TIGSource Forums

Oh boy! I may have signed up for more than I can chew by even attempting to work with a writer. Again: no experience in this myself, and no knowledge of quality writing in general, but I would like to get better at working with writers.

So today (IndieCade ftw!) I talked with a writer who said they wanted to work on games. One of the issues she mentioned was teams not talking enough with a writer, and themes/style not getting into the final game. It sounded like even direct sentences were not as important as having a broader feeling to the game, but really we only got to this because of the conflict between iterative design and how writing works in films, where it's all at the start from what I've heard.

I must ask then, has anyone worked with a writer and iterative design before, where the writer was not the game designer? Story, universe and character sound like they all come from the writer... but the universe will be changing constantly under the game designer's hands. So how do we handle this? What can I do to make a writer's work still get into my final game, when on Wednesday I just axed half my levels?

(perhaps the Limbo team would be a good group to ask. Their story seemed strong, but many of their levels were removed in development)

for indies, because the scale is so small, i think it's a bad idea to limit people to different "roles". everyone can and should contribute to areas of the game beyond their specific realm. if the writer has ideas for the game design, even though you yourself are in charge of game design, that should be encouraged, just as long as you have the final decision of course (and the writer, similarly, would have the final decision on the writing, not you)

that's how i've done it, anyway

You can have few strong elements and themes that you want to be in the story and roughly when you want them. For example, love interest on act 1-2, murder on 3-4 and dragon on 5-6. These will be guidelines for the writer's brief.

Your writers may advise you to put dragon & murder in 1-1 and love interest later on, maybe on 4-5... they may also suggest sub-plots to your story or even story arcs to expand on the universe, lore or characters. Their points are often valid, but it is still up to the designer to maintain the experience (and the schedule) as a whole and get the final call on what should or should not be implemented.

Regarding iterative process, it is the writer's job to warn you of possible loop holes or loose ends that will be caused by recent changes, but it is their job to take care of them if they are maintained. Writing is an organic process, so they should be able to patch up, merge, divide, rearrange or even rewrite scenes according to your new build. If they are not willing to do so, they may just not be fit for project writing.

Edit: on the other hand, if you ax your levels or do a major change twice a week, it may be a good idea to keep others on hold until you get something a bit more defined on your side.

I've worked as the writer on a very iterative product where I only had a small design role, so I've done this from the other side. For me, story was completely driven by the needs of the gameplay, the only time I would push back on a change was when I knew it would be impossible to implement from a scheduling/cost perspective (i.e. requiring re-recording dialogue/changing a huge cutscene).

Often, as a writer, you're coming onto a project where you're playing in someone else's world (due to the license) so if you have strong feelings about where you game is set/the basic plot I wouldn't worry about butting heads with the writer over that - it's par for the course.

In the example of axing half your levels - sure, that sucks for the writer but it's part of the job to be able to stitch those loose ends together in the way which requires the least amount of work. Being a writer on a game is a job, after all.


Yup, this is the ideal scenario. It keeps everyone invested.

Something I hold in high importance with regards to things like this is that the various elements of a game should become intertwined in the process of becoming cohesive.  I consider it a good sign when a game's story wouldn't work as well outside that game, or when a game's mechanics would be diminished in impact were a different story substituted.  Generally, I think the means of achieving this intimacy is a process of back-and-forth iteration where the elements are developed and altered in response to one another.

Austin Wintory gave an excellent talk at IndieCade about how during the development of Journey he and the development team had an iteration process where each change to the music would spark a change in the associated game sequence, and vice versa, until the two achieved a very strong rapport.  This gave rise to scenes like the sand valley.

Well if you want to get things moving while you work on the actual design, have the writer do some backstory and history to your world. These are things that probably won't impact game design, but may be a good source of inspiration for new features.

Just a thought.