Chris Avellone
Arcane
Again, don't always have time to answer, but figured rather than answer the latest, I'd try and make sure I don't miss some others (although there's a lot).
It is also useful when dealing with Italian in-laws. My wife's family are teaching me small amounts of Italian in passing. I do know a bit of French and took a few years of Latin, and I still fall back on Latin constructions sometimes when writing/designing.
Latin also allowed me to do better than I deserved on my verbal SATs, too, because you could deconstruct so many of the words if you know the roots.
Some overseas companies are also cool enough to offer language programs as part of freelancing, although I rarely have time to respond to the forum here let alone learn a new language.
Me too. (Me 2?)
I saw him speaking based on his original tribal roots, which he fell back to in order to keep up appearances while doing his espionage thing (same with why he wears his hair, I believe he says, it's been a while). His tribe was one of the many laid out early in Van Buren: The Hangdogs, Twisted Hairs, the Ciphers, and the Twin Mothers, among others (this was while VB was still in "holding pattern" mode until BG3 got cancelled, they may have changed not long after that).
Another part of the reason is I heard Roger Cross's audition and thought he had a cool voice, so I did play around with the word choice/metaphors a bit. In the end, among the other complaints (and there were many, but we weren't allowed to re-record him) was that he just spoke too slowly, which I agree with (we tried to manually speed up his voice, but that only goes so far). But again, that wasn't the only problem with the presentation (there's a bunch).
Among many others, John Gonzalez, Brian Mitsoda, and Travis Stout are still doing cool projects, and John alone did a good job on Shadow of Mordor and Horizon: Zero Dawn, if the reception is to be believed (I admit I haven't had a chance to play either one beyond seeing demos and certain gameplay scenes).
Probably the ability to not only physically punch, but philosophically punch, all the high-minded antagonists. I still don't think anyone I've tried to do ever comes close to the Master in F1, though.
The rest I don't really know, but the critiques of what I do wrong are pretty valuable (watch out for word repetition to the point of exhaustion, for example, and don't make up 2-3 slang/code names for a single character or event, it just confuses the audience - make a decision and stick with it). While I have been accused of long exposition, the two worst exposition moments I've ever had to write (Dead Money and Old World Blues) were both publisher and CEO mandates because they felt players wouldn't have any clue what was going on. While me arguing the point is fine, in the end, arguing the point doesn't get the milestone paid and keep people employed, so sometimes you have to bite the bullet. That said, there's been other times where I have done way too much exposition when I shouldn't.
I didn't know BraveMule was quoting Miyamoto, but from personal experience, if fans start believing (rightly) that your initial release is best to hold off on purchasing for a patch or for a few patches, that can stick and hurt reception (to the point where they'll believe it for the wrong reasons or immediately assume something is a bug or a flawed feature even if it isn't).
You can also compound the error by releasing bad or game-breaking patches for the same reason you released the core game as-is. Also, the initial Steam reviews for those games don't go away, either.
It's possible to fix that reputation, but it just takes a while, and usually the causes for such releases rarely change - but they can.
While I agree a game can recover over time, I just believe it's better to make it the best it can be at launch - that's the best time to get noticed.
I owe you a longer answer to this (add it to my debts), and there's a GDC presentation entitled the “400 Simple Steps to do a story in a game” that walks through a lot of this, but I’m not sure it’s on the Vault - (I found a link here but didn't test it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3aobafRUlo
In short, I prefer to proceed with the following steps: (Reposting from some advice I offered a while ago on how to approach a game story)
Again, this is only my approach, and to be clear, I haven't always done it this way.
It is also useful when dealing with Italian in-laws. My wife's family are teaching me small amounts of Italian in passing. I do know a bit of French and took a few years of Latin, and I still fall back on Latin constructions sometimes when writing/designing.
Latin also allowed me to do better than I deserved on my verbal SATs, too, because you could deconstruct so many of the words if you know the roots.
Some overseas companies are also cool enough to offer language programs as part of freelancing, although I rarely have time to respond to the forum here let alone learn a new language.
Me too. (Me 2?)
I saw him speaking based on his original tribal roots, which he fell back to in order to keep up appearances while doing his espionage thing (same with why he wears his hair, I believe he says, it's been a while). His tribe was one of the many laid out early in Van Buren: The Hangdogs, Twisted Hairs, the Ciphers, and the Twin Mothers, among others (this was while VB was still in "holding pattern" mode until BG3 got cancelled, they may have changed not long after that).
Another part of the reason is I heard Roger Cross's audition and thought he had a cool voice, so I did play around with the word choice/metaphors a bit. In the end, among the other complaints (and there were many, but we weren't allowed to re-record him) was that he just spoke too slowly, which I agree with (we tried to manually speed up his voice, but that only goes so far). But again, that wasn't the only problem with the presentation (there's a bunch).
Among many others, John Gonzalez, Brian Mitsoda, and Travis Stout are still doing cool projects, and John alone did a good job on Shadow of Mordor and Horizon: Zero Dawn, if the reception is to be believed (I admit I haven't had a chance to play either one beyond seeing demos and certain gameplay scenes).
Probably the ability to not only physically punch, but philosophically punch, all the high-minded antagonists. I still don't think anyone I've tried to do ever comes close to the Master in F1, though.
The rest I don't really know, but the critiques of what I do wrong are pretty valuable (watch out for word repetition to the point of exhaustion, for example, and don't make up 2-3 slang/code names for a single character or event, it just confuses the audience - make a decision and stick with it). While I have been accused of long exposition, the two worst exposition moments I've ever had to write (Dead Money and Old World Blues) were both publisher and CEO mandates because they felt players wouldn't have any clue what was going on. While me arguing the point is fine, in the end, arguing the point doesn't get the milestone paid and keep people employed, so sometimes you have to bite the bullet. That said, there's been other times where I have done way too much exposition when I shouldn't.
I didn't know BraveMule was quoting Miyamoto, but from personal experience, if fans start believing (rightly) that your initial release is best to hold off on purchasing for a patch or for a few patches, that can stick and hurt reception (to the point where they'll believe it for the wrong reasons or immediately assume something is a bug or a flawed feature even if it isn't).
You can also compound the error by releasing bad or game-breaking patches for the same reason you released the core game as-is. Also, the initial Steam reviews for those games don't go away, either.
It's possible to fix that reputation, but it just takes a while, and usually the causes for such releases rarely change - but they can.
While I agree a game can recover over time, I just believe it's better to make it the best it can be at launch - that's the best time to get noticed.
I owe you a longer answer to this (add it to my debts), and there's a GDC presentation entitled the “400 Simple Steps to do a story in a game” that walks through a lot of this, but I’m not sure it’s on the Vault - (I found a link here but didn't test it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3aobafRUlo
In short, I prefer to proceed with the following steps: (Reposting from some advice I offered a while ago on how to approach a game story)
Again, this is only my approach, and to be clear, I haven't always done it this way.
"The way I approach it (a story outline) is:
- Break down/Get the pillars of the game (these don’t have to be the narrative ones and often aren’t). There should be at least three, and these three are the most important aspects of the game. So, for example, when we were doing the Fallout New Vegas DLCs, the pillars were:
- Make sure you've read and played all the core systems for the game and you know what the gameplay loop is going to be (b/c the story needs to serve that). Know the character's movement set, what their powers will be, what level traversal will be like, etc.
- Then we do a one sentence and a one-pager (no longer than this, and we don’t mention specific details like exact locations or names of characters). It’s more like “Trapped in a frozen hellhole, the hero awakens to find he’s been in suspended animation for 100 years and must save other hibernating humans from zombies crawling the earth” or “BioShock with dinosaurs” or some such. Whatever sentence would be what a player would tell another player about the game and the story, and it has to be compelling in that one sentence.
- The reason we don’t do specific places, names, NPCs initially is because until you have the spine of the story sorted out, those details are irrelevant (and they can actually get in the way by being obstacles or details you get too attached to). All you want is the critical path, no side stories, nothing beyond “what’s likely to get the player from point A to point B.”
- Once all the leads (not the whole team, the leads) agree on the 1pager, do a 4pager that fleshes out more details – add 3-9 locations (no more than a paragraph), a quick description of what you do in each location, and the primary antagonist, protagonist, and no more than 2 other major characters (keep it simple). Also, and this is important – prioritize everything, and try to prioritize narrative in tandem with other design content (for example, A-Priority narrative should be in tandem with A-priority levels). I use Priority A, B, and C to represent:
A-Priority: If this isn’t in the game, the story or game would be obviously unplayable or broken.
B-Priority: If this isn’t in the game, the player will notice it, but the game will be playable, just not as good as it could be.
C-Priority: Something the player wouldn’t miss if it wasn’t there (thus, cutable) but if it was there, it would make the overall game experience better. (The talking appliances in Old World Blues.)
Then I try to break the content into 50% is A-Priority, 25% is B, and 25% is C. This will help prevent headaches later on because if you need to cut something, you know what to cut.
- Get that approved by all the leads (it’s not important the rest of the team yet).
- Then present the story to the team - don't tuck it away like a rare, secret treasure only the writers know, that's a good way to make your story suck when it's in the game.
- I advocate some things with a team presentation:
- Once that’s approved, break up the story doc into 1-pagers of each location and each of the major characters, and repeat the process all over again, expanding each section to 4 pagers, etc.
- Agree with the other writer(s) who’s going to be writing what – and ideally, if one writer really wants to write a certain location or character, it’s often best to let them flesh out the 1 pagers and 4 pagers for characters and locations.
- While doing this process, every location, quest, and NPC (and the player themselves) should always be checked against the pillars of your game – is the writing and the character and the content complimenting the themes and the gameplay? Are they helping to support the core experience?"
Switching to a few recent questions, but it felt unfair to tackle those without dealing with these first. Forgive any typos.- Break down/Get the pillars of the game (these don’t have to be the narrative ones and often aren’t). There should be at least three, and these three are the most important aspects of the game. So, for example, when we were doing the Fallout New Vegas DLCs, the pillars were:
- Provide an 6-8 hour experience similar to the core game (this comes with a set of assumptions, such as: must cater to different character archetypes in quest design and action gameplay, every archetype should be useful and get something cool, etc.).
- Communicate X ambiance in the DLC (ex: Old World Blues was “sci-fi super science comedy” and Dead was “Survival Horror”).
- Each DLC must abide by X resource restrictions (we only have a single programmer, no more than 2500 voiced lines, we can only make 2 new creatures and X number of weapons, armor, etc.). This one was more logistical, but it’s absolutely a pillar.
- Communicate X ambiance in the DLC (ex: Old World Blues was “sci-fi super science comedy” and Dead was “Survival Horror”).
- Each DLC must abide by X resource restrictions (we only have a single programmer, no more than 2500 voiced lines, we can only make 2 new creatures and X number of weapons, armor, etc.). This one was more logistical, but it’s absolutely a pillar.
- Make sure you've read and played all the core systems for the game and you know what the gameplay loop is going to be (b/c the story needs to serve that). Know the character's movement set, what their powers will be, what level traversal will be like, etc.
- Then we do a one sentence and a one-pager (no longer than this, and we don’t mention specific details like exact locations or names of characters). It’s more like “Trapped in a frozen hellhole, the hero awakens to find he’s been in suspended animation for 100 years and must save other hibernating humans from zombies crawling the earth” or “BioShock with dinosaurs” or some such. Whatever sentence would be what a player would tell another player about the game and the story, and it has to be compelling in that one sentence.
- The reason we don’t do specific places, names, NPCs initially is because until you have the spine of the story sorted out, those details are irrelevant (and they can actually get in the way by being obstacles or details you get too attached to). All you want is the critical path, no side stories, nothing beyond “what’s likely to get the player from point A to point B.”
- Once all the leads (not the whole team, the leads) agree on the 1pager, do a 4pager that fleshes out more details – add 3-9 locations (no more than a paragraph), a quick description of what you do in each location, and the primary antagonist, protagonist, and no more than 2 other major characters (keep it simple). Also, and this is important – prioritize everything, and try to prioritize narrative in tandem with other design content (for example, A-Priority narrative should be in tandem with A-priority levels). I use Priority A, B, and C to represent:
A-Priority: If this isn’t in the game, the story or game would be obviously unplayable or broken.
B-Priority: If this isn’t in the game, the player will notice it, but the game will be playable, just not as good as it could be.
C-Priority: Something the player wouldn’t miss if it wasn’t there (thus, cutable) but if it was there, it would make the overall game experience better. (The talking appliances in Old World Blues.)
Then I try to break the content into 50% is A-Priority, 25% is B, and 25% is C. This will help prevent headaches later on because if you need to cut something, you know what to cut.
- Get that approved by all the leads (it’s not important the rest of the team yet).
- Then present the story to the team - don't tuck it away like a rare, secret treasure only the writers know, that's a good way to make your story suck when it's in the game.
- I advocate some things with a team presentation:
- 1. Gather the whole team all in a room, do a PPT, and then walk them through the story points as enthusiastically as you can - show that you care, and try to get them excited. It’s best to also do:
- 2. Always show how the narrative is using THE TEAM'S existing cool features, concept art, environment art, to tell the story. Basically anything you haven’t made yourself but the team did, show them how you’re using their cool stuff (including game programming for systems) to help tell the story. Everyone likes to see their own work contributing to the process.
- 2. Always show how the narrative is using THE TEAM'S existing cool features, concept art, environment art, to tell the story. Basically anything you haven’t made yourself but the team did, show them how you’re using their cool stuff (including game programming for systems) to help tell the story. Everyone likes to see their own work contributing to the process.
Also, with a team, often words are the wrong way to communicate a story - keep it visual, keep it brief, and leave the lengthier documents just for the writers.
- Once that’s approved, break up the story doc into 1-pagers of each location and each of the major characters, and repeat the process all over again, expanding each section to 4 pagers, etc.
- Agree with the other writer(s) who’s going to be writing what – and ideally, if one writer really wants to write a certain location or character, it’s often best to let them flesh out the 1 pagers and 4 pagers for characters and locations.
- While doing this process, every location, quest, and NPC (and the player themselves) should always be checked against the pillars of your game – is the writing and the character and the content complimenting the themes and the gameplay? Are they helping to support the core experience?"
