Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
When one looks at the writers behind some of the most revered video
game stories—those of
Psychonauts, Grand Theft Auto IV, BioShock, Red
Dead Redemption, Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain
—a pattern starts to emerge.
The writers on these games possessed a great deal of on-team power
and creative control.
In four of these cases, the writer was also the creative director. In two
others, the writer was one of the game's producers. This doesn't mean
that every game with stellar narrative quality must have a writer who is also
the creative director or producer. (Counterexamples include
Deus Ex,
Portal, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
, and
The Walking Dead:
Season One
.) It also doesn't mean that putting the game's director or pro-
ducer in charge of storytelling will automatically yield good res-
ults—especially if they have no particular training or expertise in this area.
But it does indicate that in order for narrative experts to be effective on a
game development team, they need to be taken seriously and have the
political capital to push back against the inevitable resistance that presses
on the story elements from almost every direction during the game's de-
velopment.
So when a concept artist (for example) produces something that directly
contradicts the writer's intent, but which the game director nevertheless
thinks is “cool,” what happens? Who gets trumped? Which side takes on
the burden of reworking and revising content? If the answer in these situ-
ations is consistently the writer, then he's probably unempowered and will
have a very hard time delivering a strong narrative outcome for the game,
despite all good intentions going in.
Likewise, when the creative director, lead designer, or similarly senior
person on your team doesn't agree with the writer on a narrative is-
sue—not something that clashes with gameplay or the overall vision of the
game, but just a purely narrative beat—and the writer gets overruled even
in these situations, you've definitely de-powered your writer and marginal-
ized his effectiveness.
The “anyone can write” myth runs more subtly in some people than oth-
ers, and many don't recognize when they're acting on it. But when push
comes to shove, it becomes clear that everyone's got strong opinions on
story.
It's fine to have an opinion, and it's healthy to express it. Just recognize
that having seen many movies and TV shows doesn't mean your opinion
on game story is an informed one. And you overrule a professional game
