Would like some help on my writing ideas for a game project

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MapleTree889

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It's supposed to be a cyberpunk theme and I wanted to know if this would be the right place to ask for advice, thanks.
 

Aurie

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I am not sure if this is the right place for advice but I LOVE Cyberpunk! All the punks actually, like Steampunk, love, love, love, Steampunk. So following this thread for other replies. Also, what sort of game is it? Table top D&D style or is it a computer game or other?
 

LeviSweeney

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If you're thinking of a video game, I have almost no expertise on the subject. I know absolutely nothing about designing video games.

But I do know something about stories.

If you just need help coming up with a cool concept, then I might be able to help you. I once heard somewhere that all stories are remixes. Everything has already been done. Or, in the words of Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun." The solution? Follow this formula: copy, combine, transform. Copy something else, combine it with yet another thing, and then transform it all into still another thing.

Now, it should be noted that the key to this tactic is that you have to draw upon story material which isn't particularly well known. As an old creative writing teacher of mine once said, "True originality is obscurity of source." The more obscure the stuff you copy, combine, and transform, the better.

Now, let's see here. You want to make a cyberpunk video game? Hm. That fact that you're making a video game puts some limits on your scope already. I do know, thanks to the folks at the YouTube channel Extra Credits, that video games can be expensive and time consuming to create, especially the big, epic smash-em-ups like Halo[ and Final Fantasy. I don't know anything about the amount of resources at your disposal, but I'd advise starting small if you don't have much to operate on. Just something to keep in mind.

I don't think it would be very productive to give you any ideas out of whole cloth, but I will commend this lesson to you: Draw on obscure sources and draw on a lot of them.

Now, go conquer the world! :)
 

Snitchcat

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If you're looking for ideas, etc., you might be better off asking in the Sandbox sub-forum.

Also, what type of game are you making (e.g., FPS, RTS, platform, RPG, etc.) as this will likely impact the ideas that people might contribute.
 
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ChaseJxyz

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A lot of my friends went to school for game design, and some even do it for a living! Lots of people want to make video games but actually making it is quite difficult. Unless you do a text-only MS DOS-tier game, art assets are going to be the big thing hindering your progress. Then it would be the ability to program, and THEN it will be the story. It is incredibly easy to get carried away by the scope and be overwhelmed. Just look at Yanderedev.

So there's two kinds of media, "hot" and "cold." Hot media has a lot of stuff going on so your consumer doesn't have to do a lot of work. You just sit back and watch the giant robots punch each other and explode and you get little hits of dopamine. "Cold" media does not, and requires more effort of the reader. You need to use your brain to visualize what you read in a book, or how the characters are moving during a fight in a comic book. Modern video games are hot, while old school/low tech games were cold. In a piece of media that requires the consumer to use their brain to fill in the gaps or understand what's going on, story is really important. A game like Undertale wasn't a visual spectacle, the player character's face doesn't change or emote at all, but because of the writing (and scripted events) your brain filled in the gaps and could tell what the character was thinking or feeling in the moment. How the menu changes during a fight implies emotion and conflict, while in a big-budget AAA game it would just feel like the game is trying to railroad you into taking certain actions.

A game that only has one story (such as Assassin's Creed) has to be written differently than a game that has multiple ones (such as Mass Effect or Undertale). You have to figure out how you want information revealed to the player, and how likely they are to do things. Be honest with yourself, who's actually going to pause and read the in-game encyclopedia entries? Who's going to explore and find those easter eggs? Who's going to ignore the tutorial and then get mad that they don't know how to do things? Do you want players to have a choice? Or do you just want to pretend to? Is the hero a specific character, like Mario, who has to act in a certain way? Or can they be anyone like in Cyberpunk 2077? Are you prepared for a player to want to play in a way that your story won't allow?

I, and I'm sure many others here, will be happy to help you with your goals but it's going to be really tricky and you have way more to think about than what a writer of a novel or short story has to think about. Every format to tell a story has pros and cons, and you can really suck a player in deep with your story, characters and themes if you do it right, but you have to decide what gimmicks/features are a narrative device and what has pure utility functions.
 
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