Writing in a Team - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 79

aboutwhatkindofgameitisyou'retryingtomakeatanyonepointandwhoyou
are trying to make it for. That will tell you the place of story in any particular
game. In any event, story versus gameplay is a false match-up. In truth, everything is
subservient to the game experience—story, gameplay, physics, art, music. I've played
Silent Hill late into the night, and the thing I most remembered the next morning
was the fantastically evocative sound effects.
You should expect designers, programmers, producers, artists, musicians, and
execs to respect the contribution you can make on a project, just as you should
respect the ability of everyone around you to deliver the work expected of them in
their own fields of expertise.
You should still expect people to ask you to explain your opinions when they're
puzzling or when they impact on other areas of development, just as you should also
feel entitled to ask others to explain their opinions when you find them puzzling or
when they give rise to decisions that impact on the story.
There's a degree of essential mutual education that needs to go on. There are
people who simply won't understand what it is you do, and part of your responsibility
is to help them. And you also need to take responsibility to get yourself educated
about what it is that other people do and why that has an impact on your work.
Respect is the bedrock you need if you're going to make a game together. Story
is constantly crossing over into other territories of game development, just as those
areas cross over into the realm of the story.
This can inevitably give rise to a kind of “us versus them� mentality. Without the
expertise of everyone involved being respected, this mentality soon leads to everyone
picking up shovels and digging trenches—and everyone remembers from history how
difficult and bloody it is to get through trench networks. (Even if you get hold of
tanks, it's still bloody—and the whole thing is still an extravagant waste of time when
you could've been standing on bridges together looking at the view.)
Respect your craft, too—remember that writing is essentially a craft of logic. Of
course there's imagination, but without logic a story just implodes under its own
weight. The best solution is usually the simplest. Be logical and you'll be persuasive.
Even if it's not always possible to ascribe reason to your views—like, for example, why
you might prefer Otis Redding's 1965 original of “Respect�—you need to engage in
the collective debate, and you have a responsibility to try to guide the discussion
toward a productive conclusion. After all, as a writer within a development team,
you're a card-carrying member of the unofficial Logic Police, helping to look after
everyone else and making sure they all get home safely to the place where things
make sense.
When all else fails and arguments seem to be going round in circles, respect can
come to your assistance yet again—respect for the original vision of the game, what
its creative core is, and who it's for.
Of course, if you're working on a game that doesn't have a vision document of
some kind, or at least a vision keeper, then you're in serious trouble, and it might be
time to respect yourself and see if there's another company needing a writer.