“Good storytelling in a game often hinges upon decisions made throughout the development cycle with regard to narrative-related investment, planning, and integration.”
How are you currently integrating narrative into your development process, and what can you do to make sure you are integrating it throughout your process?
“Back then, it was not unheard of for a single person to handle the entire job: story, design, art, animation, audio, programming, QA – soup to nuts.” This has become full circle with the vast array of tools available for indie game developers and the ability to distribute games digitally, enabling many indie developers to create games with small teams or individually.
How many people are on your project’s team? Are you and/or others juggling multiple roles?
Do you have someone on your team with strong knowledge of narrative and game development?
Whatever your team composition is right now, how can you avoid the widely accepted misconception that “everyone can write?”
If you are working in a game development team or have in the past, have you encountered any of the following scenarios? How did that impact the game you were working on?
No writer hired
Writer hired, but not a game writer
Game writer hired, but late in the cycle
Game writer hired, but let go early
Game writer isolated and/or unempowered
On the flip side, have you seen it done well in your team or other teams where a qualified game writer is integrated and empowered, and the team is educated on narrative fundamentals? How did that impact the game you or they were working on?
If you are wanting to write for games, which of the following areas do you feel you need to currently invest in?
Finding opportunities for paid fiction (non-game) writing to add professional published works to your portfolio
Increasing your knowledge and passion for video games
Gaining hands-on game development experience in writing or non-writing roles
Gaining experience with writing and narrative design specifically for games
Gaining experience with writing and narrative design for a specific genre of games
If you are in a team leadership role, what specifically can you do now for your team to help ensure your project’s story quality is great rather than good enough (or worse)?
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