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Site Seeing: Chuck Wendig/TerribleMinds

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Lots of people say what they think. Chuck Wendig says it the way he thinks it:

I ride you people pretty hard. I’m like an old man on the lawn, shaking his walker at you interlopers. “Get the hell offa my property! Quit screwin’ around!” Next thing you know, I’m thumbing two homemade rock-salt shells into the breach of a double barrel. Ch-chak. “Old Man Wendig’s gonna make Swiss cheese out of our backsides again! He’s lettin’ the taco terrier out of her hermetically-sealed cage, too! It’s like Jurassic Park, and we’re the goats in the T-Rex paddock!”

I deft you to find anything similar outside of a state-run institution.

But that’s Chuck. He’s got attitude to burn, and the writing skill to weld that attitude to a web page. If you want a little entertainment with your subject matter, you’ll get a feature-film’s worth at TerribleMinds.

(I can’t tell you if Chuck’s site is safe for work or not, because for all I know you run the Hell’s Angels Deli. Still, it’s a question you might want to consider.)

But here’s the thing. Chuck isn’t just entertaining. He also knows what he’s talking about craft-wise. He knows about writing, he knows how he writes, and he knows the difference. And that puts him in a pretty small camp.

So pick yourself out a pretty one of these, and one of these, and maybe $500,000 worth of this, and head on over to Chuck’s site. He’ll welcome you with open arms, as long as you’re cool with the pulled pin.

— Mark Barrett

A Generational Definition of Insanity

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You’ve undoubtedly heard this before:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results.

I’m old enough now that I can attest to the truth of that saying from both observation and personal experience. The antidote, of course, is to recognize behavior patterns and interrupt them — provided you have the clarity of mind to do so. It’s not easy, and it runs against the human tendency to resist change and protect the ego, but it can be done. As is also often said, admitting you have a problem is the first step.

A related but much more insidious problem involves the repetition of behaviors over the course of generations. These generations may be literal, coming along every twenty years or so, or they may be developmental and occur with greater frequency. In each case, however, new generations are predisposed to repeat experiences precisely because they arrive on the scene oblivious to what has gone before.

There are two main reasons for the perpetuation of such generational blindness. The first is the failing of previous generations to pass along useful knowledge, or to make knowledge available and digestible in ways that are accessible and relevant. The second is the failing of new generations to recognize that a distinction must be made between what is new to them (as a group or as individuals), and what is actually new.

For example, at some point most people becomes fascinated with their own sexuality, often to the point of distraction. Yet no one would argue that this process for any individual sheds new light on the human condition, or represents a break from the past. Coming to terms with one’s own desires and biological essence is exciting, intoxicating, and so utterly commonplace as to be mundane. That such newness can feel transcendent to the individual or group is clear, even as it is demonstrably not new. (Without ‘going there’, try conceptualizing your parents or grandparents as the sexual being you believe yourself to be. Because they are/were.)  [ Read more ]

Ken Rolston on Narrative Design

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Who is Ken Rolston? He’s the guiding light behind The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and IV: Oblivion. If you’re interested in interactivity, interactive storytelling (of any kind), and/or computer games as a career, you should play and understand Ken’s games.

What is narrative design? It’s a title that didn’t exist five years ago, back when I took a break from the interactive industry. At the time, the designer of a game was akin to the director of a movie, and that held true regardless of the type of interactive entertainment that was being produced. The problem was, some games were so heavily narrative — and some designers so completely unprepared to control and author a narrative experience — that game-centric designers started becoming a detriment to the final products they were producing.

Narrative designer as a title recognizes the fact that putting a story-centric game together demands particular skills — just as does game design and art design and architectural design (level building). A narrative designer handles the storytelling in an interactive work, either on their own, or by directing a team. If you’re interested in narrative design, you should be interested in what Ken Rolston has to say.

Speaking of which, here’s Ken on consistency, one of the most important aspects of interactive design:

Filling a game’s world with appropriate content that sets the tone — in-game books, artwork, maps, signs, languages, and so on — is paramount to crafting consistency and believability.

“The best thing you can do is find artifacts that feel in the mind like they’re touchable. They’re evidence of another world,” Rolston said. That extends to every corner of the design, even the fonts used in the game.

More from Ken here, including an awesome PDF of his recent talk at the Montreal International Games Summit.

— Mark Barrett

Chrono Trigger

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You’ve probably never heard of this game, and even if I gave you a copy you probably don’t have a Super NES in your closet to play it on. If you did, however, you’d get a first-class lesson in storytelling for the video game market. A lesson I assumed was lost to the always-receding hardware horizon.

Today, however, I ran across a wonderful write-up and analysis of Chrono Trigger by Michael Brannan, who was participating in a contest in association with the IGDA Game Writers’ SIG. Here’s a sample:

Chrono Trigger’s story is a massive, sweeping story that spans a world consisting of several kingdoms across five distinct time periods (not counting the Day of Lavos in 1999 and the End of Time). In a nutshell, Chrono Trigger follows Crono’s journey through time, beginning the morning of the Millennial Faire celebrating the beginning of the year 1000 AD and follows Crono and the allies he meets on a quest to stop the Day of Lavos from occurring in 1999 AD.

If you’re interested in interactive entertainment, or in the history of the industry, or you were lucky enough to play Chrono Trigger back in the day, take a look. In an industry that often can’t be bothered to remember yesterday’s games, let alone the techniques that made them great, this kind of reference work is shamefully rare and desperately needed.

— Mark Barrett

The Interactive Difference

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Whatever you think about interactive entertainment (commonly referred to as video games or computers games), and whatever you think about the long-term potential for interactive storytelling, there is one critical and indisputable difference between interactive works and all other forms of entertainment. Movies, books, television, theater and even live-action sports are all witnessed, while interactive works are participatory.

This may seem like an obvious point, and perhaps even trivial, but it isn’t. It’s not only central to what makes interactive entertainment compelling, it’s a revolutionary change in the relationship between entertainment product and intended audience. Because players/users make choices instead of witnessing other people’s choices, the meaning inherent in an interactive work is heightened and intensified, both personally and culturally.

To see this clearly, imagine any gripping or emotionally-charged scene you’ve ever experienced in a passive form — a great moment in a novel, a thrilling scene in a film. Now translate that experience from one you’re witnessing to one you’re participating in. Instead of reading about the gunfight, you’re shooting. Instead of watching the heroine slip past the mob, you’re doing the sneaking. Instead of witnessing Sophie’s choice, you have to make Sophie’s choice.  [ Read more ]

One Person’s List….

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…is another person’s tool:

By winnowing the literature of anthropology, Donald E Brown collected a list of some 200 ‘human universals’. Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate” includes an alphabetical version of the full list, but I think trying to re-sort it in ‘evolutionary’ order should be more instructive:

…

environment, adjustments to
binary cognitive distinctions
pain
likes and dislikes
food preferences
making comparisons

The list goes on like that for hundreds of lines, and on that point alone it deserves notice. But consider the implications here for creators.

If you’re telling a story, any mix of these traits would allow you to develop a convincing society. If you’re working in interactive, figuring out which of these traits you can simulate would give you a subset of useful traits, and a logical way to create machine-controlled races/species.

Too cool.

— Mark Barrett

Valve, Writers and Success

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Long-time readers know I’ve been harping on this subject for at least six years, but it deserves the harp. One of the more successful and forward-looking game developers over the past decade has been a company called Valve. It’s more recognizable titles include Half-life, Half-life 2 and Portal.

As I noted as recently as September, Valve has had a professional writer on staff throughout its admirable run. My own opinion, as a writer, is that these two things — writer-on-staff and success — are actually related. The interactive industry being what it is, however, this tends to be a minority opinion, and the rationale is always the same: there’s no money for a staff writer. To which I reply: maybe if you had a writer on staff, you’d make more money.

In any case, today Gamasutra put up an interview with Mark Laidlaw (the aforementioned writer) and Eric Wolpaw (a second writer hired by Valve — apparently because the first hire turned out so well). It’s worth a read if you’re trying to break out of the game-design box you’re in. Because good writers know how to do that.

— Mark Barrett

Transmedia, Level 26, 90-9-1 and Transparency

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One of the hallmarks of storytelling over the past few thousand years is that the majority of people who are drawn to stories are not interested in creating stories on their own. They don’t even want to confront the means of delivery, or to understand how stories are imagined, created or produced. What they want is an imaginative, emotional narrative experience that is transparent to all of these mechanisms and processes. They want to consume in the same way that you or I might prefer to consume a meal without having to gather ingredients, cook, season, serve, or do much of anything except taste and chew.

I mention these points to re-frame the context surrounding transmedia storytelling and a recent example of that exploratory narrative form: Level 26, which you can see here, and read more about here and here.  [ Read more ]

The Oz Project

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I first learned of the Oz Project a decade ago, during conversations with some of the original members of the Carnegie-Mellon team. If you’re interested in believable agents and interactive drama you can find a comprehensive overview of the subject here, written by Michael Mateas.

— Mark Barrett

You Get What You (Don’t) Pay For

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In the publishing business writers get paid to write. In Hollywood, writers get paid to write. In the copywriting business, writers get paid. In the theater, playwrights get paid.

In the interactive industry, however, it’s been a very slow process getting the people who make games to see writers as an inherent part of the industry. In fact, ten years ago one of the docs I just added to this site — Storytellers: A Hiring Guide for the Interactive Industry — originally had this title: “Storytellers: Part of the team?”

Well, the good news is that writers are now much more a part of the development process than they were even five years ago. In fact, that’s one of the things that’s changed for the better in the interactive industry: writers are now being thought of as part of the team.  [ Read more ]