Storytelling in Video Games
This week Justin, Stephan, and Kevin focus on the larger picture of storytelling in video games, and discuss what they mean when they say story in video games. There are various levels of storytelling in games – some games are all about the story, while others tell story through the mechanics and have very little dialogue or cutscenes.
This was a fun episode for Kevin, because he has no video game experience aside from playing them, so he was able to ask Justin and Stephan more questions.
Some topics that came up include:
How should you be thinking about story in games?
Where should you be focusing your writing if you’re aspiring to write for games?
What does it mean to write multi-faceted storytelling, instead of simply writing one linear story as you would with a novel or screenplay?
The trio also talked about the more traditional games where its hack and slash mixed with cutscenes, why level design is so important to telling the story, and more. And yes, Pacman came up as an example.
The UCLA Video Game Writing program: http://www.tft.ucla.edu/programs/professional-programs/video-game-writing/
The Writers Guild Foundation Events: https://www.wgfoundation.org/writing-seminars/
The Unity Tool: https://unity3d.com/
The article we mentioned in our discussion: https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/standard-patterns-in-choice-based-games/
For more descussion like this, check out the books in the Creative Mentor series: