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.

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.

Bully -> Sleeping Dogs -> Ruby Skies?

How do you get from Bully and Sleeping Dogs (not to mention Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3) to Ruby Skies?

The first two are open world console games. Bully is a high school romp while Sleeping Dogs is all about cops and gangsters in Hong Kong. Ruby Skies is a romantic exploration and treasure collection adventure on iOS.

So how did I end up taking the jump from a game featuring cleaver wielding maniacs and mass murder to one about looking for love while floating through pink clouds?

Really, they're not that different. They're all about characters and their relationships. The focus in writing them is to identify who the characters think they are, how they think they're being perceived; everything derives from that. Then you add airships, kung-fu, or slingshots as the environment requires.

At the core, it's all about the relationships. You may notice that there are dating components in both Bully and Sleeping Dogs; I pushed that as far as I could and would have gone further if I could. Ruby Skies, of course, has romantic relationships at the very core of the gameplay; it's a casual game, so it's still fairly simple but I hope to push it further as we continue with the game.

Human relationships too often end up trite and perfunctory in games. In some ways that's due to various limitations of the medium itself or the pitfalls of the production process. It's not easy, but it's what I'm trying to do. I hope it shows at least some of the time.

Sleeping Dogs Out

I'm going to indulge myself for a moment, and post some positive reviews of Sleeping Dogs' story. I spent a long time working on it, and trying to keep the tone and characters true to the vision. It was sometimes pretty hard going dealing with the politics at Activision (to put it mildly), but I think it came out alright in the end.

Props to UFG for giving me my credit even though I'm not working there any longer (this isn't standard policy in the industry, which is frankly slimy as all hell). Further props to Jeff O'Connell for name checking me in this interview. Thanks man, I appreciate it!

Also thanks to Eddie and his crew in Hong Kong. You guys were phenomenal, and you can take credit for a big chunk of any authenticity Sleeping Dogs might have.

Here's what some people have been saying about my work:

"Sleeping Dogs’ story is by far its strongest quality... it’s a gripping drama. It feels real. You wonder what’s going to happen, whether Shen will finally go over the edge or what. Wanting to know what was next was what kept me playing."

- Chris Kohler, Wired

"Sleeping Dogs’ melee combat and gunplay provide plenty of thrills, the driving is extraordinarily fun... but at the end of my nearly 20-hour experience, none of that mattered to me as much as the story did. It’s that story, coupled with rock-solid mechanics and a task-heavy world that sets Sleeping Dogs apart from its competition."

- Colin Moriarty, IGN

"Characters more integral to the storyline are just as charming as the city they dwell in.... Dialogue is straight and to the point. Nothing felt like excess fat."

- Tina Amini, Kotaku

"Sleeping Dogs’ story serves as the perfect wrapper for the wealth of game mechanics, offering up memorable characters and moving tale of vengeance, betrayal, and conflicting loyalties."

- Brandon Justice, EGM Review

"Gameplay and the writing are deep and engaging from start to finish"

- Dave Thier, Forbes

"...solid voice acting and writing that convincingly blends English and Cantonese make it a narrative that's more than capable of supporting the gameplay, providing context for many a dramatic mission and building up to a cathartic climax..."

- Carolyn Petit, Gamespot

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.

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.

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.