A Simple Tip On Not Writing Yourself Into a Corner

A little while ago Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic added gay characters and romance story lines to their game.

The reception was a bit mixed. You see, the gay content was confined to one world only; to new content only. Phrases like "gay ghetto" were used. Why should gay content only be confined to one planet?

The answer - or at least part of the answer - is that it's a pretty big task to go through all the existing romance lines in an open world game or MMORPG to verify whether they work in a homosexual as well as a heterosexual context. It's an even bigger task, verging on the completely impractical, to track down the original voice talent or sound-alikes and rerecord new lines. On top of that, going back and making sure the code checks each existing interaction for gender and plays the right line back would be a major effort. And of course, if you miss even one spot, you make everything seem shoddy and you undermine basically the whole point of having dialogue.

There's a way to avoid that, however, a way for the writer to be the hero when the decision is made to include gay content even though everything was based on an assumption of heterosexuality previously:

When you write romance lines for an open world game or MMO, write them gender neutral.

Instead of "hey pretty girl" write "hey good looking". Instead of "you're the man for me" write "you're the one for me." It's actually not that hard. And really, in real life most people don't include specific gender references in most of their speech anyhow.

Then, when it's suddenly decided that since it's 2013 we better have some gay content in the game you can inform the rest of the team that all existing characters who have romance lines are already "gay ready". It will make things a lot easier for a lot of people on the dev team and you will seem like you have your shit together.

That's how it happened on Bully. When I first brought up the idea of letting Jimmy mack on guys as well as girls the whole romance thing was very low priority and no one cared; we were trying to make a the game work on a much more fundamental level and stressing about the deadlines we were busting.

Later, near the end of the project when the flirting and making out stuff was in and things were more or less under control I brought up gay romance again. This time people felt it was too complicated and too late in the project and everything was already recorded - we were trying to bring it home, not add stuff. It's not that there were any objection to the idea itself, it was just a schedule and mental fatigue thing near the end of a hard dev cycle.

So when I told them that it wasn't complicated - that a bunch of the male peds had romance dialogue already and that Jimmy's existing dialogue would work without exception; all we had to do was tag these male characters as romancable and we were good to go - it got added in short order.

It worked out pretty well.

Good Results for Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs was the best selling new I.P. in the UK last year.

MTV names Wei one of the best three characters of 2012.

Game of 2012 from the Sun.

Best Action/Adventure Game from Destructiod
(beating out Max Payne 3 which I largely wrote as well).

Nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Story for the D.I.C.E awards.

Ruby Skies World Wide Launch

We just announced Ruby Skies' World Wide Launch! It's pretty exciting, since we've been working on it for quite a while.

We've been working with 6waves as a publishing partner. There are all kinds of lessons from that experience that I may share in this space... in perhaps a few months.

In the meantime, please check out Ruby Skies by clicking on THIS LINK! It's a bit of a departure from other games I've worked on, but I've quite enjoyed the process.

Portable Podcast Interview

I got interviewed by Carter Dotson over at The Portable Podcast (Episode 160).

We talked a bit about Ruby Skies, Sleeping Dogs, East Side Games and game development. Apparently I have a Scandinavian accent.

Check it out if you like podcasts.

Aryz Mural in Copenhagen

I think I better look that up next time I'm in Copenhagen.

More here: http://arrestedmotion.com/2012/08/streets-aryz-copenhagen/

The Girls of Sleeping Dogs

I've been asked whether there originally was more content planned for the girls in Sleeping Dogs.

The short answer is: yes.

I was at this recording session. Emma Stone is really sweet.

Of course when you start making a game, especially an open world game, you have all kinds of grand ideas. Many of them don't make it through the end through the various rounds of refining the vision (earlier in the process) and desperately cutting scope to stay on budget and schedule (later in the process).

The thing about romantic side-arcs to the story is that they're just that, side-arcs; so they're very vulnerable to getting scaled back when the shit hits the fan during production. As you may know, an extraordinarily large amount of faeces got airborne during the production of this particular game. It's a wonder so much of the girl content made it through; but not all of it did.

What I would have liked to have seen, and what was the plan for quite a while during development, was for the dating to be open ended. As you unlocked each of the girls through the story, you could keep seeing one of them, try to juggle several of them if you were that kind of player, or ignore them altogether.

There were some mini-games planned, and a semi-open system of reactions depending on how you were dealing with the girls. In particular, all the girls had reactions to finding out that you were two- (or more-) timing on them. There was a seduction mini-game planned at one point as well. We did record the audio for it, and it was pretty hilarious. Yes, you could've slept with Emma Stone's character (or any of the other dateable girls) as much as you wanted. There was a bunch of flirty back and forth dialogue recorded between Wei and each of the girls, as well as a bank of randomizable "fade to black" and "getting up in the morning" lines as well.

From a narrative design point of view, we were ready. But we never quite had the time to figure out how to make the gameplay part of it tight enough to justify including it, nor was there ever a firm spot in the schedule for implementing it; there was always something more crucial to get done.

There was another dateable girl as well, or a dateable woman to be more precise. She was part of a more sprawling late 2nd and 3rd act, but as time receded and scope was cut her missions ended up not making it; so there was no way her dating parts would make it either. Her name was Fifi, a cynical slightly over the hill movie star who really liked her drink. Basically she was Vivienne, 20 years later and with no illusions. I was sad to see her go.

Then there were the denouements... we had cutscenes written, and even recorded, in which Wei met up with each of the girls after the main story was completed. If it had just been up to narrative design (i.e. me) the way it would have worked with the girls is like this:

• You met them, one by one, through the story mission flow.
• They each had one, two, or three mini-missions before you got the opportunity to unlock them.
• After that, there'd be an open ended contact-and-improve-the-relationship-(or-not) mechanic leading to "private time" and tangible but temporary benefits to regular gameplay.
• If you tried to two-time anyone there'd be dynamic, open world complications.  (i.e. Tiffany might call while you were spending time with Sandra, and they'd react appropriately depending on what you did; or Amanda drop by while you're getting busy with Not Ping).
• By the time the main story wrapped up, you'd have the opportunity to trigger denouement scenes for each of the girl characters. These would showi how they each had an existence beyond being a notch in Wei's bedpost and bring a sense of closure to the relationship

... but it was not just up to me. The reality is that while it would have been very nice to treat the girls like that, those side-arcs are just that, side-arcs; they're not central to Wei's story. It would have been a significant task to support all of that with properly designed and tuned gameplay to a level acceptable for the game, even if the narrative design was squared away. And in the end, gameplay comes first.

About King

I've read in a few spots that people think the character of King in Sleeping Dogs a one dimensional racist stereotype. That sucks, because that was definitely not my intention in writing him.

Now, I haven't played the final version of the game yet - I've been busy with other projects since leaving Sleeping Dogs in the wake of the Activision cancellation debacle - so I don't know how he ended up. I'm very curious to see whether what I envisioned for the character was implemented but that the vision missed the mark, or whether the character of King shifted to something else (or, I suppose, whether the critics in question are being unfair; but I suspect they probably have a point).

I'd like to set out what I thought King was about as a character.

King was supposed to be a talented and very successful producer of gangster rap. In spite of a carefully cultivated reputation as a gangster, King is a happily married middle class guy. Not just that, but he's tired and jet-lagged and just wants to get back to his hotel and get a good night's sleep before going to work the next day. Of course, he has a reputation to maintain so since he's there it's ideal if he's seen living the high rolling crazy party lifestyle; but for King the ideal situation is to get it over with so he can call his wife and go to sleep.

The whole deal is that Sonny - the unmitigated obnoxious asshole that he is - is buying into the worst excesses of rap culture 100% and is trying to impress King on those terms. Wei, of course, is there to do what his boss tells him even if it's a little cringe worthy, and King goes along with it for the sake of his reputation and because he's doing business with Sonny.

Perhaps not a super complex situation, but it is a little more nuanced than what's being said about King right now. I'm looking forward to playing the game to see if any of that shines through or whether it got lost in the shuffle as production went into the home stretch.

The point I'm trying to make here is that I was aware of the potential pitfalls for King when the character was conceived. If the character did end up falling into them as critics say, then I am as disappointed as they are.