I'm writing a video game!

Status
Not open for further replies.

JoNightshade

has finally arrived
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
7,153
Reaction score
4,137
Website
www.ramseyhootman.com
My husband is a programmer. He and a couple of his buddies from where he works (a video game company) have decided to get together and make their own little iPhone game, an RPG.

Then the other day he's like, "So... we kinda need a writer...?"

Turns out, these guys only really care about the design and mechanics. The artist has some ideas for what things should look like that are pretty awesome.

The story? Completely up to me. Whee!!!

I have been itching to get into this medium. Every time my husband plays a game I just find myself groaning at the dialogue and thinking, "I could do SO much better than that. If only they'd hire some decent writers..."
 

Zoombie

Dragon of the Multiverse
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 24, 2006
Messages
40,775
Reaction score
5,947
Location
Some personalized demiplane
Sweet!

Now, my advice is to work closely with your husband and his buddies. Se, gameplay and plot should not be separate. Rather they should compliment and work together...that's an angle that a lot of game Devs forget and its their failing.
 

JoNightshade

has finally arrived
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
7,153
Reaction score
4,137
Website
www.ramseyhootman.com
Sweet!

Now, my advice is to work closely with your husband and his buddies. Se, gameplay and plot should not be separate. Rather they should compliment and work together...that's an angle that a lot of game Devs forget and its their failing.

Oh, yes, absolutely. One thing that always bugs the heck out of me is the artificial way the story interacts with actual gameplay. Like, that character on the screen is supposed to be me, and yet I have no control over his choices? The story always tries to "force" you into certain pathways - drives me crazy. I've already come up with a frame narrative that explains the player's interaction with the world. I'm going to try to make everything as natural as possible.

Actually, I find this aspect really cool because it plays to my strengths. I am very, very good at taking a given set of parameters and then fitting a story/ad/whatever into the necessary restrictions in a way that feels very natural. So I'm excited about taking their ideas about how they want the game to play and then incorporating that into the story.
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
Congratulations on the game-related writing job. Have you gotten slapped with the big ol' Non-Disclosure Agreement yet?

Unfortunately I'm currently working under the shadow of one of those, but maybe one of these days I can talk about it.
 

Zoombie

Dragon of the Multiverse
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 24, 2006
Messages
40,775
Reaction score
5,947
Location
Some personalized demiplane
Well, no, linearity is fine, Jo. Its just when the game shifts clunkily between STORY and GAME with all the grace of a car crashing that things get grumpy.
 

Pepper

I IS PRANCING
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 28, 2009
Messages
416
Reaction score
77
Location
Australia
Website
houseofpeppers.blogspot.com
Congrats! :D I've always wanted to write a computer game. Like you, I'm often left thinking "Geez, I could do better than this". Definitely something I'd like to do in the future. :D
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
Congrats! :D I've always wanted to write a computer game. Like you, I'm often left thinking "Geez, I could do better than this". Definitely something I'd like to do in the future. :D

It's because for the most part, writers tend to be brought into the process well after the design documents for a game and actual coding have begun. Usually they're expected to just shoe-horn whatever narrative or dialog they can into a game and then just hope for the best. Rhianna Pratchett (yes, the daughter of THAT Pratchett) has been doing extensive game writing work for many years now and she has some interesting insights--and frustrations--about the process.

There are exceptions to this course. In the genre of Japanese role-playing games, writing tends to happen alongside--or even before--game development begins. And in the West, a few developers such as Bioware and Funcom tend to work on the narrative aspect of games before--or alongside--the development of the game itself.

But yeah, for most games, the narrative tends to be an afterthought, unfortunately.
 

LOG

Lagrangian
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 10, 2008
Messages
7,714
Reaction score
354
Location
Between there and there
My husband is a programmer. He and a couple of his buddies from where he works (a video game company) have decided to get together and make their own little iPhone game, an RPG.

Then the other day he's like, "So... we kinda need a writer...?"

Turns out, these guys only really care about the design and mechanics. The artist has some ideas for what things should look like that are pretty awesome.

The story? Completely up to me. Whee!!!

I have been itching to get into this medium. Every time my husband plays a game I just find myself groaning at the dialogue and thinking, "I could do SO much better than that. If only they'd hire some decent writers..."
I dislike you now...-_-
 

JoNightshade

has finally arrived
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
7,153
Reaction score
4,137
Website
www.ramseyhootman.com
JJM: :tongue

Any ideas so far? We would love to hear it... or is it meant to be sekrit?

Good question. Not sure how the guys feel. Haha. Anyway I'll say my husband has described the setting as "post-apocolyptic steampunk fantasy." That is, the characters live in a medieval-ish fantasy world among the ruins of a high-tech civilization which bears a resemblance to old Jules Verne-ish artwork.

There will be a certain amount of ambiguity about the protagonist (you) and whether he/she is altruistic or evil. Your companion, the most visible character throughout the game, will likely be a non-Caucasian teenage female. (I sort of pushed that one on the guys; now the artist is all excited about it.)

As for the specific plot, I'll keep quiet about that. :)
 
Last edited:

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
Sounds like that old TSR pen and paper game Gammaworld.

But the Fallout post-apocalyptic vibe is hot again thanks to Fallout 3's recent success, so this could do well.
 

JoNightshade

has finally arrived
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
7,153
Reaction score
4,137
Website
www.ramseyhootman.com
Back after looking up Gamma World... :)

It's a bit different in that this isn't actually future-earth. It's more like your generic fantasy world.
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
Back after looking up Gamma World... :)

It's a bit different in that this isn't actually future-earth. It's more like your generic fantasy world.

Oh okay, that's an interesting twist. So it's post-apocalypse in some other setting with fantasy roots. Yeah, that is different.

Crystal Dynamics did something sort of like that in the 90's with their "Legacy of Kain" series. It was an interesting premise. The first game was about a guy (named Kain) who got turned into a vampire and then went on a massive rampage across the world to get revenge. At the end of the game, you were given the usual "Choose good or evil" ending, and if you chose the bad ending, the fantasy world was basically plunged into hell as Kain became a God of Vampires and ruled the world.

The sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver decided that the canon ending WAS the bad ending, so you have a fantasy world that was totally devastated by this godlike vampire society. Interesting stuff.
 

Zoombie

Dragon of the Multiverse
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 24, 2006
Messages
40,775
Reaction score
5,947
Location
Some personalized demiplane
I remember Soul Reaver...the demo, at least. It was pretty neat!

I like this, and I like the idea of a non-caucasian female. Will there be romance? I do love a good romance!
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
I remember Soul Reaver...the demo, at least. It was pretty neat!

I particularly liked the shifting mechanics of the first Soul Reaver game, where you would transition from the real world to a ghost world where astral structures and other features allowed you access to areas you couldn't get to in the real world. Soul Reaver 2 took it a step further by changing the mechanic to shifting through time, so a devastated church could be revisited in its pristine state before the vampire rampages occurred.
 

JoNightshade

has finally arrived
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
7,153
Reaction score
4,137
Website
www.ramseyhootman.com
How could you?! Whats-their-name has been totting about that sig of common spelling mistakes for who knows how long now, and you still do it...

Do what? I'm sure I've no idea what you're talking about, with your little doctored up quote... ;)

I like this, and I like the idea of a non-caucasian female. Will there be romance? I do love a good romance!

Right now, I'm thinkin' no. Well, as I told my husband, "You know me. If there's romance at all, it's going to be weird, awkward, and probably kind of disturbing."
 

maxmordon

Penúltimo
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 12, 2007
Messages
11,536
Reaction score
2,479
Location
Venezuela
Website
twitter.com
JJM: :tongue



Good question. Not sure how the guys feel. Haha. Anyway I'll say my husband has described the setting as "post-apocolyptic steampunk fantasy." That is, the characters live in a medieval-ish fantasy world among the ruins of a high-tech civilization which bears a resemblance to old Jules Verne-ish artwork.

There will be a certain amount of ambiguity about the protagonist (you) and whether he/she is altruistic or evil. Your companion, the most visible character throughout the game, will likely be a non-Caucasian teenage female. (I sort of pushed that one on the guys; now the artist is all excited about it.)

As for the specific plot, I'll keep quiet about that. :)

I see, for some reason reminds me a bit Final Fantasy. Will there be different endings depending on wether you're altruistic or evil? Am I asking too much? :p
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
I see, for some reason reminds me a bit Final Fantasy. Will there be different endings depending on wether you're altruistic or evil? Am I asking too much? :p

Oh yeah. Final Fantasy VI had a little bit of that vibe, didn't it?
 

JoNightshade

has finally arrived
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
7,153
Reaction score
4,137
Website
www.ramseyhootman.com
Hm, good question. I don't think there will be alternate endings. I haven't gotten that far. It's not so much that you have to decide by the end whether to be good or bad; not that simple. This is sort of the cool gameplay component I came up with so I don't really want to give it away, but it's more like your true identity is ambiguous. So you may play thinking you're doing everyone in the world a lot of good, but by the end you may realize that you've just screwed everyone royally - with or without meaning to. And even then it won't be totally obvious, so maybe you did try to do good? Or maybe you didn't?

I feel like I'm totally copying what the developers kept saying about Bioshock before it came out. And yet it's totally different. I fail. Nevermind. ;)
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
I feel like I'm totally copying what the developers kept saying about Bioshock before it came out. And yet it's totally different. I fail. Nevermind. ;)

Damn. Bioshock. That's a tough act to follow. Even 2K Games isn't following it. Or it seems like it, since Kevine Levine isn't on the sequel. I think even he got scared of trying to top himself.
 

JoNightshade

has finally arrived
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
7,153
Reaction score
4,137
Website
www.ramseyhootman.com
Haha, yeah. Our game is in NOOOO way going to even compete with that. I mean, it's a little iPhone game made by 4 people. :)
 

icerose

Lost in School Work
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 23, 2005
Messages
11,549
Reaction score
1,646
Location
Middle of Nowhere, Utah
That's awesome. I've been really into Final Fantasy for most of the series so that's something I've always wanted to do was write a video game and watch one of my stories come to life in that medium.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.