http://www.writers-online.co.uk^79FANTASTIC REALMS
MARCH 2020Ask two or three people involved in the industry and they
will probably have a different story to tell from one another.
However there are common threads that come through, and
you might be surprised to discover that writing novels or short
stories is not necessarily the best training for the field. With
that said, writing in other fields is often very important, and
there have often been avenues emerging from writing tie-in
fiction (Warhammer, Doctor Who etc), writing for board games,
writing for comics, writing games books or writing for TV and
film. An understanding of these forms is useful for video game
writing in two ways. First, many involve developing different
options for a story, which is crucial to video games. Secondly,
they also demonstrate that you can work within boundaries
and show an understanding of an established world, an already-
developed setting for a story and work as part of a team on
a project. Novelists often fly solo, which is certainly not the
experience in the video game industry.
The other option which many people take up is to make
their own games independently to show off their skills. Many
independent games developers have had great success with projects
they have handled themselves, and there are more mechanisms
now than ever not just for creating games but also releasing them
to an audience. When I think back over the last ten years many of
my absolute favourites have been indie games – Cuphead, Limbo,
Firewatch and my personal top pick, the awesomely meta The
Stanley Parable (if you want to see how video games can push
narrative in interesting directions, this is a must).
If you feel you have the skillset – or maybe know the people
who do – you could make it yourself. If the game makes an
impact, that could provide a way into a larger company and
more opportunities in the future. Alternatively you might find
that you decide to stick to making your own and a carve a
highly successful furrow there!
Alternative pathways (2)
In last month’s article on gamebook writing, we took a look
at how that medium depends immensely on branching paths,
an interactive story that puts the reader fully in control of the
action and the ending. If anything, the video game expands
on this idea, which is a key principle for an aspiring writer
in the field to understand. The player effectively inhabits the
character within the story, and as such it is crucial for them to
feel as though they are driving the story. They need to have lots
of choice and they need to feel truly in charge of the narrative
direction to have the full effect. While in gamebooks this is
usually restricted to a neat and tidy 400 pages, video games
can be vast and sprawling. This is especially true of more ‘open
world’ games, which offer the player vast choices as to where
to go and often options of new challenges and story elements
when they get there.
Video games rarely have just the one story – it’s many
bundled up together, which is part of what can make a
game such great value. For one famous example, the horror
game Until Dawn claimed to have 256 different ending
combinations. Although there’s some debate whether that was
really the case, the range of possibilities was very impressive. If
a player wants to come back and explore the paths they didn’t
explore last time around, or go back to look at those ‘side
quests’ and subplots they might have missed, that’s true replay
value – something much sought after within the industry.
Characterisation
Once again, the narrative advances in video games mean that we
have less than ever of the old ‘good guy vs bad guy’ dynamic.
That still exists out there, but more and more offerings are
leaving it down to the player exactly how they want to play the
game, and the choices they make are enabling the story to play
out very differently. One of the most controversial games of the
2000s, Postal 2, was banned in numerous countries for its violent
content – but the developers were at pains to point out that you
could just as easily complete the game without committing any
violent acts in-game, so the choice to play ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ was
always there. Alternatively similarly controversial offerings such
as Manhunt 2 or Hatred have that violence embedded as a crucial
part of the gameplay, and as such force the player to commit
some horrendous acts in order to complete the game.
One of the other things to consider in video game
characterisation is that many will offer multiple players, and
give you a choice between two or more different individuals to
play through the game with. How will it be a different gameplay
experience between one and the next? It could be something as
simple as different stats or different weaponry, or far more complex
in terms of personality and emotional response. And that’s not
to mention the many games that allow you to develop your own
characters from scratch, with many nuanced characteristics that
can again factor into the experience of the game itself.The past and the future
While there are many accepted and known routes into
publishing, be it mainstream, small press or self-publishing,
video game writing is a comparatively new artform and –
despite all the great work already going on in the field – the
suspicion remains that there will be many more developments
to come. Books and stories have been around for thousands
of years, while video games have just sixty or seventy years of
history to call upon.
This article could easily read very differently in five or ten
years as the medium continues to develop and the demands
of the gaming audience change over time. While some games
(particularly those you carry around on your phone) depend on
simplicity, the demands and the expectations on AAA games on
the very latest consoles are far more strenuous in every respect- storyline and dialogue included. My own theory is that there
will be more opportunities for writers in the industry going
forward, and – like comics before them – you will eventually
find more acclaimed and well-known writers from other fields
taking a dip into the medium.
What’s also worth bearing in mind is that the inexorable
march of technology remains an inscrutable question. In the last
few years we’ve started to see VR technology that you can now
get at home, which opens up a whole slew of opportunities – not
to mention a raft of questions as to how a VR game has to differ
from a traditional on-screen video game. Who would dare to
guess what other new consoles, devices and audio-visual elements
might be to come to change this element of writing forever?
In this light, the final point is that if you want to be a video
game writer, you need to be a video game player, and a current
one at that – be up on the current trends, the popular titles,
and look at them critically to see what really makes them tick.
If you can develop that sort of understanding, then that’s a
great start for you.