two & a half gamers session #11 - How to increase game revenue by 35% with Narrative design

[Music] hello everybody uh welcome this is no gaming podcast 2 and a half Gamers session number 11 we discussing latest news fun stuff and gring some knowledge uh but also don't forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion wi sometimes so let's not take it too seriously we have a special guest today so uh welcome Steve and also well welcome Felix and yakob let's let's start with the Felix um favorite activity let's do the intros Felix please thank you Ma for that I'm Felix I do ad monetization currently working at Forte but everything ads related in games that's what I do nice I can go next uh name's Jacob work as a game designer for last seven

years pretty much currently we're get head of monation head of monetization at trapl light and yeah pretty much all game design product stuff that's my way yeah let me continue my name is mate uh I'm the UA guy over here working with several developers around the world U growing the UA budgets games and and businesses and Steve how about yourself tell us about uh about your career what what are you doing what are you doing at who are you um hey I'm Stephen Elliot Alman but you can call me Steve on this interview it's shorter um thank you you know you have to use your writing name so that there's name recognition if you call yourself something different on every project no one will be able to follow what you're doing um oh yeah so you learn as an author you have to that that's okay that's how you're going to put your name on your first book that is just your name for now on um I'm also a

game designer um like yaka but I specialize in narrative design um the the writing that goes on in the game everything that from uh from the dialogue that the characters are saying if there is dialogue that the characters are saying to the to the button that says start I literally have to write start and uh I could be all capitals or it could be capital S you know that's a stylistic choice that I have to make sometimes that's what I do sounds great nice and uh and uh which titles have you been involved in which mobile gaming titles uh in my gaming titles you know the first um the first game that I worked on was for DC Comics and it was the DC Universe uh first time they put it on dis you know you could explore who the characters were and how their their stories interacted and what their origin story were um and that was kind of the

first time that somebody gamified DC Comics back in that form but that wasn't really a game um but the first true game that I wrote was called Nine Dragons and that was a for a company called a claim and that was a free-to-play MMO RPG set in Ming Dynasty China still being played it's it's on its like fifth publisher right now that game still going after I don't know 17 years I just I guess I just dated myself um how long I've been doing this um and uh and uh I wrote a couple um uh social games for claim 2 there was a game called Mafia payoff that I did that was um uh you know one of the one of these Mafia Facebook um text based games good old good old Facebook games yeah and then later um I started doing social games

that lived on Facebook and then moved to mobile I wrote um where you guys are in Germany I wrote a game called Pearl's Perl um which started off on Facebook and then went to mobile um I did some games for uh the History Channel um based on some uh TV and feature products that they had show TV series um Ancient Aliens the game based on their show Ancient Aliens Project Blue Book the game which yakob we can talk about that when we get up catch up to that one that was a a hidden object game said in the Project Blue Book Universe um I'm leaving out a bunch of games but my most recent game was the um was Terminator dark fate when the the last Terminator movie came out that I did for sky dance so I mean I'm a science fiction author first and foremost so when I'm working in games they tend to lean towards more the science fiction genre

that's some of my stuff right how someone uh become uh you know a writer for mobile games like what did you do before like I suppose you're writing books as well right or like how how do you transition to mobile games you know that's a that's a question I get asked a lot um nobody imag nobody nobody really nobody really comes into this business the same way um we're all doing something else uh before we fall into it now I mean I I guess let me take you back I've I've been a Storyteller since I was a kid um the Storyteller how do I explain the Storyteller the story teller if it was caveman times yeah there were the the men went on the hunt right and they had to go kill whatever they were G to eat for dinner and the women and children stayed home so they weren't there so the

Storyteller was the guy who was on the hunt who then stood in front of the fire and told the story of the hunt to the women and children in this kind of dramatic way you know like what happened and so if this was caveman times I guess I was that guy that that got up and told the story and then you know I read a lot of comic books as a kid and I was an only child so that kind of puts you into your head telling stories and then I mean I started writing comic books and then I started writing books because I was sitting I was an only child so I was reading to my to myself a lot and telling stories to myself a lot you know so I then I started writing books and then I got a a book published and then I got another book published and I became known as an author and then eventually I became a best-selling author and so that gave me a little bit

of uh Street credit right because then games were just kind of at that point where they started putting stories in games I mean the evolution of games we could talk about forever and the evolution of story in games in parallel in Pac-Man there's the only story is they meet right that's that's it you don't really need to hire a writer for that but later as games became more and more complicated they gave game game companies decided they wanted a story and that storytelling that exists in uh books and screenplays and video games it all started to converge to that the audience wanted a story along with their game especially if it was a Batman game right they didn't just want Batman swinging and shooting and throwing the batarang they needed a little mystery in a little story right so I just I just was lucky enough to be in that that kind of evolutionary stream where games

needed writers and they said where do we look where do we get a writer let's look at movies and TV and and book authors to get our writers trun ah that was quite a nice int good intro I was really interested in uh in hearing more about the creative process uh at the different stages like how do you usually start you know like to like from thinking about what are you going to write are you doing any like home works like what's the what's the process behind all of these because from what you just shared I mean it's it's super interesting that's you know every game project is going to be completely different let me start you there sometimes sometimes you get called in and they've already built a game and they I think they had it in mind that the receptionist was going to write a story and and just kind of fill it in and then they realized that the

receptionist had no idea how to do it or tried to do it and it it wasn't good enough to be uh worthy of the G of the beautiful game that they that they just did you know yeah and then you duct taped the the whole narrative no well so in this kind of a situation you get pulled in and then you really have to just sit down and immerse yourself in what is already there and you look at how the game moves and how the levels are designed and then you have to kind of craft a story and make it like a rapper that will fit and then then in that situation you know I have to look at what are the characters they drew look like and oh that look kind of looks like a soldier and that looks like she could be the love interest and and then you kind does that work does that work when you wrap something around like that you don't you what you don't have any choice does work

you don't have a choice that's man yeah like so so I'll tell you why I can do it next if you remember to ask me why I think I do it I'm able to do it so then you go you look at what the end point is where sometimes a game is infinite there is no end point you might look at where the first chapter has to end and then you have to kind of work backwards I want to get to here and then I need a middle point where everything changes that you thought was one way is suddenly revealed revealed in a new light and then you go oh wait I'm not really I I thought I was the I thought I was the good guy but I'm the bad guy holy cow so um you you've been manipulated so by someone and that so that person that you thought was your friend is the bad guy so but these are the same basic elements that are in storytelling which you need in a movie script right so that in that way you have to kind of me mechanically work backwards and tell a story that will fit and you might have to say the

story would really work and everything makes sense if you can change this game design element and then you have to kind of beg and plead to the game designers can we change this one thing and usually they say oh yeah we can do that and because I'm not just the writer that got brought in I'm also a game designer I know how to explain to him why I need this thing changed and how it can get changed at Point a and point B and point C so I I kind of to coax them I do their work for them on what would need to be changed in the coding and the more I know that the more likely they will say yes and change it for me and then that that that works there and then you know if they've only Built chapter one yeah if they've only Built chapter one I might be able to influence everything that happens in chapter 2 but if the game is ready to ship I might just have to get it in there jam it in there as as quickly as I can and and the and here

now Felix the reason I'll tell you that I think I can do this because some writers would be like holy I don't know yeah can we say on your show multiple times of course all that's that's excellent good then I can say um so if there's any kids at home please this is an R-rated broadcast um so the reason I can do that is because I spent 10 years in the advertising business as a copyright and as a copywriter the they literally walk in and say the client is coming in 15 minutes right a TV spot and you're like ah so some writers can do that and some writers need to wait for inspiration I didn't have this luxury I had to just write a TV spot immediately but what this does for you as a writer is it for me it strengthens a muscle that I think everyone has called create on command my create on command muscle

so because I did advertising for 10 years under these crazy deadlines and I I didn't have time to wait for inspiration and just had to do it now that muscle in my body that create UNC commmand muscle is probably the strongest muscle in my body so when I have to come in and do it I just have to do it now these are not ideal circumstances to write a video game that you come in and it's already built ideal CC answer is yeah the ideal it's it's that's only like 33% of the time these days now it's more typical that they bring the narrative designer in at the same time that they're creating the game so this allows the narrative department or designer I'm usually the narrative Department of one um to be involved in every aspect of the creation of the game and it's happened in various it's it's different in in every situation of the game I mean we can talk

about individual ones or but right now I guess I'm giving you more of the general overview so ask the question and if we get to a a place I'll tell I'll take you through more of how we did a particular game I I think like I've been there on the other side of the barricade as the you know designer we begging him in a way that it's always kind of like this kind of conflict that how much resources or capacity do we want to sacrifice you know on top of the story and will this increase our apis of course because you know that's the main priority in Mobile and then you exactly like you said like I can feel the pain that the narrative Department you know like how about we have this and then and that and like okay like that needs to be coded that codes this and this happens on screen in in between there's dialogues and that and this and you know offsetting capacity it and then like but we cannot have that because we first need to do tutorial we need to do you know monetization stuff like that and you get into this conflict so I I can feel it especially after it's like you said in a situation where the game's already

finished and you're just duct taping it on top of it because there's no time well I'm just let me just say that's a great that's that's the other side of the coin and it's great because great that you said that because in the beginning when I first started working games the game designers didn't want a writer what do we need a story for to shoot like what do we what what what do we need this for so I mean f the first job we have is to convince you that story is is important and why is story important important the main reason um and this speaks to your question of does it help the kpis does it have an Roi does it have a return investment to get a Storyteller especially an expensive Storyteller like me with myig um uh to come in is that um having a good story makes the game sticky right if you have a game uh if you have a game that someone just bought and paid $29.99 for I mean you've

already made your sale they've got they're GNA play that game and but if you have a social game where people need to come back every day stickiness really really makes a difference they want to know what's going to happen next week uh when The Story Goes On they want to know what's going to happen in the next chapter chapter and the next Quest they want to reason to follow the character because they have they develop an emotional investment in the story and that's where the writer adds the most value you know why am I shooting these people why you know instead of I'm just shooting and uh you know not everybody cares about the story though some players just want to play if there's a Twitchy game you're playing Tetris you don't care you just want to point and click and shoot but a a certain amount of people who play games want to read the story and as time goes by they're getting used to the story being there

and they want a good story and if you have two hidden object games that you're choosing from you you really are you're looking at kind of the top level a few sentences about the story and maybe that's how the person who likes story decides which game to play so now you see that the the writer has a value in the beginning and you know what sometimes there's a marketing person writing that text those two lines that help the player decide which game they're going to play but usually that's also me and that's only because I was in advertising so I'm good at writing this advertising copy so I'm using this other skill that I had before I was a game writer on my journey and in in the what I bring to the table as a writer I right so I'm but I'm definitely the the player that sorry that was a big Dr that was a big DPE doesn't read yeah that doesn't read that doesn't read the text because it's just so annoying at least for me it's like yeah okay so I don't I don't care I don't care but you

skip like you said I imagine skip skip yeah Skip Skip Skip Skip oh well there's a lot of text Skip come on and then I have no idea what's going on in the game of course but I don't care IG I just want to shoot click and and play and just uh enjoy enjoy that but you mention that brings up wait that brings up just a really quick Side Story there when I um when I wrote Nine Dragons right which was this Ming Dynasty Kung Fu game um I I I wrote the game and then I handed it off to the developers I didn't and and they and they were building and so I didn't have anything to do for a while until the next set of quests came along so I just hung out on the message boards and my character The Hermit um spoke to the players they'd say oh great hermit what will the names of the Clans be of of the game and I would say oh grasshopper I would answer the back they will be gin Clan and wuang Clan and I

kind of talked back to them in game but then I said you know what I want to be playing the game and Nine Dragons is an MMO for those of you who haven't played an MMO you have an avatar that you design and you're a character and you put the clothes on them and you're running around in this persistent game where you see everyone sees you so my character The Hermit was running around and I had the um the game Masters create a special Avatar over my head that said Lore Master right and they gave me this power this power that I could kill a player I could just zap them and they're dead right and you know that if your character is dead you lose XP right you have to respawn and you've lost your XP for the day so I went around in the game and I met players who were used to seeing game master over somebody said they said what's the la la master I said I'm the one who wrote the story and the quests in the game and they and they and I said do you want to play you want to

play with me and they'd say well what are we going to do and they'd say I'm going to ask you a question about the lore of the game and if you accept the question if you accept and you can answer the question I will give you a gift and if you get the question wrong I will kill you basically and they were like uh uh and so now this is happening in the chat right so all the other players come to see what's going on and suddenly we have an audience around us and I asked my question and if they gave it right I I would upgrade their weapon or give them some magic pill that made them really strong for 12 hours or something and as they got wrong boom and I killed them so even in that I I was adding an element to the design of the game that that that was not there and I didn't work at a claim yet by the way I was just I was writing as a freelancer and wrote for them and then I went away and then Howard marks the uh the former

chairman of Activision and now the CEO of of a claim called me in and he said I want you to come work full time and run events and and and start work doing what you're doing in the game because you raised the revenue this month 35% and I was like okay he said you're gonna be the game director and this I was like what's a game director he's like you keep doing what you're doing and we we'll we'll we'll figure that out as we go so this was a situation where a a writer in a game where the story was important and I started uh working in game development and understanding and adding more to the game than even the designers had had placed there using using story nice okay well I would definitely but you had a question I hope you I hope you remember I hope you I won't I won't kill you but I hope you remember your qu your question you would have died though you didn't know the story so you would oh man 100% 100% that already uh but um so you mentioned

uh hidden object games but now you mentioned also MMO so are there any like game genres that are more Su suitable for narrative uh design or you just you know you just can write everything because well you've done your job in the in the advertising industry for 10 years Kudos by the way thank you thank you that's not easy um that's a that's a really good question I think um almost any game could could do with a little bit of narrative and a little to make it more of a brand because when you you're making a game or a property one of the Holy Grails would be that it could go further than the game it could become TV it could be movie it could be a franchise right and a franchise is gonna some elements of a franchise are going to have a story if it's going to become a comic book it needs a story if it's going to become a movie it needs a story right um so are are some stronger

than others I mean if it's a mystery you definitely need a story um um uh sci-fi wants a story I mean adding e even just a little bit of a story or a cute character and giving the character a name and and then once he's a character and he has a name and he's alive the if it's a male character I don't want to get gender specific he wants a girlfriend or a boyfriend or you know then that's a love interest and there's a story of how they met and what they do after they met and so I mean I think we as humans want a story Right add it add it on ADD it on to us but do uh or do these stories actually have an effect on the ROI and the kpis in all genres because well you know even if you know you you you you write a story for the characters like does it does it matter even though I want to I want to see and hear like okay what's going on

but you know it's it's definitely 35% increase on the revenue SI with the retention is is important right so if if if the if the player plays your game if it's a hidden object game right before pearls Peril uh where we did some very Innovative things um y with narrative design uh there was one character that came on the screen and told you what to hunt for in a game such as Gardens of time right so that wasn't as appealing as having multiple characters in a dramatic situation with a cliffhanger where you wanted to know what happens next and if you want to know what happens next you don't start playing a different game you you relaunch your game tomorrow to tune back in and this is the same model as Television right if there was a 2hour movie on TV a television movie you watched it and that

was the end of it and then you click over to another Channel and what's the next movie but if there's a television series like The Walking Dead you want to know will your characters survive next week so you come back the next day so my first answer is yes it it it certainly that is a clear way that it affects retention and as you know retention is going to uh bring you more of an Roi yes but you can't pay bills with retention only that's the thing but obviously very much conect connected that's not my that's not my part of the job right I'm supposed to make your title sticky and make the story dramatic and make you want to come back yeah yeah right yeah 100% I I think like but but but but but the people that like the story they tell their friends right and then other people who like that kind of story come and play too it's it's part the reality it's not yeah it's not black and white of course yeah

yeah of course yeah one thing I can to this is that uh I've seen the the other players also that we talk about that you have the Maes of the world who skipped the story and doesn't read anything and they just look for the skip button but I see also the other ones who are let's say playing gardien Scapes sitting with thousands of stars in their inventory they man mention still being a rubble but they just follow the story they don't care about refab bring and you re revitalizing the mention they just care about the story so they like move fast through the puzzles and look through the story they don't care about the Stars anyway so I've seen this live like that this is the retention driver for them it's not you know the The Meta game that play R plan for them uh wga actually did a um going back to the ra question they did some some testing um and they talked about this a GDC so I don't think I'm giving away any uh Trade Secrets here where they wanted

to see how important the story was and they literally tested how long people were staying online watching when when text bubbles came up to measure uh if they were reading the story and they said something uh I I don't want to butcher their their research but they said something like if they if somebody was only there for five or six seconds they were like mate and they would he they were they were clicking through but if they stayed for 30 seconds or longer they were obviously reading and I think if they said if they stayed for two or three minutes they probably went to the bathroom but in this way they were tracking how many people were actually reading the story and at least they seemed to feel that they had accurate results of this and then they went a step further and and uh they matched the people that were reading the story to the people that were spending money in this free-to-play game and they they it was lining up and they said that the people reading the story were actually the buyers in the game so maybe there's

your answer for does does story bring in Ro does they got it down to a science I'm just a bit curious as well like speaking there like how you're looking at the data like were you looking at any data points to influence your story arcs or like character arcs when you're actually working particularly with like a mobile game at that no that that doesn't the I don't I I won't pay attention to things like that because you got to remember I'm in the front end of the game I'm I'm creating the script and I'm not I I'm often gone before they get to the point where they're they're receiving uh data except through AB testing so during AB testing they might say wow you're you're I we think your text is too long in in a in a particular game which I mean usually because I'm if you're just the writer and you come on a game they tell you this many characters is the limit for a speech bubble but if you're the narra designer you're which I I almost

always am it's me helping to determine how many characters there should be in a text bubble and how often how many text bubbles there could be and you're kind of gauging the the players's um patience level for story yeah right I mean different modes of writing and I've been very fortunate to be in all of them if you're writing a book you get to write as as much as you want jump into people's heads tell the story however you want to right uh on paper then when I when I uh when I left New York and came to Hollywood and I and I was uh indoctrinated into writing the screenplay that's a very technical document um at minute 15 you have to have all the characters introduced and the villain has been introduced but hidden as a good guy right and you have to at the minute the the the protagonist has to make a

decision to enter the new world and and take on the the the situation that's coming on if you think of The Wizard of Oz that's the moment where we go from black and white Dorothy is in Kansas and black and white and then boom she's in color actually that happens at minute 30 I'm sorry not minute 15 and enters the new world even in a romance novel The Character is single and then all of a sudden decides to enter the new world of I'm going to be in this relation ship there's just certain certain moments that you have to hit in a screenplay in a video game things aren't laid out like that but the story still has to hit these emotional points right and the interesting question there on all writing is since caveman times do we as humans need to tell a sto hear a story in a certain way and if it's not told in a certain way we get bored and we leave or have people been watching movie so long that a story has been told in a

certain way that we've come to expect it and it doesn't matter we have this story in our heads there's the emotional low point the darkest cave the the villain comes back one more time at the end and you have to fight it these these story points that we all come to rely on or the boss mob comes back one more time that we that we've learned to we've internalized this so much the way a story is told that if somebody tells the story in the wrong order we get a a sick feeling and the movie didn't work the game story didn't work the comic book didn't work it's really interesting but if you don't use these story points you fail no one knows really why sounds like tenet to me oh yeah was there any was there any hints from the studio as for the like story pacing because for me as a game designer

this is like one of the biggest pain points like how to Pace the story from like capacity of the content threadmill that we need to you know create on and on and then like where to kind of cut it because I guess there comes the Cliffhanger part we've been talking about because you cannot just Pace the story like you want so are you involved within like the pacing of the story like how does this work I in in every situation I've been in that's that's a narrative design the the that's the game developers going we don't know how you're going to put the story in here so that's really me saying it's it's gonna I I I suggest we do it like this and they they pretty much follow it because they game developers don't yet we're hoping for the evolution of it they don't really understand how the writing mind works and they and so they don't try to put barriers they say tell us how to put the story in the game and uh on in a

situation like the ancient aliens game for example I came onto that project when all they knew was it was a city Builder and you were building the pyramids in ancient Egypt they didn't know why you were building the pyramids in ancient Egypt or who you as the player were playing so I looked at it and then I watched the show which I don't know if you're familiar with the show is about thinking about and asking questions about how did we build the pyramids we don't have the technology to build these pyramids now back then they only had the they didn't have the wheel yet they hadn't developed the wheel so how did they build these precise instruments that are precise to like a millionth of a centimeter in some points that are you know facing these planetary how did they do it so I said well there's aliens just like their show said there could have been aliens so I said I need a character that looks like

a gray alien and so I was telling the art Department make this character like a gray alien and and then there's Georgio who's this guy in the show um who's a sweetheart who's usually the one talk he's like kind of become the face of the show talking about ancient astronaut theory so I said we need to get him in the game and they said how is Georgio from the 20th century in in ancient Egypt and I said I'll I had to weave a story that said Georgio was a teacher teaching in the present time and I'm his student and he asked for volunteers and I volunteer to be hypnotized and regressed back to my past life in ancient Egypt and so then you know the circle spins and I go back to it's really funny too because it says will you agree to be regressed to your past life and in Egypt and it says yes and no and you have to click yes or no

but I told them whether you click yes or no yes gets lights up like so literally if you click no yes still lights up because you otherwise the game is over right so it clicks yes which is we call this a magic trick of force so you C clicked yes you go back to ancient Egypt and then you see camels and the you're in the desert and then no sooner are you there you're abducted by aliens and you go up to the ship and then they turn you into a human half human half gray hybrid and then they put you in charge of building the pyramids and then you are the one recruiting the the humans and they're picking up bricks and building the pyramid so that whole story which acts as a wraparound because they were already building the city Builder but then from there I said we need a quest system and sometimes the gray would come on and give you a quest you know uh put 5050 blocks on your pyramid or uh and

and then and then Georgio this character from the future would come on because you're in a psychic link and he would give you a quest find evidence that there were aliens at the pyramids so you find some some something that shouldn't be there right you find a wrench in ancient Egypt and then you're about to use this as evidence but the gray comes on and goes yeah we have to destroy that wrench so the first Quest was find a wrench and then the second Quest was the alien saying destroy that wrench so I I created drama you see what I'm saying but before that you were just building a pyramid so now I think that was actually a good encapsulation of how do you enter the story in there and then to to deliver the story I needed a quest system which was not in the game before I arrived so they had to the game devs had to build yakob they had to build a a quest system into the game so that was story instructing narrative design and me begging the game

designers to please build this Quest system basically and then we had to get approvals from the actor Georgio to be in the game so it's all very uh interlaced you know how how are you able to come up with you know you just you know there's a little bit of this you know um I watch I I watch movies you know you guys watch movies and some people watch a movie and just enjoy it I watch a movie and I get inspired and I want to tell story so I mean some people are it goes back to are you the Storyteller guy around the fireplace that that that wants to come up with this and some people have that skill and some people and the often the receptionist that the game company doesn't by the way our movies rud for you this way because you can you know see the pattern behind them as they're being told wow that's a yes yeah actually yes when you

when well there's two things if you live in Hollywood long enough you know so many actors that you're watching like I I have a friend James crell I have a friend James crumel and I'm watching my favorite show it was six feet under and I and then all of a sudden in season five or six he suddenly came on the show as the love interest for Ruth the mother in six feet under and I'm like oh no I can't watch this now I don't believe it anymore right it's it it it pulled me out of it but that's one way that things get messed up but the the for Storyteller when I when I transition from writing books to writing scripts for movies and television show you're right suddenly you see the pattern in every TV show and every movie and it does indeed ruin it for you because you're watching and you look at the clock and like we're at minute 15 something has to change who was the bad guy yeah minute 30 minute 30

Everything's Gonna Change and minute 60 it's a movie Everything's Gonna Change so it does it for when you're starting out it ruins it for you because you're watching the skeleton you're watching the machine but then once you learn the the process of Storytelling then suddenly a magic thing happens that makes the story better for for someone who understands than for the Casual viewer because you're watching it and it's hitting you on a subconscious level this Primal storytelling but for the storytellers who are watching it when first off when you see it bad you really know it's bad but when you see but when you see someone pull off uh in a in a creative way you not only are satisfied as the viewer but as a Storyteller you go ah wow you really G Des that you pulled it off and it it's like be you're smitten

with how the person wrote it and it inspires you to want to tell your stories better I often tell people that um watching a bad theater play or watching a bad television pilot is actually good training because when you see it done bad you learn oh don't do that or don't tell it don't tell a story so it actually is is instructive for you in your craft to even watch bad bad television is it is there some some other inspiration that uh you are also thinking about not only movies but you know obviously books comics and whatever else games maybe as well you mean that Inspire what you're writing yeah Inspire yeah yeah yeah yeah what you are writing like where do you take the inspiration for writing I mean I I mean I went to graduate school in English man so I we read all the Classics I mean there there are just

basic tropes and storylines that have been that all Trac back you know to the Greeks you know Boy Meets Girl edus Boy Meets Girl girl in this case happens to be your mother you know and then uh then you then you poke your eyes out which is you know a basic uh storyline or in Star Wars you get your hand cut off um uh so there you kind of have in your toolkit as a writer the different basic stories and you end up using them and recombining them uh as you go and and and the same themes because we're human it's the same love story or Revenge story just they come back yeah yeah if it's Red Dead Redemption it's a it's a Revenge story you know know if it's

um there's there's just different kinds of Adventures and they all have their own basic rules by the way do you borrow these kind of patterns from different movies or you know stories that you find kind of elegant to kind of transition somewhere because I do this with game design all the time the more games you play the more kind of systemic problems you can then reference oh they solved it like this in this game I can use that in my system you know connecting core gameplay to meta game do do we got you have it's a fine line it's a fine line between borrowing and stealing you know and plagiarism for uh for you I I think it's it's more subconscious again because you know the pattern of how a story must go by the way for anyone out there who's an aspiring writer what we're following is called the hero's journey um and uh the the best if anyone who wants to be a writer I think the a book that I often recommend is by a man named vulker who wrote a book called The Writer's

Journey um and it lays out the it lays out how to tell story in a very um simple easy to understand way and it asked you to track as we mentioned for The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz is kind of the perfect story to very clearly follow structure I mean in Hollywood they took this book The Wizard of Oz and even did this trick with it that the that the movie itself would go the first 30 minutes are black and white and then at minute 30 they went into Technicolor which where they wanted to put into a film so much so that that changed um an element in the book which was Dorothy receiv received the silver slippers in the book but in the movie it was the what was it do you remember what it what she gets in the in the movie The the ruby slippers which were these bright shiny red shoes so they changed that story element so they could take advant of the fact that they were in Technicolor and at minute 30 in a script

you have to go into the new world and at minute 30 is when Dorothy lands in Oz and everything boom goes into color to really illustrate it so if you have this book The Writer's journey and have the movie The Wizard of Oz you can teach yourself uh how to tell a story basically so these elements are in the it teaches you how to recognize you know who is the trickster character who is the mentor character who's the Mentor character in Star Wars obiwan Star Wars Episode obiwan Kenobi absolutely who's the protagonist in Star Wars Luke the first movie Luke Skywalker is the the young hero and you know there's a moment in every story in the just to give you a good illustration of how you can see it in everything there's a moment in the story where the hero denies the call it's actually the point of the script it's called the hero denies the call and when doesn't Luke Skywalker deny the call at first when Obi-Wan says I need

to take you on an adventure what does he say like want to stay farming with on Felix then they kill them over exact I can't go I can't go the this Farm they needed here an Owen and Uncle Uncle Uncle Henry what's it Uncle what's whatever their name um uh I'm gonna get Star Wars letters you don't know your star um uh is it is it Ben is it OB then he Reveals His Obi yeah he's Ben but uh so so he say I have to stay he denies the call I can't go right and then what happens he comes home and they're dead and then all right I'll go with you you know to I'll go on this journey with you but the hero has to deny the call even if it's just for a moment even if she goes nah I can't do it all right I'll go but if if that doesn't happen you feel like something is missing right so it happens now when you guys

the next movie or TV show you watch on the pilot watch for deny the call I just look at the CL like ah 30 minutes now everything is going to change ah I know I so you put the same hero's journey into like mobile games exactly so like next time I'm playing a story div game that you've written I'll be able to tell as well like oh here's where yeah the hero actress and here's where he and it's not just the hero I'll make the the smaller character characters have these have these decisions and here's another funny thing the villain whoever the best your story is only as good as your villain they they I learned really young you need a really good course uh villain but you got to remember that the villain is following the hero's journey in reverse because in the to the villain he is the hero he thinks what he's doing is right he thinks uh what he's doing is saving the world like the Republicans in America no okay I won't go to I'm just kidding

[Laughter] um the the the the you you need to be able to look at your story after you've written it and go back and realiz and see did the villain story make sense as a hero's journey from the villain's point of view and testing it that way you can see did you tell a good story um okay and Ste like how do you look at story when it comes to liveops for example there is going to be an event in the game is it a different process for the liveops events or is it very similar and you're still looking at it that the same way and well sometimes I'm already remember I'm a I'm a I'm a freelancer I'm rarely an employee of the company I'm doing the game for so sometimes by the time the game gets to live Ops I'm not I I'm not really involved unless it's we're doing an expansion or we're adding chapter 2 or we need more quests but maybe the right

way to answer that is going back to Nine Dragons at a claim here I was the Lore Master running running game but later um when I started working more hand inand with the with the devs and we planned an event then I would uh announce the event you know week in advance we're going to have uh a scavenger hunt um then I have to say 12 of the greatest swords ever created were were lost and we must find them so I had to put this event in the story of the game in the in the marketing of the of the event which what it brought a a more um uh more players to that particular time slot were coming it it it dragged them there and maybe then I'd say let's have an item Mall sale during that time where people will get this these special glasses maybe not

in Nine Dragons this special mask that will help you locate them easier I'm making this up right now but this is the bad example of it glasses right there yeah some item all item that would that would that would help you in this so so that there was a sale involved with the event and then I would decide where on the map did we drop the items and I would of course be there and there were different serers uh operating at different times when it was night in Europe it was day in America and so I'd have to do the event three times so that I could hit them at the at the same event while they were awake so there was a lot of coordinating going on and then you know sometimes there were game design elements that had to be hard programmed and or sometimes it was just story or the game the the game director the game uh Masters being in certain places to referee who found the item first or did they collect it and put it in their inventory so it was

always variable how much game design uh or uh a game element uh was just about story and then then after the art Department then comes the UA in then uh they look at the all those lines and text you've wrote and then they just used in the in the marketing activities well funnily enough because I come from advertising typically on the games that I work on I'm also writing the the the marketing copy right down to the Facebook posts nice you know like Pearl's Peril in Pearl's Peril I had to write the uh the hook lines for each scene basically encapsulating them that they you know oh no Pearl's in danger today and this is happening that they used to put in the game which the players would send out to get energy right they that was the virality of the game was they would they would Force out these um these these small texts with an

image from the game which would hook the players who then wrote could friend on your friend list just read you know this little snippet of pearl is in danger in Atlantis this week and if they were oh she's in Atlant there's a game and she's in Atlantis okay may I'm interested in that so even those little pieces of text became the viral hooks that brought people back in and I'm I'm typically WR the the back jacketop on the game right uh like what the game is about but that's just because I'm bringing my marketing expertise uh in to help them write and basically if you have a good enough writer they can flow like water into any part of the game that you need created into the jacket copy the market copy um the um the I mean even just like the start you know like that's text any text

that's in the game a good writer should be responsible for that so that it has continuity it has the same flavor uh running through the character dialogue and and all the yeah because you create the some expectations with the with the creatives and if you use the same well messaging in the creatives and then the very similar messaging is in the store and then the the players have some expectations and those expectations are met in the game afterwards then that's the the perfect flow nice I'll tell you you en counter bad writing you know that's you know that you recognize that right whether it's in a game or a movie or a TV show it really turns you off right it can it can make you quit doing or it can and R um your willing suspension of we're not really on a spaceship but you believe you're willing

you're willing to go and believe you're on a spaceship but if somebody opens the door to look out and they can still breathe then you're like all right they don't know what they're they don't know what they're doing yeah so good writing is sticky and it it it enhances everything else that's going on and bad writing will will kill it yeah and I think with that I think with that we can uh we can close the the discussion because I mean man this was it was so interesting yeah it was really thank you very much for coming and uh thank you everybody that you actually got uh at the end end of our discussion and thank you very much guys until next time byebye byebye I'll be watching the show I'll be watching next

[Music] yeah we should we should have a we should had a drink before I'm just drinking coffee gentlemen that's what I'm drink ah all right well that's what writers drink 10 dou also a program Dr I thought it was whiskey isn't it yeah I thought it's red wine whiskey red wine I didn't say what was in my coffee I just said that I was drink ah okay okay okay H okay let's uh let's start [Music]