Game Design, Narrative Design and Game Writing

So I was (am?) having a quick twitter discussion about game design, narrative design and game writing with Steve Ince, Stephen E. Dinehart, Altugi Isigan and Armando Troisi.

It's a bit tricky to cover nuance in 255 characters, especially when the @-list grows, so here's a blog post instead, with my working definitions and how they interact:

The overall vision of what the game is, how it works and what the user experience is - that's Game Design. It often seems to focus on game mechanics and user input, two very important areas, but ultimately that is in pursuit of the end goal: to shape the experience of interfacing with game.

Narrative Design is a subset of Game Design focusing on story and story like elements as tools to achieve the Game Design goals. The better the Narrative Design, the more it meshes with other parts of the game, be it the mechanics, the art direction or something else.

The most obvious example of Narrative Design, and what I expect most people think of when they think about it at all, are seen in the cutscenes that are typically found in games. A one minute animation makes it clear that the hero's best friend is really a traitor, and that he has the macguffin; thus the player understands why he has to kill the 200 zombies in the level and ultimitaly defeat his erstwhile ally.

But Narrative Design is also used in more subtle ways and, I would argue, that's where the real substance of the discipline resides.

When, after having slain the nasty dragon, you overhear a random villager comment about how life has changed now that the dragon is gone, that's due to good narrative design. If there are physical changes in the village (i.e. the narrative design and art implementation are aligned) that's even better.

If the fact that the Chemical-Substance-With-A-Cool-Name is incredibly flammable has been mentioned several times throughout the game before the players are faced with an action-puzzle based on setting fire to it, that's good Narrative Design. If the flammability of the substance has somehow been a core part of the plot, that is (again) even better.

Then, of course, there's the whole subset of Narrative Design that deals with allowing the players to substantially change the plot. If the players can either slay the mercenaries and return the cargo to the corporation or join the mercenaries and sell the cargo, then both of those options need to be communicated (so they're aware there's a choice to begin with), both options need to make sense within the context of the game-world and there should be noticable in-game consequences of that choice. And to do that, you go need good Narrative Design as I outlined above.

Good Game Design is making sure that whatever the players do in the game is fun; good Narrative design is making sure not only that it's clear why they're doing it, but that it's interesting and compelling.

If it's fun flying the space ship around to defeat the massive alien invasion, then that's good Game Design; if the alien invasion makes sense to the players and they're invested in defeating it, that's good Narrative Design.

All that said, then, Game Writing is writing the words that are used in games. Whether it's the amazingly pithy one-liner the hero speaks as he kills the end boss, the heart-wrenching exposition that explains why you want to kill the end boss in the first place or simply the copy on the bullet-ridden billboard in the middle of level 7, it's all game writing.

The thousands of lines of ambient dialogue that help make the open world seem alive? That's game writing. So are the instructions in the front end, or the little blurbs that go with each of the upgrades you can buy at the in-game vendor.

The Game Writer obviously needs to be aware of what the goals of the Narrative Design is; it's no good writing in California vernacular if the game is trying to evoke the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Often that's not a big problem, as the Game Writer and Narrative Designer is the same person.

Narrative Design and Game Writing are relatively new terms so I'm sure there are different definitions out there; but those are mine.

Getting Into Libraries - 2

It looks like 3M is also getting into eBooks for libraries.

Of course, it's still uncertain how easy it is for independent eBooks to be picked up by 3M and OverDrive.

Getting Into Libraries

I recently learned that digital lending is growing rapidly in the Vancouver Public Library system. That's not really too surprising, and it probably applies elsewhere as well.

A probably more interesting discovery is that VPL and many other libraries get their digital content from one distributor only, OverDrive.

So, if you want your work to be available in the VPL system and many others (it seems), that's where you have to go.

How to Self-Publish Online - Part 2

... so you've written your book, you've formatted it like they told you to, you sorted out the cover and you clicked the button to upload the thing to Smashwords. What happens next?

You see a screen that says you're some number in the queue to be processed. For both Prince Arkenbright and the Forsaken Maid and At the Lovely Touch there were a little over 2500 entries ahead of me.

So, you wait. Every so often you check back to see how many other books are ahead of yours. The number decreases seemingly very slowly, especially for your first book. It took somewhere around 30 hours after I hit submit before my story got dealt with.

Then, if you've done everything right, your book is available to buy on the smashwords website.

One thing to be aware of is that if you want to change the blurb for your book or if you want to update the manuscript (say, because you spotted a typo), you resubmit and are placed at the back of the queue.

Some time after that, they ship the books to the various other retailers: Apple, Kobo, Diesel, Sony and something called Scrollmotion (not quite sure what that is). And some time after they ship it, the books appear.

On top of that, eventually (most recent update is in September) Amazon will accept books from Smashwords as well. Of course, the other option is to publish directly with Amazon (which I haven't done yet, but if and when I do I'll be sure to mention it here).

Now, the process is a bit spotty to be honest. Kobo and Sony only seem to have one of my two titles there, while Diesel and iBooks have both.

Then the hard work of making people pay attention to what you just published begins.

Prince Arkenbright Reviewed

I got my first review of Prince Arkenbright & the Forsaken Maid, and it's not even from my mom:

Review by: Liep on May. 11, 2011 :
It's a fun little story. Arkenbright is a good character, a prince who wants to do what princes do but can't quite do it right, this makes his adventures a bit atypical.

Looking forward to reading more tales of Siward and Arkenbright.

At the Lovely Touch - Now Available

Carlton Yee has done well for himself. He's running a growing protection racket in Vancouver's Chinese community. Even better, he's going to marry the boss's daughter. No one can touch him. Yeah, he doesn't really like her, but that's alright; he knows how to keep her sweet.

Normally you shouldn't mix business and pleasure, but when Carlton spots Maggie at the Lovely Touch massage parlour he makes an exception. He'll have some fun and make money too. That's how you get ahead in this world.

At the Lovely Touch - Available Here.

Cover for At the Lovely Touch

Here's the cover for At the Lovely Touch, available soon.

 

  

When you run a massage parlour in Vancouver, you pay protection. That's just the way it is, and Carlton Yee is there to collect the fee. If he wants a few benefits on the side, who's going to stop him?

A story of sex, violence and danger in Vancouver.

The art and layout was done by Nick Tay. Check out his website: nictatorship.

Lexxy

One of the things you need to publish online is to provide your own covers. For Prince Arkenbright, I really could see the covers done by Alexandra Douglass, aka Lexxy.

Of course I'll need to sell a few more stories before it makes sense to spend money on commissioning covers.

Land of Frost by Lexxy

Game On by Lexxy

Necromancer by Lexxy

If you like her work, you can see more on her website.

How to Self-Publish Online - Part 1

I've had a few people ask me how you go about publishing online. It's actually pretty simple.

The First Step, of course, is to write something you think is worthwhile. Then edit it thorougly, get some feedback and rewrite as necessary. That's the same as any other kind of writing really. In this situation it is perhaps a little more crucial, because there are no editors between you and the world other than the ones you yourself insert into the process.

That means it's very easy to put something out containing embarassing mistakes, and who wants to do that?

The Second Step, before you can be published, is to commission, make or otherwise acquire a cover for whatever it is you're publishing.

It's probably smartest to get something you can use without getting into trouble. You know, don't use other people's copyrighted work without permission and so on.

The Third Step is to go to Smashwords and upload your work. Smashwords has fairly comprehensive step-by-step guides of their requirements, plus some tips. Definitely read those before you upload anything.

Once you upload your work, it takes about twenty four hours before it becomes available, but then that's it, you're published. Smashwords takes about 30% of what you make, the rest goes to your paypal account.

Now, to get people to download and read your stuff that's a whole other thing of course.

That said, if you followed the instructions they gave you, not only are you published, but eventually your work will be available on Amazon and through the iBook store.

I'll go into a little more detail about the process at Smashwords in a later post.

Chen Man

Chen Man is one of the leading fashion photographers in China right now.
It has nothing to do with writing, but many of her pictures are very cool.

Chen Man has a blog here . It seems to mostly be more regular, bread and butter fashion shoots. She also has a website, but it's been very slow in opening so I have no idea what it's like.

Things on the Go

One of the things about independent projects is that you generally don't have somebody bugging you with deadlines. In some ways it's nice, but it makes self-discipline more important. In an effort to make my self-imposed deadlines a little more concrete, here's a list of the things I'm working on now:

• At the Lovely Touch - another short story, more serious in tone about Chinese gangsters in Vancouver. Part of a series tentatively called Danger in Vancouver. This story is finished and is just waiting an edition pass and a cover.
• Unspecified Start-up Project - just maybe Bryna, Brent, Tony and will embark on a independent project. I have some documents to write up about the concept, and I need them done very soon.
• The next installment in the Prince Arkenbright series - I know what I'm writing, I even have a couple of key passages. I just have to find the time to sit down and do it.
• Hong Kong Film Project #1 - I'm working with a couple of guys, Keith and Howard, who have a pretty cool idea for a Hong Kong film. I've started on a treatment of their idea and I need to finish it. Then we'll try to pitch it in Hong Kong.
• Hong Kong Film Project #2 - this is another screenplay I want to write and pitch in Hong Kong, once everything above has been squared away.
• ... and then there are one or two things that I'm not supposed to mention at all; so I won't.

Enough to keep me busy for the next little while.

Welcome to Adventures in Writing

I'm going to join the mid 90s or so and start a blog.

I have 12+ years experience in videogames, I've just taken the very first steps down the path of self-publishing. I've also had a variety of encounters with the film industry, both in Hollywood and Hong Kong and I'm still noodling around with a handful of screenwriting projects.

In this blog I intend to chronicle my various projects and make some hopefully not too dumb observations about being a writer. Sometimes I do other things too, and if they're interesting I'll post about them here as well.

So welcome, gentle reader. I hope you find something worthwhile here on Adventures in Writing.