Some terms questions

Game Development Writing and Content
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Uncharitable words, inaccurate, and more than a little silly. Whoever the unknown source might be, I doubt they’re a writer. As someone who’s pretty proudly inefficient in my own heavily branching CoG work, I would never slur people who go for simpler, cleaner projects.

When I say that graphics and voice acting require efficiencies that text doesn’t, I don’t just mean that there’s a time and money scale where bigger game dev teams can add more choice and variety than lone authors writing CSGs in their spare time. I’d argue that some variability can only work with text.

I mean, sure, we’re probably at the point where it’s technologically possible to do a faithful rendition of Choice of Rebels with voice acting and animated graphics… but no one ever would, because of the insane amount of vocal and graphical variability you’d need to seamlessly code together to create the same range of experience that someone gets by reading the text version. Anyone trying it, even with a big team, would start by dropping a bunch of the variability in the text version of Rebels – a necessary efficiency, leading to a non-identical experience.

I’ve not (yet) played Fallout; my experience of Bethesda games is limited to Elder Scrolls, which of course also have graphics and voice acting. When I compare Skyrim with Telltale Walking Dead S1, two games I liked a lot… I mean, they’re different things, and not just because of budget.

Telltale has far greater control over tone and pacing, which it gets by limiting player choice, so its music and story beats hit harder. Its protagonists are a more meaningful presence, not just ciphers. Its graphics are way more effective in storytelling terms; sure, Skyrim has its breathtaking vistas and cool monsters, but its characters (while a step up from Oblivion’s uncanniest valley) have to be rendered for gameplay above story. You’re so much less likely to get memorable images that way than with stylised graphics where the authors rather than players are picking camera angles.

Telltale’s advantages get sacrificed for the greater freedom of Skyrim. I like that sandboxy exploration interspersed with plot nuggets as much as the next gamer, and lots of the plot nuggets are satisfying. But the convention where quests stay on ice until you’re ready to pick them up is also an unrealistic efficiency – especially for the main, save-the-world one. If I choose to go off and spend a year of game time building a house, getting married, mining ore, and juggling cabbages, it has zero effect on the main plotline.

Laziness, I say! I’ve seen behind the curtain and my suspension of disbelief is shattered! They should have coded it so that if you didn’t care about the hero’s journey or were too late in stopping various impending dooms, you lost your chance, and people stopped treating you as the Dovahkiin and instead treated you as a failed messiah hermit while the world ends around you all. Bethesda picked efficiency, and it turns my hermit role-play into mere flavor rather than a real choice. Corporate bastards.

All that isn’t to say that Telltale couldn’t have included more variation, or that you have to like their stuff. Your tastes are your own. I’m just suggesting that if consequential choice is all you look for, you’re going to overlook a lot of things that other people might legitimately like.

Which is also why I don’t agree that writing for an audience of CoG fans who play through these games just once is:

Look, if I personally enjoy a CoG or HG, I’m totally going to read through it at least two or three times to find new things in the story and world. And it does still kind of baffle me that so many people do it differently. But last I checked, all the info we have points to the fact that readers like me are vastly outnumbered by the one-and-dones.

What those readers are enjoying is clearly the illusion of choice. Maybe there’s a reality behind some of that illusion (never all of it, of course – every game has Level 1 rails of one kind or another), and maybe not… they’ll never know, because they never test any of the paths not chosen. All they ever get is the sense that it could have played out differently, and that’s what they enjoy.

I don’t think writing for that audience is a decision that could only be made on the basis of money. Authors themselves enjoy different degrees of consequence and flavor. So in answer to:

Because 90% of the people reading your work are happy with the former, and so are you as a writer? My own personal satisfaction levels are different, and that’s why it takes me seven years to finish a game. I can think of games where my reaction was also “too much seasoning and not enough meal.” But some of those games have found a huge audience, and I’m not going to scorn either the author or the fans for what they enjoy.

You could go on a quest to break other COG readers’ immersion by pointing out the ratio of choices that are fake/flavor choices. I’m not sure how well that would actually work, though. People like what they like. It seems to me like a lot of analytical work that’s likely to be met with a shrug.

And your analytical tool would probably miss the fact that not all flavor is created equal. I can think of plenty of memorable moments from CSGs I’ve enjoyed where my choice didn’t alter a stat or branch a plot. Some of those choices didn’t even lead to different flavor text – the text of the choice bank alone gave a sense of scale, or possible emotional reactions that gave weight to what I was reading.

At the end of the day, you’re entirely within your rights to push for COG to publish more of the kind of games you like. Go to town. I like games with lots of consequence and room to explore, too. But do it with that mindset – “Cater to my tastes, company!” – and not, “Doing it differently would be lazy moneygrubbing!”

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22

Some folks approach these projects as almost sandbox “do what you’d like” games (let’s say 90% game, 10% story), and others, perhaps on the other end of the spectrum, approach them as essentially personalized novels (let’s say 90% story, 10% game). The awesome thing about Hosted Games especially is that there is room for both, and everything in between! Yes, Choice of Games has a house style, but broadly speaking, does anyone claim there is a ‘right’ way to write interactive fiction?

And IMO more Creatives, at least those viewing their creative endeavors as a way to earn income, would be well served to adopt a “very corporate mindset.” That term was used like it…was a bad thing? Seriously? A business mindset helps you set parameters, keep feature creep from getting out of control, and actually finish projects, which many folks fail to do.

And efficiency is your friend, not your enemy. In what other field or venture does one say, “Oh I’m just going to see where this goes without thought to project scope or time spent, efficiency be damned!”?

I’m just saying, approach your project however the heck you want, but know in advance how you’re choosing to approach it, and don’t ridicule others who embrace efficiency and a market mindset.

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23

That’s wonderful, and so kind of you to say! I’m very glad it’s been useful. When I revisit some of the more complicated or very in-depth bits I occasionally use it as a benchmark of what NOT to do as well, which can be just as helpful!

Yes - there’s a degree of swapping between story and code in the process for me. I think about the overall shapes of a chapter or scene, and figure out what information or development, if any, will happen no matter what paths are followed. Once I have a detailed outline designed, I do all of the code and use Quicktest and Randomtest to check that everything’s functioning. I can then get into the writing side of things. I know other people do the writing first, and still others do code and writing at the same time - there’s not really a right or wrong way of doing it, it’s more a case of figuring out what works for you.

I think I started doing it this way sometime during Blood Money. I didn’t do it as rigorously as with Creme de la Creme, where I did it all throughout creating the game. It’s been useful ever since for me - it helps me keep track of the size of a chapter and how much more I have left to do. In my current projects I’ve been going into a bit more mechanical detail with my broad-strokes notebook outlining than I did with CdlC, making decisions about which stats will be tested and the stat outcomes.

For example the sort of thing I would have written before was:

Clemence is running a discussion about the vote. They're excited because we're living through history!
-I just want to liven up the lesson
-History's written by the victors
-It's intellectually stimulating

Now, because I’ve got into the habit of pinning it down a bit more before starting the actual coding, I go into more detail about mechanics when I’m doing my initial plan. I prefer having the mechanics in my mind through the whole process. So I might put something like this in my notebook instead:

Clemence is running a discussion about the vote. They're excited because we're living through history!
-I just want to liven up the lesson (Test Entertaining, +/- School Popularity)
-History's written by the victors (Test Authoritative, +/- School Popularity)
-It's intellectually stimulating (Test Eloquent, +/- School Popularity)

When you’re further through writing, this article about game balance for Choicescript games may also be useful. I’ve been using a similar method since starting Creme de la Creme, as when I finished drafting Blood Money I hit points where it was literally impossible to pass some of the stat challenges.

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24

Have you found that this helps you find more natural intervals and inflection points, or is it just what is more natural to you?

I think it’s a function of how I plan stories. I have the overall plan, with the waypoints (nodes, beats) where the story needs to land. I have a detail plan, which deals with different paths taken between those points. But even the detailed planning is not really about choices most of the time, they are about different routes to achieve objectives.

So for me, the bulk of the choices the reader sees and makes, happen when I actually sit down and type. How characters react and interact, which directions discussions might veer off in. The mood of the conversation, what tactics you might use in a fight. Most of that comes to me when I am writing. And, in order to do that, I need to be free to progress fast, instead of taking the time to break and fill out choices as I go. So in a way, what I write in that first pass is the way my imagination sees this scene unfolding on the first go. If I get ideas for choices right away, I note down the gist of them, but I don’t explore all the paths. In essence, I write one branch first, and then backtrack to fill things out.

For me, this is essential for three reasons:
1: I need to explore when I write. If I know everything, I get bored. I need the freedom to go wild.
2: Especially when it comes to discussions, flow is everything. Often choices there switch mood or direction, and it’s hard for me to jump between angry argument and soulful bonding in the same moment. Preserving the flow and mood is important.
3: Past Malin is always more boring than current Malin, and future Malin is smarter yet. Even if I think I know what will happen in a scene, actually writing it reveals things I never thought about. There’s no need for me to lock down choices beforehand. It’s often not until a scene is finished that I can look back and see which other directions it might go.

My way of working is all about trying to preserve writing momentum, and how you do that depends on what kind of writer you are. I have noticed that the more I write, the more the code gets integrated in the first writing session. These days I might not flesh out all the choices on the first go, but I add many smaller bits of code, *if’s and flags when I encounter the need for them.

EDIT: As for stats… that usually gets added when I feel like it, at many stages in the story. I tend to use stats more to understand what person the character the reader has created is, rather than to limit access.

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25

Wow, this is a little masterclass in writing choicescript with a clear stats plan, thanks! I really appreciate this. I’m gonna end up following this approach when framing this piece up, see how it goes!

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Do you find you need to take steps to prevent your first path through from being the dominant path for readers?

Very cool, so over time you stay in the momentum while dropping in bits of functioning code as you go?

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Do you find you need to take steps to prevent your first path through from being the dominant path for readers?

Not really, I’ve noticed my original path is in fact not the most popular with the players :sweat_smile: I think my character version is more caustic than most… And the first path is rarely even the most fun, it’s just the first one.

Very cool, so over time you stay in the momentum while dropping in bits of functioning code as you go?

Yep. A lot of my text have *if variations depending on past choices/personality of the player, so much of that tends to get added right away.

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28

That is an unfortunate shorthand. There are fantastic things about a business mindset, including everything you mention in your post. Most of the art and entertainment we love is made by people who earn at least part of their living by making and distributing it. No one should be ridiculed for considering the likely return on the hours they put into their work.

On the other hand, as the person who first referred to commercial efficiency with (at best) faint praise on this thread, I’d not want to dismiss the bad things that can come with a business mindset. As the focus on marketability and profitability gets stronger, it can kill off creative ambition.

Partly that can be the direct effect that extrinsic motivators seem to have on many if not most people. There’s a good, pretty balanced article on that here. It includes the Anne Sexton quote: “First I want to write good poems. After that I am anxious as hell to make money and fame and bring the stars all down.” A corporate mindset can shift people away from putting their intrinsic motivation first; it doesn’t always, but it happens easily and often enough to be a legitimate worry (for creators) and gripe (for consumers).

And especially when a business loses its entrepreneurial edge and gets more risk-averse, it can stop investing in new, exciting, or complex things and aim only (or almost entirely) at safe and simple bets that offer a guaranteed profit. So contemporary Hollywood makes more and more blockbusters that are same-y and sequelly, with creative directors squeezed into the house style, while more weird and distinctive ideas or styles can’t get funding like they used to. Same for a lot of pulp publishing. That’s one major downside that can come with a corporate mindset.

I just came across a Skyrim retrospective that mentioned a game of its sheer scale wouldn’t be considered economical today. If true, that’s a shame! Its bigness was its most winning feature, and while it was a commercial risk to make a game so huge and unwieldy, it surely paid off for Bethesda, which is still raking in the cash a decade later.

As I noted earlier on this thread, Choice of Rebels is long, messy, and inefficient. A risk-averse business mindset would probably not favor it, despite its commercially appealing genre. Don’t bet on the guy who takes forever to finish a game because he’s writing so much emergent complexity and rabbit holes into it!

But I think it turned out to be a worthwhile bet. It’s no Skyrim, of course, but so far it’s sold around 39,000 copies, and my income from the game is in the neighborhood of $44,000. I don’t know how that compares to what people hope or expect to earn from their writing, but it’s a lot more than I’d expected to make! (Especially as someone whose earlier narrative nonfiction book had earned only $17,000.) As I shift from having a full-time day job to being a house-spouse with game-writing as my side contribution to the family purse, and can thus hopefully start getting the sequels out every couple of years rather than every 6-7, it’ll also look better in terms of an annual income. :slight_smile:

That said, if my household was actually depending on that income (which we’re fortunate not to be) I would totally switch to writing simpler, more straightforward games and aim to get one out every year. There are virtues other than complexity in a piece of IF, and I’d aim to hit more of those (to satisfy my intrinsic need to write fiction I enjoy) while finishing games more quickly and reliably. There are other equilibria on the sliding scale of “business/efficiency” and “creative/complexity” that could satisfy me, not just the particular one I’m at now.

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29

If I may add on to this:

One of the things that makes XoR so good about creating meaningful choices is that when you are learning the game, you start with prima facie optimal strategies; you think they are optimal until you want to create and develop new characters. And then you realize that the other, seemingly suboptimal choices, have their uses too.

What are some seemingly optimal choices?

  • Only Plundering Merchants after Harrowing
  • Having Zvad Raid Extensively
  • Owlscap Protection Racket
  • Playing Nice with Horion and Linos

All these things are good to do. I used them as crutches for a while.

But it was only after the Discord started discussing “Red Bars Helots” (ruthless, skeptical, and nationalist ex-slaves, the weakest attribute and origin combination) that I started using heterodox and seemingly suboptimal strategies. Because I decided that I was going to make my characters work (and show other people how to make them work), and to do that, I had to do some weird stuff to squeeze out every attribute and Radmar Influence point I could get.

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30

Joel, our numbers are amazingly similar.

Between CCH1, CCH2, Zip, and even counting my small part in Starship Adventures, I’ve sold about 51,000 units with royalties of about $44,500. I had been speaking with another author recently about the different approaches of “doing fewer, longer games” versus “doing more frequent, smaller games” and in our case here it looks like it’s a dead heat. I’m guessing we’ve invested similar amounts of time and mental energy but that might be hard to measure.

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31

There is an audience for both “longer” and “shorter” games; trying to approach design as if there is only one or the other can be a hindrance for an author trying to reach their full potential. Having experience in addressing both, I think we can all benefit from your perspective.

With that in mind, it looks like from your current process, @Eric_Moser , that you have explored both audiences … focusing back on the thread, would you say you can use the same development sequencing for either a “short” or “long” game, or is it better to have separate and different steps to reach your end-goal with both?

Edit:

It seems you are using a more in-depth approach here, making the quality and intimacy greater with each character you develop – sort of ramping up the intensity to achieve the burn the reader needs to keep your (literary) hook intact.

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32

I’m really interested in this whole conversation! The games I’ve released are on the longer and less-visible-content-per-playthrough end of the spectrum (though not anything as behemoth like as XoR, Choice of the Cat, Jolly Good and so on!) and Royal Affairs is shaping up to be that sort of structure too… though I aim to make it shorter than Creme de la Creme simply because I want to release it sooner rather than later.

The new project I’m working on is shorter by design, with fewer main characters (which is mostly what makes it shorter) and I’ll be very interested to see its reception. Something that I’m paying particular attention to is making sure that a playthrough is a larger proportion of the total game length, so that an individual play experience should feel chunky and satisfying.

I’ve also used a different plot approach of ensuring that each main NPC has a distinct plot “route” in which there are plenty of options, branches and outcomes. In Creme the romanceable/befriendable characters generally exist independently of the late-game plot. But here I wanted to tie things together more tightly and make the fact that there are fewer characters work for me. With fewer characters, I’ve got more time and space to give them breathing room and show how distinct each of their plots are.

Also - the theme of this shorter game is more restrictive than something like Royal Affairs and the protagonist’s setup is fairly difficult compared to RA, so I feel it’s suited to a more streamlined approach. The plots are also high stakes emotionally (and physically), but not sprawling or affecting a whole nation. I often give the protagonist the opportunity to express how they feel about their life internally (which affects their personality stats) or externally (which affects other characters’ attitude towards them) to keep the theme of being in a tough situation in players’ minds.

I think it’s pretty successful so far… but the proof will be in the pudding when I put the demo up as I haven’t had wide feedback yet!

I would love to hear more about how other people have designed shorter games. Some older shorter games are delightfully branchy - Choice of the Deathless for example is 99,000 words and I’ve never had the sense of it feeling railroaded or it feeling like it’s over too soon (other than just wanting MORE because it’s so good). Perhaps the case-per-chapter structure helps it feel longer?

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33

This sounds fascinating! I cannot wait to see what this is like. The potential of this kind of approach is what drew me to interactive in the first place — though as i’m learning more about how to execute this, it seems to require a bit of engineering elegance to offer this level of world building without exploding the wordcount.

I hope others will chime in on the short(er) form design question. Am really curious!

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