The Art of Writing - Today’s Game Scribes Are Ushering In A New Era Of Interactive Storytelling

“THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY NINJAS! ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO SAVE THE PRESIDENT?” To our younger readers, that might read like the text to a nonsensical animated .gif posted on a message board, but there was a time when that was all the story a game needed (in this case, the arcade classic Bad Dudes). Throughout much of video games’ first two decades, a lack of storage space and technical limitations meant that storytelling and writing took a back seat to the needs of gameplay. While there were notable exceptions, primarily in the RPG and graphic adventure genres, most gamers were content with being given a goal and a set of tools that allowed them to reach it – or, at the very least, a gun and something to shoot. For a long time, that was enough. While we might never know Pac-Man’s true motivations, other than an appetite for dots and a fear of ghosts, the game managed, like so many of the era, to turn a primitive concept into enduring entertainment.

With the advent of CD-ROM as the primary media for games, designers began writing more involved stories, delivered through computer-generated cutscenes or [shudder] b-movie quality full-motion video. While this was a step in the right direction, in recent years the power of consoles like the Xbox 360 and PS3 is allowing game creators to merge gameplay and storytelling into a more cohesive whole, resulting in dramatic storytelling that responds to the player’s actions in real and often shocking ways.

With so much ink being spilled about recent successes like Mass Effect and BioShock, it’s tempting to proclaim a new golden age of game writing. In fact, some in the media have gone so far as to say that games are quickly surpassing Hollywood in terms of pop culture storytelling. However, statements like this ignore the torrent of clichéd drivel that still pours out from our consoles each year. Recently, we spoke with some of the industry’s top writers to talk about not only how far the industry has come in terms of storytelling, but also how far it still needs to go.

By speaking with talented writers, it quickly becomes apparent that “good writing” for video games is a concept as diverse as games themselves. In addition, the art of crafting a game story is one that’s quite different from writing in any other form of media. For most, the interactive nature of games isn’t just something that informs the story; it’s the very foundation of the process.




“Good video game writing enhances and complements gameplay, and vice versa. Reading a book, watching a movie – those are both passive media,” observes Bethesda’s Emil Pagliarulo, who is currently working on Fallout 3. “With a game, I can alter that story depending on my actions. So the player is always an active participant. Good video game writing needs to recognize that. A strong narrative is important, sure, but equally important is the way the player interacts with that narrative.”

Susan O’Connor, whose past work includes writing credits on BioShock and Gears of War, is more succinct: “Player action defines the story. What I do, I am. Good game stories amplify those game mechanics and give them meaning.”

Marrying gameplay and story can be accomplished in a number of different ways, as evidenced in recent years by many of the top titles. In BioShock, players are drawn into the world through clues left to the player through bits of dialogue, taped evidence, and the environment itself. In Mass Effect, cutscenes become gameplay through a system that allows players to select responses and guide the conversation. In Grand Theft Auto IV and Oblivion, traditional cutscenes and dialogue segments coincide with the player’s in-game actions to shape the outcome of events.



While there are many valid approaches to tackling next-generation game storytelling, it’s clear that developers and writers must work more closely than in years past in order to assure that the story serves the needs of the gameplay and vice versa.

For BioWare’s Drew Karpyshyn, who has worked on Mass Effect and many of the company’s other projects, game writing is a balancing act of maintaining a strong narrative theme while making the myriad changes necessary to complement the gameplay. “Our writers work very closely with the artists and technical throughout the project,” he reveals. “We have full-time [writers] on a project from day one right up until we ship. With any collaborative project there is constant revision from everyone involved. Sometimes there are technical limitations that require changes in art, writing, or design. Other times ideas simply evolve as the project goes on; they are iterated on and refined to give them more emotional impact and more resonance with the gamers. It’s an integral part of the process, which is why you need to have writers involved with the project throughout the entire duration.”

While all the writers we talked to seem to agree that more and better collaboration is in everyone’s best interest, there are differences in how they view certain aspects of storytelling. In recent years, the trend has been to move away from long CG cutscenes in favor of player-controlled content or in-game sequences that grant the player some freedom over how to view the action.

“I’m tired of people trying to turn video games into movies. I’m tired of losing my HUD, and sitting through 20-minute cutscenes, and playing games that are little more than interactive stories,” comments Pagliarulo. “Why should we so desperately try to be something we aren’t?”

Others take a more mixed view. “There are a lot of advantages to in-game narrative. It gives the team more leeway to iterate on the story – to try ideas, see if they work, and change them if they don’t. Cutscenes are labor intensive, so you have to lock the script early. That can cause problems, obviously. But cutscenes are still opportunities to surprise the player. Player takes action X, expecting result Y, and the cutscene delivers a surprise instead. Surprises are part of the deep pleasures of storytelling,” observes O’Connor.



Games are also capable of delivering story through experience, even with very little exposition or dialogue – something no other medium can do. “Call of Duty 4, for me, epitomizes great video game storytelling, because the story is told through the medium, through the gameplay. There’s very little dialogue, only pre-scripted character interaction, but when that story hits a major beat, you know it,” observes Pagliarulo. “What better way to feel the impact of a character’s death than to be that character during the moment of execution? And the nuclear bomb scene? I think for Infinity Ward, it took a lot of guts to give me a five-minute gameplay segment where I don’t actually do anything except crawl around, view the destructive power of man, and then die. That was probably the strongest, most memorable story moment for me of all last year. It was just superb.”

While it will likely be awhile before games reach a level of writing consistency and quality delivered in other forms of media, it’s clear that we’re in an exciting time. Games sit at the confluence of a number of encouraging trends – technology that’s better able to express emotion and subtle forms of storytelling, an increasing number of studios that actually care about telling quality stories, and an audience that sees games as a vehicle for experiences greater than just mowing down random enemies with a machine gun.

“I think the industry as a whole has always valued quality writing, but now it’s become expected,” says Pagliarulo. “In the early days, good game writing was so rare, it really stood out in players’ minds. Everyone remembers the witty dialogue in The Curse of Monkey Island, because it was so unlike anything else at that time. Doom is a classic, but it had no discernible story. You can’t really get away with doing that today – gamers would cry foul. Just look at GTA IV. The series has actually become less about crazy sandbox gameplay, and more about exploring characters and relationships.”

For Karpyshyn, we’ve only begun to see the fruits of what new development technologies will bring to bear in the art form. “In many ways, video games are in the same place movies were in during the 1920s. Technical advances, such as sound and later color, changed the movie experience. It took time for screenwriters to adapt to these advances and develop the ‘language of film.’ Similarly, video game writers are just now starting to build and develop our narrative language.”