Narrative Design - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 54

create better stories but will also help teammates stay excited about getting
your story told. No matter how brilliant your story is, it's no use to anyone
if it's all locked away inside your brain. You need your teammates on board
with the narrative if you hope to get it told well, and it's much easier to get
that support when everyone understands the direction you're headed. By the
same token, if you don't know what your artists or engineers or designers are
working on or planning for, you could be in for a nasty surprise when your
mind-blowing cinematic introductory boat chase has to make do without wa-
terphysics.Orboats.

• Innovate! Innovation needs to occur on both levels for the Narrative Designer.

From the design side, games are still in the process of figuring out how to tell
a good story without becoming a movie or something other than a game. A
Narrative Designer should actively seek new ways to deliver narrative content
to players and challenge old ways of thinking. From the writing side, resist-
ing the temptation to tell stories the way they've been done so many times
before will help further elevate game writing as a whole. As the gaming audi-
ence is increasingly exposed to new and interesting narratives, developers will
learn much more quickly what works and what doesn't, and how story can
contribute to the overall success of a project.

• Advocate! If the Narrative Designer doesn't champion the story throughout

the development process, no one else will. In the majority of the game de-
velopment world, writers are generally brought on towards the tail end of a
project, when many of the most important decisions have already been made
and are unalterable. At those points, story must make do with whatever hand
it has been dealt. The strength of the Narrative Designer lies in the ability to
craft a narrative vision for the project and then see it through to the end.

Keeping the CIA mantra in mind, and putting it into practice continually, will
maximize team buy-in and minimize disastrous surprises throughout the develop-
ment process. In the real-world trenches of game development, however, there will
be surprises that threaten to derail your beautifully crafted narrative. For those times,
there is another three-word mantra that works just as well (as long as the US Marine
Corps doesn't mind): improvise, adapt, overcome.
Mental (and emotional) flexibility and agility are highly desirable traits for the
Narrative Designer to possess. Throughout the development process, at least one
good crisis always seems to emerge. When developing the initial narrative pitch, or
high-level story concept, it is wise to keep the inevitable crisis in mind. No one knows
for sure what it will be, or when it will come, but every experienced developer expects
it. As a Narrative Designer, developing a core vision or specific theme can serve as
an anchor for your story when trouble hits. Rather than building your narrative on
an elaborate and delicate web of game scenarios, first establish a central theme that
defines your story. With that accomplished, as long as you hold fast to the heart