Chris Bateman - Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames

Game Writing

Game Writing

Narrative Skills for Videogames

Second Edition

Edited by
Chris Bateman

Contents

Editors (Second Edition)

Chris Bateman (Editor) is an award-winning game designer and narrative designer. He has thirty years of experience in the games industry and has worked on over fifty published games with his acclaimed game design and narrative consultancy International Hobo Ltd. His first game as lead designer and writer was Discworld Noir , and his most recent titles are the PlayStation VR game The Persistence , Shadows: Awakening , Tropico 6 , and his lo-fi indie game passion project, Silk , which pays tribute to the 1980s British bedroom coding legend Mike Singleton. Find him at ihobo.com or @SpiralChris on Twitter.

Neil Bundy (Subeditor) is one of International Hobos hardest working minions. He has been in the trenches of game development for two decades, providing consultancy services in game design, dialogue scripting, and troubleshooting for dozens of videogames at all scales of development, as well as working on tabletop role-playing games in the 1990s. As subeditor for the second edition, Neils tasks included swearing at a great variety of computer software and the main editor.

Chapter Authors

Dr. Ernest Adams is a senior lecturer at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University, and is the founder of the International Game Developers Association. He has served in the game industry since 1989 and is the author of six books, including the university-level textbook Fundamentals of Game Design, Third Edition. Adamss research interest is in interactive storytelling, the subject in which he holds a PhD. Before his academic career, he worked for many years as a game designer and video producer at Electronic Arts. He has developed online, computer, and console games for everything from the IBM 360 mainframe to the present day. His professional website is at designersnotebook.com.

Dr. Richard A. Bartle is Honorary Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He is best known for having cowritten in 1978 the first virtual world, MUD, and for his 1996 Player Types model, which has seen widespread adoption by the MMO industry. His 2003 book, Designing Virtual Worlds , is the standard text on the subject, and he is an influential writer on all aspects of MMO design and development. In 2010, he was the first recipient of the prestigious GDC Online Game Legend award.

Richard Boon has enjoyed twenty years in the videogame industry as a writer, designer, and teacher. As Head of Narrative Design Services at International Hobo for many years, he worked on dozens of games including MotorStorm: Apocalypse , Pac-man World 3 , and numerous successful cartoon license adaptations such as Fairly Oddparents and Spongebob Squarepants . His recent titles include Tropico 6 and Angry Birds VR. He currently works for Leeds-based XR Games, investigating the potential of Virtual Reality as an interface for videogame storytelling.

Richard Dansky is the Central Clancy Writer for Red Storm/Ubisoft and is a twenty-year veteran of the videogame industry. His credits include Tom Clancys The Division and The Division 2 , Splinter Cell: Blacklist , Driver: San Francisco , and numerous others. A published author, he has seven novels and one short fiction collection to his credit. Richard was also a tabletop game developer for White Wolf Game Studios, most recently developing Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition for Onyx Path. He lives in North Carolina with his cat and an ever-changing collection of single malt scotch.

Wendy Despain has more than two decades of experience spearheading digital media projects. She has worked with teams around the world as a writer, narrative designer, producer, and consultant on interactive experiences ranging from videogames to augmented reality. She has worked with EA, Disney, Ubisoft, Cartoon Network, PBS, Marvel, and Wargaming, and her books include Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing , Writing for Video Game Genres , Talking to Artists/Talking to Programmers , and 100 Principles of Game Design . She is currently working as a production director at ArenaNet, makers of the Guild Wars franchise.

Mary DeMarle has been designing, writing, and creating narratively driven Triple A videogames for over twenty years. Although best known for her award-winning work on Square Enixs Deus Ex franchise, she has also written extensively for such beloved series as Tom Clancys Splinter Cell (Ubisoft), Myst (Cyan Worlds), Dungeon Siege (Gas Powered Games), and Homeworld (Relic Entertainment). She is currently hard at work on a new, top secret project for Eidos Montreal that promises to be unlike anything shes written before.

Dr. Konstantinos Dimopoulos is an urban planner, geographer, game urbanist, and designer. He is a lecturer on level design at SAE Athens and author of the Virtual Cities atlas. The first commercial game Konstantinos designed and wrote for was Droidscape: Basilica by Kyttaro Games, and he has since then worked and consulted on the urbanism of a variety of games including The Sinking City by frogwares, Lake by gamious, A Place for the Unwilling by Alpixel, and Cyberganked by Robb Sherwin. Most of his articles appear on Wireframe magazine, and most of his talks and lectures take place in Europe. His professional website is www.game-cities.com, and you can find him on Twitter at @gnomeslair.

Matt Entins career as a videogame writer began with 2004s Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude . Since then, he has worked on a variety of titles including Valiant Hearts: The Great War , Agents of Mayhem , and Maneater ; he forays into advertising, comics, and film as well. He lives in Arizona, surrounded by mountains and a wide array of desert creatures that could kill him at a moments notice.

Stephen Jacobs is a professor with Rochester Institute of Technologys School of Interactive Games and Media and is a scholar-in-residence at the Strong National Museum of Play. He has been a narrative or game designer on serious games including on Picture the Impossible , Just Press Play, the Finger Lakes Interactive Play website and app, and Martha Madisons Marvelous Machines. Most recently, he produced The Original Mobile Games for iOS, Android, and the Nintendo Switch.

Ed Kuehnel has worked on the comedic games Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle , LocoCycle , The Gunstringer , Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley , and Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude , among others. He is a former contributor to The Onion and cowrote the comedy-horror film Lumberjack Man . His first comic book collaboration, Invasion from Planet Wrestletopia , can be found on Amazons Comixology. He is also a senior economist at a think tank advocating credible policy solutions that support a climate of bizarre but surprisingly delicious, fast-food creations.

Tim Langdell is an early founding member of the games industry having formed one of the first companies, Edge Games, which at one time was effectively Electronic Arts Europe and Sega Europe as well as being a top-five European game publisher. At Edge , he devised and developed the brand name (which is well known through the very successful Edge magazine) and has more than 180 games to his credit. He has been involved in founding numerous organizations including the American Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) and the British Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (BAIAS), as well as instigating the interactive media and game classes at University of Southern California in 1992. Tim has also written a number of books on videogames, most recently the first-ever book on games testing ( Game Testing All in One , Thompson, February 2005) which he cowrote. His first book, The Spectrum Handbook , reached number five in the London Times Bestsellers List.