Skill-Building Series: Making The Designer-Writer Collaboration Work

[Music] hi thanks so much for joining us this evening for gdc summer my name is emma kidwell i'm a freelance narrative designer and i'll be moderating this session on behalf of susan you can ask questions in the chat box next to the session video and i'll get to as many of them as i can at the very end before we kick things off i ask that everyone is respectful and mindful of our code of conduct when participating in the discussion and with that i'm going to hand it off to susan awesome thank you emma hi everybody hello invisible people what's happening so i'm really excited to be speaking at gdc this year and i just want to get right into it because i want to save a lot of time for q a so as you're listening please keep in mind anything that comes to mind you'd like to talk about at the end we'll try to get to as many questions as we can okay so my name is susan o'connor and uh for years i was a game writer and now i'm a

story consultant my job is to help writers and the teams they work with i have been at this for a while i've worked on i stopped counting after 25 games mostly aaa but some indie as well way back in the day i founded the game narrative summit actually here at gdc because i really wanted writers to have a chance to get together so i'm really proud of that and i also in addition to working with studios uh and helping them with their stories i also teach a course in game writing over at ut here in austin where i am where i'm at right now so what are we going to learn today so a couple of things we're going to be talking through today we're going to be talking about why understanding the medium and what's really special about games helps you know what kinds of stories to tell i'm going to talk about why a dance class will make you better at your job i'm serious and i'm also going to share a couple of like three really specific uh practical strategies that you can use to be more effective with your designer

if you're a writer or more effective with your writer if you're a designer and if you are both you're going to get along with yourself a lot better so here we go okay so let's start by talking about what are games so every storytelling medium and games are a storytelling medium um like theater like tv every storytelling medium kind of lends itself to certain kinds of stories so for example books books are great at like showing us the inner life of a character we can go in chapter four inside the head of a character and listen to their thoughts for five chapters and we don't get tired of it like it just is a natural expression that books really lend themselves to so interior lives are in books movies are really great for visual storytelling big explosions gorgeous actors visuals pictures really do the job in movies tv is less about pictures tv really is a great place where if you are a writer who is really good at creating relationships between

characters and then expressing those relationships through dialogue so knowing what different mediums are good at helps you know where you can do your best work so games have kind of their own thing right and what makes games special as a storytelling medium is really two things one they they allow us to create stories that players can live in and for those of you that recognize this picture yay uh this is point break live which is a theatrical production that someone took the keanu reeves movie point break turned it into a play hired trained actors they perform every night but right before they go on they take a volunteer from the audience just some random person and bring him up on stage and that person plays the keanu reeves role totally unprepared doesn't know the lines has just kind of figured out as they go along that is game writing in a nutshell so it's something really challenging about storytelling in games and it's also something that's really special

so games let us live stories and stories bring meaning to gameplay it makes what we're doing in a game matter when it's working so stories have a really special power in games and and obviously i'm a writer so i'm biased but i think they're worth the effort you know we have tools that other writers do not i mean one of the strongest tools as writers that we have is the game play sometimes we think of it as getting in the way but it's actually like one of the most powerful tools that we can use to make an emotional connection with our with our players and the flip side is to my designers out there that story is one of your tools as well we don't always think of it this way sometimes designers think stories in my way and writers think gameplay is messing up my story but in fact they're actually really powerful tools the trick is we have to learn how to how to use them well and that's what we're going to talk about today so you know that if we're gonna get these two peanut butter and chocolate

together then the writers and the designers have to work together duh right and in some for people who are outside the industry like they'll often think well it must be pretty easy because you have a lot in common writers and designers spend all day problem solving writers and designers are both really interested in things like setups and payoffs and both writers and designers really want to create an awesome experience for the player so what's the problem well we'll talk about that in a second but i wanted to first share this awesome quote from jessie shell who is one of my favorite people he's amazing and he talks about this idea that it's really for designers he argues it's really not about the game it's about the experience the player has playing the game and you really could replace games with stories and designers with writers in this and the same sentiment would apply so we have a ton in common so what's the problem well let's talk about it so yes

we are all writers and designers are both solving problems but we're solving very different problems writers are sitting there thinking about dialogue and character and relationship and structure and designers are thinking about things like this right both important problems to solve both kind of unrelated something else that gets in the way we've got the setup and payoff idea right which is true both designers and writers are thinking about it but writers tend to think of it in traditional story terms which is beginning middle end and that's because human beings are hardwired for story to think of story in that way so writers are thinking in a linear fashion often whereas game designers are thinking in terms of maps and of spaces right story's linear game is spatial and then as far as creating a great experience for the player this is the real zinger i think i think when we if you asked a writer like what would be the ideal experience you could deliver to somebody they're going to talk about something

like moving you the way shakespeare moves audiences and if you ask a designer like what's the ideal gameplay experience they're gonna talk about something elegant and perfect like tetris so we both are looking at different north stars in the sky right and so like the big question is how do we get these things to actually start working together because if we don't try to make them work they're not going to work and i really think that the challenge in the working relationship is the perfect metaphor for it is the idea of silent disco so if anyone's ever been to one it's where you like hang out with your headphones and you dance and everyone else is maybe dancing to the same music but you're really kind of doing it on your own this is a lot of times how writers and designers end up working together like they're in the same room and they're we think they're kind of thinking the same things they're kind of listening to the same music as they create their stuff but they're not even looking at each other they're kind of doing what they want to do they're both expressing themselves one

is expressing through gameplay and one through story but they're not really communicating with each other right and part of the reason this happens in studios i think is because both people are really busy they have to do their jobs and it feels like it's going to be easier if they just do it side by side but don't get in each other's way very much but the problem is that doesn't lead to awesome creative breakthroughs and awesome innovations that bring story and gameplay together in new ways so i want to argue that instead of being at the silent disco we need to start thinking about partner dancing specifically honestly the tango is like the best metaphor i can think of because the tango is an improvised dance and while the man technically is leading the dancers are really paying attention to each other and following each other's cues that's why when you watch people dance the tango the expressions on their faces are very intense and it's because they are putting all their energy on their partner to try to figure out what wants to happen next it's not about the

woman or the man it's about the dance that happens between them and that to me is the ideal that we all should be shooting for in terms of bringing story and gameplay together in games so no silent disco yes tango how do we do it let's talk about it so this is uh the very practical part of our talk today and like i said i'm going quick because i want to have a lot of questions questions and answers um you know it's not about what i say it's about what you do here so i'm here to help so let me try to unpack three strategies that i've been able to use at studios that have really worked that hopefully will help you as well again whether you're a designer or writer it'll work so the first thing i think is worth thinking about is making sure that the story in your game is really built around the way the player is going to win the game and here's why because the players in a way are really are the most important characters in

your story they're not there right they're on the couch they're but their opinions matter if they aren't engaged they're not going to continue to play the game slash play the story so we've got to factor them in what they want matters their motivation really matters and a lot of times players are not motivated especially early in the game they're not motivated by the story players are usually motivated by the game meaning i want to win the game i want to beat the game i want to finish the game for a lot of players story is a is a game progression tool they'll go along with the story so that they can continue to play they'll say like oh do i have to see the princess okay that's cool right and then off they go and then halfway through they're like no you have to kill the princess they're like oh okay that's weird and then they keep playing most players are not gonna be like that's ridiculous i said i was gonna save the princess i quit if they're into the game they'll keep going so we have to and this is something that like traditionally when i

worked on projects i would be siloed off with the story and i wouldn't know a whole lot about like gameplay and player progression and i think that was a huge missed opportunity you want these things to be in sync as much as possible so so let's say you want to do that let's say you want to make sure that like the the players win state and the avatar's desire line are in sync right like what the player wants with avatar wants are the same okay so simple way to do it if you're the writer go to the go to the designer and say okay so what are we doing in this game right you can say how do you win the game or if it's like a really big ginormous open world rpg that goes on for 100 hours what's the what's motivating the player right why what's keeping them going what are they engaged with what are they trying to accomplish or do and then once you've got that information you go back to your your story ideas and you look at the player avatar and what the player avatar is saying and then you go okay what is that avatar saying that she wants to

accomplish or do what is she striving for and if it doesn't line up you change it and i you know this one's a funny one because it seems so simple like who wouldn't do this but i have been brought in to consult on multi-million dollar projects and one of the problems was this one the the play testers were like i don't understand the story i'm totally ignoring it and we took a look at it and it's like well what what what that avatar wants to do what the player wants to do have nothing to do with each other of course they're getting confused so this is a deceptively simple strategy meaning it's so simple that it often gets overlooked and forgotten in the chaos of game development so simple is good if you're running into story problems this is one of the first things you can check okay so that was our first one second strategy that i've seen really work on teams is the idea of really embracing the idea of theme which i know is a little bit english class but bear with me so a lot of times in this industry when

we talk about story we're talking about like plot beats right this is going to happen then that's going to happen and then that surprise is going to happen which is great except that a lot of times it ends up remember our silent disco it ends up going into a non-playable cut scene right when we have cut scene gameplay cutscene gameplay silent disco and that creates a big divide right between the designer and the writer and between the gameplay and the story but if you talk about story in a different kind of way if you kind of get above the like day-to-day plot point points and you get up into the 30 000 feet level of theme now both the writers and the designers can rally around a shared idea and bring it to life using their specific tool set right the writers can use plot and character and designers can use systems and mechanics but they're both driving towards the same goal of theme so what is theme so theme

uh you know and it's a funny term i mean i do this for a living and even i am like what is theme what am i talking about but it's not subject matter right we're not talking about like poverty or something like that we're talking about a point of view on a subject matter um and you know this is a tricky one to bring up because most games really don't take a point of view right but think about stories that you've loved in other mediums there is a distinct point of view in the stories they're telling and even in games the games that do take a point of view in their story are often the games that that we remember the games that sell really well and the games that win awards because they're more interesting they actually are saying something but they're not saying it they're letting you live it out so so theme is one of those things it's invisible it doesn't seem like it's that important but when you commit to making it a fundamental part of your work everything comes to life and everything is elevated and your game design and your story are

going to mesh in ways that you probably don't expect like this can be the stuff this is the stuff that makes it rise so let's say you're like okay cool i want to use theme in my work what do i do well uh you're gonna again every step of this is gonna involve starting with the player slash designer you're welcome designers but it is where it starts right the player drives everything and the and the designer is the advocate for the player in a lot of ways so think about what the player is doing like what are the verbs what are the actions that we're doing then think about how that's gonna feel right because there's seven billion unique snowflake souls on this planet but we can take some educated guesses about how people are going to feel when they play this game you know if this is if it's a wild shoot em up they're probably gonna feel pretty fired up right pretty aggro um safe to say right so you can start to guess where they're at emotionally and then and then you take a second and you and this is whether you're writer or

designer either one or both can do this and really think about what you care about like what kind of a message would you want to deliver in what you're creating and if you're like i don't know that's tough i guarantee the answer is in the things that you already love so sit down and look at your five favorite games or your five favorite stories and and just do a little thought exercise and try to figure out what they all have in common and that is something that's really important to you guaranteed so once you've taken a chance to do that kind of figure out where the player is at emotionally figure out where you're at as a person basically um and then try to figure out how to bring them together what kind of a point of view could we deliver that the player would be ready to hear would be in the mood to hear would be in the mood to experience in this game and then of course it has to be a story that's lived not watched so the final cherry on top of the sundae is that you find ways to express that theme through choices that the player makes

and then the choices become meaningful because this the story and the game you've created are meaningful because you've got a point of view behind it i hope this part is the most dense part of my presentation so i know i kind of gave you a whole bunch but i just wanted you guys to have enough to be able to like i said go back to your studio tomorrow and try some of these ideas out so i'm happy to talk more about this for anyone that's interested but we're going to come up on our third and final strategy right now uh yes player choice yay okay third and final one follow the player's lead so what do i mean by that well i want to take another step back so i think it's going to help us uh this is something that i heard in a jessie shell talk in 2013 at gdc and jesse was quoting a professor at usc who made this awesome prediction which i i've never forgotten obviously because here i am talking about it seven years later so here it is he predicted that he took a look at the way film started and he's like when film first came around

it was all silent films black and white and everyone was like this is dumb it's for kids it's never gonna amount to anything it's a fad right people look down on movies when they were silent films but eventually movies learned how to talk and they grew and they evolved and they blossomed and they went on to become the dominant storytelling model for the 20th century so okay if we're going to say we're going to argue that games are kind of next in line if games are going to be the next dominant storytelling tool for this century well they already know how to talk like that's not the problem right they they talk plenty and chris swain says we're not waiting for games to learn how to talk we're waiting for games to learn how to listen and i don't mean in that creepy siri alexa eavesdropping kind of way but in terms of like both game design

and story being extremely responsive to the player in the same way that we are responsive to each other in real life and of course telltale has taken some or you know poor one out telltale you know made some great strides in this right using stuff that's not technically super complicated you know putting a kenny will remember that on the screen is not like a major heavy lift for the programmers but it had a huge impact on the players who were like what what do you what does that mean oh am i in trouble like what's going to happen next right this is a this is a really simple and powerful example of how listening to the player deepens the experience and transforms it for for the people who are playing your game so let's say you want to make your game a better listener whether through design or story how can you do that well you really just look for ways for the story to respond to player behavior really is all it is right so

obviously you can do big things like defeating a boss or like little things like particular dialogue choices this is not so much like a specific set of tactics so much as it is about like i want to put this on your radar right i want this to be on your radar whether you're a designer or writer thinking how can we make this experience be more responsive to the player and brainstorm with each other and with other people on the team to look for ways to make this happen like that's an interesting problem to solve and a lot of people on your studio can help to make that happen it's just going to require a whole lot of talking right not silent disco tango so okay guys we have reached the end like i said buku time for q a so what have we learned we talked about the idea that games are uniquely positioned to let us live stories and also stories can make your gameplay really matter and that's a thing that is worth embracing

we talked about uh boo silent disco yay tango and i want to say also i know that the idea of literally doing the tango or metaphorically doing the tango can be real anxiety producing and i get it it requires that you become more vulnerable and it requires that you become more reliant on the people on your team so uh yes it is scary but it's worth it it's worth trying and then we also shared three strategies that you can use at work to bring that that story and that gameplay just a little bit closer together and the three strategies were just to remind you we talked about like build a story around the way that the player wins the game really embrace theme for all of its 11th grade english class glory and both design and story should be looking to the player and following their lead okay so before we get to q a i wanted to

share with you guys one of the best things about being at conferences is that you get a chance to talk to each other in real life like after the talk right like you get to catch the speaker in the hallway and have a chat with them and it's fun and it's awesome we can't do it in quite that way this year but we can do it virtually so i've put together a web page and this is not on my main website you have to go directly to this url to get to it but for people who are attending tonight you're welcome to go check it out and um you can book a call with me and i would love to have a chat with you and we can just pretend like we're at moscone together and you can tell me what you thought about the talk and ask questions and maybe you've got some ideas you want to share with me too i would love to hear it so i hope you'll take advantage of it and um that is my presentation and i'd love to do some q a now okay perfect thank you so much susan uh we got quite a few questions so i'm going to pull from the very top of the list

uh let's see i wish i had a moderator in life this is so luxurious i love it uh so tori asks can you give us examples of games that had a strong theme and how it benefited from that theme sure how about bioshock i mean that's a mic drop right i mean my bioshock really embraced like iran and objectivism and like really explain again took a point of view on it right like okay what if we took objectivism to its like ultimate we sort of thought the whole thing through um that's not the only example of a game that really embraced theme but that to me feels like the most like overt and clear example of um of like putting you inside of something that feels very dry when you read about it like oh objectivism i read about this my sophomore year in college and i slept through it but like nobody sleeps through bioshock that's a really good example um

we had another question uh they said hey susan great presentation uh if the writer wants to add something to the mechanics because it helps emphasize the theme in the story more would that be crossing bounds if not what are some tactful ways to approach it so it sounds like um well first of all like that's definitely the way to be thinking right like like you know i think about and i'm guessing you're a writer person so you know i i think about our storytelling tools almost like you know how when you see a cooking show in the night then the chefs show up and they've got their knife roll and they like bust it out and every knife's got a special job this is my fish knife and that's my paring knife and like i think about the ways that we can tell stories and games and i think of like dialogue for example as like the weakest tool we've got because players just don't listen right and then like like environmental storytelling is a very strong tool and mechanics is a super strong storytelling tool so i don't think it's overstepping

bounds but i think it i think it really speaks less to like the craft and more to the politics because it's got to be an idea that both you and the designer can get excited about right and so this is where being a really good team player comes into comes into play sorry um right but like spending the time and this is also like this is just career advice too like i've been talking to my friends who run writing teams at studios and i'm like what do you look for in a writer and i was expecting a whole bunch of like well they've really got to know how to do branch and dialogue or they really got to know artisy or whatever and they're like they've got to be able to work with other people that's what everybody says and i was like really okay and this is a perfect example right so like let's say you have a great idea for a mechanic then it just becomes a question of like how can i share this idea with a designer in a way that doesn't feel like i'm telling that designer how to do their job right and so that's where like if you've got a level of trust with each other

that you've established previously then you can go and just throw some ideas around and and then and here's the trick and this is the challenge too honestly listen to what they say like they might say no and and when people say no the temptation is to mount a defense like no this is a good idea list i'll explain it again but i'll be louder this time then you'll get excited about it right but the smarter play is to just be quiet listen to whatever they say whatever their objections are and then go away and really think about it because everybody that works in game development in my experience is very smart and when people have an objection to an idea they usually have a pretty good reason for it and that reason is usually in my experience rooted in something that i don't know anything about whether that's like an engine limitation or like you know the publisher will never go for it or who knows any of a host of reasons that have nothing to do with your awesome mechanic idea but it's still going to be an impediment

right so i think i think embracing the possibility of getting involved in game design as a writer is really important and vice versa i want designers to start getting really excited about being involved in the story process and then it's a question of how do we do it collaboratively and that takes time unfortunately but that's how it gets done like with anything right like anything right exactly uh let's see so nathan asks can any kind of gameplay benefit from having a story and vice versa for example can a mechanics focus game like tetris be improved with a story that matches it well enough so that's an interesting question i'll be honest i do not want to see a story tetris game like tetris is perfect like why would we add a story to it what's exciting to me this is actually this is a this will be a positive comment once i get around to it games don't need stories not in the same way that like movies need stories and tv needs stories and

books need stories games are a storytelling medium but they are not that is not their reason for being and so story is optional and therefore i think as an industry as a bunch of creatives we should be we should be being a whole lot more foolish around story ideas we should be crazier and more creative and try nuttier things because it's optional like if it doesn't work just cut it right i mean not to be overly simplistic but i do think that you not every game needs a story um but when story and gameplay really work there is something special and magical that like can't be replicated and and the other thing about this too is that game like gamers are desperate for this stuff like the entertainment software association did a study of like what motivates people to to buy a game like what what's your decision criteria and 57 of them are like well if it's got a good story i'll buy it like that's a that's a that's a big number right

and so and you know all games out there like have a really solid code base and all games have great animation for the most part and great music and great game design but the one place you can really stand out even now is if you can deliver a great game with a great story it's hard to do and so the ones that pull it off really stand out and so even though it's hard to do it's worthwhile and it can be done and the reality is it's only going to get easier because we're going to learn more and more and more about how to do this it's it's hard now but it's easier than it was five years ago which means it's going to be easier than now you know five years from now to be even easier i've just been nodding at everything that you've been saying because you're making really good points i'm just sitting here like yeah she makes a lot of sense oh you know i'm teaching her i'm teaching the writing for games master class right now and like we're just really going deep on all this stuff and like yeah it's really exciting to think about it like absolutely let's uh

see so bradley asks what are some strategies for communicating with team members who are not who are not as story-minded to encourage them to value integrating narrative into their work yes um my boyfriend is a designer who doesn't like story so i get it i really get it um so i find that what really helps um and again this is the long game right this is like investing in the relationship with that person but even people who like say like i don't want to work on a story based game are going to go home at the end of the day and watch game of thrones or like everybody loves story some kind of story right um and so i find a lot of times when i'm trying to talk with someone who's kind of resistant i don't talk about the project at hand but i just ask him like well what do you what stories do you like like you know it doesn't have to be games it can be

are there movies that you like are there tv shows that you like um inevitably there's gonna be something and then like getting to know what they like about those stories that they like and kind of digging in um without being intrusive right but you wanna you wanna find some common ground with them and a lot of times the things that other people love can become the common ground where you can start a really good conversation with them and the other thing so that's like one tip and the other tip i would give is like like uh be curious right like like instead of instead of and i've done this i've been like i can convince them like if i just say enough words they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna bow down to me and they're gonna accept that story really matters um but instead like you know be the read you know like like just be well tell me why tell me why you think stories not good in games and let them let them make their case and there probably is some nugget of insight in there that would be really helpful to hear and then like i was saying earlier like

going away and reflecting on it if you can here's the trick here's what we're shooting for you want to get to the point where you can really see the problem from their point of view like legitimately like not a patronizing kind of way but like wow they've got a good point i see what they're saying and the trick is as writers you guys like this is actually tapping into your superpower because writers one of their superpowers is that they've got a lot of empathy writers have a real gift for putting themselves in someone else's shoes so think about it in terms of like making a power move as a writer like really getting to know that character which is that person at your studio that doesn't want to do story and find out why and then you know then you if you can empathize with them here's the thing you know this is a marketing message which but it weirdly applies to this which is you can't be seen until you learn how to see and all that means is like you've got to understand them first

and then they're going to be way more open to understanding you know again yeah it's it's longer it takes more effort but it's it's how you win yeah absolutely we have a lot of really good questions so i'm very i'm very excited um so let's see evan asks what are some of your favorite methods for avoiding unplayable cutscenes um um you mean like in terms of like when i'm working on a project how do we keep from like defaulting into a yes we don't specify but let's go with that yeah they want to amend their question i'll get to okay yeah i'm being ridiculous i'm like what you mean like when i played or i skipped cutscenes what i'm sure he means okay okay um yeah so um well i'm not opposed to cut scenes like as a blanket statement but i i am opposed to story and gameplay

being really separate so like for example if there's a real push for on a project for like using cutscenes what i want to do is use cut scenes here you know what i'm going to be specific and use an example i'll tell you a game that i think did a great job with cutscenes is the original god of war because when you play the god of war athena comes to you and says aries has gone mad and only you the strongest spartan can kill the god of war will you do it and if you go back and you watch a cinematic on youtube he doesn't say hell yeah i'll kill the god of war i hate that guy he sucks like it's not a revenge story what he actually says is i'll do it if you take these memories away from me and this is the beginning of the game i'm like what memories did i miss something what memories what's going on and so as the game progresses we get to see more and more of his memories which are revealed in bits and pieces which are huge payoffs for me i've been waiting for that right because this mystery was set up ahead of

time and the cutscenes play out in such a way that they give me just enough they close a loop and they open a loop at the same time um they really keep me on the hook and so for me and it turns out that what's happening in the memories he's trying to forget is tied to the gameplay in ways that become not clear at first but become clearer and clearer as the game goes on so that to me is like a magic trick like it is cut-scene-based storytelling but deeply integrated with gameplay um and that's and that's you know cut scenes are just a tool a weak tool right dialog is your weakest tool second weakest tool is cut scenes but they can be used well if they're just used carefully right uh it looks like they added to the question and i think you may have answered it but they they clarified and said um as in how do you deliver large amounts of story without just turning it into a movie right okay fair so that i'll give a slightly different answer to that question which is really

good i think that you know what and again i think we just want to look at our tools right like how can we deliver a story here's how you deliver story in a game you figure out what the player is paying attention to and you put the story there so for example um players pay a lot of attention to the world because that's where the trouble lies in terms of enemies right and that's also where the treasure lies that's where the loot is that's the nafta trying to navigate there's the bridge i was looking for so they're real attentive to the world so like environmental storytelling is really powerful um and uh you know mechanics can be really powerful and i think also something else i want to say every answer could go on for an hour but something else i want to say is that um you know games are really storytelling and games are really counter-intuitive like if you've got a big story that you want to really deliver to the player and it's real important to you that they see it

the best way to deliver it to them is to hide it from them like like you want to use what they call pull storytelling versus like push storytelling so if the gameplay stops and i push a cinematic on you like you just want to skip it like it feels like on a front like hey get out of my space right but if you're playing a game and it's like you don't know what's happening in this world but clearly something is and it's crazy and you want to understand you can't figure it out and you want to know more about it so you start exploring and then you find some notes here and there and whatnot right that's pole storytelling that's pulling you through the space so that you can discover the story and if you turn story discovery into a game play reward like that's when things really start clicking so i say if you've got a great big story hide it like an iceberg that's a really good way of putting it it's a really good answer too thank you um like i do this for a living

or something i thought uh so brian has a really good question and they ask what are your thoughts about writing tools like twine run p final hi sorry i'm dealing with a little bit of rain and thunder on the east coast did you hear the question that i asked i heard the first part i heard twine i did not hear the other two things sorry perfect no that's fine i'm glad we got you back well i got you back um so bryant wants to know what are your thoughts about how writing tools like twine renpi final draft influence the way that story gets hammered out in a game aha perfect okay so uh i wrote a whole thing about this i think on my blog but i here's my thoughts i think twine is awesome for a couple different reasons

it's great for your portfolio and it's great for prototyping ideas with your team right it's because you don't need anyone else to do it no one it's interactive storytelling that's only only the writer has to deal with it so it's really good for rapid prototyping of ideas i think i think i don't use final draft um i think that it just gets me back into like screenwriting mode and storytelling in games is just so different in some ways than that um i mean it's great for cinematics right and that's the problem if like your favorite tool is good for for the you know your favorite software is good for creating the weakest storytelling tool you've got that's bad because then your tendency is going to be to lean towards it right like cutscenes are fun to write you've got so much control you know it's also perfect on the page but if the player skips it then it didn't happen so i think that like this and we still need we are still lacking in tools honestly i mean twine is good i know that there are studios that use artisy

and i think they've had some good success with it but you know for writers who are outside the industry i think it would blow their mind if they heard that there is not some industry standard software for writing games like that would make no sense to them and it shouldn't this whole industry is full of programmers can't we find some people to write a program that'll use work for us i mean it's crazy but i know a lot of studios use homegrown writing software and i don't know we just haven't solved this here's what's going to happen someone's going to solve this problem we're going to get some really great industry standard software and then a year later six months later the quality of storytelling in games is going to make this quantum leap and they're going to think it's because all they hired better writers and it's not it's because they're going to finally have better tools so please somebody do that i'll pay you a million bajillion dollars thank you now you have to keep on that promise when it happens bajillion um they want to know how do you process criticism in this writer designer

relationship and decide which hill you want to die on if any without being confrontational and unproductive yes queen i love this question um i know we're getting to the end and i literally could stay here till sun comes up talking about that one um i i'll try to give you a short answer so i think one of the things that's really important about growing as a game writer is figuring out which pills to die on it's really important to be collaborative uh everybody gives a little on games everybody um and we have to give as well but there are some things that are worth fighting for so i'm going to share with you the the things i think are really important um and here's what's not important here's where i think it's really important to be really collaborative plot plot is a shared endeavor you have ideas about the plot so does the designer so does the programmer so does the player and that is great it should be a group

effort don't sweat plot let it be right throw out ideas make suggestions but like let it evolve however it's going to the place where you want to put your storytelling love where you can be of greatest service to your team is by really committing to the characters storytelling in games is about character creation and oftentimes and when i say character i don't mean the player avatar like when i work on a project i skip right over the player avatar like i push that guy out of the way so i can get to the npcs in the corner because the player avatar is going to do whatever the designer and the player want to do right i really don't have a whole lot of control over that and if i create a really fully fleshed out character for that avatar that's probably gonna get in the way of the players experience right because it's no longer them in the game it's this it's this guy or this girl but the npcs like that those are your actors like those the ones who are going to read your

lines and believe your story and embrace your motivations and and live out the themes that you want to describe right like what we want to do as game writers and i'll maybe end on this note like what the where we can do our best work as writers in games is if we create characters who have inner lives who have like hopes and dreams and fears of their own they feel like they are living a life and that you just came along at a moment in their life to either be their best friend or their worst enemy or somewhere in between but we love living worlds and living worlds are full of interesting characters and interesting characters are characters who are interested in something so like what i would say to you and what i wish i could get in a time machine and say to myself 15 years ago is like let it be with the plot be a good team player around that and give all of your love to the characters because that's what's the really going to have the most impact on the player and that's who you're trying to reach i think we have time for maybe one more

really quick question with a quick answer um kay wants to know do you think there is such a thing as too many game notes or audio diaries oh um [Music] yeah i could see that getting out of control right you want to have you i mean really and that kind of comes down to you know like my first thought about that would be well it depends on gameplay right like if the gameplay is a real like run-and-gun manic kind of situation where like probably the player's only going to pick up 20 of the notes well then go to town have a million of them because you want to make sure that the player gets at least some of them but if it's a real like creepy crawly slo-mo kind of a thing like be more judicious because if there's a if there are notes falling out of the air decks and you're like you're kicking up like a foot's worth of notes all the time they don't feel very special right and so we want the we want the player's ability to discover the story

to feel special and so i think it's it's really about tuning right you just have to kind of like you got to be um you know not too much not too little there's a sweet spot in between and you don't know it where that sweet spot is until you start testing and that is all the time that we have that was a perfect perfect timing um susan i want to thank you for taking the time to speak with all of us tonight and i want to thank everybody for their really great questions and that is the end of gdc summer for us so thank you guys so much for hanging out with us yay pajamas gdc is over