We Need Game Writers
Sep 25, 2006
Most games have stories. There are very good reasons for this, involving how we as a species like to learn and remember things, and how we generally rationalize and understand the world around us. But the bottom line is that games do have stories.
Despite this, alarmingly few games have proper writers.
I think this trend is changing. I see more and more game writers getting work, and the better (or better-known) of them are finding themselves in great demand. This is a Good Thing. But progress is slow, and we should change that. I've been both part of the problem and part of the solution in this regard over the past few months, so I have some perspective on this issue.
The Hypocrisy of the Game Designer
Most game stories that are not written by proper writers are written by game designers. This makes sense of course...the designer is the one who probably devised the game's setting and action in the first place, and good designers (especially lead designers) tend to have very strong verbal skills. It only makes sense that the designer should write the story.
This is of course total crap. And the irony is, designers of all people ought to know better.
It wasn't that long ago that a person carrying the sole title of "designer" was a relative rarity in the game world. If you were going to do design you were expected to bring something else to the table, like the ability to write code or do art. In fact most designers were converted artists or programmers until quite recently. If you didn't have these skills, well then you'd better be good at production, organizing schedules, localization and such. In short, pure 'designers' have had to struggle for acceptance within teams.
What's more, every designer has had the experience, usually a multitude of times, when "everybody's a designer". Or "how hard can it be?" Often, trying to explain the reason for a design idea is frustratingly difficult and time-consuming.
And yet here we are, designers trying to write stories. Tsk tsk tsk.
A Story is More Than Words
The first step that we seem to have taken in the right direction is to stop writing actual dialogue. Those of us that have written dialogue, then heard it read by perfectly good actors and sound like total ass, have been humbled by this experience. So I think it's relatively easy for us to decide early on that a "real writer" will be brought in to write the actual dialogue.
But the thing is, a story is much more than just the dialogue. It's like looking at a game as just its moment-to-moment level design rather than its overall structure. Creating a story that actually resonates, that gives the viewer what they want emotionally and logically, requires great and long effort, and more importantly requires a very specific skillset that isn't obtainable just by reading a couple of books. It takes understanding, study and most importantly, practice.
I was making this exact mistake on my current project, feeling that, along with a couple other game developers at the studio, we could get the story all worked out along with the game's macro design, then bring in the writer to make it all sound nice. Then I saw Flint Dille, an accomplished game writer, talk at the Games and Hollywood Summit back in June. He had this great quote, which was "I am so sick and tired of hearing 'Man, I sure wish you were here last December!'" What he meant was, he's frequently brought in just to write the dialogue, but finds a story that's structurally a train wreck. And usually the game is so far along that it's too late to do anything more than a patch job on the story itself.
I felt immediately like an ass. We were struggling with what parts of the story to keep, what to discard, how to pace and structure it. I could just see myself saying "Man, I wish we'd brought in the writer a few months ago." The 'real' writer was brought into the project right away, and the project suddenly took great leaps forward. Hunh, go figure.
Writing is a Skill
What I've learned is, while I and many other designers/artists/etc in the games creating business may very well have the talent to create a great story, we don't have the skill. I think most people have at least some understanding of the difference between ability and skill, but for purposes of this discussion, I'll make a very simple definition:
Skill is ability gained through understanding and practice.
When looked at in this light, I think the typical designer fails in both areas. While I have a bit of an advantage in the first area, having supposedly studied literature (some 20 years ago now, I might add), I don't think that my understanding ever got past the typical academic areas of theme, image and metaphor. I didn't learn much about structure, character, technique... those practical things that make a writer a good, skilled writer. And, just like with game design or art or programming, good writing absolutely requires practice, a dedication specifically to the art of story, words and dialogue.
I'm sure there are a few designers out there, with not only broad skillsets but also tremendous time and dedication, who can study and practice writing enough to perform the writer's role... but why? Most of the time, in my observation, developers who try to wear too many hats end up frustrated, compromised, and holding up the overall progress of a game's development. Though good game writers might be a little hard to locate right now, I know there are a fair number of very good ones available, and that's only going to improve as time goes by.
Because, think about it... we need game writers.
Despite this, alarmingly few games have proper writers.
I think this trend is changing. I see more and more game writers getting work, and the better (or better-known) of them are finding themselves in great demand. This is a Good Thing. But progress is slow, and we should change that. I've been both part of the problem and part of the solution in this regard over the past few months, so I have some perspective on this issue.
The Hypocrisy of the Game Designer
Most game stories that are not written by proper writers are written by game designers. This makes sense of course...the designer is the one who probably devised the game's setting and action in the first place, and good designers (especially lead designers) tend to have very strong verbal skills. It only makes sense that the designer should write the story.
This is of course total crap. And the irony is, designers of all people ought to know better.
It wasn't that long ago that a person carrying the sole title of "designer" was a relative rarity in the game world. If you were going to do design you were expected to bring something else to the table, like the ability to write code or do art. In fact most designers were converted artists or programmers until quite recently. If you didn't have these skills, well then you'd better be good at production, organizing schedules, localization and such. In short, pure 'designers' have had to struggle for acceptance within teams.
What's more, every designer has had the experience, usually a multitude of times, when "everybody's a designer". Or "how hard can it be?" Often, trying to explain the reason for a design idea is frustratingly difficult and time-consuming.
And yet here we are, designers trying to write stories. Tsk tsk tsk.
A Story is More Than Words
The first step that we seem to have taken in the right direction is to stop writing actual dialogue. Those of us that have written dialogue, then heard it read by perfectly good actors and sound like total ass, have been humbled by this experience. So I think it's relatively easy for us to decide early on that a "real writer" will be brought in to write the actual dialogue.
But the thing is, a story is much more than just the dialogue. It's like looking at a game as just its moment-to-moment level design rather than its overall structure. Creating a story that actually resonates, that gives the viewer what they want emotionally and logically, requires great and long effort, and more importantly requires a very specific skillset that isn't obtainable just by reading a couple of books. It takes understanding, study and most importantly, practice.
I was making this exact mistake on my current project, feeling that, along with a couple other game developers at the studio, we could get the story all worked out along with the game's macro design, then bring in the writer to make it all sound nice. Then I saw Flint Dille, an accomplished game writer, talk at the Games and Hollywood Summit back in June. He had this great quote, which was "I am so sick and tired of hearing 'Man, I sure wish you were here last December!'" What he meant was, he's frequently brought in just to write the dialogue, but finds a story that's structurally a train wreck. And usually the game is so far along that it's too late to do anything more than a patch job on the story itself.
I felt immediately like an ass. We were struggling with what parts of the story to keep, what to discard, how to pace and structure it. I could just see myself saying "Man, I wish we'd brought in the writer a few months ago." The 'real' writer was brought into the project right away, and the project suddenly took great leaps forward. Hunh, go figure.
Writing is a Skill
What I've learned is, while I and many other designers/artists/etc in the games creating business may very well have the talent to create a great story, we don't have the skill. I think most people have at least some understanding of the difference between ability and skill, but for purposes of this discussion, I'll make a very simple definition:
Skill is ability gained through understanding and practice.
When looked at in this light, I think the typical designer fails in both areas. While I have a bit of an advantage in the first area, having supposedly studied literature (some 20 years ago now, I might add), I don't think that my understanding ever got past the typical academic areas of theme, image and metaphor. I didn't learn much about structure, character, technique... those practical things that make a writer a good, skilled writer. And, just like with game design or art or programming, good writing absolutely requires practice, a dedication specifically to the art of story, words and dialogue.
I'm sure there are a few designers out there, with not only broad skillsets but also tremendous time and dedication, who can study and practice writing enough to perform the writer's role... but why? Most of the time, in my observation, developers who try to wear too many hats end up frustrated, compromised, and holding up the overall progress of a game's development. Though good game writers might be a little hard to locate right now, I know there are a fair number of very good ones available, and that's only going to improve as time goes by.
Because, think about it... we need game writers.
|
Fantasy Football
Sep 19, 2006
Oops, missed a week. Why? Fantasy Football, that's why.
Without question, Fantasy Football is the most enduring game in my life. I just kicked off season 13 of the Great and Mighty Yaks. Thirteen years, of mostly the same people, who see each other exactly once a year, doing this thing. It's kind of amazing.
The Sports MMO
Over the years I've been invited to play in leagues with people I didn't know, and a couple times I've done it, but it's never been very satisfying and I've never stuck with it. Fantasy Football for me is all about playing with people that I know, communicating with them regularly, and participating in this little community we have.
But there's more than that too. It's not like we just get together and set up some game and play it, like a game of Diplomacy would be for instance. There's this other wild card, which is the statistical backdrop for the game, the NFL. On any given weekend, my act of watching a game or two (I used to watch a lot more, but life has intervened...) allows me to track the progress of the Yaks, but in so doing unites me with every other player (close to 35 million, by some estimates!) who "plays" fantasy NFL.
In sort of a weird way, fantasy sports are overwhelmingly the biggest, most mainstream MMORPG going.
Fantasy Sports and the Internet (part one, History)
For anyone wondering whether online is an important part of the "next generation" equation, a hard look at the progress of fantasy sports would sure be instructive.
Fantasy sports predate the popularity of the internet by a wide margin. Depending on who you ask, fantasy sports date back as far as 1962, when several members of the Raiders football organization and local sports media created a league. "Rotisserie" baseball, a fantasy baseball scheme, was created in 1980 by a group of New York writers (sports and otherwise) who met weekly at a restaurant called La Rotisserie Francaise (thus the name - how's that for some trivia for ya?).
Regardless, fantasy sports were a fringe activity, restricted to the most hardcore of sports and/or simulation fans. Unsurprisingly, sportswriters were the core demographic. When fantasy football was first suggested to me back in 1993, I had never heard of it. But it sounded fun, so a group of friends gathered over a lunch hour, did a draft, and I was elected commissioner. The rest is history.
That first year, I did all the scoring using the box scores found in the Los Angeles Times. I did the scoring by hand, and wrote up the results on a sheet of paper that I then photocopied and distributed to the league members. It was primitive, but really fun. We were hooked. Among other things, it was our "little secret", because nobody we knew understood what the hell we were doing with all our little sheets of paper and lunchtime discussions.
A couple years on, I discovered that Compuserve had somehow gotten the rights to publish raw NFL stats as text files as part of their online service. Seeing opportunity, I started downloading these stats and running them through a filemaker database, which made my scoring faster and more accurate, and also allowed me to publish statistical analytics for the whole league - still on photocopied paper of course.
Then, the internet hit.
Fantasy Sports and the Internet (part two, The Explosion)
When I first registered the domain pmffl.org (the "Philips Memorial Fantasy Football League"), I just started throwing up html files. There were no online services - yet. Eventually I wrote a proper back-end suite of applications to run the site, but meanwhile, the likes of ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS Sportsline were catching on. The game was afoot.
The internet did two things to enable the explosion of fantasy sports.
Enabling of Community
With the ability to set up message boards, create team identities, and generally to do all the stuff we associate with online presence now in the age of myspace and blogs, players are able to really infuse their fantasy sports endeavours with personality and community. Trash talk is one of the longest standing and most important traditions of fantasy sports, and the message board is the perfect vehicle for this.
In our league, several teams have taken on entire identities, exploited through online postings. My team, the Great and Mighty Yaks, takes a spiritual approach, praising top performers for their excellence in meditation as well as touchdown catches. Team 180 is famous as a ruthless corporate entity. One team fired one of it's co-owners this season, and replaced him with HAL-9000. Perhaps most famously, the now-defunct Oscar Wilde Cardinals once dedicated its entire season to Peter Tork, the unfairly neglected member of The Monkees.
Community makes the league fun and enduring. Every summer, when I send out the obligatory "are you guys in?" email, I get responses like "fuck yeah I'm in" or "dude, don't insult me. of course I'm in." While we do meet in person once per year (for the draft), this group of guys is spread all over and has gone very different ways (one even works for the Fantasy Football program at Foxsports.com). The internet keeps us together.
Ease of Play and Participant Parity
That's us though. My league is filled with really hardcore players (we use a convoluted "keeper" rule system which forces players to use multi-year strategies). You don't get to tens of millions of players if the game is only appealing to the hardcore player. In this area, the internet has played an even more pivotal role.
It's So Easy
Unlike in 1993, players can now use interactive websites to do their roster management with a few simple clicks while waiting for a meeting at work, or before bed at night. Adjusting your roster, proposing a trade, or hunting the waiver wire are made ridiculously easy by connected databases with slick interfaces. I've struggled mightily to have the pmffl website keep up with this (pride prevents me from succumbing to the allure of the pay services). But it's been fun and worth it, and I've learned a lot about interface design (not to mention programming in four different languages, all self-taught for this project).
The pay services have live draft software now, so you don't even have to be present for a draft. With the incredible ease of use provided to modern fantasy sports players, it's not uncommon for players to participate in 2, 3 or more leagues all in the same season. And with the exception of arrogant masochists such as myself, it no longer requires much effort on the part of the "commissioner" either - most of the time the commissioner is now just the guy who invites the players, and the online service handles the rest.
The Field Has Been Leveled
Lastly though, and most importantly, the fantasy sports field has been leveled by the internet, and if you have any interest in reaching the casual enthusiast market for any game, this is a very important message. In the earlier days of fantasy sports, information imbalances were common between players, based on those who were able to do the most research or find out key statistics in a timely fashion. It wasn't inherently unfair, unless a player really had an inside source (one of our players had a brother who was a star linebacker on the 49ers, which wasn't maybe entirely fair). However, it meant that there was a linear relationship between a player's resourcefulness and investment of time, and his success. And this is the very definition of a "hardcore" game.
Let me state that again. It can't be said clearly enough.
If you want to limit your game to the hardcore, create a linear relationship between a player's effort and success.
The internet changed all that for fantasy sports.
Back in the 1990s, the Yaks had a dynasty. My team won three straight championships, and contended for two others. That's because, along with my partner Al Hastings, we were very hardcore players. We dredged stats, put them into spreadsheets, and geeked over them for hours. For instance we discovered that the most important predictor of a wide receiver or tight end's future success was catches, not yards or scores. Similarly for runningbacks it was carries. (Both of these statistics have subsequently been combined and improved to the concept of looks, which includes incomplete as well as complete passes thrown to a player.) We were hardcore, and we kicked ass.
The decline of the Yaks however coincided with the internet's movement into the fantasy sports realm. The availability of information on the internet made statistics less opaque, and our opponents could use statistics easily and readily to do their own analysis. Also a proliferation of "experts" found a voice on the internet, further fueling the player's capability to make clever, forward-looking decisions.
In my opinion, this freedom of information, this leveling of the playing field, is the single most important factor in the explosion of the popularity of fantasy sports. With all players now able to access statistics and analysis readily and easily (including the newest trend, the 'wisdom of the crowds' analysis of which players are most picked up or dropped), every player feels like he has a fair shake at the beginning of the season. And even more importantly, a player can have success without having to lose his job for spending so much time at his desk poring over statistics, or having his wife and kids disown him for painstakingly flipping through every single game all day on Sunday.
Bear that in mind. Sure World of Warcraft is outrageously popular. But its philosophy is still hardcore. This is not a criticism, but let's not kid ourselves - if reaching a real mainstream is important to you, fantasy football is a much better case study than WoW.
I'm Back Now
I've got pmffl.org back in good shape now, and since I'm not nearly the hardcore player I used to be, I have time to get back to my regularly scheduled Wednesday postings. Thanks for your patience.
And...
...All Hail the Great and Mighty Yaks!
Without question, Fantasy Football is the most enduring game in my life. I just kicked off season 13 of the Great and Mighty Yaks. Thirteen years, of mostly the same people, who see each other exactly once a year, doing this thing. It's kind of amazing.
The Sports MMO
Over the years I've been invited to play in leagues with people I didn't know, and a couple times I've done it, but it's never been very satisfying and I've never stuck with it. Fantasy Football for me is all about playing with people that I know, communicating with them regularly, and participating in this little community we have.
But there's more than that too. It's not like we just get together and set up some game and play it, like a game of Diplomacy would be for instance. There's this other wild card, which is the statistical backdrop for the game, the NFL. On any given weekend, my act of watching a game or two (I used to watch a lot more, but life has intervened...) allows me to track the progress of the Yaks, but in so doing unites me with every other player (close to 35 million, by some estimates!) who "plays" fantasy NFL.
In sort of a weird way, fantasy sports are overwhelmingly the biggest, most mainstream MMORPG going.
Fantasy Sports and the Internet (part one, History)
For anyone wondering whether online is an important part of the "next generation" equation, a hard look at the progress of fantasy sports would sure be instructive.
Fantasy sports predate the popularity of the internet by a wide margin. Depending on who you ask, fantasy sports date back as far as 1962, when several members of the Raiders football organization and local sports media created a league. "Rotisserie" baseball, a fantasy baseball scheme, was created in 1980 by a group of New York writers (sports and otherwise) who met weekly at a restaurant called La Rotisserie Francaise (thus the name - how's that for some trivia for ya?).
Regardless, fantasy sports were a fringe activity, restricted to the most hardcore of sports and/or simulation fans. Unsurprisingly, sportswriters were the core demographic. When fantasy football was first suggested to me back in 1993, I had never heard of it. But it sounded fun, so a group of friends gathered over a lunch hour, did a draft, and I was elected commissioner. The rest is history.
That first year, I did all the scoring using the box scores found in the Los Angeles Times. I did the scoring by hand, and wrote up the results on a sheet of paper that I then photocopied and distributed to the league members. It was primitive, but really fun. We were hooked. Among other things, it was our "little secret", because nobody we knew understood what the hell we were doing with all our little sheets of paper and lunchtime discussions.
A couple years on, I discovered that Compuserve had somehow gotten the rights to publish raw NFL stats as text files as part of their online service. Seeing opportunity, I started downloading these stats and running them through a filemaker database, which made my scoring faster and more accurate, and also allowed me to publish statistical analytics for the whole league - still on photocopied paper of course.
Then, the internet hit.
Fantasy Sports and the Internet (part two, The Explosion)
When I first registered the domain pmffl.org (the "Philips Memorial Fantasy Football League"), I just started throwing up html files. There were no online services - yet. Eventually I wrote a proper back-end suite of applications to run the site, but meanwhile, the likes of ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS Sportsline were catching on. The game was afoot.
The internet did two things to enable the explosion of fantasy sports.
Enabling of Community
With the ability to set up message boards, create team identities, and generally to do all the stuff we associate with online presence now in the age of myspace and blogs, players are able to really infuse their fantasy sports endeavours with personality and community. Trash talk is one of the longest standing and most important traditions of fantasy sports, and the message board is the perfect vehicle for this.
In our league, several teams have taken on entire identities, exploited through online postings. My team, the Great and Mighty Yaks, takes a spiritual approach, praising top performers for their excellence in meditation as well as touchdown catches. Team 180 is famous as a ruthless corporate entity. One team fired one of it's co-owners this season, and replaced him with HAL-9000. Perhaps most famously, the now-defunct Oscar Wilde Cardinals once dedicated its entire season to Peter Tork, the unfairly neglected member of The Monkees.
Community makes the league fun and enduring. Every summer, when I send out the obligatory "are you guys in?" email, I get responses like "fuck yeah I'm in" or "dude, don't insult me. of course I'm in." While we do meet in person once per year (for the draft), this group of guys is spread all over and has gone very different ways (one even works for the Fantasy Football program at Foxsports.com). The internet keeps us together.
Ease of Play and Participant Parity
That's us though. My league is filled with really hardcore players (we use a convoluted "keeper" rule system which forces players to use multi-year strategies). You don't get to tens of millions of players if the game is only appealing to the hardcore player. In this area, the internet has played an even more pivotal role.
It's So Easy
Unlike in 1993, players can now use interactive websites to do their roster management with a few simple clicks while waiting for a meeting at work, or before bed at night. Adjusting your roster, proposing a trade, or hunting the waiver wire are made ridiculously easy by connected databases with slick interfaces. I've struggled mightily to have the pmffl website keep up with this (pride prevents me from succumbing to the allure of the pay services). But it's been fun and worth it, and I've learned a lot about interface design (not to mention programming in four different languages, all self-taught for this project).
The pay services have live draft software now, so you don't even have to be present for a draft. With the incredible ease of use provided to modern fantasy sports players, it's not uncommon for players to participate in 2, 3 or more leagues all in the same season. And with the exception of arrogant masochists such as myself, it no longer requires much effort on the part of the "commissioner" either - most of the time the commissioner is now just the guy who invites the players, and the online service handles the rest.
The Field Has Been Leveled
Lastly though, and most importantly, the fantasy sports field has been leveled by the internet, and if you have any interest in reaching the casual enthusiast market for any game, this is a very important message. In the earlier days of fantasy sports, information imbalances were common between players, based on those who were able to do the most research or find out key statistics in a timely fashion. It wasn't inherently unfair, unless a player really had an inside source (one of our players had a brother who was a star linebacker on the 49ers, which wasn't maybe entirely fair). However, it meant that there was a linear relationship between a player's resourcefulness and investment of time, and his success. And this is the very definition of a "hardcore" game.
Let me state that again. It can't be said clearly enough.
If you want to limit your game to the hardcore, create a linear relationship between a player's effort and success.
The internet changed all that for fantasy sports.
Back in the 1990s, the Yaks had a dynasty. My team won three straight championships, and contended for two others. That's because, along with my partner Al Hastings, we were very hardcore players. We dredged stats, put them into spreadsheets, and geeked over them for hours. For instance we discovered that the most important predictor of a wide receiver or tight end's future success was catches, not yards or scores. Similarly for runningbacks it was carries. (Both of these statistics have subsequently been combined and improved to the concept of looks, which includes incomplete as well as complete passes thrown to a player.) We were hardcore, and we kicked ass.
The decline of the Yaks however coincided with the internet's movement into the fantasy sports realm. The availability of information on the internet made statistics less opaque, and our opponents could use statistics easily and readily to do their own analysis. Also a proliferation of "experts" found a voice on the internet, further fueling the player's capability to make clever, forward-looking decisions.
In my opinion, this freedom of information, this leveling of the playing field, is the single most important factor in the explosion of the popularity of fantasy sports. With all players now able to access statistics and analysis readily and easily (including the newest trend, the 'wisdom of the crowds' analysis of which players are most picked up or dropped), every player feels like he has a fair shake at the beginning of the season. And even more importantly, a player can have success without having to lose his job for spending so much time at his desk poring over statistics, or having his wife and kids disown him for painstakingly flipping through every single game all day on Sunday.
Bear that in mind. Sure World of Warcraft is outrageously popular. But its philosophy is still hardcore. This is not a criticism, but let's not kid ourselves - if reaching a real mainstream is important to you, fantasy football is a much better case study than WoW.
I'm Back Now
I've got pmffl.org back in good shape now, and since I'm not nearly the hardcore player I used to be, I have time to get back to my regularly scheduled Wednesday postings. Thanks for your patience.
And...
...All Hail the Great and Mighty Yaks!
Letter from Senator Barbara Boxer
Sep 06, 2006
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for the following news.
Back in June, I sent a letter to my congressman, and also my two senators.
Lo and behold, today I received a reply from one of those Senators, Ms. Barbara Boxer. The reply, as you'll see below, is far from a form letter. It addresses the issue of ESRB ratings directly, and though Ms. Boxer certainly leaves her political options open, nonetheless it shows that she (or someone on her staff) read the letter thoroughly, and that she has an actual position, which I find to be reasonable. And yes, that is Babs's actual signature at the bottom.
Also in June, I encouraged other game developers to write to their representatives. I'm quite confident that none of you did. But I did. And I was heard. It's easy to get cynical about American politics, what with the nattering nawabs of negativism and all that. But you know what? When you speak with authority and clarity on a subject you can actually get heard, even if you aren't paying some jackass on K street a million dollars.
So, without further ado...
Back in June, I sent a letter to my congressman, and also my two senators.
Lo and behold, today I received a reply from one of those Senators, Ms. Barbara Boxer. The reply, as you'll see below, is far from a form letter. It addresses the issue of ESRB ratings directly, and though Ms. Boxer certainly leaves her political options open, nonetheless it shows that she (or someone on her staff) read the letter thoroughly, and that she has an actual position, which I find to be reasonable. And yes, that is Babs's actual signature at the bottom.
Also in June, I encouraged other game developers to write to their representatives. I'm quite confident that none of you did. But I did. And I was heard. It's easy to get cynical about American politics, what with the nattering nawabs of negativism and all that. But you know what? When you speak with authority and clarity on a subject you can actually get heard, even if you aren't paying some jackass on K street a million dollars.
So, without further ado...