If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times… “story is king”. Regardless of you’re medium or audience, be it a book, movie or, yes… even a game – STORY is the framework, the glue, holding the entire experience together. Within game development, you’ll find that less experienced teams will delay developing their story, or even ignore it altogether, but it’s sometimes the extreme opposite which can also be just as damaging. I’m not an expert on story, but I do understand the importance of its place and you won’t get very far if you ignore it. Trust me, I’ve witnessed what happens when a team does and it’s not too pretty. What happens though, when you go to the other extreme and you become too attached to your script?
Sometime ago, I sat in on a meeting which turned from being a simple conversation about how to structure a particular game event, to quite a heated debate between colleagues over the very issue of: What role does story play in a game? Unfortunately, as I observed and participated in what was becoming quite a heated discussion, I couldn’t help but question – what was more important to us?: Building a FUN and compelling experience, OR…sticking to our guns about one precious event, just because “it’s in the script”. I found myself at the opposite end of the problem I had seen in a previous development – rather than ignoring the story all together, it seemed to me that we were attached at the hip with our script. The discussion that day became quite an ordeal, and it spurred a few thoughts for me on the matter, which I believe are important points to consider whenever conceptualizing or developing a game.
Be Willing to Sacrifice Your “Babies”
So, you have a script…
Within movie development, hopefully the screenwriter has indeed done his work and toiled over the process of envisioning something which will not only move an audience, but inspire and direct their crew’s every move so they can assemble the vision; as the linear nature of making a film requires. That’s the natural progression and one which has gone unchanged since the first story ever told. We’re primarily focused upon game development here at the moment, yet, I mention film here also because the two mediums share a common problem (though in different ways). In what I would say is classic Robert McKee instruction, here’s how it goes down:
The writer sits down and steadily pulls together a few scenes from imagination. He begins to craft a brilliant scene. Inspired, he moves on and begins connecting events and pulling scenes together only to eventually discover that his scene, as brilliant as it may be, it doesn’t work inside the story itself. It stands great on its own, but sandwiched between the rest of story – it doesn’t work. The scene itself may move a thousand people but it simply splits the story in two. Even more so (when left unchecked), this scene is so well loved, the writer finds himself sacrificing other parts of the story, just to make just this one scene work. What this ultimately does, however, is leave the entire thing a mess. The narrative becomes broken and it cannot move forward because the one special scene he’s just crafted, simply cannot tie the ends together. So, what to do?
If the writer’s experienced and strong enough to do it, he’ll THROW IT OUT. The scene’s lovely, but it ruins everything else and he knows – it’s simply not worth it and everything else will suffer for it. I love what Brad Bird had to say on the matter. In an interview he made after his work on The Incredibles, Bird once said “you have to be willing to throw away your babies”. What he was referring to, of course, is the willingness for one to simply let go of the scenes and gags in which a writer falls so madly in love with; those scenes we cannot live without because they’ve become part of us. The problem, you see, is that it’s so easy for us, just like parents, to become attached to the things we value most; the things which we pour our every effort into. But, at some point, we must be willing to sacrifice them (not our kids, of course), let them go and move on in order for something better to come together and make sense of the experience as a whole. In the case of developing a game, if it breaks the fun-factor…then let it go!
Go Organic
While making a movie, you have a very linear process from start to finish from script as a blueprint. In game development, on the other hand, the process is very organic. And by organic, I simply mean a structured mess which sort of works its way out as it moves along, winding its way through events which are tried and tested to see if they actually work. There’s a method to the madness, yet one cannot simply write out every little step in the beginning, every single aspect of the story, and expect that it will all come together perfectly in the end without any changes, simply because it was well thought out in the beginning. No. As much as I’d like for the process to work that way 
, there’s only so much you can do in the planning stage. Now, on the other hand – for a screenplay to come together, complete and working, those problematic events which the playwright wants to keep but cannot, get thrown out during the writing process BEFORE the script is ever seen by other eyes. For a game’s story to work though, these events are sometimes not realized until the design is actually implemented or tried out in the game; at which point these buggers have to be decided upon… keem’em or toss’em? That’s the question. So, the point here is simply this – ask yourself, when tested out inside the game, is this “scene” fun? Does it create a compelling experience? If not, then throw it out and let this one little gap in the story, be filled by a fun event. Remember, in a game, if it ain’t fun, then it’s not worth making!
Leave the Pen, Grab a Pencil
For a successful game development, the story needs to be there in the beginning for it to develop a compelling experience which players will actually care about. I mentioned earlier that I’ve witnessed the mess which happens when you leave this important aspect out. But, you have to hold it in your hands loosely. This means… your games’ story is going to go through revision after revision and slashed through a dozen times until things really work! I am unaware of any truly successful game in the market, which has ever done so otherwise. The story has to come first. However, as they say, write your plans in pencil because they WILL change! The key is… develop a great high story concept and develop the major plot points you want to be nailed, but then learn to be flexible so that you can actually move forward with your team and create a fun and compelling experience for other to enjoy!
Question: Have you been in (or heard of) a game development which had a different process with regard to story development? If so, what were some of the pros/cons?
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