writing for games

Growing up, two of my favorite things were books and video games. If you’d told me twenty years ago that I’d grow up to write both, I probably would have choked on my Mountain Dew.

But over the past few years, I’ve been doing exactly that. I’ve written the Recoletta series, a science fantasy trilogy published by Angry Robot, and I’ve worked as a narrative designer at Obsidian Entertainment for three and a half years now, writing for the Pillars of Eternity games and expansions.

In both media, the principles of good storytelling””establishing a strong story arc; building a vivid, believable world; and populating it with complex, memorable characters””are the same.

But the user experience differs, and understanding that is key to knowing how to satisfy both audiences.

Readers generally pick up novels to immerse themselves in stories that they experience through the eyes of another character. Players generally sit down with games to immerse themselves in stories that they discover and define through their own actions.

A large chunk of storytelling in both media comes down to understanding the role your characters play and how to make them real.

Characters bring a fictional world to life. Their problems and dilemmas create the oft-sought tension and “stakes,” and their choices and conflicts drive the story. Most readers and gamers would be hard-pressed to discuss their favorite stories without also talking about the characters who populate it. We connect emotionally with the people in stories rather than the ideas and philosophies.

But who are those characters?

In a novel, the most important character is typically the protagonist. It’s not just because the action (mostly) follows her. It’s also because we experience the story through her perspective. We see what she sees and know what she feels, even if we don’t always agree with it. First-person and close third-person stories have become immensely popular because of the intimacy of the perspective they offer.

For the protagonist’s story to be engaging, she has to have challenges to overcome. Strengths and vulnerabilities that add variation to her journey. A deeply personal investment in the events of the plot. Writing a protagonist who meets these criteria is often a matter of architecture in the planning stages””figuring out who this person is and what it is about her that generates interest and tension””as well as retrofitting in the revision stages””finding ways to connect her more deeply to other characters and events and building momentum over the successes and setbacks she faces.

When it comes to games, protagonists may be a lot more varied. For the sake of simplicity (ha!), I’m mostly talking about Western-style RPGs, which are often characterized by protagonists who are defined by the player in some significant way and whose stories are often discovered over the course of (fairly) open-ended gameplay.

The degree to which players define their characters differs widely between games. In some games, you have a protagonist with an established identity and established personality whose significant choices are defined by the player. That includes Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher.

In other games, you have a character whose overall identity is set, but whose personality and outlook is determined by the player. For example, Commander Shepard of the Mass Effect series is always a human operative intent on saving the galaxy, but the player can cast her as an idealistic savior or a ruthless maverick.

Finally, there are other games, such as Pillars of Eternity, in which nearly everything about the protagonist, including personality, backstory, and race, is player-determined.

In these types of games, the task of the writer is to build everything around the player character as much as””or more than””defining the player character on his or her own. You develop a story that is just loose enough to fit whatever way the player might choose to define the protagonist according to the options you have given them. You create a world with enough freedom for the player to make choices and enough context to give meaning to those choices. You write side characters who establish the world as a living place and who frame the stakes for the player.

It’s a delicate balance, and it’s one that places a much greater burden on the writing that establishes the world around the protagonist.

That’s because you’re defining this character””or, to some extent, allowing your player to””through negative space rather than positive space. You’re creating a stage that will allow the player to shape a personal story, and one that doesn’t feel at odds with the choices you’ve given them.

Heroes of their own stories

And yet, protagonists aren’t the only characters on the page (or screen). A common piece of writing advice is to write villains as though they were the heroes of their own stories. It’s good advice, and it holds true for all characters””sidekicks, love interests, mentors, and spear carriers.

In many books, the most memorable and beloved characters are often secondary characters. Written well, they are typically less encumbered by the constraints of following the plot. Writers may feel freer to embody them with the quirks and idiosyncrasies that help them stand out. And the foil they frequently provide for the main character””whether as comic relief or as someone who pushes and challenges the protagonist””can create entertaining humor, conflict, and character development.

Put simply, these characters work because they have goals and interests that do not always line up with those of the protagonist.

Games may contain even more secondary characters””often called NPCs (non-player characters). Of course, if every character is the hero of her own story, you’ve still got to make them good stories. And “bring me five puffleberries” and “get my cat out of this tree” don’t quite cut it. We don’t like busywork in real life, so why does anyone assume we’d do it for fun? Yet “fetch quests”””formulaic tasks in which the player character is sent to handle a routine errand for someone else””are everywhere.

The problem isn’t just that they usually make for dull content. It’s also that they suggest a world in which other characters’ concerns go no deeper than grocery runs. In which they only exist to provide some degree of involvement for the player. And in which the protagonist only relates to them as an errand boy.

Every quest need not be epic. But it should mean something or reveal something, both with respect to the protagonist and the other characters involved.

In both games and novels, we rely on good characters to develop our stories and to hold our audience’s interest in them. Novelists and game writers merely need to understand how their readers and players will relate to them in order to deploy them most effectively.

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Bio: Carrie Patel is a novelist and a narrative designer at Obsidian Entertainment. She is the author of the Recoletta trilogy, which is published by Angry Robot. The final book in the series, The Song of the Dead, comes out on May 2. She works at Obsidian Entertainment as a narrative designer and writer. She has worked on the award-winning Pillars of Eternity and its expansions, The White March Parts I and II. She is currently working on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. You can find her on Twitter as @Carrie_Patel as well as at http://www.electronicinkblog.com/.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.

The second-most interesting thing about writing for video games is that odds are, the bulk of the writing that you’ll be doing will have very little to do with the “main” plot and its showier expressions. Yes, there is dialog to write and there are cut scenes to script and they are shiny and sexy and cool, but the thing is, a player’s only going to run across those lines and those scenes once as they advance through a game’s storyline. On the other hand, if they’re playing, say, a first person shooter, they’re going to encounter the so-called systemic dialog about shooting (and getting shot, and needing to reload, and needing to get the hell out of the way of an incoming grenade) rather more frequently than that. And, that in turn, means that you’re going to be spending a lot of time working on those lines, and generating a lot of them. You’re also going to be writing things like story documents, and character writeups, and team documents, and a dozen other things that aren’t the sexy bits with explosions that everyone thinks of when they think of game writing.

And that’s perfectly cool. Because those aspects of the gig require just as much craft and care as the more obvious ones, which means developing a whole new set of tools to make sure you get them right. Don’t believe me? Then go play a game where the systemic stuff didn’t get that tender loving care – where they didn’t produce enough variants so you hear the same lines coming from dozens of different enemies who probably shouldn’t be comparing notes with one another – and see if that starts getting annoying after a while. Better yet, find a game with one jarringly out of place systemic line and see if that doesn’t turn into the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard long before you’ve picked up all of the game’s achievements. (Trust me. I was kind of responsible for one of those.)

So, yes. There’s an awful lot of game writing that most people don’t really think about that’s necessary and intricate and hard work, and if you’re good at that you’re worth your weight in gold.

But that’s the second-most interesting thing. The first is that you’re not actually writing the story. Your protagonist is not the hero. And your version of how things are going to happen is going to crumble in the face of an irresistible force: the player.

Because in games, the player is the hero. It’s the player who makes every decision so that their particular journey through the game is unique to them. Even the little stuff – deciding when to reload or change garments or duck instead of sprinting – personalizes their experience in a way that defies the cast-in-stone progression of other narrative forms. Which means that as a game writer, you’re writing the stuff that the player turns into the story through their interaction with it. The wittiest dialog, the coolest cut scene, the most interesting plot twist – they all sit there, inert, until activated by the player’s interaction with them. Then and only then do they become part of that player’s story, a story that inevitably starts with the word “I” (and not “Lara Croft or “Sam Fisher” or “Pac-Man”) when it is told to friends later.

That’s a hard thing to grasp sometimes. The urge is to want to tell our stories, to tweak the timing and hone the experience so that everything’s sparkling and perfect and immutable. But that doesn’t work in a space where players are the reason the whole shebang exists, and while you may want your narrative elements to draw them forward, forcing them to do the same is liable to get some pushback.

And make no mistake, game players do love their story. Look at the uproar over the ending of Mass Effect 3 – that was about player investment in game characters and story,. Look at the love for games as wildly diverse as Gone Home and The Last of Us and Kentucky Route Zero and the utterly insane but brilliant DLC Gearbox put out for Borderlands 2. The writing in all of these games is something players want to experience; they just want to experience it in a way that makes it theirs, something they did instead of something they read or heard or watched.

And this is so much of what makes writing for games fun. It’s seeing that moment when the player inhabits your words, picks them up and makes them their own, that makes the crunches and the meetings and the endless, endless iterations of “Arrgh, he shot me” more than worthwhile.

Which reminds me, there’s a third really interesting thing about writing for video games. But that’s another story entirely.

Bio: Writer, game designer and cad, Richard Dansky was named one of the Top 20 videogame writers in the world in 2009 by Gamasutra. His work includes bestselling games such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3, Outland, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist. He has published six novels and the short fiction collection Snowbird Gothic, and is currently hard at work as the developer for the 20th Anniversary Edition of classic tabletop RPG Wraith: The Oblivion. Richard lives in North Carolina with his wife, statistician and blogger Melinda Thielbar, and their amorphously large collections of books and single malt whiskys.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.