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Mediums and Mastery

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No matter how you find your way to storytelling, your own individual authorial journey begins with the stories you have been exposed to over the course of your life. This exposure inevitably affects and informs your initial efforts as you necessarily substitute mimicry for what will later become mastery. As you grow and develop as an author, and as your skills and interests broaden, you will leave these initial anchors and points of reference behind in order to explore new narrative territory. As you become more comfortable with different aspects of craft you may even probe the complex dynamics inherent in the interplay of art, craft and commerce. You may also decide to branch out and work in different storytelling mediums such as poetry, short fiction, long fiction, screenplays, stage plays and even interactive fiction.

At some point, if you keep pushing against your limitations, you will realize that stories exist apart from the specific mediums that allow us to document and relate fiction to others. We don’t need mediums to conceive of stories, we need mediums to express and communicate stories. This means that choosing the right medium is, in the end, simply another aspect of craft — albeit one that has unparalleled importance. As you grow in mastery you may even notice that many if not most of your earlier conceptions presumed a medium, and that in some cases that medium was not the best choice. (Not only can choosing the wrong medium dull the potential of a story, leading to a less-than-satisfying result, it can lead to still-born tales that never quite work no matter how many drafts or versions you write.)

Understanding the strengths and limitations of every medium you work in is critical. As I detailed in the previous post, what the world witnessed during the first three weeks of NFL football this year was the complete collapse of an entire medium into a narrative black hole. This self-inflicted debacle was both a chilling and comical lesson in the dangers of authorial hubris, and a cautionary tale for authors who believe they have absolute power.  [ Read more ]

WIG&TSSIP: Mystery and Curiosity

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The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

Mystery is the first of three types of suspense that Hills analyzes, and I think it’s fair to say he’s dismissive of mystery as a technique. Despite my own life-long enjoyment of mysteries as a genre, I don’t disagree with his reasoning:

Stories where mystery is deliberately the method, and curiosity about the ending is the whole desired effect, are usually trick stories with wow endings.

Even as you may be bristling at Hills’ highbrow perspective, you probably know exactly what he’s talking about. Mystery can become an all-consuming, story-obliterating objective. As Hills himself notes, everyone has read a book in which the only reason for turning the page sprang from a singular desire — curiosity — to find out the answer to a mystery. Works in which mystery is the “whole desired effect” cannot help be feel insubstantial, if not insincere.

Yet: like sex, mystery does attract attention in fiction. It’s often meaningless attention, resolved by some equally meaningless bit of cleverness, but it works.

To see the raw effect of mystery and curiosity, think about any magazine headline with the word ‘secret’ on it. For a certain percentage of the human species that’s all that’s needed to invoke curiosity, prompting the reader to investigate further. It’s simplistic, even idiotic, but it works.  [ Read more ]

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 ]

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

Crisscrossing Chris Crawford

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A couple of days ago I was working my way through a slate of storytelling and publishing links when I found myself on the O’Reilly site. It’s one of those sites chock full of interesting links and notes, so I spent a few minutes just clicking around until I ended up looking at splash screen for Safari Books Online, which included works from Peachpit.

In that instant my current interest in digital and online storytelling suddenly merged with my ongoing interest in interactive storytelling, and I felt as if those divergent worlds had become a single focused image in mind. The cause for this convergence was my work as technical editor on Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling, a book written by Chris about his pioneering work in that fascinating and maddening field.  [ Read more ]

Bread Crumbs

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A few months back I got my annual e-mail announcing the upcoming GDC this spring. I opened it, looked at it, closed it, then deleted it.

A few weeks after that came an e-mail from a really great group of people that I’ve had the pleasure to dine with at the GDC for the past few years, announcing this year’s dinner location and menu. I opened the message, read it, closed it and never replied.

A few weeks later the renewal notice for my subscription to Computer Gaming World came in the mail. I’ve had a subscription to CGW for almost a decade, but I threw the notice in the trash, unopened.

A few weeks later I received some materials in the mail about the upcoming GDC. They went in the trash, unopened.

A few weeks later I talked with a good friend who’d just heard that his company was sending him from Europe to the GDC this year, all expenses paid. We’d shared a room in prior years to defray costs, and I knew I’d miss seeing him again, but I felt no pang of loss at not attending myself. Even the location, which I knew so well, seemed an echo in my mind’s eye. (Except for the little drive-up/take-out Mexican place a couple of blocks down from the conference center that I’d become enamored with.)

Somewhere along the line I began to think about these individual moments in sum, and I wondered what they really meant. Was I truly sick of the games biz, or was this just an emotional low after the letdowns I’d had the previous year? What did it all mean?

Honestly, I didn’t really know until by chance I happened to look at the Mission Statement here on my site, which reminded me why I used to like working in the games biz more than I like working in it now. I don’t know if I’ve reached any real conclusions about where all this is leading me, but I do know there’s a trail of breadcrumbs here, and I don’t think they lead back to interactive entertainment the way the business is right now.

As an antidote to this malaise, I involved myself in an entirely new enterprise over the past six months, during which time I was able to rise through the ranks in fairly short order and materially participate in one of the most amazing and important reversals of fortune that I’ve ever seen. I may write about the specifics later, although probably not, but two points about the experience stand out. First, it reminded me that I have been most successful and helpful when I trust my own judgment, rather than following someone else’s lead. Second, any time money becomes important to me, it probably means I’m not enjoying my work.

— Mark Barrett

Peer Pressure

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In my years in the games biz I’ve been fortunate to enjoy most of the projects I’ve worked on. I’ve also enjoyed watching people have fun playing games I helped create, as I have enjoyed attending and speaking at conferences and evangelizing for the cause of emotional involvement in interactive works. All of that pales into nothingness, however, when compared with the peers I’ve come to know as good friends.

In working with and getting to know some very talented people, I’ve also learned that nothing motivates me to excel more than collaborating with people I respect and admire. It is a kind of peer pressure that I view as entirely positive, and I hope in your own professional life you get to experience the magnitude of satisfaction that comes from measuring up to the standards of respected peers. I know people give lip service to the idea that no amount of money or authority can compensate for such joys, but in my case – as demonstrated in the previous essay here – it’s actually true.

So today I want to take a moment to introduce you to two friends I’ve worked with on multiple projects, and grown to have a great deal of respect for. I also consider them important to the long-term health of our industry, which is another reason I think you should know who they are.

Lee Sheldon
Many of you know Lee from the lectures and talks he’s given at the GDC and other conferences over the past decade, and you know he knows his stuff. For those of you who don’t know him or his work, you can take a tour of his site.

Quite coincidentally, while I was working on a post about design basics a few months back, Lee sent me the first in a (now completed) series of articles he was writing concerning storytelling in MMORPG’s. What interested me about Lee’s point of view was that it mirrored my own: we’re simply not getting it done. We can talk about possibilities ad nauseum, but the bottom line is that as an industry we’ve made precious few gains over the past five years, and our inability to grow and compete with mainstream narrative entertainments is having a negative effect on our industry, and limiting our potential.

As Lee continued cranking out his essays I found his line of thinking in agreement with another essay I was working on, which made the case that it was time producers started hiring professional storytellers to actually do the storytelling in their games. Now, the usual caution on this point is that writers who don’t understand interactivity and game design can do more harm that good, and I agree with that. The problem is, designers have historically used that concern as leverage for doing the storytelling themselves, even if they’re not qualified.

My response to all this is that I started out as a storyteller and learned the interactive ropes, so I think others can too. I also believe storytellers will be able to learn about design issues and how they impact storytelling more quickly than designers will be able to learn how to do first-rate storytelling, and I think that argument has already proven out in film. Good screenwriters know the movie-making craft and process, but at their core they are good writers. And being a good writer involves some skills that are mighty hard to teach.

Okay, so what does this have to do with Lee? Well, here was Lee writing a series of solid articles about failed storytelling in MMORPG’s (specifically Star Wars Galaxies), and that suddenly hit me as patently absurd. There probably isn’t anybody on the face of the earth more qualified to tackle the issue of storytelling in MMORPG’s than Lee Sheldon, so what’s he doing on the outside looking in at failed implementations? But there’s more to the story.

See, before Lee was a gaming dude, he was a Hollywood dude, and his background even includes taking the lead on a soap opera or two. While that probably sounds a little old-school, can you think of another storytelling medium in which the demand for ongoing content is even remotely comparable? Soap operas, like MMORPG’s, are designed from the ground up to never end. They’re built to keep people coming back again and again, which is an awfully good thing to know how to do if you’re trying to run, say, a subscription-based entertainment service.

I have no doubt that at some point in the future a producer is going to think to themselves, “Gee, this online game thing is kind of like a soap opera, so maybe we should talk to some Hollywood people who know that territory….” The problem, of course, is that the people they talk to won’t know anything about games, which means the resulting effort – however noble and sincere – will probably fail.

So, if you’re putting together an MMORPG, and you want to deliver story, your first and biggest mistake will be not hiring Lee Sheldon. Sure, you can hire other people, but they’re not going to know what Lee knows about story, and they’re not going to be able to deliver the storytelling he can deliver. Which means instead of having customers who say, “Wow!”, you’re going to have customers who say, “You suck!”

And that’s why you should get to know Lee.

Jurie Horneman
Over the past eight years or so, if there’s anybody I’ve spent a lot of time talking design theory and practice with, it’s Jurie. Dutch by birth, Jurie has worked in Germany, France and now Austria, in a variety of capacities that almost always underestimated his capabilities and talents. Did I mention he speaks four languages fluently, not including C++ or Python? That’s the kind of smarts he’s got, and we’re not even talking interactive yet.

About a year ago Jurie joined RockStar, but soon after that he dropped out of sight. For a while I thought maybe he died, but it turned out he was the project manager on the XBox port of GTA3: Vice City. (This should be a warning to those of you thinking romantic thoughts about the games biz. Instead, think 2 a.m. phone calls about bug fixes.) After a little R&R, a transfusion, and some illumination from sources other than an electron beam, Jurie is not only back in the swing of things, he’s posting to his blog faster than I can comment. [Note: Jurie’s output has now exceeded even the pace of blogging, and he can be found on Twitter here. — MB]

While his posts are eclectic, he’s not a dilettante. Jurie knows a lot of the heavyweights in the business on both sides of the pond, he knows the core design issues we’re wrestling with, and many of his musings are concerned with the basic problems that our business is facing. Tag along for a few days and you’ll see what I mean.

— Mark Barrett

Article Posted: Localizing Narrative

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I have posted an article in the documents section on Localizing Narrative in Interactive Entertainment. I wrote the article in the aftermath of having been asked to correct a localization effort that proved almost fatal to an otherwise enjoyable product.

In my opinion there should be no failed localizations at this stage of our industry’s development. That a game’s entire development cost could be forfeit due to poor localization should be sufficient motivation for developers and publishers to see that it doesn’t happen to them. For those interested in avoiding such disasters, the article explains how to implement a narrative localization process that will allow foreign audiences to appreciate and enjoy the produicts you create.

— Mark Barrett