Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Project Direction and Writing in RPGs - Do RPGs actually benefit from having more than one writer?

Joined
Dec 12, 2013
Messages
4,229
If you have 6 major locations and each location should have a dozen quests, you need more than one writer

How much time it usually takes to write one decent, average sized quest for a writer who can use his tools well and has a general idea for the quest he is doing?
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
If you have 6 major locations and each location should have a dozen quests, you need more than one writer

How much time it usually takes to write one decent, average sized quest for a writer who can use his tools well and has a general idea for the quest he is doing?

Depends on the complexity of your choices (the more different paths it offers, the longer it takes) and how many ancillary writing things you need to do (not just dialogue but also in-game notes and books, journal entries, etc).

Depending on how quickly you write, if you have already planned the quest out it takes between 2 days and a week to implement it.

Keep in mind you also have to work with the coders and level designers (though ideally, during your time at the company you have learned some basic skills with the scripting engine and level editor to do basic scripting and level implementation yourself).

A rough estimate on my own experience which is of course not representative of every writer's approach and every company's workflow:

First, a basic quest idea is developed
Then, you take a day brainstorming the quest and discussing it with the other writers, getting feedback on the quest and asking the other writers if anything is missing (maybe you haven't thought about a rogue option yet, but you already got fighter, mage and cleric approaches covered). This takes maybe a day. Could take longer depending on your position in the team: if you're the lead writer, you already know where you want the quest to be within the big picture and you know how to make it fit; when you're not the lead writer you gotta talk to the lead and coordinate with others who might be working in the same area. This is why it's a good idea to assign writers to different areas, btw. Let one questline be done by one writer, not every quest in a questline by another. Let one location be done by one writer, not every quest in the location by another.
Let's say you have a town where the lead writer himself is contributing 3 quests, and two other writers are contributing two quests each. Coordination and discussion of the quests might take up to three days to make sure they all fit together and have some interplay with each other (it's always cool if one character has relevance for more than just a single quest). But not much longer than that.

Then, when you know where you want the quest to go, what kinds of choices the player should have, and what kinds of things can affect dialogue choices (skill checks, race and gender, class, maybe even equipment, etc), you start writing the dialogue trees. If you already know where you're going (which is why you should take enough time during the brainstorming session), this can be done within a day, two at max.

Then you write ancillary texts like journal entires, which shouldn't take you more than a couple hours if everything else is already done.

Overall, a week per quest is a realistic timeframe for a writer who knows what he wants to do.
But keep in mind you also have to (or, well, should because it's often not the case) work together with the level designers and scripters for optimal results, which might add some more time of in-team coordination to it.

If you've read Swen's recent report on the development of Original Sin 2, you may have noticed that he said a lot of the writers they hired had no experience with non-linear dialogue trees, and sometimes broke the scripting. Fact is that often, companies hire outside writers to help in a project, and these are harder to coordinate with the team than in-house ones.
You absolutely should make your writers coordinate with the rest of the team to prevent such situations. At the very least, they should know what can be done with your scripting engine so they know the possibilities and limitations of what they can and can't do in quests.
Lack of coordination and direction is the #1 reason why some projects gets bogged down imo. Additional time spent coordinating between team members is time saved in the long run because there'll be less issues to fix later on.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
The really hard thing is to be able to combine the two: delegate and exercise control. It is possible, just very difficult.

Steve Jobs was famous for his ability to do just this.

Doesn't this really depend on the strength of the team? Every person is different, both in talent and self-reliance. If you have an art director who knows his shit and has a clear vision you agree with you can pretty much let him do his own thing. If you have a quest writer who sucks and maybe shouldn't have been hired but oh well here we are, then you'll have to have strong guidance over him. I'd guess any project lead... or movie director, or showrunner, or whatever... has varying levels of delegation and control depending on the person and department. I doubt even Stanley Kubrick was constantly up the ass of everyone on set. So in the end it's more about Sawyer's ability (or lack of ability depending on your opinion) to make these decisions and juggle the outcomes.
 

cosmicray

Savant
Joined
Jan 20, 2019
Messages
436
I doubt even Stanley Kubrick was constantly up the ass of everyone on set.
But James Cameron totally is/was. Though it comes from him knowing how to produce, write, paint, do VFX, edit and film.
One of the "marines" on Aliens was joking that actors were the only people safe on set from Cameron because acting was the only thing he couldn't do. And since his wife was also a producer, they were up the ass of everyone and everywhere. Great movie, though.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214

Flou

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
869
Location
Hellsinki
Funny thing, it was his call. He told Feargus that Obsidian needed to do an IE successor before someone else could make money off of something "rightfully" theirs, and told him he'd quit and start his own studio to do it if they didn't. He had no passion for the concept itself, but he did care a lot about giving Obsidian its own Baldur's Gate (and ultimately failed given BG2's level of success versus Deadfire's; that lack of passion).

You are forgetting (or choosing to forget) Brennecke. It was Adam and Josh, not just Josh.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Passion is mostly a capitalist scam to squeeze out the last drop of "productivity" out of its wage slaves, but it is a real thing in creative fields. If you don't have a passion to make your game/movie/book it's gonna be bland pablum.
 

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
If you want to deliver an AA game within a reasonable timeframe, you do.
I’m sorry. What this has to do with anything? We are talking about what are the best choices to make an excellent cRPG, not what is supposed to be ideal for a AA studio, whatever the hell the means. If what is good for a AA studio is bad for cRPGs, then AA studios practices are bad for cRPGs. I’m neither a developer nor a publisher. I'm a cRPG player. It doesn’t interest me in the slightest what development practices bigger studios are adopting to maintain their status or assumptions about how these things should be.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
Patron
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
A number of AA CRPGs with the kind of development schedule and manpower JarlFrank is talking about turned out better than Age of Decadence. :M

Edit: Planescape Torment, Fallout 2, Arcanum, Jagged Alliance 2, Wizardry 8, Might and Magic 6, KOTOR 2, Fallout New Vegas and Divinity: Original Sin, off the top of my head, are in my opinion all better than Age of Decadence; I don't include titles going back further than the late 90s, but if I did, the list would go on. You'll doubtlessly disagree on most if not all of my picks, so I wonder why you asked for citations at all. We have very different ideas about what makes a good CRPG.

Edit edit: sorry about breaking your 7 post combo.
 
Last edited:

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
Hey Politician, you speak with such confidence that I wonder about your qualifications. Are you a writer or a game designer? If so, which games have you worked on?

Cuz from where I'm standing it sure sounds like you're blowing smoke out of your arse.
Oh, no! An ad hominem attack involving qualifications. How quaint. I think I will quit the internet forever and cry.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
The lead writer is the guy who is the boss of the other writers.
For a moment I thought you could think for yourself, but apparently you have no capacity to see things as they are or criticise the common wisdom. But then again, this is the norm. People just repeat and accept what most people think.
 

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
Passion is mostly a capitalist scam to squeeze out the last drop of "productivity" out of its wage slaves, but it is a real thing in creative fields. If you don't have a passion to make your game/movie/book it's gonna be bland pablum.

Do you know what is a scam? Rationality. This myth created by illuminists. If human beings were rational, we would have no communist enthusiasts in this day and age, but here they are, espousing their nonsense for the whole world to see and in all their glory.
 

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
Does his position as the counterproductive and unpaid marketing lead on Age of Decadence count?
Counterproductive? Do you mean that people avoided the game just because of me? Please, provide some examples. Right now the only people the avoided the game are the ones that were shitting on it from day one.
 

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
Planescape Torment
Are you really suggesting that PS:T was just like these games with dozens of writers? I though Avellone workload nearly killed him. D:OS? Really? Jagged the motherfucking Alliance. I could barely endure all those big walls of text! Are these your counter-examples? Let’s be frank. Idiots like you assume these practices are good because most developers accept them, and since you think they are special people, you accept said practices without batting an eye.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
Patron
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Are you really suggesting that PS:T was just like these games with dozens of writers?
No, I'm suggesting that it's better than Age of Decadence despite being developed within a reasonable timeframe by a bigger team. Also, what game had dozens of writers? That's ridiculous.
D:OS? Really?
Yep. Also better than Age of Decadence.
Jagged the motherfucking Alliance. I could barely endure all those big walls of text!
I'm sorry, have we segued back to writing? You asked for better AA games than Age of Decadence, and I provided them.
Are these your counter-examples?
Yes they are, that is correct.
Idiots like you assume these practices are good because most developers accept them, and since you think they are special people, you accept said practices without bating an eye.
The practice of producing good games like the ones I mentioned? I love that practice. The practice of producing the writing in Pillars, not so much.
 

Kyl Von Kull

The Night Tripper
Patron
Joined
Jun 15, 2017
Messages
3,152
Location
Jamrock District
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The lead writer is the guy who is the boss of the other writers.
For a moment I thought you could think for yourself, but apparently you have no capacity to see things as they are or criticise the common wisdom. But then again, this is the norm. People just repeat and accept what most people think.

Are you campaigning for village idiot or something?
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Oh yeah also: the more time you spend in the planning stage, the more time you save in the implementation stage.
Do you remember Torment: Tides of Numenera? I do.

Yes. I've read the Codex article about it, where inXile was interviewed and told about their development process.

They had many stages of pre-production, during which previous planning was often scrapped and then they began anew.

So let me rephrase what I said:
When you actually use the plans you made during the planning stage, you save a lot of time in the implementation stage.

If you scrap half your shit and change direction midway through development, no shit, your game is going to end up a mess and will take longer to develop than anticipated.
If you actually use the plans you developed during the planning stage rather than scrapping them all and beginning anew... yeah.

The lead writer is the guy who is the boss of the other writers.
For a moment I thought you could think for yourself, but apparently you have no capacity to see things as they are or criticise the common wisdom. But then again, this is the norm. People just repeat and accept what most people think.

I was lead writer on a game for a while. It meant I did most of the worldbuilding and overall direction of the questlines, and the other writers would discuss their quest ideas with me and I'd give them the ok when I like them and when they fit into the overall direction of the game, and tell them to change things when I didn't.

But yes, do tell me what a lead writer actually does. I'm waiting to hear your wisdom.
 

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
I was lead writer on a game for a while. It meant I did most of the worldbuilding and overall direction of the questlines, and the other writers would discuss their quest ideas with me and I'd give them the ok when I like them and when they fit into the overall direction of the game, and tell them to change things when I didn't.

But yes, do tell me what a lead writer actually does. I'm waiting to hear your wisdom.
You don’t need to remind me of this. I think everyone and their dog knows this at this point. You obviously lead this get over your head and are full of yourself. People are so predictable. Fallacious arguments bore me. Saying that you know what are the best development practices because you are a lead writer is the same as saying that scientists know more about the nature of science because they are scientists. It’s a fallacy.
 

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
No, I'm suggesting that it's better than Age of Decadence despite being developed within a reasonable timeframe by a bigger team.
Let this record show that Strange Fellow thinks that KOTOR2 and Divinity: Original Sin are better cRPGs than Age of Decadence.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I mean sure, we can have one single writer doing every text in the game if that writer sleeps in the office and works weekends.

Or if the games were scaled down, but that's not going to happen because big companies need to make large games because "60+ hours!" on the box makes a game sell, and they need to sell a lot to keep running.

You can go on about how games would be better if the teams and game length were cut down, but the fact is that these companies aren't 5-guy-indies and need to approach development a certain way.

And there's a structure for it that works reasonably well.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom