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[andy wolff]

Some folks think writing in games isn't worth the effort, saying things like "If I wanted a story, I'd read a book", or "Writing for a video game is like writing a plot for a porno".

Other folks say that story is important for some games, but writing isn't.

I think these opinions are wrong and that good writing is very important, and can contribute as much to a game as good graphics, audio, or gameplay.

Let's talk about it

[Alec S.]

Some day, hopefully soon, more people are going to start understanding the medium of telling stories through interactive systems, mechanics and content.  The story can play out a thousand different ways, but it's still essentially the same story.  The designer can create heroes and villains with rich motivations and back-stories, and set them loose to play out their fates.  They can create vast empires and send them off to war.

Take the new XCOM, for instance.  All the mechanics (with a fair amount of positve feedback loops) working together generally lead to two possible stories which can play out in a variety of ways.  1) The squad was well-prepared and methodical tactics were employed.  It might have gotten touch and go at some points, and maybe a squad member or two died, but overall it was a smooth mission or 2) Someone made a misstep, now where they had been holding the line, the aliens are breaking through.  The squad tries to fight, but they've lost their position, and one by one they get picked off and surrounded.  Maybe some of them panic and kill their own squad-mates.  Maybe one of them escapes, but the outcome is the same:  the mission is a resounding failure and there's going to be hell to pay with the council.

Contrast that with the experience I've had a few times in the original X-COM but never had in XCOM, where the whole squad gets killed off except for one lone soldier who manages to get to take out the last alien.  Different mechanics lead to different possibility spaces for stories.

I think writing for games should focus on backstory, characters and situations, and play only a gentle guiding role in the action of a game.

(Of course, I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy games with heavy story components.  I love adventure games like Gemini Rue and Phoenix Wright, although these take less the form of a game with a set of interconnecting rules, and more the form of a story with puzzles which must be solved using the context of the story.)

[Belimoth]

Story is pointless. Graphics are pointless beyond communicating the gamestate. Sounds are pointless beyond communicating the gamestate.

There, now you have your minority opinion.

[Netsu]

Games like Legacy of Kain or Bastion, even though not RPGs, would have made little impression on me if not for the story. Instead those are two of my favourite games. And they are both linear in terms of story (not counting multiple endings).
So yeah, I think a story can make a huge difference but it's not easy and isn't just about the story but also about how it is told.

[Schoq]

A game needs a story like a song needs lyrics.

This analogy works so well that I don't think I even have to elaborate.

[SirNiko]

Phoenix Wright is more of a puzzle set to the tune of a story, as opposed to a story-telling game itself. The writing is generally meant to serve as a platform to conceal the puzzle. For example, one of the "lies" in the first game is based around the player's recounting of events versus those of another character. If you simply laid out all the facts on the table, the lie would be obvious. Framing it in a story forces the player to recount all the things that happened before in order to identify the lie, and that makes the mechanics work.

Putting good writing is a game is important. Laughably bad dialogue can spoil a perfectly good game, and a few choice paragraphs can help form a player's expectations before they see a new area with their own eyes. The dilemma is when you start to emphasize the writing too much - you wind up with reams of text that distract the player from the interact portions, or worse, the text sets expectations that aren't matched by the interaction. In the worst case scenario, the interactivity is forgotten, lost in a sea of nouns, adjectives and verbs.

This is my concern regarding writing in video games. Adding good writing to a game does improve it, but after a relatively low threshold it comes at the expense of all the things that make a game distinct from a novel or a movie.

[Belimoth]

A game needs a story like a song needs lyrics.

This analogy works so well that I don't think I even have to elaborate.

Fuck that's a great analogy.

[Sergi]

A game needs a story like a song needs lyrics.

This analogy works so well that I don't think I even have to elaborate.

whoa

[Sergi]

I think it's a good analogy because it's almost the same situation. Both game story and music lyrics are art forms brought into a different art form that doesn't communicate the same things with ease.

Music (instrumentally) can tell stories, and it's been used for that purpose, but words are better at that, since they're our primary way of communication. With games, you can use the dynamic meaning of the gameplay (I've been watching Jon Blow talks lately ), but it's way harder to do it successfully to tell a meaningful story.

So words (or even additional non-interactive images in the case of games) come to the rescue to express story when needed. Otherwise, you have the more abstract entertainment.

[zacaj]

"Writing for a video game is like writing a plot for a porno"
Those people obviously have low standards for their porn.

[Udderdude]

I find the best in-game stories are the ones that lead the player into different environments and settings as the game progresses, with the gameplay and challenge developing at the same time.

And not just in a ham-fisted "Ok, now kill the next villain guy over here", or "The bad guy ran to this area, let's get him over here now" kind of story telling, either.

[Alec S.]

Phoenix Wright is more of a puzzle set to the tune of a story, as opposed to a story-telling game itself. The writing is generally meant to serve as a platform to conceal the puzzle. For example, one of the "lies" in the first game is based around the player's recounting of events versus those of another character. If you simply laid out all the facts on the table, the lie would be obvious. Framing it in a story forces the player to recount all the things that happened before in order to identify the lie, and that makes the mechanics work.

This is something I've been thinking about recently, which points to a major distinction between point-and-click adventures and similar genres, and other games.  The puzzles in a game like Phoenix Wright have no mechanical basis.  It's not a puzzle like a game of Tetris or Bejeweled where there are clearly defined set of rules (blocks fall in shapes, fill a whole line to clear it) that you are interacting with to solve the puzzles.  To put it another way, it would be impossible (or, at least, entirely trial and error) to solve an adventure game puzzle without the story.  It's more like a riddle than a traditional puzzle or game.  (Again, not to say I don't like adventure games.  Just that when I talk about how I think story should be in a game, I'm generally not referring to Adventure games, as I see them as existing in something of a different category)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i believe (with lots of evidence) that the writing quality of immortal defense was the primary reason for that game's success, moderate though that was (a few thousand sales, which is pretty good for someone's first commercial game, and for a game made in game maker). most of the reviews, fan letters, and comments about the game mention the writing as being the thing that stood out to them the most about that game. the writer of that game is a professional writer with a published novel, which is rare for writers of videogames (especially indie games). my own contributions to that game were important but without the writing the game probably wouldn't have amounted to very much more than a fun time-waster, and i certainly would not still be getting fan mails from people, 5 years later, about how the game had affected their lives and thinking process

i don't think all games need good writing, although some genres need it more than others, but good writing (including interesting characters, an interesting world, and interesting events) usually adds to a game. however, i think that *bad* writing can subtract from a game, and a game is often better without any writing than with bad writing. and most people are bad writers, particularly most game developers. so i'd say that unless you actually are or know a good writer (and by good i mean: both published and someone who has a lot of fans, not just someone whose friends and family think they are a good writer) then leave the writing out of games. however, if you are, or know, a genuinely good writer, then add that to your games. writing quality, unlike graphics quality, is something it's easy to delude yourself about

[King Tetiro]

i believe (with lots of evidence) that the writing quality of immortal defense was the primary reason for that game's success, moderate though that was (a few thousand sales, which is pretty good for someone's first commercial game, and for a game made in game maker). most of the reviews, fan letters, and comments about the game mention the writing as being the thing that stood out to them the most about that game. the writer of that game is a professional writer with a published novel, which is rare for writers of videogames (especially indie games). my own contributions to that game were important but without the writing the game probably wouldn't have amounted to very much more than a fun time-waster, and i certainly would not still be getting fan mails from people, 5 years later, about how the game had affected their lives and thinking process

i don't think all games need good writing, although some genres need it more than others, but good writing (including interesting characters, an interesting world, and interesting events) usually adds to a game. however, i think that *bad* writing can subtract from a game, and a game is often better without any writing than with bad writing. and most people are bad writers, particularly most game developers. so i'd say that unless you actually are or know a good writer (and by good i mean: both published and someone who has a lot of fans, not just someone whose friends and family think they are a good writer) then leave the writing out of games. however, if you are, or know, a genuinely good writer, then add that to your games. writing quality, unlike graphics quality, is something it's easy to delude yourself about

I agree with Paul here. Some genres like RPGs need the writing more than say, a Racing genre game. Though I would like to add that some games break this. For example, Twisted Metal has the need for good writing whilst racing. I think that a game's need for good writing is dependant for the idea.

Let's use my games for an example.
The Legena series required me to sit down and think how to it's writing will turn out because it was all about the story and the journey the player would take.
Whilst Leon, a puzzle platformer required very little writing as the aim was simplistic.
However GM Conflict's aim is also simplistic but due to an Arcade Mode having a story, it had me sit down and think. Not as much as Legena but definitely more than Leon.

In summary, it's all down to the game itself.

[Capntastic]

I don't think a game's writing needs to be constrained to dialogue or expositional text.

One of my favorite game storylines is Treasure's* Gunstar Heroes which has very little speaking or text at all, and yet there are recurring enemies, rivals, etc (that are all sort of fleshed out, although they're somewhat stock and generic), and raising dramatic stakes as the game progresses.

You don't need to be told how bad the badguys are when they are visibly menacing in game.

You don't need to be told that you're on a cool space adventure when you're literally blasting through space and blowing up enemy ships.  The scientist in the game  says "I made a spaceship for you, here are the controls:" and the level begins with you warping through space.

Now this doesn't require expert precision with word choice or 'conventional' writing techniques, but it requires a solid grasp of how to tell a story clearly and effectively.

*Other Treasure games, like Mischief Makers and Dynamite Headdy are similar, though the former had lots of expositional cutscenes to develop the situation and characters, and Headdy's Japanese release had a lot of that as well.  Not that it's automatically worse to devote time to building the narrative.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'd consider that story / storytelling rather than writing -- writing usually refers explicitly to words. you can tell a story without words though, sure, and a lot of games work well that way. but there's nothing inherently wrong about words in games either, words can be very powerful

[ink.inc]

I've played very few games with legitimately great writing; lots of games with good (or at least passable) plots, but not particularly well written ones.

Bad writing (translations esp.) stick out like a sore thumb, though.

[Musenik]

I've played very few games with legitimately great writing; lots of games with good (or at least passable) plots, but not particularly well written ones.

This is because good story writing is hard, like quality graphics is hard, and good music is hard. Just because most people can write, they think that it's easier to write a good story than to learn drawing or music composition. I think that's the main reason writing is such a backhanded art in computer games, industry AND indies!

[andy wolff]

Even a game without any words can benefit from good writing, or at least from many of the skills which are required of good writers. Character and plot development, foreshadowing, themes and motifs, and just general cohesion of subjects are all just as important for many games as they are for stories told in other media.

Good level design should tell players more about a scene than would a written description of it. If there are enemies, they should exist because they fit into the world somehow, not just because something was needed to fill space. They should have character and significance.

Paul, you say this is more storytelling. That works, too

[Capntastic]

I think that's the main reason writing is such a backhanded art in computer games, industry AND indies!

This is correct to a degree.  Most people have a very hard time discerning differences in writing capability.  Likewise, it's easy for most people to say "I've put some words in sentences, made some paragraphs, and that's a story, right?".  Most people know how to speak and read, and that with that hurdle passed, competent writing should, they feel, be automatic.

This happens more often then "oh music is just notes; drawing is just lines and stuff", because speaking and reading are things people use constantly every day as a means of communication.

But no, competent writing and storytelling take effort.