What does a game writer do?
What role is assigned to people who write in the development of games, – the writer Sergey Chekmaev told at the Higher School of Business Informatics of the Higher School of Economics within the framework of the program “Management of game projects“. We give a brief version of the speech.
Sergey Chekmaev
It’s not quite right to call game scriptwriters screenwriters.
This craft has many names. Someone calls the profession a “technical writer”, someone prefers a broader definition of “narrative designer”, which includes additional roles. Personally, I prefer the not very collapsible “game writer”.
What does a game writer do?
1) Novelization
There are a large number of projects in which the scenario is not provided. For example, they are not in the “time killers”, they are also not in various competitive games aimed at multiplayer. But in such projects there is also an opportunity to apply our skills.
For example, there is a game World of Tanks. I happened to be engaged in a literary project on this title. The result of the work was a book. This is not a novelization in the literal sense of the word. This is a collection of stories about the game universe in which science fiction authors tried to explain what is happening in this world.
We all know what the World of Tanks is. Two teams meet on one map, in one a dozen tanks, in the other a dozen more. They destroy each other and that’s the end of it.
Where are the infantry, where are the aircraft, what kind of terrain, why are they fighting? A lot of questions may arise about the game. And now there is a whole book in which we tried to give answers to them.
2) Composing in-game plots
There is a game Life is Feudal, a sandbox in the world of the alternative Middle Ages. Its developers decided to release another, as yet unannounced project within the universe. For him, I wrote stories for 400 thousand characters. Consider it almost a novel.
I pay attention: this is not a scenario, these are stories whose outcome will depend on the behavior of the player.
It is important to understand here: the literary basis should not only tell about what is happening, but should also immerse the player in this world in the same way as a beautiful picture. The text should, along with the graphics, demonstrate the universe into which the player has fallen.
When working on a plot, you need to clearly understand what kind of time it was.
This, let me remind you, is the Middle Ages. Then people lived for 30 years, plowed the field, hacked with swords, tore each other’s throats for a piece of bread and believed in spirits.
The depicted world is realistic, there are no goblins, no banshees and witches, but the people we play for believe in them. And any unusual rustle or cry in the forest is perceived by them as a manifestation of the otherworldly.
When describing the world, the writer (and you, if you are going to do texts in games) should keep all this in mind and help the player to get into the fictional universe.
Therefore, I believe that when it comes to defining the name of our profession, after all, we are not talking about a screenwriter, but about a game writer. This is the person who, by putting letters into words, helps the player to immerse himself in the world of the game, whether it’s about technical descriptions, or about quests, dialogues, character biographies or something else.
3) Elaboration of the setting
The setting is not only a description of the world, the conflict, the conflicting parties, the background of the conflict. Setting – place, time and conditions of action.
In television screenwriting, this is called “scenario presentation”, when you write at the very beginning: the situation is such and such, the place is such and such, the list of actors is next, and so on. In our case, this is called a setting, because it allows you to explain a lot.
When we talk about the steampunk setting, we immediately imagine airships, steam engines and other similar things. When we talk about the “Star Wars” setting, we understand that we are talking about laser swords, Force, space collisions and so on.
A term such as “the bible of the world” adjoins the setting.
In a situation where we are working on a big game, like an MMO, there should be a comprehensive document. It’s not about the disdock, but about something that is much bigger than it.
The Bible of the World includes everything that you may need at the stage of developing the universe. Much more than will then go into the game.
The largest project on writing the Bible of the world in which I had the opportunity to participate is Prime World by Nival. In this bible, the guys wrote everything from the religious component (they clearly spelled out the structure of beliefs for each of the actors) and the principles of building states to family values and architecture.
70% of what we wrote didn’t go into the game, because it’s a MOBA, there’s no need for that. But then, when a mobile application was made for the universe, when books were written, when extensions of this universe were created, the Bible helped a lot. There was no question anywhere at the last moment: why is this lord coming here, why can’t he send his faithful servants.
Yes, not always written letters reach the end user. But often this is not necessary. Here they have another task: to give the development team an understanding of the world they are working on.
We can say that 50% of what we write is for the players, 50% is for the team.
And sometimes players may not even get 1%, because in a game in which there is no script, it still exists.
I always explain this by the example of narrative design in the Angry Birds game, in which players shoot birds at pigs and enjoy life.
Where is the narrative design in this game?
If we talk about associative narrative design, then birds are free creatures that soar in the sky, open to the whole world. They are present on the coats of arms and flags of many countries, respectively, players are perceived as “their own”.
What are eggs? These are children.
And dirty, smelly pigs who are only fit for steak and pick at leftovers, unborn children were stolen from our proud birds – this is the same narrative design, hidden from the player’s external view, but having a huge number of pages of justifications behind the scenes.
Another example of this approach is Plants Vs. Zombies. Everyone knows the game, but not everyone knows that the company spent 400 thousand man-hours to debug the moment when it is necessary to change episodes so that the player does not have time to get bored. 300 thousand characters were spent to justify this.
4) Work on the presentation of the world
Submission helps the player to assemble a mosaic of the world.
When I wrote the legend of the world for the game Geopolitica Online, I came up with several key scientific and sociological works, the authors of which became the main characters of the game. And quotes from these works well illustrated the development of the world.
In the game, the works appeared exclusively as epigraphs. But the existence of a fictional world behind the scenes, which includes people writing scientific papers, allows us to show that everything is much deeper than the player can see on the screen.
When you bring every such little thing to the player in the right manner and at the right time, and if it is stylized and fits into the concept of the world, then all this creates a common integral perception of the universe.
A good example is Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. In the box with the game there was a book, quotes from which were in the game. This gave the game an extra volume to the world.
Of course, I do not encourage teams to spend time and effort on writing a detailed setting. That’s a lot of money. But the developer can afford to come up with a small piece that is not related to the gameplay, and put it into his game.
5) Marketing
In some cases, the game writer takes part in the marketing promotion of the project, in the promotion.
For example, in the world of The Unknown quest, there is a major mystery: where people have disappeared. We came up with the idea to write a diary of a person who is experiencing this disappearance. The last pages of the human world.
And these pages will slowly appear on the main resources of the game.
Here the task of the game writer is not just to retell the world, but to simulate the notes of a person with his experiences and fears, who at the same time has absolutely no idea what is happening.
Plus, we have to confuse the players even more, who will be waiting for a new episode and reading these diaries.
In the game, this text will not appear at all. It will appear exclusively as collateral material on resources related to the game in one way or another.
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If you have any questions for Sergey, write either right here in the comments, or leave messages on his website.
