My next article in the Adventure Architect series is now up, and surprise surprise, it’s all about storytelling:

“The way in which I like to approach the adventure game is as an interactive story; as such, the very first thing I focus on when creating a game is the story it will tell. But I feel that it isn’t enough to make up a story solely for the sake of justifying the gameplay that emerges from it. While doing so in and of itself is certainly a lofty goal to strive for, it does tend to make for a shallow and formulaic end product. For a story to truly stand out as a meaningful work of art, it must convey a purpose and make some sort of statement about the world. Hence, this next article in the series will focus on the process of coming up with such a story.”

I almost sound pretentious in that paragraph. Oh well. Here’s the rest.

I have to say, I find it quite depressing that these days, when watching a particularly mediocre movie on TV, I find myself writhing in disgust at the cheesiness of the dialogue and the clichédness of the plot and characterization, while at the same time thinking to myself “…but if a game were to have a story of this quality, it would probably be lauded by critics everywhere as being the best thing since Grim Fandango.”[1]

I also have to say that I absolutely hate when people cite the ability to cry in a game (or lack thereof) as an indicator of its artistic merit (or lack thereof). The majority of books and movies I read do not make me cry at all, and on the rare occasion that one does, it’s quite likely that I’ll never, ever want to read or watch it again. Such a lack of waterworks on my part does not, however, imply that I wasn’t emotionally moved by a particular story. There are many more emotions in the panopoly of human experience than just pure, abject depression, after all. Yeesh!

Yippee! The first in my Adventure Architect series of articles about Chivalry is Not Dead is now up on Adventure Gamers. And for your personal enjoyment, here’s a paragraph from said article:

“Now, first things first: before I decide to create a game, I find it absolutely necessary that I know the scope of what is possible for me to achieve in a given period of time. You don’t need to look very far on the Internet to find examples of ambitious, epic-length projects-to-be that simply never get finished because the person or team responsible for the project took on much more than it could handle. Admittedly, it may take the development of a prior game or two to fully assess one’s capabilities; however, putting at least a bit of thought into the questions of “What can I do?” and “How much time am I willing to spend doing it?” is definitely useful in the long run.”

Well, what are you sitting here waiting for? Go read the rest.