Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
well it flows. Here are some questions to consider if you are involved in
the design, implementation, and/or maintenance of tools and pipelines
that will be used to inject narrative content into a game.
How Technical Does the Developer Need to Be to Use Them?
It might sometimes be easy for a programmer to forget that not everyone
on the team is as tech-savvy as he. Of course, engineers who are develop-
ing tools for use by others always need to take into account what those
users know and are capable of. Often, game writers originally come from
other media, and even if they've been in games for a while, they can still
tend to be among the least technical of game development team mem-
bers.
So, evaluate your team members and make sure the tools you're devel-
oping feel sufficiently friendly to all. What can you do to make these team
members more comfortable with the tools and thus more productive?
How Difficult Is It to Update the In-Game Narrative Content?
As all developers know, iteration is critical to successful game develop-
ment. It's key to game story development as well. If the tools and pipelines
make the revision process onerous, narrative content developers might
shy away from using it as often as they should, or they might just spend
more time doing it than necessary—reducing iteration cycles and poten-
tially impacting the narrative quality.
If you're able to streamline and simplify the process of updating
narrative-related assets, you will have played an important role in giving
the game a better shot at including a high-quality story.
How Representative Are Placeholders?
Narrative presentation can be expensive and time consuming, especially
on high-profile game projects that will include systemic VO systems,
scripted in-game scenes, and/or fully animated, pre-rendered cutscenes.
During the iteration process, it's important that placeholders be integrated
and evaluated in the context of the evolving game, well before final creat-
ive decisions are made regarding the narrative content. If not, by the time
awkwardness is discovered (at an implementation phase) it may be too late
or very expensive to fix the problem.
