Game Writing and Narrative in the Future - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 171

16
Game Writing and Narrative
in the Future
Evan Skolnick
Previous chapters in this topic have focused on practical, usable information on the
process of writing for today's video games. For this final chapter, however, we will
allow ourselves a flight of fancy, turning our attention from the actual to the theo-
retical; from what is to what might be. For even the most experienced traveler must
occasionally look up from his carefully plotted map and allow himself to dream of
distant, unknown places barely visible on the horizon. In our case, it is the self-
indulgent act of imagining what video game narrative might look like in the future.
16.1 Growing Pains
As a mass-market entertainment medium, video games are still in the equivalent of
early childhood, stumbling alongside—or sometimes trailing directly behind—older
siblings such as motion pictures, radio, and television. This is not to say that in terms
of sheer size or popularity video games are lesser or inferior to these older forms.
Indeed, in terms of gross revenue, the video game industry is more than competitive
with any of them. But as a creative art form, video games are still in what will surely
be looked back upon (by future generations of gamers and game developers) as early
formative stages.
This is particularly true of game narrative development, which has continued to
be a relatively underappreciated, undervalued, and undeveloped component of mod-
ern video games—especially when compared with other, more obvious aspects such
as graphics rendering power, realistic physics engines, and gameworld sizes. As the
hardware has become more powerful, the main emphasis has been to concentrate
on ways to make games look, sound, and feel more realistic and immersive. Story-
telling, in general, has been left behind, and many games that are modern in all other
respects still sport the same type of subpar story structure, painfully stereotypical