Review of Chapter 1 in Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames

Chapter 1 - “Introduction to Game Narrative” (Dansky)

As the Slashdot article mentions, the book begins with an introductory chapter by Richard Dansky - story writer for games such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Far Cry: Instincts. In the beginning of the chapter, Dansky spends time defining and formalizing terms such as ’story’, ’setting’, ‘narrative’ and ‘cut scene’ - terms that are used throughout the rest of the book by other authors in various ways. {1.0}

Dansky’s interest in the first chapter is both to give a general overview of what is entailed in what appears to be in the typical game development houses. He envisions the role of the writer as a person who must come up with ways of integrating a story into an already existing game design. For the most part, Dansky does not speculate on qualities of stories or narratives that are more valuable than others, and chooses instead to focus on specific writing practices and concepts that make narratives easier to incorporate into games. There are exceptions of course. For example, Dansky argues that “writing is extraneous” to the game if what was written falls outside of advancing the player’s opportunities for “movement” or progression in the game. He says that while “little extras” may be important to the writer in terms of contextualizing the plot, they should be, “saved for promotional materials, tie-in novels, or projects that are personal to the writer. Many players won’t want to hear it.” While he does except role-playing and adventure games from this rule, but the implied spirit of his original claim still stands: it’s better to cater to the lowest common denominator than risk alienating players. {1.1}

Later in the chapter Dansky moves on to discuss how narratives must be delivered in a such a way that provide players with reasons to continue playing the game. In that way, the writer must develop characters that have “traits that make them appealing to the player so that they can serve their roles in the narrative”. Just as he stresses that the player’s progression through the game is always at stake in a narrative, Dansky implicitly envisions (non-player) characters as being a necessary cog in the narrative machine; they ultimately owe their existence to the plot and not vice-versa. {1.2} This is of course consistent with Dansky’s overall message that the writer’s job is ultimately to keep the player playing - a point worth considering in all respects.

Dansky then discusses some particular challenges that writers may face in games, such as what he sees as narrative techniques unfit for use in games. He says, “A lengthy, tense conversation fraught with emotional violence is superb in a Harold Pinter drama, but what does the player potentially do during that time? Sit and watch?” (p. 17) {1.3} He also believes that “forced failure” techniques (situations that force the player into a situation in order to satisfy a writer’s predefined plot point) also find no place in modern games, and should be avoided (p. 18). {1.4}

One of the last important points that Dansky covers is showing how writers might work, knowing that an entire team of engineers, programmers, artists and designers have technical constraints of their own. Since cutscene creation is an expensive process, he encourages writers to take conservative approaches based on the technical capabilities of the team from the beginning, rather than writing a full draft and scaling it back to fit technical constraints. {1.5}

Conclusion
As a self-contained chapter, Dansky presents some cursory do’s and don’ts of game writing through the lens of a seasoned mass-market game writer. While some of the basic terminology might be of use to complete newbies, the ways in which he operationalizes some of the concepts (ie. story, plot, character, etc) might be found wanting by more literary-minded folks. The chapter is best understood as a conservative task-based approach to game writing, rather than a literary or artistic approach. This choice is of course consistent with the rest of the book - a comment that I will return to in later chapters.

My Editorial Comments

1.0
I’m arrested almost immediately by the narrow way in which Dansky chooses to delimit the terms he uses; while I understand that operational definitions offer a ’starting point’ for discussion, it becomes obvious that these kinds of restrictions on narrative and story permeate the book. More on that soon.

1.1
The difficulty I have with Dansky’s claim that “players just won’t want to hear it” is precisely in that he doesn’t define just what kinds of players he’s talking about. Sure, if we’re making a hardcore shoot’em’up FPS for children with attention deficit disorders - it really might be worthwhile to contain the amount of ‘extraneous’ dialog and story in the game. But this begs the obvious question: what if we’re making games for more serious audiences? Effective and involving stories aren’t possible without those so-called ‘extraneous’ details. Take Planescape: Torment for instance. The game is filled with countless ‘extraneous’ dialogs, NPCs, and quests not central to the player’s “advancement”. But each of these details combined create the convincing, atmospheric experience that has earned Torment acclaim from both players and critics alike.

1.2
By prioritizing the narrative over character development, we risk remaking the mistake of developing “plot-driven” games. Rather than having a world populated by interesting, detailed and dynamic (non-player) characters, plot-driven games tend to feature static, stock characters that are only there to fill in their roles. Completely plot-driven games such as Splinter Cell or Tomb Raider provide characters only insofar as they give the player new directions for their next job. In that way, characters themselves provide the player with absolutely nothing valuable, and detract from the gameplay experience in the end. Rich and detailed characters with their own motivations and idiosyncratic quirks, such as ‘Murray the Talking Skull’ in the Monkey Island series, ‘Cid’ in Final Fantasy VII, and ‘Bastila’ in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, all serve to add a dimension of realism to the game world as well as give the player the sense that their actions actually make a difference to someone. Without sufficiently deep characters, the developer risks turning the world into a sandbox environment lacking a sense of meaning and responsibility outside of the player’s personal desires.

1.3
On the subject of dialogues, he continues by saying, “Whatever the players decide to do, they are not playing, and that can be deadly to a game.” To be fair, I think Dansky means to say that dialogs in which the player is not directly involved in (ie. a lengthy cutscene) can be frustrating for players who must keep their hands busy at all times. But what about games in which action occurs most primarily in conversation - such as Planescape: Torment? Considering that Torment features over 68,000 lines of dialog (or 1 million words), would Dansky conclude that the player is probably spending most of her/his time in sheer boredom? The problem with Dansky’s claim is - again - that he presupposes an audience suffering from A.D.D.

1.4
Unfortunately, Dansky does not provide a single example of a “forced failure” technique used in games. Of immediate mind is King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder. Early in the game, ‘Graham’ is captured and imprisoned in a cellar by a swarthy innkeeper and his cronies, and he must find a way of escape before being killed. While situations like these do not lend the player much agency (ie. they only have two choices: escape, or get killed), they do manage to carry along the narrative in a sensible way. I don’t believe that we automatically “diminish the player’s experience” (p. 18) by introducing these kinds of techniques - but I do accept that if these techniques are applied unskillfully (ie. by addition of a heavy-handed deus ex machina literary hack) they can lend to bad storytelling. And will players be “frustrated” by forced failures? Sure will. Will they keep playing? Yup. I did at least.

1.5
While this is likely good advice for ‘hired gun’ writers, this probably does not bode well for story-driven games whose basis rests on a detailed, difficult story provided by the writer from the beginning. Ultimately, I feel that decisions like these should be made by the entire development team, since the entire structure of the game grows from decisions made early in the cycle. If the designers already have a concept for the game, and require a writer to fill in the gaps (which seems to be Dansky’s approach), then a conservative writing approach is likely best. If the writer has more freedom however, it makes sense that s/he might work in a more liberal style that requires designers and engineers to push the limits of their technical abilities before asking the writer to cut or rewrite the story.