time and effort, I see no reason that we couldn't make it work well enough for the average player experience.
(I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)
vsove/taky, would it be rude and/or inappropriate to ask a question about how hard it is to get a job writing for games?
I want to know how much soul-crushing disappointment I'm in for after I finish college.
It's hard.
Also, there's more than one kind of games writer.
I'm technically a Story Designer. That means that I'm working with a team that crafts the narrative and helps figure out where fights go and what happens and all that. I'm also doing work on things like the incredibly awesome journals and the Persuade system.
As I understand it, on other games, you'll have the game designers make the game, and then they bring the writer in and say, "Write the dialog that tells the story so that we get from here to here." They're not developing the game as much as writing the script once the game is already developed.
To be the first, you need a good game-design background and a strong writing background of some ilk.
To be the second kind of writer, you need a strong screenwriting background.
The first is more likely to work in, say, action games with fairly linear storylines. The second is more likely to work in either sandbox games or RPGs of some sort.
Does that help?
convince EA to start a bioware branch in vancouver, please
i'd really love to work with you but edmonton is so goddamn cold it's almost a dealbreaker
I fully expect we will be able to create excellent procedural narratives within the next century, actually.
good luck with that!
edit: i suppose you may be right, if you've got very low expectations for an 'excellent narrative'
Eh, a century in the age of computing is a pretty goddamn long time.
we aren't talking about computers
we're talking about art
we're talking about teaching computers how to create things with artistic merit
okay then. first you'd need a proven science of what makes art art, or more specifically what makes an artistic (ie literary) narrative work - and last i checked, they've been caught up on that for the last millenia or two. not to mention that you'd need a comprehensive simulation model for the human psychology, as the best stories are driven by engaging human drama and its implicit subtexts as much as anything else. practically you'd also need to be able to analyze that emerging drama and frame that of it which is relevant, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it
oh, i suppose we could also go with the brute force method
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World as Mytha breezy way to annoy serious peopleRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
how interesting would it be to have a short, semi-weekly game dev podcast from some of the folks here at arenanet as we develop guild wars 2?
assuming it's interesting to anyone but me, how do you continue to make it interesting week after week without asking the same questions? and how do you make it accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences? (full disclosure: I don't listen to any dev podcasts so this paradigm is probably well-established)
convince EA to start a bioware branch in vancouver, please
i'd really love to work with you but edmonton is so goddamn cold it's almost a dealbreaker
I'd argue, but currently it's at that "You get ice-cream headaches just from walking into the wind" place, temperature-wise, which is about 5 C colder than "Oh god did my nose hairs just freeze oh jesus they did why the hell am I up here?"
convince EA to start a bioware branch in vancouver, please
i'd really love to work with you but edmonton is so goddamn cold it's almost a dealbreaker
I'd argue, but currently it's at that "You get ice-cream headaches just from walking into the wind" place, temperature-wise, which is about 5 C colder than "Oh god did my nose hairs just freeze oh jesus they did why the hell am I up here?"
whereas i'm not wearing any socks and the windows are wide open
Posts
Cutscenes are a rarity, and exposition is almost completely eschewed in favor of visual cues that slowly reveal more about the world you're living in. Here's a good example:
Then this fucking happens:
Start at 12:15
An essential piece of context comes hurtling out of the sky at you at like four hundred miles an hour, and then is gone. It's using a simple film technique of the establishing shot and bringing it into a video game in a really incredible way.
but it was awful. intensely frustrating and uninspiring to play, and the story, while pretty good, wasn't nearly good enough to make up for that. i probably made it around halfway before putting it back in the case. it's one of only two games this generation i've bought and regretfully decided not to finish because of how unenjoyable it was
(the other one's ffxiii)
edit: perhaps it was punished for the stupid fucking design decision of not being able to drop the difficulty level mid-game.
In this tiny village you killed the shop keeper, kept the town elder in charge, and ate the bandit's face? Well then, its traditional values were shaken but held firm in the long run despite a psychopathic stranger who killed a local merchant and disgustingly (but effectively) intimidated local brigands.
Oh, on this playthrough you made the shop keeper the village leader and helped the bandits in their escapades? Then the place is a goddamn vice den, turns out that merchant was a collaborator all along.
But ultimately, tying all those little side locations together would be the big trick, otherwise it's just a list of unconnected side quests presented to you before the credits. If a core narrative isn't traditionally scriptable because of all the myriad options that the player is presented with, some sort of broad overall goal involving the unification (or whatever) of the game world could at least determine the final outcome.
The final march of the gigantic invasion force is described- or perhaps witnessed. You didn't fix up the forts in the mountain so no deadline delay for you but you did repair the dwarven plot monkey so they come swarming out of their tunnels and die by the boatload.
Games often have a lot of triggers and switches that contribute to the end, but actually experiencing those changes is a different matter. Too many titles give you a binary choice at the tail end of the game, limiting any impact it could have on play. Conversely, games like Dragon Age had gigantic intro sequences with content that might not ever be experienced by players unless they choose a completely different character type...
It's cool, I'm still looking into picking up coding at some point, just to make sure I've got a broad knowledge base, so that actually does help.
Thanks.
Well, in your case, I would settle for how to effectively match script to cinematics.
I think telling me about every cinematic in ME3 would be a good way to accomplish that.
To me, the ideal storytelling in a game would come from the designer setting the stage, and then letting the player loose and having the world react to them. Mount & Blade does this to a limited extent, but I feel it's at least headed in the right direction. Even if the player does nothing at all, the world continues around them, with the various nations going to war, forming alliances, etc. Granted, in the original game the AI's limitations (either intended or otherwise) keep this from having too large an effect on the political landscape - one nation cannot conquer another, but I think some mods have addressed this.
In my ideal emergent-story sandbox, the designer would influence the story primarily through the setting, and the characters. I've seen "worldbuilding" treated as a bad word by some writers when taken too far, but in the context of allowing stories to emerge, the setting is the soil in which the seeds will grow. Depending on the type of game it doesn't need to be a 300 page setting bible with concept art, but it needs enough for the player to feel a sense of place.
The characters are more important, and where someone clever with a gift for AI scripting could make some magic happen. Fill the setting with interesting characters with their own goals and agendas, and give them the ability to actually try to achieve them, and stories will start to happen. Make them able to adapt to disruption both from each other, and from the player and you've got my dream game. Granted, a game like this would need to either be limited in terms of dialogue/VO, or have the dialog abstracted to a large extent (threaten/bluff/negotiate/etc).
Night of the Cephalopods, it was a pretty neat little experiment:
http://spookysquid.com/notc/
Well what do I know about stories or writing
But a smart and savvy dev team could take the old staple of the background of 0 and 1 yes/no inputs and use it as a basis to add a fuck-ton of variety to a plot
Where's Orikae, he'll remember our talks about that Masq thing and its ilk
Thank you, I could not find it again!
I have had a TFTD mission that lasted and was failed in one turn.
One turn.
:P ignore me, i'm being bitter.
yeah, plot is a massive driver of story, especially in a genre-reliant industry like videogames. but that doesn't mean an interesting plot is all you need for a satisfying story. focusing on all the neat tricks you could use to ermergently affect plot only is for me a big step in the wrong direction for the medium. plot is just one thing, and it's one of the easiest things.
I set it to the normal difficulty and found it just about the right amount of challenging from the few hours I played it.
I could, however, have made do without a closeup of the main character's o-face every time you clear the last bad guy in an area
The thing is I actually strongly agree in some respects, because a "plot" of the village X is now exploded kind (that is, a mere series of interconnected events) could play out like a dry historical documentary with no player investment or character interest and ultimately be utterly pointless
But at the same time, a lot of the existing mechanics that are abused as cheap ways out from actual storytelling could do great things in the right hands
Then again you and NaS have basically treaded this ground nice and thoroughly so I'm being redundant
That title goes to EVE, which neatly solves the problem of "how do we get NPCs that react as believably as humans?" by making them humans. Having the narrative be so largely player-driven makes the game much, much more interesting than that other MMO, which relies on the designers churning out new content to tell a fairly average story to the players rather than letting them create their own. And I've got to say, the defection of a corporate executive taking apart the largest alliance in the game is a much more interesting story than "killing the fallen prince that was corrupted by an evil sword."
The problem I have with EVE's storytelling is while the best stories are very interesting to read about, unless you're one of the select few directing the wars or infiltrating the enemy corps, you're often a character in someone else's story. (Though the flipside could be said, your tale could be the story of an upstart pilot, and the people giving directions questgivers.) I'm not sure if there's a way to have a multiplayer game where everyone is the hero in their own emergent story, but if there is I'd like to play it.
I fully expect we will be able to create excellent procedural narratives within the next century, actually.
Sburb, here we come!
yeah i had it on hard, based on the mistaken premise that i could notch it down if i was frustrating myself
nope
(apparently there's a way to do it, but you have to leave the game and restart the chapter, which is of little value to a person who's struggling at the climax of a chapter)
good luck with that!
edit: i suppose you may be right, if you've got very low expectations for an 'excellent narrative'
This was on the first alien turn, but i could see it happening on xcom turn as well if they were set up.
I'm not imply that the game isn't hard or whatever. the reason why it left an impact on me because the game was running roughly 77 times normal speed so everything was moving incomprehensibly fast.
A Tasoth reaction fired a rocket into my submarine when I opened the door. I cried.
Give me increasingly intuitive and responsive methods of crafting worlds and DMing roleplaying games and I'd be home free
When the day comes that I can write "the party emerges into a rusty antechamber awash with blood and bones" and the game can render that on the spot then I will die happy
Unfortunately that day will be 2100, one year after I am already dead (I plan to be a centenarian... and beyond)
Oh shit, yeah that would do it.
Eh, a century in the age of computing is a pretty goddamn long time.
we aren't talking about computers
we're talking about art
It's hard.
Also, there's more than one kind of games writer.
I'm technically a Story Designer. That means that I'm working with a team that crafts the narrative and helps figure out where fights go and what happens and all that. I'm also doing work on things like the incredibly awesome journals and the Persuade system.
As I understand it, on other games, you'll have the game designers make the game, and then they bring the writer in and say, "Write the dialog that tells the story so that we get from here to here." They're not developing the game as much as writing the script once the game is already developed.
To be the first, you need a good game-design background and a strong writing background of some ilk.
To be the second kind of writer, you need a strong screenwriting background.
The first is more likely to work in, say, action games with fairly linear storylines. The second is more likely to work in either sandbox games or RPGs of some sort.
Does that help?
Oh, that argument.
we're talking about teaching computers how to create things with artistic merit
But I'm ridiculously excited, we've already come up with a game idea that should be do-able and is interesting. We're doing a third person exploration game based around a guy in a haunted house. Unfortunately we don't have UnityPro so we can't use dynamic shadows, but we've got some neat ideas and I've got a few friends I can rope into helping program it.
If you made procedural fetch quests, where different items would spawn on the map, with requests to deliver them to people, and everyone always responded with, "Thank you for the ____," it would take the player about two quests to see the strings. "Aha, they always say the same words. It's a bot!"
If you can add a specifier to each item, a collection of four additional responses, then it feels a little more natural.
"Thank you for the ____. Now I can feed my family."
"Thank you for the ____. My wife was going to kill me if I didn't get it back."
And so on.
The more canned tools you have, and the more plot variety you've got, the longer it will take the player to see the strings of how your rules-based plot generation system works, and the longer they will be engaged on an emotional level. I don't know if we'll ever get to the point where a procedurally generated plot feels great all the way through, but with time and effort, I see no reason that we couldn't make it work well enough for the average player experience.
(I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)
convince EA to start a bioware branch in vancouver, please
i'd really love to work with you but edmonton is so goddamn cold it's almost a dealbreaker
If I remember correctly, all post-processing effects are limited to Unity Pro too, right? I remember that frustrating me the most.
okay then. first you'd need a proven science of what makes art art, or more specifically what makes an artistic (ie literary) narrative work - and last i checked, they've been caught up on that for the last millenia or two. not to mention that you'd need a comprehensive simulation model for the human psychology, as the best stories are driven by engaging human drama and its implicit subtexts as much as anything else. practically you'd also need to be able to analyze that emerging drama and frame that of it which is relevant, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it
oh, i suppose we could also go with the brute force method
assuming it's interesting to anyone but me, how do you continue to make it interesting week after week without asking the same questions? and how do you make it accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences? (full disclosure: I don't listen to any dev podcasts so this paradigm is probably well-established)
I'd argue, but currently it's at that "You get ice-cream headaches just from walking into the wind" place, temperature-wise, which is about 5 C colder than "Oh god did my nose hairs just freeze oh jesus they did why the hell am I up here?"
whereas i'm not wearing any socks and the windows are wide open