Game Writing at a Distance (aka Game Writing under Contract) - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 67

making sure you have the time you need to sync up with the team. And, again, if the
visits prove not to be long enough, offer to pay for some of the extra time yourself.
Don't Throw It over the Fence and Walk Away
After you make a deliverable, follow up with a phone call to see if it has been read
and what people thought of it. Don't wait for them to get back to you. You're not
asking here for approval; you just want to make sure they know you're concerned
that the deliverable met their needs. Take extra responsibility for your work. The
odds are pretty good that your work, once you hand it in, will not be gone over with
a fine-tooth comb. People may not have the time to read it and appreciate the time
you put into it. They may not see the effort as you do. Follow-up will help them see
that as well as show you care.
Defining What a Draft and/or Version Is Accurately
Some game developers don't truly understand version control for creative writing.
Don't make any assumptions here. Define drafts and sign-offs carefully. A project
that has gone off the rails can most often be traced back to insufficient scrutiny paid
to early drafts.
Here's a little story that gives you an example of what I'm talking about. A young
producer I was working with was a big fan of “story,� (right on!) but didn't really
know how “story� got built. Nonetheless, we had lots of support for the story, and I
got to hire my first writing “staff.� Anyhow, we're sitting in a meeting building the
master schedule, and we've got about 100 small cutscenes (done in the game engine),
five major cinematics (two to four minutes each), and maybe 400 standard NPC
dialogs. We build out the schedule to get these all written, and then we begin to
schedule the second pass (call it what you will, but the pass where we go back in and
make sure everything syncs up, makes sense, the reveals are set up correctly, etc.).
The young producer literally asks me what I am doing, haven't we finished with the
writing schedule? He had no idea that there was anything to be gained by going
back over dialog after the whole thing was done “first-draft.� So, I explained what I
meant by that and why it would be a good idea. He agreed, but it was an interesting
moment, I'll say that much.
Some other producers honestly believe that (and this is a quote), “What's so hard?
Anyone who can type can write. Once is good enough. Just get it written.� If you
work for them, you have to build in time off the schedule on your own to do the
rewrites you know will come. After all, if the writing stinks, they're going to blame
you regardless of how the producer scheduled the project.
On my current project, we use language that comes out of the world-building
arena (first functional, first playable, first fun, etc.). We do this because the studio
head wanted all the teams to be on the same page with regard to terminology and
milestones. This is fine, because the content team understands those mean “first
draft,� “final draft,� and “polish.�