Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Understanding this reality going into the project will give you time to al-
low for off-site writers—some of whom, as mentioned on
this page
, might
not be the most technically savvy of developers—to be granted remote
access to your development tools and some subset of your build environ-
ment.
Discussing the process early is key. Is there a person on the team who
has been identified as the main point of contact for the off-site writers?
(Hint: if not, there should be.) If so, is this person a narrative expert as
well—enough so that she can speak on behalf of their concerns in the
team environment? Enough so that she can anticipate and articulate prob-
lems they might encounter as off-site writers working within your system?
I have seen this situation handled a number of ways, and my perspective
on it includes stints on both sides of the fence. Without prior planning, the
default process seems to be that once narrative content starts coming in
from the writers, an on-staff team member—sometimes with narrative ex-
pertise, sometimes without—is eventually made responsible for hand-
copying that content into the tool that allows it to be integrated into the
build. It's one way to solve the problem, though inefficient, time-consum-
ing, and error-prone.
Rather than failing to plan and ending up resorting to this default setup,
find out early whether it's believed there will be off-site writers contribut-
ing narrative content that will need to be integrated into the game. With
enough lead time, you may be able to create a system and pipeline that
are much more efficient, freeing up one or more of your fellow team
members to focus on more important things.
Final Thoughts on Engineering the Story
Engineering implications emerge not only from game design concepting
but also from the Narrative side, especially on a project which has a strong
narrative vision at or shortly after its inception. However, with all the vari-
ous technical elements that need to be considered in these initial
stages—design implications, target platforms, game engine, middleware,
and so many more—it's not surprising that sometimes ramifications com-
ing from the story side get lost in the shuffle.
Don't let that happen!