Putting It All Together - Wizards and Warriors: Massively Multiplayer Online Game Creation - page 275

reference areas, people, and events that are taking place. Because of that, the
story can become difficult to write, and it ' s easy to make errors in the story ' s arc.

When writing a long story that contains many characters and many story arcs, it
is easy to make a mistake. These can be wide-ranging errors, such as talking
about an event that didn t exist. An example

of this is that many years ago, I decided to write some sample chapters of a
fiction book. In one chapter, I talked about the main character

' t happen or a character that doesn '

s dead uncle, but
by the time I got to another chapter, I had mistakenly written that the uncle was
alive and had been kidnapped. When writing large amounts of content, such
mistakes are common.

'

Consider planning how the story of your game will work. This should involve
writing and planning some of the following in detail:

n World: General information about the world in which your game is set.
This could include how the world came to be, for example

after the
great war, a new world order begun to emerge from the ashes.

“

�
n Timeframes: When is the game set and what is special about this partic-
ular timeframe. For example, “ is it 2050 and computers have become self

� “

aware, or we are living in 1,050 and the poor are being treated like

Knowing about your time period can set up many story elements
for your game.
n Characters: The main characters in the story, along with their back-
grounds. You will also need to write some backgrounds on the lesser
characters within your games, even if it

slaves. �

s just a paragraph or two.
n Factions: What groups exist in the game, and how do they get on with
each other. Even in a game idea like Zombie Invasion there could be dif-
ferent sets of humans working for and against each other.
n Places: What are the key places that the players will visit. This could be
the major cities or locations within a city. MMOs break their worlds into
named zones and then named areas within zones. I like the method that
is used in the game Fallout 3, where smaller but just as interesting loca-
tions are defined, such as the truck stop, the park, someone

'

' s house, and

so on. It s up to you how much you define your world, but the more

interesting and well-defined the world, the better the game.

'