Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
2
Interactive Script Formatting
Wendy Despain
If you look at a topic editor's desk, every manuscript sitting there in piles has the
same format—1-inch margins, double-spaced, 12-point type, specific information
in page headers. If you look at a stack of screenplays on a showrunner's desk, you'll
see they all have their own format, too—dialog centered, certain words in all-caps,
spaces between paragraphs, 12-point type.
But as a freelance gamewriter, no two of my jobs have been in the same docu-
ment format. I've worked in three different Excel spreadsheet layouts and two kinds
of modified screenplay format. Some of my big-picture interactive narrative assign-
ments are turned in with a modified memo style along with an intricate, hand-drawn,
Photoshop-edited flow chart. Conformity is not common in this industry. I've seen
this realization put writers from other disciplines into prolonged panic attacks.
Writing has a long history of appreciating structure—just ask the fans of haiku
and limerick. Writers are accustomed to being given a structure set in stone and the
freedom to fill in that structure and decorate it any way they like. Game writing
doesn't work that way. In fact, sometimes it's exactly the opposite. You get an assign-
ment where you're told they don't care what format it's in, but your narrative needs
to have a princess, a plumber, and a bunch of mushrooms.
2.1 There Is No One True Interactive Script Format
I don't want to shatter anyone's world view, but there just is no one true interactive
script format. There are a few very good reasons for this and a few less good reasons.
Let's start with the less good reasons. They're partly cultural, partly habitual, and
partly arbitrary.
For one thing, the video game industry has a long history of independence.
The first computer games were written by lone artists on borrowed machines in
their basements. Although huge teams are brought together by big corporations
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