Game Theories: A Practical Guide To Game Writing

Gamasutra published another article of mine about a month back. In "A Practical Guide to Game Writing" I teach interested, dedicated game developers how to get the most out of their writers. Check it out.

Game Theories: The Deaths of Game Narrative

An article I wrote for Gamasutra is up. Called "The Deaths of Game Narrative", it's a whimsical look at death, design, and storytelling in the digital world. An excerpt:

It's been quite a year for epic, narrative-driven games -- titles vast in scope, grand in ambition, and gorgeous in execution -- and I have fought my way through a few of the best.

In recent months I have transformed into an exiled Florentine nobleman thirsty for vengeance in Renaissance Italy; I masqueraded as a continent-hopping, chiseled chunk of vainglorious derring-do in search of lost treasure; and I traveled the western wilds of the United States as a battle-scarred loner fighting to restore his dignity and return to his family.

To the ear of an outsider, this might sound like a pretty diverse scrapbook of experiences, and I'd say this was half right. But there's one element that draws all these titles together under a cozy umbrella. In each game, the protagonist -- my avatar -- is a mass murderer...

Mark Hollis, Come Back

Today, a friend reminded me to take my monthly Mark Hollis. I rarely forget, and fall ill when I do.

Andy Warhol

I first began to appreciate Andy Warhol the moment I lost interest in his artwork. The man Andy was the thing to watch. He was the worthwhile object of all inquiry. The milieu he created was his canvas and all the art objects he produced were mere souveniers of a specific node in spacetime. If you didn't buy the t-shirt while you were there, don't bother looking for one now. What else should we think about a man who called his workshop The Factory? Could he have stated his intentions with any more clarity?

Yes, Andy's single important contribution to the world was himself. He generated the aura that Walter Benjamin worried art had lost forever in the age of mechanical reproduction. Andy spun magic scenester ju-ju so hard that he fooled people into thinking art production was actually a glamorous endeavor. Imagine! Soon people wanted to try this art thing themselves, but not because they adored the process of making it. Only because they adored themselves, and Andy, and the way it felt to participate without having to labor.



It's tempting to watch this and see nothing but a flippant hipster (a flipster!) disavowing any responsibility to indulge in polite conversation with an obtuse press; tempting because it's true, obviously. But it's also safe to take Andy at his word. His methods were easier ... he says exactly same thing about film a few years later: Film cameras are great, he argues, Because you just turn them on and walk away. After a short while, you've got a movie.

So while Andy traipses around carving himself out of ethereal clay, the work he sells to keep him afloat us is not a final product in the old sense, nor is he selling the sluggish thrill of "the process" to his admirers. No, he has perfected the intoxicating thrill of the "Have Done". Everyone knows this feeling. Everyone yearns for it at some point. "All writers want to have written" goes the old saying, and Andy offered an analogous experience to all in his orbit: simply by being around him, they had done things. Everyone was a filmmaker, everyone was a painter, everyone was in a band; everyone was everything around Andy Warhol. If he had written a novel, I'm sure he would have charged people for the privilage of looking over his shoulder as he scribbled ... or over the shoulder of whomever was writing it for him. It might even have sounded something like this:

Game Theories: Object Innuendo

Here's a small recipe to spice up a dull party:

Rule:
Name three objects found in a grocery or drugstore which, when purchased together, give your cashier the impression that the strangest night of your life is about to commence.

Example:
A cucumber, a jar of patroleum jelly, a disposable camera.

I codified the rules for this one about 5 years ago and have played it numerous times since. Players typically dive right into the risqué stuff first, but after the first few rounds the combinations tend to get more subtle and strange. Some people even take the shocking step of avoiding sexual innuendo altogether. Weird, right? But it works.

A Film By Any Other Name...

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, a shock-trailer for a film from the 60s titled "My Baby Is Black!"

Originally titled "Les Laches Vivent d'Espoir" (does this translate to "The Fearful Live In Hope"?), "My Baby..." was a French production with a bit more attempted integrity than the American rubric can possibly allow. Having never seen the film, I am unprepared to judge whether or not it has suffered unjustly from this swap, or if it is still a piece of garbage, but the original French title seems to imply some attempt at sensitivity.

This sort of targeted rebranding is still quite common, of course, and rarely capricious; there's always a profit motive to these alterations. Catherine Breillat's 2001 film "A Ma Soeur" -- literally "With My Sister" -- was renamed, for our amusment, "Fat Girl". This is a rather blunt take on a quietly disturbing film about the destructive tendancies of male sexual desire on maturing girls.

Whenever I hear of this kind of artistic gerrymandering, I can't help but wonder if the people responsible have done so on the basis of a lot of careful scheming or out of sheer fear. Is the potential audience for a film titled "Fat Girl" larger than the audience for "With My Sister"? Are they they completely different audiences, and if so, is one substantially larger than the other? Will the "Fat Girl" hopefuls leave the film disappointed after merely having seen "With My Sister"? Managing expectaions is the name of this ugly game, but perhaps it works to the artist's benefit more often than not.

A few nights ago I watched Leos Carax's 1986 film "Mauvais Sang" - "Bad Blood" - and was surprised to find under the film's title-card the subtitle "The Night Is Young". This title appeared nowhere on the DVD case or in any of the menus however - both advertised the original French. But again I was made to wonder, did "Bad Blood" first appear on these shores as "The Night Is Young"? This would be 1986, you see - the middle of the first decade the AIDS epidemic, which the film makes numerous allusions to. Was this the reason behind the change; the fear that the vague reference to "Bad Blood" might transmit the wrong impression. What sort of mind bubbles with this sort of skittishness, I wonder? And can you make a good living this way?

Musical Literacy

Bobby McFerrin coaxes the pentatonic scale out of some rather delighted victims:



I've had a few casual, barely informed conversations over the years about the idea of "musical literacy", and more specifically regarding the extent of our innate understanding and feeling for musical forms and ideas and their possible origins -- but i've never bothered to follow through and actually read anything extensive on the subject. It's probably time to change this. Should I start with Oliver Sacks? Something else? Maybe I'll watch more Bobby McFerrin videos first.

Game Theories: The Last Express

I will always be indebted to Jordan Mechner's 1997 game The Last Express for providing me with the first hard evidence that videogames could look and act as seriously as any film or novel. While the game's presentation is rather clunky by today's standards, the art direction, the real-time conceit, and the quality of the writing all deserve a huge measure of admiration.

While searching for images of this game to accompany a small article I've been writing about the role of narrative in videogames, I came across Mr. Mechner's Vimeo page. It contains this little gem:

Passively watching The Last Express is no substitute for actually playing it, but for posterity's sake this is a nice little memorial to a fantastic and overlooked milestone.

Images: "Seemann..."

Dispatch from the previous century:

Henry Thomas Sings the Texas Blues!

I'll let this link speak for itself: Recordings of Henry Thomas singing 19th century folk, blues, ragtime and more.

Born in Big Sandy, Texas in 1874, Henry Thomas was one of the oldest black musician who ever recorded for the phonograph companies of the 1920′s and his music represents a rare opportunity to hear what american black folk music must have sounded like in the last decade of the 19th century.

Download now and enjoy.