numbers of moving units on the screen at once, it will be impossible to tell a story
where the player must participate in epic, massive battles between armies. The game
designer needs to consider how the story line will be communicated to the player
through the engine that she must use. Trying to tell a story with an inadequate engine is
just as likely to compromise the game as tying a particular story to inappropriate
gameplay. Again using the example ofHalf-Lifementioned above, if the team at Valve
had tried to set their game in Death Valley and involve the player battling gangs of
twenty giant insects at once, theQuakeengine would have ground to a halt on the
machines of the day and the game would have been miserable to play. In the Death Val-
ley scenario, Valve might have been telling the story they wanted, but no one would
have cared since the game would have been miserably slow and looked horrendous. For
the greater good of the game, the story and the technology must be compatible with
each other.
Something else to always keep in mind when considering how your technology will
limit your gameplay and story is how you can creatively work around your limitations.
For example, if you are trying to do a game about massive battles with thousands of
individual units, do all of the units need to be represented in 3D, or will a 2D representa-
tion work just as well? Or, perhaps you never need to have all of the units in the world at
the same time; you could tell the story of such a gigantic conflict from the viewpoint of a
single soldier in that battle, with between-mission updates that show the larger picture.
For an example out of my own past, my ill-fated gameGunslingertried to capture the
myths and storytelling of the Old West. We had a technology that was perfectly suited to
rendering sprawling outdoor environments in 3D, so it was a natural fit to the game.
But if we had only had a 2D engine, there is nothing to say we could not still have done a
tale about the legends of the Old West in a 2D game with a god’s-eye view of the pro-
ceedings. As a game designer, it is possible to get stuck in a rut of how a game “needs to
be done” and forget the potential for alternate implementations that may be a better fit
for your technology.
Starting with Story ............................
Finally, it is certainly possible that the brainstorming for your game may start with a
setting you want to employ, a story you want to tell, or a set of characters you want to
explore. This is probably a less common starting point than technology or gameplay.
Indeed, since many games have no story whatsoever, the very concept of a game start-
ing with a story may seem strange. At the same time, it is not unheard of for a game
designer to think of a story she wants to explore, and only then start exploring what
sort of technology and gameplay will be best suited to telling that story. Frequently, a
particular setting may inspire a game designer, such as the adventurous world of Errol
Flynn or the dark and gritty crime world ofSin City. A designer may not care too much
about the specifics of the plot, but may have a strong desire to work in a world filled with
swashbucklers or grim private detectives. For my purposes in this chapter, I consider
these inspirational settings to fall under the definition of starting with story.
Any good game designer who thinks up a story or a setting will have a tendency to
think of it in terms of how it would translate into a game, how the player can interact
with that story, and how the story may unfold in different ways depending on the
player’s actions in the game-world. Indeed, not all stories will translate very well into
Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea 45