Article Time: The Heartwarming Sequel
May 30th, 2007My 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.
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:05 am
I can totally relate to that dude without a shirt!!
Great article again. I especially liked the stuff about the design document. Something I haven’t been great at. On the one hand, spending all that time ‘engineering’ a game/novel/whatever kind of takes the art/fun out of it. Like you say, it doesn’t leave much room for improvisation. Once I have the outline together I’d lose interest in actually WRITING the novel, etc… On the other hand, it really helps organize all that right brain activity. I think 3 pages is a great length. Good enough to be organized, but to leave room for all the fun stuff to go into the game.
I REALLY like the idea how the game can end (positively - a real ending) at several points in the game, but you can choose to go on. That’s kind of like combining the best of both worlds in the way that Sierra did things (dying was part of the fun, but a game ending failure) and Lucasarts (where you couldn’t die).
Looking forward to the next bit - and the game!
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:33 am
Thanks again.
One thing about endings in this game is that I’m trying less for a success/failure approach and more for a neutral approach. I find a few reasonable points in the story where the game could potentially end (although there aren’t actually that many of them, since the game’s pretty short in and of itself) and explore what could potentially happen in such an ending, given the player’s choices. I’m attempting to stay away from implying moral judgements on such endings, though I’m sure that players themselves may like some outcomes better than others. When exploring ethics in an interactive form, I’ve learned that it’s more effective to allow for the player to make his or her own judgements and reflect on them rather than present a certain viewpoint as right or wrong as you would in a non-interactive storytelling medium.
Of course, whether I end up succeeding in this goal is a different story.
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I dunno. This sounds like a very cool idea. I’m excited to see it in action and think it has a lot of potential.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
By the way, i thought you’d enjoy this, if you haven’t seen it already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBcrTucxiRc&mode=related&search=