Script Doctoring - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 161

Existing assets. By definition, a script doctor is playing with someone else's toys.
Something—levels, characters, mission designs, you name it—is already in place in
the game and would cost too much time or money to replace. That means that you
have to suck it up and work with it, for good or for ill. On one hand, it can be a
situation where there are twenty levels built and you get to craft a storyline putting
them in order; on the other, it may be, “Here's all our gameplay and mission design.
You get to write the dialog to support it because the last guy couldn't stop bitching
about the plot holes.�
On the bright side, finding out what's already in place that you can or have to use
helps you build a structure for your work. It also answers questions about what you
have to work with and potentially gives you something to match your work against,
providing a useful standard.
Other restrictions (rating, number of voices, etc.). There are a lot of hidden
restrictions on writing that you may not know about. For example, the character
pipeline may be tapped, or the voice-recording budget may be stretched thin, so
you might not be allowed to add any new voices or characters. The game's motion
set doesn't include, say, smoking a cigarette, so you can't write a cutscene where
your dastardly villain lights up and blows smoke in the captured hero's face. The
publisher may have mandated a certain rating, either US or European, and that
places definite restrictions on the sort of language you can use. Finding out what all
of these secondary parameters are before you start writing helps focus your efforts,
and it keeps you from being frustrated later at having to chop stuff you thought
was good to go. There's nothing quite like having to go back through a 20,000 line
script taking out every instance of profanity worse than the word “darn� to make you
appreciate the importance of getting the boundaries of what you're doing straight
before you start.
Integrating with the Team
In video games, no one works in a vacuum, and a writer called on to script doctor is
no exception. And because time is generally short for a script doctor, there's precious
little room for the sort of extended getting-to-know-you period that might otherwise
have taken place. A script doctor needs to integrate with the team seamlessly and
immediately, or they're already behind.
On a basic level, that means being introduced to everyone you might be working
with, getting shown the tool set you'll need to use, and otherwise finding your way
around. Everything from security badges to knowing where the coffee machine is
falls under this particular rubric. In a broader sense, it means getting yourself ready
to work immediately. On the other hand, there are certain particulars that need to
be addressed first that aid in the larger integration of the script doctor into the team.
Find a point of contact. Ideally, there should be one key point of contact for a
script doctor. While it's fine to talk with other folks on the team for informational
or social purposes, there really needs to be a dedicated point of contact: one person