Yeah ok, I’m doing this.
Here is some advice for aspiring game writers.
Do not come into games wanting to be a game writer with the attitude that all you are going to write are the cinematics.
Fact: a game’s story is not about the cinematics.
🧵
Here is some advice for aspiring game writers.
Do not come into games wanting to be a game writer with the attitude that all you are going to write are the cinematics.
Fact: a game’s story is not about the cinematics.
🧵
Comments
Grunt work, as far as I understand it, of the writing. Because I love dialogue
Quick time events barely constitute gameplay, especially when they're the only semblance of it versus an abundance of cutscenes and cinematics...
as an architect, i try to weave a building's language into so many of its facets and create the experience at all levels, and thinking about the same process in video games is 🤩
Good tip.
It worked for him.
I am a novelist, and game writers are like unto GODS to me.
And cinematics are just ONE SMALL PART OF THAT.
Ambient conversations, one-liners for banter, barks for combat, weapons descriptions, codex entries, emails, etc.
"Biggest thank you to everyone involved with the advancement of RPGMaker. This is a director, choreography, set design, and story boarding sim all rolled into one."
Versatility is key.
I love writing flavor text, item descriptions, codex entries... You have a lot more freedom with what you can do and how you can entertain and inmerse the player in there
One of my favorite examples are the 1-2-1 little intro dialogues and the clash 1-2 exchanges in the recent MK/Injustice games.
They're SO GOOD and they have next to no room to work with yet they've established lore, had running jokes, and even work for multiple different characters!
A good game writer should be ready and able to write ANY OF THAT.
"I just write cinematics" for fuck's sake, no. NO. /grumbles
I repeat this because it's worth repeating, it's the fundamentals of telling stories in games. You are crafting an interactive experience.
This means not just words.
Hearing this thread just further solidifies that i would absolutely love working on projects from the angle of a writer but I'd have no idea how I would present myself.
It hit so perfectly at the time.
Good artists may not make good game assets. Game music is different from normal music. And roles are less well defined than you would think.
And that is the joy of working in game development.
It's easy to forget how much goes onto a game's story outside of the obvious
https://youtu.be/WJfVUnFH6m4?si=UZvM0U_pmBSe5vK5
like does it look like a regular script or does it look more like a mind map/flowchart
i know people hate cutscenes but i hate blocks of text in gameplay i have to interact with that really should've been a cutscene even more
I’ve written a script for my game’s cutscenes that I’ve given to people, but when they come back, it hasn’t been the exciting reaction I wanted.
This reminds me that part of the reason is because I’m not done yet. I still have so much work to do to make it come to life.
I have lots of follow-up questions, but I don't want to get blocked for being annoying. Are there any resources you suggest for learning more about this?
It’s literally taking an interactive medium and making one of the most important parts NON-interactive.
My background in QA and lack of personal side projects would make that a problem, admittedly. Maybe volunteer work...
But there's still so much more to keep in mind! I still got so much cool stuff to learn!
I really don't think there is enough emphasis on just how multidisciplinary making any interactive media is. It shows in just how poor some game writing can be ;p
Actually reminds me of the books I can find and read in open world games, the board game that progresses with the story in mouthwashing, cool stuff ngl
Gorgeous story that should've been a movie. Shit game.
Editor, not writer, but ALL player-facing text is important. Cutscenes, background chatter, tutorials (especially tutorials!), item descriptions, item NAMES even.
Do the whole job or get out of the way.
Like, if you did ONLY that - cue the cutscene:
All protags and BBE stand around, looking at each other, a cough, a shrug, a headscratch and - nothing else, while the soundtrack climbs to a dramatic crescendo & the camera swoops around them all cinematic. 🤣
THANK YOU!!!!!
obviously I'm biased but I think I can say this is game writing done right
Create your own cinematics together.
I don't know if it's WORSE than when those duties are handed off to whichever coder has the fewest typos in his emails, but it's about a hundred times more pretentious.