A Q&A Session For New Game Writers

Hello, I am Toya Kristen Finney from Snewdo Media LLC and this is It's Not in the Writer's Manual and this is a crowd sourced panel. So, the content is based upon the questions that would you would like to bring to us. Um and I would like to start by everybody giving a brief introduction of who they are and how they actually got into game writing. Oh, um so I'm Chris Avellone. I got into gaming about 25 years ago because I was a pen and paper D&D game master because my players were really lazy, so I had to make all the stories. And then I tried to publish those stories and uh eventually on the 30th submission I got accepted and then I turned that into an exciting career in game development cuz I could prove to somebody that someone would pay something for something that I wrote. So. Um I'm Heidi McDonald. I broke into the gaming industry when I was 41 years old. Um I was the oldest intern that Jesse Schell ever hired. Uh the movie The

Internship, I didn't have to watch it because I lived it. Um my first project with them was an HIV prevention game and if you want to be thrown into the deep end, try making HIV prevention fun. Um I'm very proud of the fact that uh Orion Trail, our game, just got tagged for uh narrative uh narrative excellence by the IGF this year. So, that was that was my big happy for this year. So, welcome. Thank you. Uh I'm Evan Skolnick and I've been in games about 15 years. I kind of side slipped into games after having worked in comics at Marvel Comics and other companies, then working into interactive development on CD-ROMs and websites, and then eventually just sliding over to game development, first as a producer and then uh helping out occasionally with narrative because of my background and then bit by bit doing more and more narrative and less and less producing, which makes me very happy. Hi, I'm Michelle Clough. I I'll be playing the plucky newbie of the panel

because uh I've actually only been game uh a narrative design and writing for I guess maybe two or three years. Um I got into it by actually meeting these wonderful lovely people and them uh getting me in touch with uh my first client, which was a uh a visual novel game called 1931 uh Shahrazad in the Library of Pergamon, and uh I've also been doing a little bit of the lecturing circuit. Some of you may remember 2 years ago I did a talk about male sexuality in games, as well as how to write a healthy um diverse fan service, and uh I'm also head of the romance and sexuality special interest group for IGDA. All right, at the other end of the panel we have the other grizzled ancient of the industry here. Uh I I am that terrible person who is uh first and foremost was a game designer and programmer, and then was like, "I can write this stuff, too. Watch me go." Which usually is the nightmare of most writers and their designers. But I was lucky in college, I knew a couple of other college students who had dropped out and started a little game company,

and I went and offered to intern for them, and they gave me some programming work to do, and then I noticed they had a uh game they weren't going to finish, um and I said, "Hey, I could finish that thing." And so eventually they I finished it, and they let me take it and go publish it somewhere else, and that company was Bungie Software way back when they were two guys in their basement. So that was a great sort of introduction to the industry for me in game development in general, and I've always tried to do writing as well as as game design when I've worked on projects. And a few times have done only writing, and then realized how little respect writers get in the industry, and went back to game design jobs. Uh but now I am running a uh independent project where I'm doing design, writing, and programming again, uh called The Church in the Darkness, uh which uh is going to be done in maybe a year if we're all if we're lucky. So I've been uh writing and publishing for many years, and about 8 years ago I wondered uh how do you get into game writing? Cuz I like games and I like writing and I wonder if I could do that. So, I actually did a Google search for game writing, which usually does not bring up anything, but in this case, the

same indie studio that Michelle started with was looking for lore writers. So, I started as a lore writer. They liked what I was doing. They made me an assistant designer. And at this point in time, I discovered that game design was a thing. Uh so, that was my start and I've worked on probably about 10 projects now, PC, mobile, Facebook. And probably three or four of them have actually come out and the rest you will never ever see, but such is the game industry. So, with that, let's start with questions. Please just feel free to come up. We'll try to get to as many as possible. Is this thing on? Cool. Uh so, as people trying to break into the industry, sometimes it's hard to know what kind of samples to send when you're asked for them. So, uh what kind of samples pool should be we we be working towards? Um mostly in terms of like form, you know, Twine, short stories, screenplay format, stuff like that. And uh when we do work in screenplay with these writing samples, is it better to follow

these sort of animation screen writing where you explain more than, you know, writing for live action, things like that. Well, uh first off, I I probably choose when you're applying to a company, I I would probably study what type of games they make first. Uh if they actually have a game editor and or or a narrative tool set involved with their with their game design, open that up, figure out what format actually that tool set uses for the the narrative delivery. And if you're actually going to include writing samples, just tailor it for the the type of game that those publishers usually make. For so, for example, if you're applying to Bethesda, I mean, like like study Skyrim, like study Fallout 4, see what the dialogue mechanic flow is for that and then and then just tailor your submission accordingly. You you shouldn't have to explain too much if you if you're if you're following their general format, but and sometimes over-explaining can actually hurt hurt your case a little bit, but that's just one piece of advice.

I got a really really good piece of advice from a friend of mine who writes for BioWare once. Um her advice was to take a scene that has high impact in in a game made by the company you want to apply for. So, let's just say, you know, that you were going to apply for BioWare. So, you take your favorite scene in Mass Effect and you dissect it, dialogue line by dialogue line. It's going to take you a long time to have to go through all of those different times and find out all the different responses and where they lead, and you put a big string of sticky notes on your wall, and you see what the structure is and how the mood plays out and how the dialogue plays out over the structure of that scene, and then just adapt what you're doing to the general structure that you already saw that they used. Um I think I guess it depends heavily on, you know, are we talking about samples for you know, actually applying for a specific position, in which case I I definitely second Chris's

point of view, or whether this is stuff for a portfolio website. And I think there, you know, you know, having a diversity is is really handy. Having said that, I got sort of my second big gig when I had nothing on there but like a couple Twine games and an RPG Maker game and a promise to myself that when I had time I was going to sit down and write some combat barks. And the next thing I know, I get this email through the website being like, "Hey, we're looking for game writers, you know?" I'm like, "Okay, I'm one. I can do that." The other thing is I'm coming from the freelance end, so a lot of times you have non-developers. They're new to the industry or they realize that they want to get their message message out through a video game, and so they're not going to know to ask you for samples necessarily. And so in that case, I pick a few a few choice samples that show like character design, dialogue, and maybe world-building. So I give them kind of a general overview, and then I send that along and say, "Is there something that

you need specifically?" And so that'll give you direction as far as genre, tone, setting goes. So if they don't tell you, send something anyway because you are more likely to get a response if you send samples if and if you don't, you may not. I think somewhere in there you mentioned short story I would I would steer you probably steer you away from short story or prose in general if you have other samples you can show that you're right we are writing for a visual medium cuz in in nine out of 10 cases or more you'll be writing for visuals and not more internal focus of of prose. So a chapter from a a novel you've written or a a short story might not be the best choice. I mean if that's all you've got, we can still when you when you do see one of those samples you look at them and you can quickly tell within a few paragraphs what kind of chops the person might have, but it's not the kind of writing you generally do in games, so it's not as applicable as like a screenplay format for example. And in general I agree with what everybody said. I I do like to see if

someone does a custom sample for say fancy studio X you're probably applying for, that's great. I always looked for another thing too to make sure that wasn't like the only thing they had and they're a one-trick pony or something. Um but I agree that the other thing to think about is that people reviewing these are probably reviewing a lot of them. So you want to have less is more like just two or three things like the custom piece and a piece of your own. And you want some of your own personality to come across in like that custom piece probably so you can show I can do work that fits with you. I can do my own stuff too, but it should be short. It should be like I can read it in 10 minutes or something like that. I'd echo what what what Richard's saying like we sometimes we get like like 20-page dialogue submissions and that that's I I don't we don't need all that to determine what quality of writing you have or that you understand the structure of how a dialogue works. Like, and again, like Richard's right, like it it just takes too long to read like a super detailed submission. Just put your best foot forward and just and keep it brief and condensed because that that's also a good quality of a game writer, too. It's like you don't need to expound upon a a certain subject, so.

Thank you. to have dialogue limits, right? And you know, always. Um when I was Yeah, well, no, when I was doing dialogue for Lionel Battle Train, we had to take localization into account and so every single piece of dialogue that we have in that entire game had to be 110 characters long. So, we were kind of telling our story in in little spurts of 110 characters. So, that will actually help you learning how to do things in a very succinct manner. Thanks a lot. Hello. Um so I I wouldn't claim to be a writer myself. I um am a game developer and indie game developer and my friend and I are in the early stages of planning out a narrative-heavy game, sort of choose your own adventure style experience and we want to at least make a first attempt

of writing it on our own even though neither of us are writers per se. Um and I know it's a lot of work and it's going to be really tough to make it something that people connect to. Um I'm curious if you have any advice, resources for people trying to really do something that might be unique but need some basic concepts of how to write good dialogue and also um if we do feel the need uh on to bring uh a contractor in, a writer, uh game writer, what's the best format for someone to coming in later on, whether, you know, to look at a rough draft or something like that and try to punch it up. Uh what would be the best ways to to work with someone like that? Well, I know a bunch of people on this panel have written books. Why don't you get No, seriously, you've written books about how to do this. So, why don't you guys rattle off the title of your books? Yes, so I wrote the game narrative toolbox

with Tobias Rusner and LeMay and Jennifer Brandes Hepler, which is all about narrative design, just the writing of it, but also putting it into production with the entire team. So, you can find that on Amazon. Yes. There you go. My uh my book is called game design theory and practice. Uh it has a chapter on writing and storytelling, but it's more generally about game design in total and the whole development process. I think I think you. Uh the book I wrote and came out last year is called video game storytelling. Uh and it's it's the first half is basically a distillation of the basics of Western storytelling structure seen through the lens of game development. The second half is aimed at different roles on a team and how you can apply these principles to development. But but one thing you said uh concerns me a little bit and it seems like you're associating writing with dialogue. Like you we're going to write we're going to make the whole game and the game story and then if we need and we're going to You have any tips on dialogue? Um and dialogue is like the icing on the

cake, right? The question is how good is the cake, right? So, uh the You asked the question, when to bring in or how to bring in a writer. And if you're not confident about your abilities to tell a story and yet you're going to structure it and structure is usually an adventure story game story game, uh the earlier the better is is my answer because if you bring a writer on just to write the dialogue and you've got a structure that isn't working, um then that writer they will not be able to help you that much. And that's a case that happens to game writers a lot as they're brought in at the late stage just to write dialogue to layer icing on a on a cake that was not properly baked, possibly. We can slap some icing on it, but in the end you take a bite of it and it, you know, more like a stale Twinkie sometimes. So, yeah, that's So, I would say the earlier the better. If you're not confident in your abilities or at least be able to backtrack and and give the writer the ability to come back in and work on your structure as well as your your dialogue, which is the icing. To to to briefly follow up on what Evan said, like there is a difference, you

know, cuz cuz at that point in a in a way you would be asking them like, yes, as a game writer, but also to a certain extent as as a copy editor who may not be able to make substantive changes. So, you know, they might be like, yes, I can I can do this dialogue for you, but here's this massive plot hole that would require, you know, an extra 6 months of development to to fix. Um and the thing is like, you know, there are there are definitely game editors that are, you know, that that you know, that is that is an a cool discipline and is very worth looking into. But if you want to really integrate it with the story as early as possible, like yeah, there's a difference between game editing and narrative design. And as Evan says, earlier the better. Also, you were talking about hiring a writer. I would highly suggest doing your research on work for hire law and looking up work for hire contracts. Also, please for the love of God and everybody in this room, please look up professional rates for writers. A lot of writers do not know what professional rates are and when you understand what the professional rates are and you say,

"Hey, I can actually pay you what you are worth and what your job is worth," you will get good writers. You will attract bad writers if you don't pay them well. And I guess a final thing I just wanted to say, not to be too harsh, I guess, but you say like, "Oh, we're we're not, you know, you're a programmer and maybe friends and artists or or whatever." And you're you're "And we're going to take on this narrative game, but we don't feel like your writers on Why are you taking on a narrative game?" Like I mean, you should play to your own strengths first, you know, if it's like a a first project that you're you're venturing into or something like that. You should say, "Well, what can we do that What are we really good at? Let's play with that." And then maybe write your Or but if you really want to do a writing game but a narrative game but neither of you feel good about it. Yeah, get someone immediately. And it doesn't have to be Much as I agree, get a professional if you can, but if you're on a budget, you know, look around the community for someone else who wants to go in as a partner with you or something who can be that voice for narrative from day one. And it Keep Just one thing, keep in mind that you can do a lot with narrative without words.

You can have a very visual-heavy game that has a lot of environmental narrative. You would also need a narrative designer for that, but keep that in mind, too. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I wanted to avoid a lot of those pitfalls going into it, so thank you. Okay. Good luck. Hi. This might be another buy my book question, but um I am a very strong writer, and I'm not a very strong game designer. And I'm trying to become, you know, like you said, a game designer that also writes well. And I guess my question is how do you take it so that your writing is built around the mechanic more or less? What was that last thing you said? Um how do you uh How do you suggest that you take the mechanic of the game and, you know, use your writing to supplement that as opposed to the other way around? It's just the story slapped onto a game. I kind of came at it from the same direction that you did. I came into the industry as having been a writer and never done any game design before.

And so, you know, that's kind of where I was in the same place. And what I did was I bought The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. And I didn't just do that because the guy was signing my paychecks. It really was the most accessible, conversational, entertaining book that I found on game design, and I learned an awful lot from that. And you start to look at the story from different angles when you've read that book. And then when you're on the team that you're that you're with and you're making this game, um you're going to be in a lot of meetings, and during those meetings they'll tell you what is and isn't possible. You know, if if you've got this bit of dialogue, you know, about a guy who's talking about an ancient door that needs a key, but the artist is like there's some wacky reason that it can't be a door, it's a gate. You know, you just you you get that by talking to the other members of your team and having some understanding of what their constraints are. Yeah, I I'd agree with Heidi. Basically, what you'd want to do is is

sit down with the system designer, the gameplay programmers, or whoever's actually in charge of the systems for the game, and just have them walk you through it. Like it's it doesn't require a lot of critical analysis to figure out what the core system the narrative should be supporting it. So, for example, if you're writing a merchant for an RPG, there's certain implied system mechanics there whether people actually realize or not. One is if you're talking to a merchant, the reason a player is talking to a merchant is cuz they want to buy and sell something. So, don't have like 15 nodes of dialogue before you actually get to the buy-sell option. You're smiling, but there are some writers that still make that mistake. When you when you talk to a merchant or you talk to the healer in town, there's a very specific system that you want from them. Don't let the narrative get in the way of that. And that's that's a really easy analysis to do. And then you can take that analysis and make it even more complicated. It's like if you're in like Fallout: New Vegas, for example, and they're trying to reinforce the reputation mechanics in that game, as a narrative designer, you suddenly have an important role about how you're going to communicate that reputation mechanic in the game, which has a

certain number of narrative conditional to it associated with it. Like you'd have to have factions, for example, in order for reputations to work. Or obviously the the people you talk to need to react with the reputation is low or high. And a lot of that stuff you can just find it by dissecting the systems, talking to the system designer or the gameplay programmer, and then figuring out how the story can support all of that. And actually it's actually not too complicated once they lay it out for you. There's a There's a lot of Excel and spreadsheets involved with that usually, too. Yeah, I already experienced that. Thank you. Okay. This might be a dumb question, but what exactly Never say that. exactly is the difference between like a game writer and a narrative designer? Someone have a So So once upon a time the Writers Guild Association told me that we couldn't submit work because we weren't labeled writers where I was working. And I I took a little bit of umbrage at

that. I'm like, "Well, I do a lot of writing, god damn it. Blah blah blah." And but And then I realized maybe I don't do writing. And so I think the distinction comes So a narrative designer, I think the the full job description for that is they're the guys that that also know how to like script the logic variables. They know exactly how to implement the quests in the game in all those different stages, what sort of XP rewards they should be getting. And usually they're arranged a little bit more technical than, "Hey, we just brought in a writer to take all the blank notes for this particular quest and just write like two lines for each one of them." So it kind of depends. I I generally prefer the term narrative designer because as soon as you're involved with an interactive experience, I think you're you're doing a lot more than just writing, whether you realize it or not. But that's just my opinion. I The The definition I've been working with for the most part has been that that game writers, their craft focus is more on words and text. So you know, they're they're often doing the

dialogue, the lore, sort of the plot. Whereas narrative design encompasses that, but also can encompass like all the more, I guess, abstract ways that the game itself tells story. You know, things like environmental design, sound design, things like that. So, a writer would be maybe, you know, their their day might be like, "I'm going to write this, you know, this dialogue." Whereas, a narrative designer might be like, "I want this area to convey a sense of foreboding. I'm going to go talk to, you know, the narrative designer to see how can we do that. Maybe we could have like a corpse hanging somewhere or something." That's how I differentiate the two. I'd agree with Michelle, too. Like, sometimes for for games, narrative designers would actually do like a visual storytelling pass, where they're like, "Here's the props that I need in this area to communicate that the following thing happened." But, there wouldn't be a single note of dialogue or a journal entry anywhere around there. You're just asking in tandem with the environment artists and and the world builders, like, "How do I build this campsite so it looks like, you know, it was abandoned 1 week ago, but clearly

the turrets and the binoculars are focused at this distant location over there that I'm trying to draw the player to?" And there's no talking about it whatsoever. It's all in the setup. Well, in a in a lot of ways, a narrative designer is a facilitator. As Michelle was saying, the narrative design can help embody the world and the story and even the gameplay in a lot of different aspects of the game. And so, as a facilitator, the narrative designer is going to work with the level designers and the game designers and the programmers and the scripters and and talking to them about, "Okay, how can we get this to come across in the gameplay? Or, you know, how can we get aspects of the world to come through in the UI design?" To use Mass Effect, for example, the UI and the menu settings looks like a console of a spaceship. Why? Because you are the commander of a spaceship. So, that's narrative design in just the UI. You know, it can be sound, it can be art. So, you are really making sure, I like to say it this way, that the world and

the story embody the gameplay. That's how I think about it, but you can look at any aspect of the game and apply narrative design to it. I like I like all the Sorry. I'm I'm the bald white guy now. The sad truth is that all these things are true, but also defined differently at every company that you might interact with or work with. And some will not have narrative designers, and the writers will be doing the narrative design, but not getting credit as that. Sometimes the narrative design is being done by the level designers, and the writers really are just writing the dialogue, you know, and it it'll Sometimes there are no writers, and they're all called narrative designers. What it So, it's really variable from place to place. I like the definitions I'm hearing. Is that sort of generally what happens? But you kind of again, if you're like applying somewhere or something like that, you'll want to research, well, what do they mean by this? And it might be that you're applying for narrative design, all they want to see is writing samples, and they don't even talk to you about gameplay. Or it might be the opposite. So. Yeah, I I've done a whole talk on this very subject in the back in the past at IGDA, and uh I would say that I would say that

high-level First of all, game writer, narrative designer, they both do both. They have to. Uh it's very hard to complete If you're a narrative designer, you're almost guaranteed to be doing some game writing of some kind. And if you're a game writer, you're implicitly doing narrative design of some kind in the way you think about the story. Um it's it's almost impossible to completely extricate them from each other. And in a smaller team, one person will generally be doing all of it. As you get to larger teams, we start to see them separated, and that's becau- I would say game writer is more focused on content and creating the creative side of of the just the story side more. And the narrative design is more integration and implementation. But they both have to be on the same page. And again, they both have built to kind of think that way. Um but when you get a large team, you it's useful to separate them to a certain degree, so that one person can be that person in the meetings with the level designers and with the system designers, and the writer has has the ability to to detach and focus on actually writing, cuz it's very hard on a large team and large project to do both those things at the same time.

To to sort of, you know, wrap everybody's thoughts up there, the one of the things I I one of the definitions I really liked for narrative design is that you are the champion of the story, you know, the of the champion of the theme, of the mood, of the narrative. And so, and of course you can be that as the game writer as well. But I think, you know, for me narrative design sort of, you know, there's a connote that there's a sort of an implication of not only are you championing it within, you know, the writing sphere, but you're championing it for the entire team, you know, you're you're working with the team to sort of say like here is our narrative goal, how are we all working together to reach that goal. Awesome. just going to say that when I talk to elementary schools and they ask me, "What does a narrative designer do?" Um the simplest answer that I tell them is I'm the one who explains why the birds are angry. Um I just wanted The point I wanted to make has to do with all the invisible writing that goes into game writing

because every single thing that you see on a screen has to be described so that an artist can draw it properly. Um there have to be documents that explain backstories, there have to be um lore bibles saying, you know, "These are the rules of our world." So, for all of the text that you see on a screen in the game, there's a whole lot of text that you never see and we have to write all of that stuff, too. So, there's a lot of invisible writing that goes along with the game, too, so keep that in mind. Cool. Awesome, thanks so much. So, uh parts of this were kind of covered by the last part of the that answer and answer of the previous question, but um how would game writers or game narrative designers market their skills or what they do to people who may not be aware of what it is that game writers or game narrative designers do or are aware of their importance.

Mhm. Well, uh you point to Half-Life 1 and you go, "Once upon a time, first-person shooters were all just about shooting people in the face, but then Half-Life came along and added a story." And they saw it was valuable. It made a lot of money. Yeah, I I mean, there's a If you're looking to convince someone of the value, is that what basically we're talking about? I mean, there there's a survey I have I have a link to my website on the front page that that showed that in games with a story mode, that reviewers uh are more concerned with the story aspect, the narrative aspect, than than other elements like gameplay or art. Like, it's that important. It drives review scores. And there If you want to try to quantify this and and put it in dollars and dollars and cents, you know, say, "This is actually can benefit your your say your your review scores, which in fact impacts sales." I mean, it's right there. Uh you know, in in kind of black and white if you're looking for the actual data. You could you could also point to Telltale Games and go, "Well, apparently there's some studio out there that makes a lot of money just does telling stories in games." Like, apparently that's working

out really well for them. So. I would actually go I would do all of that, but I'd also go a slightly different route, and that is have a couple of games in mind that you can try to have that are not uh explicitly story-heavy or what we would normally think of story-heavy games. So, you know, for example, there's lots of people who say, "Oh, Five Nights at Freddy's, that's not got much of a story." I'm like, "Yes, it does. Here's Here's all the story that's in it." Um or uh you know, or some other games that maybe don't even have any text at all, but you can point to like, "This is how the art you know, this is how the art, the music, the like, everything combines to convey a mood or convey a story, and hey, narrative design is all about that." I think your best bet is going to be through networking when you were talking one-on-one with someone. And as Michelle was saying, you have your arsenal of examples. Um you know, one I like to use is Plague Inc., which has a very specific story and has lots of dynamic world building, but a lot of people would look at that game and say there's no story and there's no world building. Well, yes, it's right in front

of you. You see what's happening in real time. Um, so being here is really great. Uh, try to find other networking events because, you know, there are a lot of people now who want to make games and you're probably in the position where you're probably going to be looking for work soon. So, if you can convince them, um, and it's getting a lot easier all the time because they want to be convinced. They need They know they need to make games. So, listen very carefully to what they're saying because they'll probably tell you a lot about their project and based upon what they are telling you, grab a example that is similar to what they're doing and explain to them using that example. Don't explain to them directly, "Here's how you Here's how you fix your game." Because then they don't need to hire you. Um, but, you know, listen very carefully, grab an example that's very illustrative of what they're trying to do. And I would just add as sort of a cynical point of view on this that if you're I mean, it it sort of depends on the situation and like if it's your friends who are making a game

and and you want to tell them to convince to convince them they should add more story to it. I think you have a shot. If you're like going up to a team that's established, that is working well, and doesn't think they need story, like they I don't know. It It can be hard to to flip them and if you If you If they say, "Well, I guess so." and sort of let you in to do some stuff, they'll probably end up cutting you off at the knees most of the time anyway cuz they never wanted story in the first place. Now, this person show up and and I've certainly been in those situations on like big projects at studios where whoever was in charge of the project didn't think story was necessary, but someone told them to bring someone in and then they can you know, continue to undermine them for the entire process and say, "See, we didn't need story." So, you got to look at the situation you're going into and is it possible to actually convert these people or should I just go look somewhere else where it's going to be more receptive? Yeah, if you're if you're talking with a team that that you're trying to convince of the of the value, you may need you may be talking to the wrong team. Right. At this point, there's there's so much evidence already. need to discover this by themselves, which they often do. And you may say, "Hey, you know, your game might be better if I with some narrative put in here and here, but let me know if you need any help." And just let them go. And you may

get a call Right. in 6 months when it's hit the fan and they realize that they don't And could you just come in and write the dialogue? Right. Well, that's that's Yeah, but then next maybe next time afterward they will have learned their lesson and you will say I you know, I can fix this dialogue, but you know, I could have done a lot more if I could change this and this, which I know I can't because you've already locked it in. But maybe next time I could help you earlier. And that's that's kind of you know, that that may be a long-term relationship. But sometimes they have to a lot of times they have to discover it for themselves. They think they know how to write. They think they can handle it. And then Or maybe they think they don't need story at all. Right. Or they don't need story at all. And someone says, "This is really flat. Doesn't feel right. What could help? Maybe a story." And then suddenly they realize that they're in trouble and they call in someone like you or someone like us to try to rescue them and we do our best, but we have to explain that the reason we can only do so much is because they waited so long. And maybe next time they'll be one of those studios that does value what a what a narrative person can bring early on, but you know. Thank you.

Hello. So, so writing is a process of iteration and reiteration and that is important because that's so in your endeavors you want your writing to be as polished as organized as possible and I mean, every writer has his or her own process when it comes to writing. So, I wanted to ask you folks, you know, what is personally the process that has proven most effective in your writing endeavors when it comes to you know, creative writing and you know, game writing overall. Uh first off, uh, indicate the person on the team who's in charge of the story. They may not be in charge of the project, but that person is empowered to have all the authority and responsibility over the story changes as long as it's in accordance with the game systems. Uh, when there's multiple writers in the project, uh, make that hierarchy very clear within the writers as well. So, they all they always know who the creative lead is or the lead writer is and they recognize that they're actually trying to help that lead writer realize the vision for that

story and he, in turn, is trying to help the game realize its vision, but he feels the story, uh, is the best way to do that. Um, and the responsibility, uh, the lead writer would usually, um, do the the the the drafts of the story, uh, up until a point. Usually, I find by the third draft, you either need to figure out what the strengths of that story are or scrap it. Uh, usually by the third draft, the lead writer has come up with, "We feel this is the appropriate spine for the story. Now, let's reinforce it and and build off of that." I would say have finite feedback windows. Because anytime you have a whole team of writers in a situation where they can write If you've If you've ever popped open a document that 100 people have commented on, you know, it's like, "I'm done." Like, there's there's no way I'm going to get through this. Like, it's all a month has passed and you're like, "Why is there 100 people commenting on this? Like, Jesus effing Christ." Yeah, it's like, you know, marketing, your your time to to look at this and

and give us feedback is between this date and this date. And then after that, we're moving with whatever you said at this time. They're just words. Can't you just reorder them? Uh, you just reorder everything. You can you can get yourself into a real situation because if people are making changes all along and all along and all along, it's like, when is this thing ever done? You have to reach a point cuz there is a release date, people, right? There just is. And you have to be willing to declare it done at some point, even if you're not 100% happy with it. There is going to be a time when you have to declare it done. And so, um assigning which groups are allowed to give feedback at what points, and making those feedback windows finite and scheduled. Yeah, there has to be that cut There has to be that cut off point where the mutation has to stop. And you're like you're like, this is the This is the form you're going to take. And that And that's pretty much it. Uh because I actually ran into one problem with the studio where um I I realized that every time I gave feedback, they'd completely rewrite the story. And at that point I'm like, okay,

wow, actually feedback is getting really dangerous now because it's not actually helping anything. So I'm like, okay, well we're just going to take this story right now. Don't change anything. Here's some very tiny specific things you might want to address, but uh you have You have to watch the iteration process, too, cuz sometimes people can just jump off the deep end. Uh I've I've found the process well I mean every game is different, every team is different. It's hard to say there's one process that you could apply to all situations, but one thing I always make sure I do is really focus on, especially when brought in early enough, is to really focus on the the mechanics of the game. And what is the core of this game? And to play the game, and to understand and to read the documentation on the vision for the gameplay, cuz that's what we're trying to make better. We're trying to support it and enhance it and contextualize it. And if you just jump in with, well we thought we were going to do this with the story, just run with that, and you don't stop and stop and back up and go, wait, what is your game? Show me the game. Show me how it how it plays. And then sometimes you need to take two steps back and say, you know what? This story that you've come come up with doesn't match your game. This character you're talking about in the story isn't what you do in the game. So

And that's more of a narrative more of a narrative design type of angle, but you've got You kind of go Maybe have to go back one or two steps possibly, I found, and and and really with a fresh set of eyes, especially if you're coming in new, and say, you know, maybe we need to reevaluate where your story concept is, and let's match it better to what this game is really about, uh what you actually do. So. So I come from the opposite end of the spectrum because except for two projects, everything that I have worked on, I have been the sole narrative designer and or game writer. So, to stop the infinite feedback, I have very clear milestones, and I have milestones for client feedback. And then I have milestones for payment that go along with drafts. So, it's like if you want more than two revisions, then you start paying me for more revisions. And so, with feedback, the the the feedback milestone, that says to them "Okay, you only have so many chances to give me feedback to change things before you pay me." And so, they know that feedback

needs to be excellent, and it needs to be on target. Yeah, I I find that financial accountability really causes those those comments to sharpen very quickly. And also, if if you're doing game writing, if that you're getting feedback like from a publisher and the developer, it's always good to have one person designated as the sort of compiler of all the feedback from the studio, and that's actually specified in the contract somewhere. I guess the one thing I would add a little different is I like to I like the expression I heard somewhere that if you're putting it out there and you're not slightly embarrassed by it, you've probably worked on it too long. And I think that's particularly true in like particularly if you're on a on a big project that's going to have a lot of iterations, and you need to like write the script for a level or something like that. You want to do a pass of it that's like pretty good, but not insanely polished, not like every line agonized over forever, because you know you're going to get around to feedback. And then it'll be really interesting to see, "Oh, these are the things everyone didn't like. I'll work on that. I guess the other stuff is probably fine." I

mean, still go back and have your own polish pass to make yourself feel good about it, but don't And also, as in the very iterative process, "Oh, sorry, we cut half the level." So, all those lines you polished are now trash. So, better to just get a good version out get a pretty good version out there, but don't kill yourself on it, knowing that you're going to have time to go back to it. But if you've, you know, got something like a a session coming up, knowing, "Oh god, I guess I better actually polish that now." So. Um I'm still kind of working out my favorite iteration process because I'm new, so I've I've worked on like in terms of the projects I've worked on I've worked on everything from being the only narrative designer to being in a team where there's like multiple writers and none of us are allowed to talk to each other. Spoiler alert, don't do that. Um and and then the current team I'm I'm with, you know, we have a a meeting and we talk about stuff um and sometimes that's an incredibly, you know, useful iterative process and other times I'm like, "We've been talking about what this character should be named for 2 hours. Oh dear, what happened?" Um I I I would take away from that that like don't don't be afraid to ask for more

like specifics if they're not giving you enough cuz several times I I've I've had, I don't know if you've ever had the feedback, "This is great. It just needs to be tweaked a bit more." It's like, "Okay, like do you want me to like tweak the paper or what? You know, what what what do you want from me?" Um and uh the other thing is uh I I I actually am kind of a fan when if there's multiple writers, if there's a little bit like, you know, each writer has their specific task like, you know, "You're write you're you're, you know, doing this project. You're doing this part of the project." As long as there's good communication between, you know, the writers, I think that can actually, you know, be a very handy way to do things because then, you know, you're not you're not constantly iterating off each other, but you're able to give feedback to each other on your area of of specialization. So, I've I've had good good experience. Michelle Michelle's way of doing it in the Fallout games where what we do is we actually uh segment each area and give each area to a different writer so they wouldn't be stepping on each other's toes like that. Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah. Also, another thing I'd say I in terms

of iteration, I do prefer it when like, you know, one writer gets something out and then everybody builds on, you know, what that writer has done rather than, "Hey, we need this idea for this character." and everybody provides their character idea cuz now it's like, "Well, now we've got to, you know, go through what everyone has done and figure out what we're going to do, which can be very interesting, but can also be a little time-consuming. So. And morally depressing. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much for the invaluable insight. Howdy. Hello. Um so, one of the things that I found in talking to a lot of students who want to get into game writing is that they really want to write games, and it's really hard for them to divorce sort of the game mechanic aspect of game writing to just look at good writing and interesting writing, and really be excited from writing because they're not reading anything that isn't really a game. And they just don't understand how those things connect. So, I think it's would be super duper valuable if you guys just talked about like what you've been

reading recently, what's some really good writing you've discovered in just sort of in the last couple months, and throw that out so everybody knows what books they should buy and read after this conference. I I just got done reading The Circle by Dave Eggers. I loved it. It was terrifying. So, that's I recommend that one. I I just started reading a book called Loosed Upon the World. It's a collection of short stories about environmental calamity that she wrote a story in. It's pretty cool. Thank you. Yeah. I admit I tend to have my favorites that I keep coming back to, and and will basically foist on anyone who asked me like which book should I be reading, and one of them is frankly I reread Pride and Prejudice at least once a year. I love that book to death. Um and actually the one of the one of the best books I've read also in terms of interesting like integrating the research about a time period into the story was um Pillars of the Earth, which

is a novel by Ken Follett about cathedral building in medieval England, and it's just it's got a riveting story, and it's like but clearly he wants you to know he knows that he learned a lot about cathedral building, so really good, you know, integration of the plot with the research that way. Uh I I read Steinbeck's East of Eden recently, very long book and just a class one of the classics that kind of passed me by. I didn't I didn't catch the first time when I you know I was at school or whatever. They didn't have it, so I checked that out and then I now I'm reading a Fred Saberhagen book called called Empire of the East. So I have an East theme and I'm working in the East right now, so it's a very East-based theme going right now. Uh but yeah, your your point is is is taken that that you know, you you it's it's it's important to have influences outside the industry just like it's important to have a you know, a a rich tapestry to draw upon and different influences, not not just books, but you know, movies and classic movie you know, movies, great movies and great TV shows and just have a variety

of things you can draw upon. And I I had two sort of on that tip quickly, two interview questions that that I would use to rule people out. One was name some games that are well written and I would find a lot of writers who weren't game writers who would say they're all terrible. They're out just cuz they're not paying attention, right? Like sure, a lot of games are badly written, but there's some good ones. Have you spent any time investigating it? And then the other one was, oh great, your game stuff is good. What else are you reading? What else are you doing? It's like, oh well, I read the Halo novel and the thing and there's nothing wrong with the Halo novel and that's all fine, but if they're so insular in that world, it's sort of uh like this is going to they're not they're not broad enough in their knowledge. Exactly what you're saying basically, so. Well, and I I had one, but I I hope manga counts. Um and I'm going to butcher the title. Uh Nijigahara Holograph, which is very David Lynchian and a a very interesting style, very beautiful, so. Uh I sort of have a reverse perspective where um I punish myself whenever I'm not writing by watching Star Trek

Voyager. And I usually find within 20 minutes I go back to writing. But and uh the only non-fiction I'm reading right now is proof the science of booze which was fascinating. But what I actually do is I actually do reading in the reverse in the sense that let's say for example when I was writing on Wasteland 2, I wanted to do like the agricultural center because I really like that location in the first game. But then once I realized I was going to be like writing an agricultural center that had grown out of control, I immediately went to the internet and I'm like well what what are all the popular sources of fiction that have already covered this topic. So I'm like okay well I'm going to watch Day of the Triffids. I'm going to read Day of the Triffids. Like I'm I'm going to go read like you know Food of the Gods. Like all those aspects like cuz I want to I want to I want to be aware of the range of connections I can possibly draw and also be aware of the connections that I don't want to draw because some other source has already covered it already. So that I I sometimes approach reading in reverse but it's very specific to what I'm writing on.

Hi. My name's Bridget and from New Zealand. I'm working on a large transmedia project for young girls, 8 to 12 year olds, which sits on the core platforms of TV, books, and gaming. And that's the gaming part I'm here for obviously. So my question is do you have any thoughts or resources or um anything in terms of writing for children? I think young girls, 8 to 12 year olds, are very it's a very specific time. It's a really precious end of childhood but not quite not quite adolescence and and my whole project is all about capturing the the innocence and the the joy and the wonder of childhood. And so in terms of writing, that's always my focus. I come from a writing background. I'm a film and TV person originally. So yeah, any thoughts on that would be really cool. Yeah, actually eight of my nine titles were for children between the ages of 11 and 15. And what I found was it would be really

easy to write in a way that like talks down to them. Mhm. And so what I did was two things. One was focus groups, focus groups, focus groups, right? Um, find out how they feel about the things that you're doing and whether they fly or not. And cuz kids, they can smell from from really far away. And they are not shy about telling you what they like and what they don't like. Yeah. And so focus groups are really helpful. Um, but the first game that I worked on was for 11 to 14-year-old African-American children. And I'm about as far away from a 12-year-old black girl as one gets. And I went into the project really recognizing that and wanting to do it right. So what I did was I wrote the outlines of the story and then we went to a boys and girls club where there actually were kids in this demographic who who the, you know, the stories were for. And we had them act out the stories. And so a lot of the phraseology that I borrowed from when I wrote that dialogue was from when those

kids were acting the stories out. So that it was being done in a way that was, you know, not going to be patronizing or offensive or anything like that. It was just My my suggestion would be to include the kids in the process. cool. I was a qualitative researcher in a previous incarnation, so I I respond well to that. Thank you. I I'd suck in that. The I usually find however that the the focus groups will come to me because all my friends have have kids within that age range. They'll immediately start pitching games to me about dragons and unicorns. And they're all and actually it's like 10 times better than anything I could think of. I'm like, "Wow, this is great." But uh it often becomes an excuse to go meet and hang out with them. And then I just listen to what the kids are talking about. And I'm like, "Wow, that's pretty great. Well, that's going to make me that's going to make me rich for a year." I've written for children. I've also written for children's games. And you had a very interesting age range there, 8 to 12. Uh, because there's a huge difference in maturity and interest between 8-year-olds and 12-year-olds. And also like the technical aspect of it because writing for kids

I I don't know if you have reading level requirements. So, you know, you have 12-year-olds, but it's going to have to be on the reading level for 8-year-olds. So, that's going to be an issue, too. It's got to be interesting enough for 12-year-olds, but it the language can't be so simple that they're not interested in it, but at the same time it can't be so complex that the 8-year-olds can't get into it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good point. guess the the one thing I would add is um I don't have any experience doing this at all, so don't listen to my opinion on that, but the nightmare scenario to be in and to watch out for maybe is if you have say a member of the team or an executive who's got power over the project who has a kid who's this particular age and suddenly they are the demographic just that one child and then it just can become a nightmare scenario of like, "Well, Bobby doesn't like it." And like, "Well, yeah, but these other 20 kids did." Like, "Well, Bobby doesn't like you. Bobby doesn't like you, either. Bobby wants you fired. That's right. That's right. So, just be wary of that sort of personal because you know,

like an executive will be really close to their kid and suddenly they're running your project secretly behind the scenes or something like that. convinced they are anyway, you know? All right. Thank you very much. Hi. Um I'm a writer, but I currently work in monetization for a free-to-play game and I am going to be transitioning into game design and more writing on free-to-play games soon. Um so, my questions are kind of based on that. Um I kind of have like two facets to the question. One is like general tips for writing to free-to-play games where where you can use it is a lot more restrictive and also the game's established, so it's kind of have to like squeeze it in. Tips for that. And also tips for writing for a game that has like the build-up of a narrative, but based on the way that free-to-play games are, probably will never have like an ending point because, you know, that levels just keep going on. Um, so tips

for both of those things. So, I'm going to say something that's going to crush the hearts of all the writers in the room, but always make the narrative bits skippable. Because, you know, a lot of people are playing in short stretches. They are playing the mobile game because they'll just have a little bit of time. And so, they don't have time for a lot of story. They want to get right to the gameplay. The other thing is think about mobile games as bits of story. And like, you sprinkle that in. It doesn't have to be after every level necessarily. If you have dialogue, it needs to be super short. We talked about less is more. Less is really, really, really more with mobile games. And also, think about smartphone screens instead of tablet screens. Because, you can play the same games on the phone and the tablet, but the smartphone screen is going to be a lot more restrictive. So, write for the smartphone and not for the tablet. Um, I I have actually been working on some free-to-play games at the moment.

And I'm also doing a sort of a career transition at the moment. Um, my the one thing I've been trying to do is, whenever possible, like, you know, for example, you've got for most of these free-to-play games, you might have, for example, a you know, a resource that, you know, is going to be purchased through, you know, real world dollars. I've actually tried to make an effort to actually, like, integrate that within the story that it makes sense in a way. Like, you know, for example, okay, well, you're collecting this this, you know, maybe you're collecting stars. And then there are these special stars that, yes, you do need to pay money for. So, I've I've tried to make it so that it feels like the getting the more powerful resource is actually a part of the narrative of the game. Um, another thing I've done I've I've I have been trying to do exactly what Tanya says and keep and keep the the the writing short. I don't know how well I've succeeded. Um but uh yeah, definitely keep it skippable. Um

and make I would actually say one thing I would definitely do is try to give the NPCs as much flavor within that small amount as you can because I've I I tried several free-to-play games in the genre I'm writing it and I'm like, "This is just like yeah there's a person there's a character popping up and they're literally just giving me exposition and tutorial text and I'm feeling nothing for who this person is." Like I know you're Kate Upton. I don't know what you what it Who are you? What are you doing here? Um so I I would definitely see what you can do to make those make make the way that you're delivering the tutorial and the instructions like interesting on a character level as well. I'm going to bring the room down even further and say that if you're going to work on a free-to-play game also don't sign a non-compete clause where you can give advice about how to design or write for free-to-play games for a year after you leave a company. But in a completely unrelated topic, I've been playing this incredible game

called Dungeon Boss which doesn't have a lot of text but there's a story involved there. Hypothetically this is crazy. Um the and the amount that they get away with with just the naming of the abilities for each character tells a ton about each character as well as the animations that they have. Like they have this one goblin who does a lot of like cheap shots and like obviously like he's a dirty fighter. But then they also have his animation set where like he's kind of a pyromaniac. But he ends up his attack move is he actually he accidentally sets himself on fire and then he runs around screaming the entire screen but he burns all the enemies while he's doing it. That alone tells me 5 million words about that character right there. So look for ways with animation uh even the names of abilities, even the visual effects of how they're presented. That that can be almost your entire story right there, depending on the presentation, but and it requires no words whatsoever. Well, and what another thing uh I was reminded when Michelle was talking about the dialogue, if you can get a range of character portraits and emotional states for like say one character, maybe you

can have up to four emotional states, so you can you can match the emotional state with the dialogue. Uh cuz usually you don't have voice over, but if you can show like like a neutral state, happy, frustrated, angry, sad, that that visual helps a lot, too. With regard to your question about a story that never ends, right? Uh think think about uh TV writing and the way that they just perpetuate character arcs. And of course, it's much broader and a much larger stage than what you're talking about, so you have to scale it down, but finding out what happens to this character over this arc, and then as that's resolving, another arc starts with a different character, for example, so you can always have something on the go endlessly, as opposed to a big three-act structure with with leading to a giant climax that never comes because we can't resolve the story, right? So, you want to focus more maybe on character arcs and things resolving on a small scale and overlapping with each other. Again, very much a small stage to do it, but there is there are ways to to to kind of thread those things through. You could think of it as a soap opera model.

Yeah. You know, think of it in terms of a soap opera. You know, that things are blown up with this character, and just before it resolves, something else happens with the Now, this one's been diagnosed with some horrible disease. And and the episode always ends with like, you know, I know exactly what you're about to tell me, and then like goes, you know, you have to wait till tomorrow, and then they're like, "Oh, you're going to tell me that you're you know, going out to the store to buy some milk." So, like Or you you can wait till tomorrow or pay $5 to to find out right right now what happens. Exactly. Um and actually, that that also brings up something I kind of wanted to say, and and and and maybe I'm going to get like, you know, attacked by rabid writers. Um it doesn't always have to be Shakespeare. Like it it's it's okay to occasionally look at something and be like, it's okay to write a, you know, a very silly story. Like you can still write a silly story and still put quality and effort into it. But like I remember I had, you know, one project where I was beating myself up about like, why am I not like integrating all of these like deep artistic issues? And I kind of had to come to peace with like it's it's not

that type of game. It would feel, you know, it would feel kind of forced if I was trying to do it. It's it's working better as a narrative to do it this way even though it's a bit of a silly fantasy story and that's okay. I spent most of my time on the Orion Trail project giving people space diarrhea. So. We'll try to get to the last three. Do we have time for the last three? Oh, I think thank you so much. We have five minutes so we'll try to get to your questions, yeah. Hi, I'm a novelist um, but in the publishing industry's own words, uh, it's adult fiction is anemic and insignificant. So I'm very interested in getting into games. Um, so I've made a couple game proposals for my published and unpublished books. I made a couple text adventures for my website but with an eye to the job fair tomorrow. Um, I'm curious about how I ought to present myself. Um, I doubt I'm going to be brought on board with a triple A game to be the lead designer.

That doesn't make any sense but um, with so many companies um, and I I there's games that I like but there's many more companies making good stuff. Um, I'm curious what advice you might have as to how I might match up with a good team and how I ought to present myself to them. What what's your interest in being a game writer? Like why why do you want to be a game writer? Well, it it seems that um, the way people people always want to get stories. People love stories. Um, but people aren't getting them from books. Games have a unique the interactivity but being able to blend cinematic qualities of sound and character design and all that. It seems like a great new medium we've been waiting for. There was a hypertext and that was supposed to be the next thing in storytelling and that didn't take off cuz it's not fun to play and the writing wasn't really up to what it needed to be. So, I'm I'm interested in being on the waiting side

of things. Okay, cuz whenever I talk to someone who's from a writer from another another industry, I ask them why and and do they play a lot of games and what games do they play and you know, is it is it just seeing a is it a question of you're passionate about games and you love games, you love playing games and you're interested in learning about game mechanics and getting really hip deep in that because that's that's there's probably no harder I mean, it's there's you know, Rihanna was just saying next door that writing in games is like writing in a headwind compared to other media. It is just that much more challenging cuz there's so many more complications. And so, you've got to have that passion, you've got to have that interest in getting really into Excel spreadsheets and and tools and take the technology not necessarily being coming a programmer but understanding what programs do and how the and and what they can and can't do and there's so much involved. So, if my my my core advice is is you need to really be passionate about games. It can't just be you see this as a frontier as a writer and you feel like you should be there. It's more like you should be passionate about being there because you're competing with those who are passionate. And and do play a lot of

games and understand how games are made. So, that's Discovering the Telltale Games really opened up my mind to the possibilities. I used to take apart choose your own adventure books like a budding engineer would take apart a vacuum cleaner to see how they worked and seeing this now finally come to fruition, I thought I really love this and I think I could do this and I would like to do this. And I definitely think start with that as your pitch for yourself of saying like, I really got into Telltale games when I realized this is cool not, oh I used to be a writer and obviously that's dying so where should I go now? You know, just to be honest that's that's going to turn off certain people who are like, well forget this guy. And I would think for your meetings this week where you're pitching your own properties that you own, you know, you should really view it as an entree into a conversation about what they actually need written maybe and not like think think of it like maybe you'll maybe you'll get one of them interested in one of your properties or something like that but it's kind of unlikely but it's more of like a look I can write and I did this pitch on it that's really

looks like a game already or whatever and shows that I get it and that I'm really into it and that oh and you need this other thing written? Well, I could do that too, you know, and that's going to I think more likely scenario to work out to be honest. Thanks. We'll try to get to the last two. Hello. I'll be really quick. I'm working as a narrative designer at the moment on my first game and one of the things that I found challenging is I will write a lot and the team obviously doesn't want to read it. So I was just wondering what are some tips and tricks and methods that you guys use to communicate your story and keep that across all the team across what the story is and how it's changing. bullet points bullet points flow charts flow charts like if if it's if if it's something descriptive if if it's something that animators and artists are going to be using, I put all the descriptive stuff up front and then the more detailed stuff later because I know they tend not to like to to like to read a whole lot. So you know, like the game designers,

the game writers, they can read the stuff that's at the end but keep stuff that's descriptive and up front and brief. Cool. Yeah, sometimes for projects I actually do like just do a PowerPoint presentation of the main characters and like the plot lines and and did involve a lot of flow chart but it also include things like a lot of reference art for like here's how here's here's some sources of inspiration for this character, so you know what I'm thinking about when I'm writing him. The artist doesn't have to actually do those specific reference images, but they understand where I'm coming from, so we can sort of meet somewhere in the middle. And generally like yeah, it's it's it's it's generally hard to get anyone else on the team to to read a lot of text. Usually when like asking for like a specific character look, often with artists it was it's doing what Toya says where you make a very brief list of bullet points, and then I dump a dump a bunch of reference art in a folder on the net, and then they go look at it and they meditate on it for a while and they come back with a number of variations for that character. Exactly that. Any way you can dramatize the story like

a PowerPoint with with art, and you can act it out, and you can kind of dramatize it and get them excited. Get up on get up stand up and use your hands and really if you were there with them. Mhm. You know, that's going to draw them in much more than a any document probably will. And yeah, and Evan's right. Another way you can you can sort of dramatize it too is if some concept artist already done. I generally find that artists really get excited about a presentation they see their images up being presented before the whole company and they're like, oh, well, that's my art. Wow, that's pretty cool. And this is a final thought, you know, I have a friend Liz England who talks about writing with the audience in mind any document you create. Like you shouldn't just write a design document, you should write one for the animator, one for the programmer, one for whatever. And she's doing a talk about this on Friday at 1:30 in this Rules of the Game session that you might want to check out cuz she talks about all the ways she's written different documents for every possible audience on the team. Awesome. Uh some things that's worked for the team I'm working with is one whenever possible they will actually try and embed a writer into one of the the other scrums so that there's someone not

necessarily giving them documents but actually able to answer questions on the fly. And the other thing is is weird as it sounds, we have a company newsletter where like we have to break down every scrum has to break down their three main points that's important for the rest of the scrums to to to know, and that's actually been really be to like, you know, break it down in three points. This is what the rest of you need to know about what narrative is doing. Yeah. Uh what last question and also really quickly we'll be at the wrap-up room right across in 3022. Hi. Um I am creating an immersive media game and the the thing that is bringing people through is the creation myth of how the world was created and our purpose here in saving the planet. And I've never created a game before. And so my big question is who do I need to bring on my team or what games would you point to and say, "Well, you want to learn and study this." Um but again, my big question is as I as I form this board of advisors and our team members, like who would you recommend is like good people to bring on.

I can tell story. I've never done it in the in the form of a game before. Did you say you have never played a game before? Oh, I've played a game before. Yes. Okay. I thought you said you never made a game before. Okay. Like I've got great story. I've never gamified it before. And so we're looking at how do we gamify this so that people go through this game experience where they get to be a part of saving the world, you know. I would definitely bring on a narrative designer or two uh to help you figure out how to integrate the uh the gameplay and the story. Uh I mean and and especially because immersion's really important. So your narrative designer would figure out how not to break immersion. And it's interesting that for a while there were a lot of of movie games that were made like say, "Oh, the new Star Wars movie is coming out so we should have a game about that." And they would try to follow the same plot as the movie or whatever. And those were inevitably terrible because you really need to write the plot for your game for your game and not just like, "We've got this existing plot. We can apply it to whatever." So you'll see a lot of the successful adaptations these days are really writing a pretty custom plot,

maybe in the same world, same setting, some of the same characters, but really changing it substantially and that's where like a narrative designer could come in to help you structure that. I was going to say you might want to expose yourself to a lot of different kinds of storytelling to see what you can draw from different things. Um I recently was in Nashville and did an escape the room experience in Nashville, and you wouldn't necessarily think that there's story that has to take place with that, but there really is, right? And so, you know, maybe just play different types of games and see what kinds of things you're really drawn to and really work that you can draw from. Um and you will find very quickly both what you really like and what you really don't. I was going to say like definitely bring a narrative designer on board, but something you can also do for yourself to kind of like you know, get at least some of the beginnings of understanding like, you know, how this sort of uh you know, the the the way uh game storytelling can work is to actually see if you can experiment in

Twine. Like um it's it's admittedly that's a that's a branching a specific branching type of of narrative, but I've actually found it's it's a very good visualization of understanding how game style branching narrative works. Um you know, you cuz cuz you might find oh, I had this like one central plot line, but I want to have a but you know, now there's all these like random branches that are going off into nowhere. I now need to write a new story for that. So, it it's actually I think a very good beginner way to kind of uh maybe beginner's not quite the right word, but a a good intro way to sort of wrap your brain around um you know, context-sensitive storytelling really. And that's called Twine? Yeah, it's a free tool on the internet, and there are many very good tutorials for that on the internet as well. Um and Twine too has actually gotten reasonably sophisticated with the things that you can do with it, you know, with visuals and audio, and you can build systems into Twines now. It's pretty It's a pretty powerful free thing. And it's great for experimentation, too.

Thank you. Thank you guys so much for coming again. Uh some of us will be in the wrap-up room, which is right across the hall. Thank you.