The Exposition Burden

[Music] all right so I'm Jennifer Brandis heer and I wanted to talk about Exposition here because uh show of hands how many of you woke up today thinking oh boy I want to write a giant block of exposition that players are going to button through and forget almost immediately all right and how many of you have had to spend a work day or two doing exactly that that's kind of what I thought so now I'm going to stand here for 25 minutes and lecture you on why you should never have someone stand there for 25 minutes and lecture you so uh let me start with a little bit of who I am I've been uh working in games since the late 90s I started as a freelancer for a bunch of uh different tabletop role playing games like Shadow run and paranoia and then after that I went out to Hollywood for a few years and I was on a a television show uh

called the agency on CBS well I wasn't on it I wrote for it and uh after that I was recruited by BioWare and I spent 8 years there as a senior writer on all three Dragon Age titles and Star Wars the Old Republic and when I left BioWare I spent two years as the lead writer uh on Game of Thrones Ascent for disruptor beam and I'm also uh a co-author of the game narrative toolbox which is a game writing textbook from focal press and I just got the all clear to announce my new book from focal press uh which is women in game development breaking the glass level cap which will be out this Hall uh thank you and uh just this January I made a very big change in my career and took a sort of sideways step into serious games which is something I've been interested in for a long time so I'm now working for a company called Cognito inter inter

active which uses Gamestyle interactive dialogues to teach doctors and teachers and parents how to have better and more empathetic communication skills with their patients and students and children so basically I finally found a way to make money off of all the time that I spend talking to my kids about their feelings and being mad at my doctors so um to me Exposition is information that you want to get across to players and you want them to remember and you have it has to be delivered in dialogue so let's start by talking about why we actually have dialogue in games if you saw my talk here two years ago you've heard me say this before the purpose of game dialogue is to move the player forward so why does so much game dialogue end up like this let me tell you about my people our histories begin in the age of stone and end up with the player kind of like

that well a lot of times it's because the dialogue starts out like this and then after a marketing meeting it turns into something like that and then when the lead designer needs to show off the deep explorable world you have to add this and then when QA realizes a week before c that the whole area is empty and the level designers need to throw in some mobs you also have to work this in so uh does that mean we should get rid of exposition entirely are all the execs actually right when they keep asking us to cut cut cut can we just forget what we're saying and charge into game play uh no Exposition is necessary it's how players know what's happening where to go and what to do next it's an important tool it just has to be used correctly so how do we do it better um one of the key tasks that we have as game writers and narrative designers is to ask the question of when we need to

use Exposition in dialogue and figure out the difference between when we must use Exposition in dialogue such as when there's plot critical information that the player needs to complete a quest or Mission when we probably should use Exposition in dialogue such as when the player needs an in character motivation to carry out a mission when we can use Exposition and dialogue such as when there's ex information that the player can optionally ask for or that can be delivered without affecting the flow of gameplay and when we really shouldn't put our Exposition in dialogue which is when there's information that stops your game playay that isn't relevant to the current Mission and the player didn't actually ask for but I see some of you riding in your seats I have all this lore I've been working on this world Bible and it's like 5,000 pages long and it's got the full history and what am I supposed to do with it well world World lore is

great for a lot of things that is are not dialogue worldl is fantastic for using in in-game books and journals um it's great for ambient dialogue that the player can overhear and not have to interact with if you're in a game oops that has um optional question hubs worldl is great for filling those out worldl is uh very important when you're doing a game that uses environmental storytelling using visuals and audio that the player doesn't directly interact with uh World lore is essential uh when you're doing an auxiliary product like a novel or a web comic and uh if you're in a game that has a lot of world lore and your players are into that sort of thing it can even be worthwhile to do a codex where they can look it up so if we're not going to be talking about Exposition about world lore what are we generally talking about here usually we're talking about plot and a lot of times game plots especially if you're on something like a big RPG like like I've been on you get

these labyrinthine things that are sort of like this crossed with some of that and maybe a little of this thrown in for good measure so how do you get all of that across to players in a way where they're going to have any idea what's going on um you need to figure out what your key pieces of information are and present them in bite-sized pieces for example let's take a plot where we find out that there's an ancient Crown that's gone missing and and we learn that the crown is imbued with Elven magic and we find out that the Elven Kingdom used to lie to the west and that the kingdom was destroyed in the war with the goblins in most games each of these points should probably be its own dialogue uh you can assume that players will only really remember one thing usually the last thing in any dialogue so by splitting up your important information into different conversations you really increase the chances that players are going to remember anything

and uh of course when we split up our uh information into little crumbs and we trickle it along for players to follow we call that a breadcrumb trail so are there any best practices for breadcrumb Trails what I've found is that it's really important for players to know what they're looking for first and only then get the details of why and how to use it so to go back to our Crown example um you could do something in a game where maybe you would start with with a scrap of ancient prophecy that says that only the magic of the Elven Crown can defeat the Goblin King and you know from the map that there are Elven ruins in the west so you go there and you find the runes that tell the story of the first battle between the elves and goblins but you can't translate the runes yet then on the way out you meet a scholar who can translate the runes and he tells you where the Escape Route was that the Elven royalty escaped down when the uh Kingdom fell and only once you follow the Escape Route you actually

find the crown and the information of how to use it by presenting the information in this order what why where and how you make sure that players have a goal in mind that is the what that is motivating them to listen when you tell them all that backstory which is the why um and then you present the piece of information that is going to let them go to the next plot Point that's the wear uh and only then do you tell them how this one Quest is going to fit into the larger storyline that's the how so what this all sort of boils down to is that Exposition should be the solution to a problem that players are trying to solve already if players are already trying to solve something and you give them Exposition that helps them they're going to want to listen to it and try to remember it so what pitfalls can we run into when we're trying to use breadcrumb Trails um the first one that I've seen happen a lot is what I call the maybe the elves

know something problem and we did this a lot on Dragon Age Inquisition where we had you know a big document that we were working from and it said and then the player figures out that maybe the elves know something and our writers would go off into a room and they would beautifully write you know your followers saying maybe the elves know something and then we would all play test it and we would you know follow the followers who were saying maybe the elves know something and we would end up basically wandering around waiting for the next plot delivery NPC to find us and it all felt a little like this and uh we found that you could actually correct this really really easily by just giving the player something that they were looking for go to the Elven ruins and get the widget of what's itness and then you could keep all of the rest of of what you already had of the the next plot delivering NPC finding you and instead of feeling like the designers were you know manipulating you it felt like hey this is my reward for

my hard hard work of looking for the widget of What's itness um so that was a really easy fix for what had seemed to be a really intractable problem um the next big Pitfall that you see especially with beginning writers is the let me tell you a story mentality where people figure that the player's going to want to know everything about this Crown before they go looking for it and the problem with doing that is if the player doesn't know why that information is relevant to them they literally don't know which mental filing cabinet to file it under and so instead it just gets left on the floor and they don't remember anything about it um by following the um the the what why where how uh order that I had in the previous slide you can avoid that problem because uh by the Time Players Get the story they know exactly what it's relevant to and therefore it's a lot more likely that they're going to remember

it and the last uh Pitfall that I found is red herrings uh I discovered a long time ago as a tabletop GM do not put red herrings in your games unless you want players to swim after them off a cliff um as a general rule if players go to the trouble of remembering a piece of exposition that you tell them in a game they expect it to be important and if it turns out it's not important they don't go oh darn and I was an idiot for following that red herring they go your game is broken and it sucks um so unless you're willing to deal with that consequence there's usually not any compelling reason to include red herrings in interactive games so let's go back to the beginning the most basic piece of advice that you get in every English class and screenwriting seminar and writing book on the market of show don't tell what does that mean for games especially games where all the information is being delivered in dialogue isn't everything

being told well I like to think of exposition as the bitter pill you're trying to get players to swallow while characterization is the delicious chocolate coating that makes it go down easy so most of the rest of this talk is going to focus on characterization because if you make sure that the characters who deliver your Exposition are interesting in and of themselves then you can make that Exposition go from this to this so the best Exposition is characterization when somebody is telling you something about a plot in your game you want to know not just what happened but how it affected them so if we consider the news in a Star Wars game that the Empire has landed on a republic Outpost if we get told this by a republic Commander this information will probably come across briefing style maybe she'll give you some of the political or Marshal significance of the out post maybe she'll be concerned about

looking good to her superior but if it's told by The Outpost terrified janitor who's hiding in a closet then you might get the human cost maybe he has a family and the Republic won't let them Evacuate the planet and surrender to the Empire um if you tell it from the point of view of a defecting Imperial uh you'll get a whole third point of view on that you'll get something about how much better the quality of life is on The Outpost and how you have to drive off the Empire or she'll be ex exed you get the same information that the Empire has landed on the planet but it's three very different dialogues and if all three of these characters are in one story you can end up with a more complex picture of what's happening but because they're such different perspectives it's not a giant Exposition bomb so when you're writing Exposition delivering NPCs uh there are two major things that you need to keep in mind their speaking style and their stake in the story so let's break these down a

little bit um for speaking style you want to determine all of the basic things like sentence length and vocabulary and slang usage it's the difference between O miut is a fire my Lord can you help me and brave Adventurer this land is seeing troubles the likes of which we have rarely seen and now you know why I'm not a voice actor um so um both of these can equally introduce a quest about in a fantasy game about saving a village from Bandits but they are very different experiences of what mindset you're in when you start that Quest but even more importantly than the speaking style is what extraneous information do they wrap the important information in if there isn't any extraneous information if they're literally not telling you anything other than that Bandits are attacking this Village then they can be replaced with a sign nailed to a tree that says Bandits this way and if your

character can be replaced with a sign nailed to a tree you've done something wrong so you want to be considering what else they're saying about the situation at the same time as they're giving you the plot critical information it's the difference between that guy who is talking about Justice and how it's not fair that the Lords are safe and his people are the ones who are left to starve and die and the other guy who's mostly just concerned about whether it's going to look bad to the neighbors if lets his people get killed by Bandits um so just to delve into the uh the more academic for a second here um generally the more information that you can convey through subtext the less expository your writing is going to feel subtext is the art of not saying exactly what you mean it's the difference between this and this and uh um any information that's part of the background of a world or plot or

character or has to do with how a character is feeling should generally go in subtext only information that the player has to immediately act on should be in Broad simple text and if you're doing serious games work and where you actually need to teach your players something um and you can't trust them to to get what you put in the subtext you can consider using analogies to make information memorable uh I use this a lot in my work work at Cognito uh we did a Sim to help teach parents how to help their children manage their feelings and instead of just saying teach children words for their feelings we would say things like just like you tell your baby that's your nose a hundred times before they say nose you need to tell them that's you're angry and that's you're scared and by using that kind of analogy it makes the information much more memorable so stake in the story if the person who is telling you the information has no stake in the story then they're

probably the wrong person to be giving you this information you need to replace them with somebody who has something more to lose from what they're saying everybody who's talking to you in a game story should have something they want need fear stand to gain or stand to lose from what they're saying and it's the variety of these Stakes that gives your story texture if you use too many of the same take in the story in a row it gets old even if it's something legitimately interesting like needing the player to save their life um you want to have a great variety of stakes in the plot some people should be doing stuff for Noble reasons some for selfish reasons some might be deceiving the player some are offering to profit the player and others might be asking them to be altruistic um and emotion if characterization is the chocolate coating that we're using to make make our Exposition taste good emotion is

actually the sugar that lets us taste all the rest of the work we've put in cuz without that the chocolate tastes kind of like this um so even if you've done the rest right and you have an interesting character with a stake in the story in a cool speaking style if they don't feel anything about what they're saying then neither will the player and a lot of times writers get afraid of sentiment they don't want to be modlin or melodramatic and my personal philosophy on has always been what the hell I want my characters to have really big feelings and really care about what they're saying if it comes across as melodramatic it's usually easier to tone down a line or performance than it is to add emotion to something written blandly so all of this generally means that when you're writing for games you want to be writing twice the first time you go through and you figure out the information flow of what does the player need to know to be able to get through this game this is the basics of the job

and if you haven't done this right then the game doesn't work but then to do the job really well you want to go through a second time and figure out in every dialogue why does the NPC think she's there what is this story from her point of view um and it can't just be that she's there because she wants to tell you about this she should have a legitimate reason to be there of her own accord so one thing to keep in mind when you're doing this second path is that most people are really self-centered they don't tend to care about the fate of the world unless it's their job so your plots become more interesting the more you're dealing with people who this is not their job uh so this is why the poor janitor story is a lot more memorable than the Republic commanders the more personal in NPC's motivations the more memorable they generally are but one thing to keep in mind is that characterization can also really be Exposition if all that your

characterization is is characters telling you about their background so if you look back to the show don't tell Maxim it can help to realize that Exposition is any kind of telling even if you're telling people about character while characterization is any kind of showing even if it's about world or plot so just telling players the facts of a character's backstory of hi I'm Bob I'm a Jedi Knight I entered the academy at 4 and I apprenticed to master so and so and fought my first battle at blah blah blah none of that is really characterization even though a lot of writers would think it is characterization comes from how characters react not from long explanations if you have a character with a complex backstory you can handle that just like any other Exposition it can be broken into parts and then delivered by other characters who have their own reason to like or hate the character in question

for example let's go back to Star Wars and say we have a character who was once tortured by the Empire um in order to show this to the player you could do something like first show him being very anti-empire even when talking to somebody really sympathetic like a Defector who just saved your life then later maybe he knows something that he shouldn't like the back way into an imperial ship then once you're inside the Imperial ship you meet somebody who recognizes him but because you're in the middle of a firefight you can't stop and ask about it right now uh this means that by the time you can really ask about the backstory a lot of the basics of it have been established already um you've already been intrigued about it for a while so that when the backstory information is given to you it feels like the answer to a question you've already been asking and you've already seen that it can be useful to you look he knew this one thing about the Imperial ship what else might he know if I get him to answer uh the full story of what happened to

him um and uh the last thing I want to talk about is stereotypes when you are designing a character to give Exposition and you're thinking about their speaking style and their stake in the story and what their emotion is and everything I just said don't necessarily go with the first thing that comes to mind uh because sometimes that's this or this guy or her or this guy and nobody really wants to see any of them so it's always good to try picking a character and a speaking style or motivation that don't match what your first impression of what that character would be like and then you can figure out how they got that way so our story earlier would have been even more interesting if the Republic Commander was at The Outpost because her family was there and she was willing to defy orders to help you save them while the janitor was actually a re hred officer or weekend warrior who wanted to

die in The Blaze of Glory that you set off and when you're writing people of different backgrounds than yourself um don't be scared to get it wrong it's important to do your research but if you write humans that's more than half the battle any character who is a credible human being is going to be better than the majority of characters um who are out there in people's own fanfiction and in unfortunate amount of published material so if uh if your characters have convincing human emotions it goes a long way to battling any stereotypes so in conclusion my background is in RPGs so some of what I said May apply better there than to other genres but for all games Exposition is best delivered in small pieces Exposition should be the solution to problems that players are already trying to solve and most of all you should think about who is delivering

your Exposition and what they want to get out of saying it pick the person who has the most interesting reason to be there and get into their head and if that all goes well maybe someday some of you will get to write what we all know is the number one absolute best way to ever deliver Exposition a musical number so thank you I'm Jennifer heer