A nice--though brief--review

 
On the sciencefictionfantasy blog:

"Everything That Matters by Jeff Spock (illustrated by
Kenn Brown, who also did the cover): a traditional SF thriller about
hunting for alien treasure in the oceans of another planet, humans
adapted by surgery to breathe underwater, murderous 25 metre long
sharks, and revenge. Great stuff!"

So is it spam, or is it marketing?

 
"S'il vous pla?t, pardonne-nous de perturber votre précieux time.We sont [name removed] company.This Tai est une company.one électroniques des plus
grands grossistes du commerce international dans China."

There is a fine line...

Zoé grows up; Dad freaks out

Zoé's new haircut! It's kind of a watershed, actually. She's 11 1/2, and this is the first time she has really wanted a more grown-up, teen-looking haircut. I'm not ready for this...

Real, actual emotion in games

Not that fake, cookie cutter Freeman how-to stuff.

Games that made Margaret Robertson cry.

I met Margaret at the NLGD in Utrecht and as wowed by how smart and cool she is. In addition she is now blogging for Offworld, the gaming extension of the BoingBoing blog. This blog entry is a thoughtful, intelligent discussion of why and how emotion in games is not the same as emotion in books or movies.

Gnashing those teeth...

From a job wanted posting:

"This is a new company boasting a wealth of talent... The Games Designer is [a]lso contributing to creation of the game story & character descriptions, including in game dialogue & text."

Hopefully the "wealth of talent" part extends to the ability of the game designer to come up with interesting plots and complex characters and snappy dialogue and concise in-game text...

ET skype home

This is why we have Skype.

When I'm away on a trip, I can call and say hi -- with video -- to the kids. One of the things for which the Internet actually shows a real, tangible value.

To parents, anyway...

Game length, gameplay, and story

There is an interesting article in The Escapist on the fact that one rarely finishes a game these days. Regardless of the affection you may feel for it, the Haloes and Witchers and BioShocks don't see many people get all the way to the final scene. Our best guess for Heroes 5 was about 10%, and we have a pretty hardcore following.
Tom Endo points out in his article a few points and problems; one is that once you figure out the gameplay the rest is just endless (more or less repetitive) variations on that gameplay. The designers try to pull you in with new tricks and some plot twists, but stacked against the odds of finishing is the enormous time commitment required to get all the way to the end.
I think that there are a lot of cogent arguments for trimming game story to a more manageable size while adding tons of extra gameplay content for the hardcore gamers. After all, if a player has to leave the game for a few days, will they remember who the characters are? What quest they are doing and why? Is there any point in writing an enormous sprawling plot that is the equivalent of two or three screenlays if so few finish it?
It might make more sense to make games smaller, tighter in both story and gameplay, and then provides tons of downloadable content for those who want to keep going. Mod kits, additional levels, and unlockable bonuses would probably be more than sufficient for the hardcore player who falls in love with the game.
Especially if the development costs drop, and the price tag along with it.
I recently played Portal, and was very impressed by it. It didn't have a story, more like an atmosphere, though I suppose you could argue that there was slender plot thread. It was brilliant playability, fun writing, and all over a great experience. It was widely lauded, won many awards, and took only three or four hours to play.
Is that the wave of the future? Maybe it should be, otherwise studios are paying to create, and players are paying to not play, an awful lot of game content.

The latest Yahoo! headlines

I see these every day -- Yahoo! takes a headline from the French newspaper Le Monde and runs it through some sort of translator. 'A' for effort, 'F' for execution. Recent samples:

"With the approach of the victory of Obama, arms manufacture filled the tank"

The article is actually about the fact that gun merchants are stocking up due to future regulatory worries. Doesn't quite come through somehow...

And this one:
"Garzon judge deprives himself of the investigation into the missings of Francoism"

Is subtitled:
"The judge, who was likely to see himself declared inefficient in this business, deprived himself with the profit of the courts of province."

Computers are just, well, not quite there yet...

Teens and reading genre fiction

Recently within my circle of contacts a couple threads have popped up on the question of getting kids to read more. This is sort of a classic question, posed by authors and academics as if it was some sort of cry in the wilderness (Potter-san notwithstanding). Richard Dansky had a particularly interesting question on developing a list of genre recommendations based on what kind of games kids like to play.
That one really intrigues me, as it is a very pragmatic approach to getting kids into books as opposed to asking the local English teacher who would probably reply: "You like First Person Shooters? You should read Cooper's Leatherstocking series. You like fantasy games? Gosh, there are a lot of fantastic elements in Love in the Time of Cholera."
Richard started with a few, and more have been added, and hopefully we'll end up with a lot of good ideas.
The other interesting thread was started by Cat Rambo here, and a lot of good comments were added by readers.
This is important to culture in general, I think, and will continue to be so until that improbable day in the future when game writers are nominated for Pulitzers, Nobels, and Bookers. As the game media takes over more and more of mass culture, and as generations grow up using that as their first window into art and writing, the question can only gain in pertinence.

The Bad Guy in video games -- why is he so much more interesting?

Part of it, I think, is inherent in the media. The player-character tends to be relatively generic; often either a voiceless cypher (Gordon Freeman, Master Chief) or a relatively unimaginative remodeling of the wise/tough guy that we have known and loved from Bogart/Cooper to Willis/Ford. The player needs to identify strongly with the main characters, want what they want, and love them enough to endure tens of hours of their trials and tribulations.

Too much "character" in the main character can turn off players; not everyone wants to walk in the shoes of a metrosexual angst-ridden teenager with a gravitationally impossible hairdo (yes, I am talking about Japanese RPG's).

So I think that both writers and designers play it safe with the main character. Easy to like, based on well-known and well-loved stereotypes, a comfortable pair of shoes to put on.

So where do you get to be crazy and creative? The bad guy. You get to make him as offensive, outrageous, irresponsible, unbalanced, and crazy as you want. He can be over-the-top sexy when the main hero can't, outrageously flamboyant when the hero is tough and restrained, insulting and offensive when the hero has to be cool and/or supportive.

So why do we make evil sexy? Because we don't want to put too much in the player-character and risk alienating the player. But the bad guy... there is no risk, only reward.

Removing the SFnal element from a story

During the VD3 workshop I presented a story that is really actually about marriage and family life, though it had a fantasy trigger element in it. A couple of reviewers commented that they thought it would be stronger without that; just the couple and their two kids (what? autobiographical? of course not...).

Then someone -- I think it was Chance -- started riffing on that idea. I mean, how many genres out there can you do that with? Could you imagine someone writing a Western, and then in the workshop someone says, "Why don't you take the cowboys out? And it doesn't really need the saloon and the Indians" Or a thriller, and someone says, "I think it would be better without the guns and spies." "You know, this Harlequin might be better without the tall handsome mysterious guy with the shadowy past." "I don't know... I think the thing under the bed should really just be a teddy bear."

It's a funny idea, but it does underline a point about the universality of good SF that is generally missed by most critics of the genre.

 
In the market of Avignon we happened across a local chef doing a cooking demonstration. It was for an apple crumble with honey and thyme; we watched him make it from A to Z and taste-tested (wow!) the final product. It was a great idea -- publicity for the restaurant, a bit of life and animation for the market, and a great little cooking lesson for those who happened to pass by.
Who knows? The next time you stop by chez nous it may be on the menu...

A guy I could like

Kevin Smith, the director who did (among others) "Clerks," "Clerks 2," and most recently "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," comes up with a great quote in an on-line interview. He calls "A Man for All Seasons" (also one of my all-time faves) "...basically porn for people who love dialogue."

That is just so true.

Obamoments 2

An SMS from a French neighbor:

"Yes you can.
Thank you America from the world."

Obamoments 1

 
I haven't felt like this since I watched Luke blow up the Death Star.

The south of France, eleven artists, excellent meals, plenty of wine... Ah, the rigours of a speculative writing workshop.

We did the third Villa Diodati workshop at the end of October, here in scenic Le Bar sur Loup. I dare to list the luminaries who were there, as their presence imparts a certain sheen of quality to my own pedestrian efforts:
Aliette de Bodard
Deanna Carlyle
Steve Gaskell
Sara Genge
Floris Kleijne
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
Chance Morrison
Ruth Nestvold
John Olsen
Ben Rosenbaum
 
Here you can find a few of my photos, and many more can be found on flickr (few other things come up if you search for "VD3" ... ). The house we rented was thanks to good friends who also happen to make a living handling property rentals in the Côte d'Azur.

Onward and upward; the story that was critted at VD3 is already winging its way to F&SF.

Yes! Interzone 219 (11/08) will have one of mine in it.

I recently received an e-mail from Andy Cox that made it official; my tale "Everything That Matters" will be printed in issue 219 of Interzone, out in mid-November.

The story was born during Clarion in 2004, and actually started out as the tale of a tough-guy treasure hunter that was tussling with an amoral business tycoon. The Clarion folk rapidly helped me realize that it sounded a lot like "Here's looking at you, kid" versus "No, I expect you to die, Mr. Bond." So I had to put a dagger through the heart of the stereotypes, and do some thinking about what the real questions were and what was really at stake.

The story went through a number of workshop iterations, and lots of hand-wringing and gnashing of virtual teeth. In the end, it stayed dormant for a while because I liked it so much. The concern was this: If this story, that I think is so cool, doesn't sell, what hope do I have as a writer? Scary, existential writer questions.

But don't worry; I'm not assuming that this means I am a great writer. There is some reassurance, however, in finding out that I am not without hope.

Austin GDC: Andrew Walsh on "The Death of Linearity: Or, Who Shot the Three-Act Structure?"

Walsh did a very interesting presentation on the techniques for storytelling that he used for the latest Prince of Persia game.

If I can manage to summarize it, the idea was basically to have several different layers of narrative, only one of which was obligatory. All the others lurked in the background, waiting to be discovered by players who cared about them. The writers and developers referred to this as storytelling using "ondemand" dialog or ODD. As I recall, the layers basically approximated:

1. A minimal storyline that the player could not ignore. This was presented in a series of "signposts" -- primarily cutscenes or in-game scenes (like HL2). This story represented the absolute bare minimum necessary to be able to finish the gameplay.

2. Within each mission or level, certain events opened the possibility of a brief ODD with the player's love interest / accomplice, Elika. For instance, in passing a ruined building or temple, a conversation would have been written that concerned the history of that site. However, if the player was not interested the dialog would not be heard, because that type of conversation could only be triggered by the player pushing a button. Hence the term "ondemand". These ODD chunks had to be independent of time or place or previous dialogs; they had to be discrete and therefore applicable regardless of the player and their play style. Due to the fact that the game environment is 90% lethal, they also had to be a) extremely short, and b) take place on flat ground...

3. Again within each mission/level, further information that could be drawn out if the player desired it. For example, a line of obligatory NPC dialog could be extended into a conversation by talking to that NPC. Conversations could be launched at any time with Elika; these conversations would be specific to the level and to the story events of that level (unless overridden by the current situation. The game was smart enough not to start explaining the details of how the evil vizir came to power if the hero was in the middle of battling several enemies).
   Once a player passed a certain point, these conversations -- whether or not they had been triggered by the player -- were no longer available as they were no longer germane.

4. Another storyline existed; this was the tale of the the Prince and his relationship with Elika. This one had a beginning and an end, but could be played at any time throughout the game. Basically, if there was a free moment and the player was not fighting, or passing an object of interest, or already discussing a key plot point, the dialog button would pull up the next piece of dialog between the Prince and Elika.

Because the designers and writers could not control when and how the player would accesses the story -- other than the main and unavoidable storyline--  there were a number of difficult constraints:

• The dialog had to be worded so that it could be restarted at any time (after the next fight, or six months later when the player picked up the game again).

• The only control that the writers/designers had was when they opened or closed access to elements of ondemand story. These had to be carefully chosen and carefully written.

• In the event that a player liked the dialog and story, there had to be enough there to keep them from hearing repeated lines even if they were spamming the dialog button. For this reason there were numerous levels of Narrative ODD (OnDemand dialog), Relationship ODD, Ingredient dialog, Fight Taunts, and Foundation dialog.

• Many technical (in particular) AI issues had to be overcome to deal with the ODD system. For example the direction that the player's avatar was facing could affect the dialog as could the current relationship and emotional status, and any level scripting; plus the animation had to adapt to these cues as well.

For me this talk was one of the highlights of the AGDC, and I think that there are a lot of interesting techniques and lessons that I can use. Thanks Andy!

Austin GDC 3: Richard Dansky runs the "Game Writer's Workshop"

Yay Richard!

This was essentially a Clarion-style workshop for critiquing game stories and game design ideas. The workshop process, and in particular Richard's management of it, worked very well. There was a problem, however, which was the lack of a standardized document format. All five of the submissions were in different formats, and that made it difficult to do a few things:
- Read over the submissions rapidly
- Compare and contrast between them
- Standardize a series of points or questions in order to review efficiently

So though the workshop is useful both for the attendees and the peanut gallery, it would be improved with a more structured approach. I think that I will propose both document formats and a series of discussion points in order to slim and simplify the process for next year.

Austin GDC 2: Jess Lebow on "More Interactivity: A Storytelling Workshop"

Two minutes into this presentation I was very excited. Lebow comes from a publishing background and has been doing game development for many years; he has a profile of exactly the kind of person who should be a font of knowledge of writing and storytelling in a gaming environment.
In fact, I believe that he is a font of knowledge, but the format of his presentation did not (sadly) allow him to act as one. Instead, he presented a few very interesting questions or comments on game storytelling, and then asked for comments from the audience in order to open things up to a wider discussion.
The problem is that the audience comments were, as a general rule, lukewarm. Too many eager beavers were making comments just to make comments, and older and wiser heads were not engaged enough in the debate.
As a result, I walked away with a few new ideas but a lot less than I could have. This is too bad, because Lebow is a charismatic and experienced game writer/developer and a very smart guy, and the conference would have been better served (I believe) if he had done things differently.
Please, Jess, come back next year. But tell us what you know, present your challenges and ideas, and then turn to the audience for questions.

Interesting points:
- The use of the cell phone in GTA IV to delvier quests.
- The use of the car trips in GTA IV to deliver key story information (I remember how happy we were in Dark Messiah when the player got in an elevator and we knew we had his undivided attention).

Interesting questions:
- How can we better deliver story in MMOs (now called "crowd games" by us insiders who heard Bruce Sterling's talk) without the use of instancing?
- How can we develop storylines for important NPC's in a crowd game?