People News Chris Avellone Interview @ PC Authority

[Cosmo]

MCA simply lived too much time in this wretched industry i think ; his "tell by showing" stance isn't stupid at all, but it matches too much today's gaming ideology for it to be the product of happenstance.
Am i the only one to think that isometric view (to convey macro-elements) combined with plenty of wonderful descriptions (for micro-elements) was the absolute perfect blend ?

 

[almondblight]

The Mortuary is one of the better parts of the game. Much better than the "fetch quests and info dumps" that was the Clerks Ward, better than the combat slogs when you were going to see Pharod, going to the undead city, or beneath Curst, better than the angsty infodump that was the meeting with Ravel, etc. The only parts of the game I really liked were The Mortuary, The Hive, The Lower Quarter, and the undead city. Those areas were really nice, but the rest ranged from decent to bad (unlike many, though, I thought Curst was decent-ish).

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

MCA simply lived too much time in this wretched industry i think ; his "tell by showing" stance isn't stupid at all, but it matches too much today's gaming ideology for it to be the product of happenstance.
Am i the only one to think that third person isometric view (to convey macro-elements) combined with plenty of wonderful descriptions (for micro-elements) was the absolute perfect blend ?

Yeah, "show, don't tell" is kind of conventional wisdom. Which is fine, but its conventional wisdom that was copied from filmmaking conventional wisdom. In film it amounts to a pithy way of saying that filmmakers should harness the distinguishing features of their medium to tell a story, which in the case of filmmakers is the capacity to show events in real-time.

Since the distinguishing feature of videogames are not the ability to show events in real-time, but the ability to allow participation in real-time events, "show, don't tell" is really not the best way to look at it. Since a better approach would be to give the player opportunities to participate in the story, I think a better maxim would be "offer, don't force." I happen to think text, when done right, is extremely effective at offering information without forcing it upon the player - you can read it at your own pace (or not at all) and control when to move on to the next piece of information. How often do you find yourself reading the text in a conversation and choosing an option before the voice actor is even halfway done? Too much text is a product of a writers lack of concision or the games failure to give the player control over how they access the text, not the nature of text itself.

 

[Azrael the cat]

The Mortuary is one of the better parts of the game. Much better than the "fetch quests and info dumps" that was the Clerks Ward, better than the combat slogs when you were going to see Pharod, going to the undead city, or beneath Curst, better than the angsty infodump that was the meeting with Ravel, etc. The only parts of the game I really liked were The Mortuary, The Hive, The Lower Quarter, and the undead city. Those areas were really nice, but the rest ranged from decent to bad (unlike many, though, I thought Curst was decent-ish).

I didn't mind the Ravel infodump, mainly because the game did so much to foreshadow that particular encounter. By the time I got there I was expecting major game revelation via infodump.

 

[Cosmo]

We call that "wonderful descriptions" fluff text when we play games like Ravenloft where the cards describe the details. I think it can be done well. But to be honest that is NOT the only job of MCA. Environmental details through words (fluff text) is a small part of writing in general, most of which is about actually character dialogues and the actual 'story'. Which is to say that this issue is NOT as serious as you might believe.

As to third person view with isometry: I guess you mean over the head view at some angle. Yeah sure. Party based games require that, don't they?

The "issue" was not with MCA's multi faceted writing skills, but rather with the fact that a using a lot of text isn't necessarily harmful to game design, unless you decide that FPS (that forces immediacy, and telling by showing as many things as possible, an approach that too often leads to poor CRPG mechanics) is the only way to go. Done right, text as a basic ressource (next to graphics and sound) is a perfectly legitimate way to convey meaning in a CRPG. And there's absolutely no need for MCA to apologize for Torment's "vomit of text" as he said, because despite today's gamedesign trends, the game perfectly stands on its feet.

(By the way Schreck, another great job of managing to miss the point while maintaining the air of pedantry... )

 

[Roguey]

MCA just developed the dreaded Hollywood Writer Syndrome, and thinks that only people writing for movies or TV shows are serious writers.

Games should be about doing things, not a passive activity.

 

[Rake]

MCA just developed the dreaded Hollywood Writer Syndrome, and thinks that only people writing for movies or TV shows are serious writers.

Games should be about doing things

Like reading text?

 

[Roguey]

Reading things in a video game is a passive activity that doesn't test anything except your patience.

 

[Infinitron]

Reading things in a video game is a passive activity that doesn't test anything except your patience.

The cost of the evocative detail only words can provide. I pay gladly.

 

[Gozma]

The writing in the DLC arc of New Vegas seemed like a really lame comic book writer's version of mythic where lots of garbled continuity, tone schizophrenia, and loose ends are supposed to be sublime somehow

I'd rather have read the written pantomime shit for Christine (text graphics a la Betrayal at Krondor or PS:T) for another hour than listen to Ulysses or The Transcendent One blather comic bookishly for five more minutes.

 

[tuluse]

Reading things in a video game is a passive activity that doesn't test anything except your patience.

That seems like an extreme position. Do you think there should be no written text in video games?

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I'd much rather listen to barely adequate voice acting and watch creepy facial animations.

 

[Roguey]

Reading things in a video game is a passive activity that doesn't test anything except your patience.

That seems like an extreme position. Do you think there should be no written text in video games?

Some games can do perfectly well without any text at all. Some should have it, but there's a point where it's just masturbatory. The amount of text in the two Fallout games was fine. Torment was not fine, and Feargus Urquhart actually had to reprimand Avellone because the localization costs went through the roof.

 

[Rake]

Reading things in a video game is a passive activity that doesn't test anything except your patience.

That seems like an extreme position. Do you think there should be no written text in video games?

Some games can do perfectly well without any text at all. Some should have it, but there's a point where it's just masturbatory. The amount of text in the two Fallout games was fine. Torment was not fine, and Feargus Urquhart actually had to reprimand Avellone because the localization costs went through the roof.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=127
Question 10.
Your boyfriend doesn't agree with you

10. Same question I asked Dave Gaider: Text in RPGs. How much is too much, assuming that there is such a thing as "too much text" in RPGs? Chris Avellone has recently stated that dialogues sometimes get in the way of fireball casting & other exciting activities. What are your thoughts on this matter?

I think the quality of the text and the focus of the game should define that. If your text is boring, yeah, let's skip to the fireball-hurling. If your game is filled with really awesome combat, chatting it up for hours at a time probably dilutes your experience. If your game has a lot of meaningful character interactions and political intrigue, you're selling yourself short if you tightly limit how much text the player deals with.

Your audience should also have a huge effect on the "too much" limit. If you're making a game for mass appeal, forget having a lot of text and forget trying to do anything clever with the text you have. We live in a world where According to Jim tops the charts and Arrested Development gets canceled. That should put some perspective on things.

 

[Rake]

Reading things in a video game is a passive activity that doesn't test anything except your patience.

The cost of the evocative detail only words can provide. I pay gladly.

 

[Roguey]

Your boyfriend doesn't agree with you

OTOH Josh also believes that using characters for mundane exposition is a waste of everyone's time. And if you want to write realistic-feeling dialogue you're not going to have a character drone endlessly at you.

 

[almondblight]

A game turning into a watered down book isn't any better than it turning into a watered down movie (though thankfully people seem to at least realize now how bad FMV games mostly were). One, it's a different medium. Two, most writers for games aren't that good. I recognize that mediocre to poor writing is often a tradeoff for games, but it would be nice if the designers were aware of their own limitations.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Quality of writing, not quantity.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

. I recognize that mediocre to poor writing is often a tradeoff for games, but it would be nice if the designers were aware of their own limitations.

Hollywood understands that writers can be a blackhole for money.

The more generic the story of a movie, the less it offends the retards, more retards can understand it for the overseas markets, and the non-retards will be stuck watching it anyway.

Game publishers aren't stupid, why pay for 3 or 4 quality writers in a studio and make a less appealing game when you can let the level designers and write the dialogue and story and make more money?

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

A game turning into a watered down book isn't any better than it turning into a watered down movie (though thankfully people seem to at least realize now how bad FMV games mostly were). One, it's a different medium. Two, most writers for games aren't that good. I recognize that mediocre to poor writing is often a tradeoff for games, but it would be nice if the designers were aware of their own limitations.

Quality of writing, not quantity.

This is all true, but the questions about the appropriateness of text are distinguishable from questions about the quality or quantity of writing. Text is only a subset of writing. Writing includes plot, backstory, characterization, dialogue etc., all of which can be conveyed through means besides text. The choice isn't really between text and nothing, the choice is between writing that takes the form of text and writing that takes those other forms.

If a game has huge walls of unnecessary, boring text, it wouldn't be improved by turning that into a long, boring dialogue. If it shouldn't be in the game or its badly written, it should be cut. Whether its text or something else is irrelevant.

But if it adds to the game, it should be written using the most effective medium. Sometimes text is the most efficient form the writing can take; would you rather read a brief description of a fairly banal, but plot necessary occurrence or watch it happen in excruciating detail?