Editorial RPG Codex Editorial: Darth Roxor on the State of RPG Writing

[Lurker King]

Are you really this stupid or are you just pretending?

Easy on those butt wounds, buddy. I'm just trying to make (make it clear to myself?) a point. Whether you actually defend it or not, is less important.

 

[Fenix]

I should admit that I rarely read articles that long, but this hooked me from first lines.

And I should say - Darth Roxor I love you! I love you as much as Russian can love Pole ever.
And if you ever will need a hug, I'll give a hug to you at any time, for free.

Brilliant article, it is worthy of the Hall of Fame if Codex have one.

 

[Glaucon]

This whole part is kinda citiation needed-tier. Postmodernism is not all that relevant anymore in literature departments

Look through the course-list of any english department in America and you'll find dozens of classes devoted to postmodernism/deconstruction/post-historicism/critical theory/etc...but what I've noticed recently is that a lot of the kids in university now (and the younger faculty as well), are actually too dumb for deconstruction. The incredibly politically passionate, and they've memorized by rote the sentiments of all the fashionable (or once fashionable) french writers through professors/second literature--they just have no real, direct understanding of the texts. Maybe this is just my own experience at university, but I can't imagine their isn't a similar trend of mediocrity+politics going on elsewhere.

politization on universities in recent years, when postmodern sensibilities became a strawman for the alt-right.

The claim that humanities studies at universities has gone astray isn't a recent criticism by alt-righters--it's neither recent nor a criticism made exclusively by conservatives.

Course readers have a lot to do with that. If could change one thing at Australian universities, it would be ban all course readers from humanities departments.

They were introduced because students were understandably complaining that the cost of buying all these books was really high, and the library copies were often booked out. Ok, the latter part of that complaint was always bullshit - there was always a copy of each text on each reading list in the 'library reserve' (where you can only borrow for a couple of hours at a time - enough to read a couple of chapters and then let someone else have a go).

The idea was that you'd have the 'major bits' to be discussed in the lectures provided in one free photocopy-friendly course reader, and students would still go and read the full books themselves. Like fuck that was ever going to happen.

If there was one guaranteed benefit from a humanities degree, it's that you'd spent a few years reading a lot of books from cover to cover. Course readers killed that, and it's a bigger blow than any ideological shift. If students just read the whole goddamn book, cover to cover - and it was never that hard to do, you're talking, what, 3-4 books per 6 month unit, so maybe 12-16 if you're doing full-time humanities? Sounds like a lot at first glimpse in a 4 month teaching term, but that's why humanities courses have such low contact hours - 12-14 hrs per week, compared to, say, 30, for engineering. It's because you're supposed to spend the other 15 hours reading.

It's only going to get worse if intelligent people continue to skirt around the obvious political element of the decline of the humanities. We can talk endlessly about economics, globalization, and minutiae of this or that pedagogical method. At some point one has to acknowledge the the politicization of literature (of a distinctly left-wing kind) has been detrimental to the working habits and motivation of students--maybe even to their ability to enjoy and appreciate art generally.

 

[Naveen]

problematic, systemic, normalizing, or narrative - their language and jargon have become mainstream.

Thats not postmodern jargon, though.

tl.dr. version: hire writers who mostly read pre-70s stuff. More sword & sorcery, less college-educated writers.

Well, they kinda are, you can check their google ngrams and you will see their usage soars after the 60s, and it first started in the academic world and then they became mainstream, which was my point. Hardly anybody used problematic or "putting into question" before Derrida was translated, narrative (in its modern meaning) was obscure as shit and comes from Critical Theory (which isn't really po-mo, but whatever, I'm talking mostly about academese in general,) and "systemic" has become a very popular weasel word in sociology and cultural criticism retardation. Another example would be expressions like binary and non-binary, which also come from Derrida (deconstructing "binary oppositions") and then through Judith Butler, patron saint of today's Tumblr trannies. I know normal people are not going to use logocentrism, diférance, performance, or "compulsive heteronormativity" but a certain odd language that once was very uncommon has now become normal.

Anyway, I don't want to talk much about this because it gives me soul cancer, but my point was that nowadays, a language that once was French/English or translated French and academic and was born after the second half of the 20th in po-mo/deconstruction circles now can be seen even in freaking video games reviews. And since that style of writing is generally shit, people educated in that academic ambient will also write, well, shit, even if they don't study those texts directly. I don't think it's the most important point of everything Darth Roxor said, or the most influential either, but it's there. If, however, you don't like my focus on "postmodern" (which wasn't mine in the first place, though,) fair enough, replace it with "long-winded academic obscurantism" and we all understand what that means.

 

[Black Angel]

But that is an efficient way to signal the type of skill that is being used, or whether it was successful, etc. I think many other games did this too. My point is that the idea that you should change the font to express the skill that you are using, or class (clan, in this case), is tiresome and silly. We take for granted simple fonts. Darklands would be a much better game if had better fonts.

You misunderstood my mention of Lore checks in AoD here. I'm not suggesting that kind of shit. That second paragraph of mine were meant to address the topic of this thread (state of RPG writing).

And read again what I've said before, man. TL;DR, the fonts changes (or at least different words colors) take place where it's appropriate (like for some particular NPC's line, the font changes to convey the changes in their tone, or when giving you a descriptive narrative like environmental description or an NPC's appearance the color of the font changes like in Underrail). Hell, faction check tag in AoD had its own different color. But, again, in no way I'm suggesting different font to express skill and shit.

Edit:

Just quoting to reinforce. I am and always have been a huge fan of turn-based games. But the way Dark Souls is written (and voiced), and in particular how the sparse writing connects with the stuff you experience in the game is just amazing --- you will forgive the butt-jabbing boss combat and collision problems.

This. Dark Souls (and Soulsborne series in general) were Action-RPGs, first and foremost, but the way it present its narrative (basically its overall writing aspect) should really be the new standard of writing in games.

Still waiting for a cRPG with a writing inspired by the way Dark Souls did it.

 

[Haba]

According to this chart, good editing is far more important than good writing or good ideas.

Well... If you have no writing to edit...

 

[DrDigej]

Somebody should ask Faergus about self loathing. Doesn't mean it's actually gonna happen.

And the whole Tyranny Torment2 riting team be like

 

[Lurker King]

The claim that humanities studies at universities has gone astray isn't a recent criticism by alt-righters--it's neither recent nor a criticism made exclusively by conservatives.

I recommend this book:

​

When Intellectual Impostures was published in France, it sent shock waves through the Left Bank establishment. When it was published in Britain, it provoked vicious debate. Sokal and Bricmont examine the canon of French postmodernists - Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Latour, Virilio, Deleuze and Guattari - and systematically expose their abuse of science.

 

[DrDigej]

Btw, the font changes based on xy are the most idiotic example of style. Anyone who finds it kewl is fucking braindead.

 

[Lurker King]

Though geographically there are obtuse "analytic" philosophers and concise/analytic continental philosophers... and presently the western analytic tradition is being polluted with rubbish like 'feminist epistemology' and other relativist nonsense.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The whole piece would've been a lot better had you simply deleted the entire "Unskilled people in the wheel" section. Whole lot of uneducated guesses and broad generalizations, without much to back it up other than your own brain farts. We all love taking wild swings at people in industry for the pure pleasure of taking wild swings at the people in the industry, but that's not article-worthy content I'm afraid.

Also, you've clearly never seen a hard science paper if you think hard science background magically gives a person any understanding about language beyond what they've learned in high school. People who know how to write are a rare exception, most of them write in barely coherent gibberish, with technical jargon vomited all over the place just so author can make his work seem more important than it really is.

Fuck, try reading your dishwasher manual or something of the sort. Most of that stuff is written by technical writers who have to translate gibberish passed down from the engineering team into something comprehensible by general population. And it's still barely comprehensible. That's how most engineers write.

 

[DrDigej]

Roxor is just mad that he cant land a job as a gaym riter, so he lashes out.

 

[Archibald]

Good article, thou I also wonder if second part shouldn't have been axed. I agree for the most part with what was said that, but its really "citation needed" material that retards will use to discredit whole article which has number of sound arguments.

This whole sub-topic about cows is a bit interesting to me since I feel that games, and fiction in general, should try to be as abstract as possible. Tell and show only whats relevant to the game, if you go too deep into this shit, at one point or another, you'll start writing about things that you have no understanding off. 5 good sentences are better than 5 good and 2 shit sentences.

 

[alphyna]

I prefer not to touch on things I have no real idea about.

What are you even doing on the Internet

 

[Bohrain]

Fun stuff, I'm a sociology major and the mandatory course I'm currently doing involves lovely themes such as 3rd wave feminism, Frankfurt school and postcolonialism. At least it works as a good motivator for reading the entrance exam books for economics major switch.

 

[alphyna]

Whereas most RPGs are like novels, I take the Souls series as poetry (strong imagery loosely connected by archetype-based plots at best and simply being expressionist at its least coherent). The thing is, recently I've come to believe that games as a medium are actually generally better at being poems than at being novels

Actually, if we had to choose a correct, basic point of reference for CRPG writing, i'd rather pick theatre : even in its written form, words are destined to serve and mesh with action, when similarly games are about player's active influence (RPGs being no exception).

Some random points illustrating this :
- theatre shows us that exposition ("loredumps"in the case of RPGs) can be conveyed by action and dynamic writing (dynamic because it's destined to be spoken)
- written theatre has descriptions in the form of stage directions ; similarly non-dialog writing in CRPGs should be limited to its express purpose, and the gratuitous, flowery, or redundant in that case should be expunged because it takes us away from the action.

You make a great point, actually, especially since modern theatre so often invites audience interaction. I also agree with the specific points you're making. However, the crucial difference to me is that a medium-sized CRPG has much, much more content than a medium-sized play—and it does become an issue since all that content has to be structured somehow and theatrical means will not necessarily work for the overall structure.

Still, I wholeheartedly agree that many playwriting tips would improve 99% of CRPGs.

Even Tolstoj has shit prose now? what? holy crap the codex sometimes.

Perhaps translations soften the punch somewhat, but in the original, his wording is often a mouthful. He's famous for trailing off mid-sentence sometimes. One thing I'll say for him though is that his prose is the opposite of purple: he often sounds like a guy who so desperately wants you to get the point that he kinda forgets to check for awkward phrasing.

To each their own and stuff. Just wanted to point out that it's a controversial reference when talking about writing style.

[On Dark Souls]Just buy a gamepad and get to it. When you get into it, you'll never be the same again.

Just quoting to reinforce. I am and always have been a huge fan of turn-based games. But the way Dark Souls is written (and voiced), and in particular how the sparse writing connects with the stuff you experience in the game is just amazing --- you will forgive the butt-jabbing boss combat and collision problems.

Add my voice to this advice as well. The design of the Souls series is brilliant in how deliberate everything is. Almost every flavourful element of these games is also functional—a feat that honestly extremely few other games can boast.

 

[Iri]

This article is fekkin long for someone that is shitting on writers by telling them to get to the point.

Let us, in this case, take all the prior considerations together and try to make a model modern graduate who wants to start his writing career!

Why say this like that?

PS
I also liked a bunch of it tho.

 

[Goral]

This article is fekkin long for someone that is shitting on writers by telling them to get to the point.

It's not that long really, in fact I would say that Darth Roxor is rather concise considering how broad this subject is. Notice that he doesn't use too many examples but is short and to the point, gives the best example he can think of and goes to the next "item". It's probably his best work yet and I much prefer editorials like these compared to reviews for example (I only read reviews if they review some obscure title or present a completely different POV, e.g. DR's PoE review), Codex should have more of these. Unfortunately felipepepe prefers Gamasutra and the rest doesn't seem interested in pieces like this (and Vault Dweller doesn't have the time).

 

[KyivAfter12am]

This is a good article, and not just because I agree with all his points.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Even Tolstoj has shit prose now? what? holy crap the codex sometimes.

Perhaps translations soften the punch somewhat, but in the original, his wording is often a mouthful. He's famous for trailing off mid-sentence sometimes. One thing I'll say for him though is that his prose is the opposite of purple: he often sounds like a guy who so desperately wants you to get the point that he kinda forgets to check for awkward phrasing.

To each their own and stuff. Just wanted to point out that it's a controversial reference when talking about writing style.

Please, do list some actual published (in peer reviewed journals) papers, philological or linguistical, which state that Tolstoy's works are shit. And if you can do it, than please tell me by what margin do they outnumber those who don't think that Tolstoy was a hack.

 

[Tigranes]

Roxor's criticisms of the games are hard to disagree with, so I'll just say :brofist:.

The wider causes that he points to aren't entirely wrong, but he seems to come up with very specific theories about how things came about without offering anything to persuade. It doesn't make it wrong, it just makes it just as persuasive as any other guy's off the cuff spiel.

Re. literature / creative writing graduates, humanities, postmodern, whatever, it's hard to tell whether he's well informed on the subject and just boiling it down to simple polemic or he's just riding the wave of "oh it's all tranny sensitive dumbfucks going on about incomprehensible bullshit" that is levied out of ignorance* (just like how it's usually those with no actual experience in scientific research that think science provides absolute truths, or how those who have never made video games thinking oh couldn't you just add a weather system in 2 hours). E.g. if we're talking about pomo in its popular, corrupted, retarded form (there is no truth! everything is relative! etc), it's generally ridiculed in academia now and has much greater traffic in tumblr or whatever. There's an argument to be made that even in more serious forms pomo or Derrida or whoever destroyed humanities, but I don't see any such argument or evidence here - and rightly so, since that would take many more pages and this is supposed to be an editorial about video games. I don't really see why roxor has to sell his armchair "its em these folks have ruined our society you see" schtick when he can just stick to the very true claim that the writers are myopic.

Now, it's much easier to agree with his argument that game writers seem to have very narrow inspirations and backgrounds, and that someone who has read Kafka, travelled extensively, worked as a prison janitor, whatever, is going to have much better creativity than someone who looks at Mass Effect and World of Warcraft to write their game. But I thought this was a common sentiment on the Codex by now? It would be meaningful to learn whether there really has been a sea change, and whether that's actually got to do with the degrees they have or something else - e.g. MCA's talked about how he looks at history and the real world to write, but he's clearly not some Renaissance Man either and worked on games all his adult life.

Re. the loredump trend, I don't agree or disagree with roxor's guess that it was caused by writers trying to copy Tolkien in every game; it's logical and definitely could be the case, but there's not any reason for us to say that must be it over other explanations. One factor that is well documented to have been a factor across games, tv, films, etc. is the whole convergence economy - basically, tie-ins. They've always sold action figures with action movies and shit, but it's really stepped up the last 20 years or so as media conglomerates have made it a central aspect of their monetising strategy, as diehard fandoms became a more visible and vocal part of the landscape, etc. You see this even in the Kickstarter situation, where the companies feel compelled to come up with a million useless side products - why do I want to read 18 Torment novella, just make the fucking game good - because there's a perception that it's added value, that audiences will consume it. When you're writing a game not just for one story but comics and lunchboxes and Saturday morning cartoons and porn episodes copious, irrelevant loredumping becomes an asset. I suspect that these industry conditions combined particularly well with roxor's Tolkien complex in the case of fantasy RPGs, resulting in the current spew.

*i.e. there are a load of pointless 'uh everything has relative value' cancer-pomo works out there, but these tend to make up the shitty chaff and not the wheat. One of the real problems the humanities has in the last century (and well before pomo) is that by the very virtue of how it produces knowledge, it's always going to create a lot of waste. A subpar work by a barely competent scientist can still contribute as long as it obeys some basic tenets; this is, by definition, not true of the humanities. There are also wider factors like the massive, exponential increase in academic populations since the 60s, so that you've got a million creative writing graduates when the world might only really need ten thousand with the kind of training they get. It's just impossible to make head or tails of what roxor actually means when it's just "look pomo ruined humanities and that ruined the vidgame writers", as if the most idiotic 'white males die' SJWs on tumblr control the entire process.

 

[Jaedar]

Agree on the people complaining its too long. If anything, it is too short and skips on elaborating some points, providing more reasoning, etc.

 

[Raziel]

Even Tolstoj has shit prose now? what? holy crap the codex sometimes.

Perhaps translations soften the punch somewhat, but in the original, his wording is often a mouthful. He's famous for trailing off mid-sentence sometimes. One thing I'll say for him though is that his prose is the opposite of purple: he often sounds like a guy who so desperately wants you to get the point that he kinda forgets to check for awkward phrasing.

To each their own and stuff. Just wanted to point out that it's a controversial reference when talking about writing style.

Please, do list some actual published (in peer reviewed journals) papers, philological or linguistical, which state that Tolstoy's works are shit. And if you can do it, than please tell me by what margin do they outnumber those who don't think that Tolstoy was a hack.

I'm assuming here, but why does it matter what #of experts think so and so about Tolstoy's works?

Of course the majority are going to praise the man. I'd much prefer Roxor would use someone more recent for his example precisely because of that. There's a historical bias present when people criticise authors who have died, even if the examiners are experts.

 

[Lexx]

Shit, I agree with many points and I didn't even realized till now. Like all this "he looks at you with his grim eyes and groans random shit" description text stuff is so annoying and it is *everywhere* now. It's like if you write a text-heavy game, you need to add this shit or marketing won't be able to sell your shit as a literary masterpiece.

-> Sometimes, less is more.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

I'm assuming here, but why does it matter what #of experts think so and so about Tolstoy's works?

Of course the majority are going to praise the man. I'd much prefer Roxor would use someone more recent for his example precisely because of that. There's a historical bias present when people criticise authors who have died, even if the examiners are experts.

Because our dear webcomic author slash community ambassador said (emphasis mine):

Just a heads-up: Tolstoy was a very smart man who had a lot of great and important ideas, but his writing ability—i.e. the ability to put actual words into actual sentences to convey said ideas—is widely regarded as atrocious here in Russia. (And not by lazy ninth-graders, but by mature philologists as well.)

Given that I'm from Russia too - I really want to know by whom exactly Tolstoy is wildly regarded as atrocious, and the names of those many philologists. Call it a natural curiosity.

I don't even like his prose that much, and I really hate his women characters and many of his ideas - but to say that he's wildly regarded as a hack is a gross exaggeration based on... well, I really want to know on what exactly it is based. Hence the question.