Tag: blog
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What Do You Even Mean By Branching Narrative?
There’s a conversation I’ve had more times than I can count, and it usually starts the same way. Someone — a writer, a designer, sometimes an executive — says they want a “branching narrative” for their game. Everyone in the room nods. Everyone thinks they understand what that means. And then, about three meetings later,…
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You Feel Nothing: The Problem with Second Person Storytelling in Games
There’s a book I used to keep on my desk in the office. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. Every time someone came to me with a design concept that had a particular problem baked into it, I’d hand them the book, tell them to read the first chapter, and let them figure out…
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Less Is More: A Framework for Game VO That Players Actually Listen To
There’s a version of this post that starts with a rant about Claptrap. We’ll get there. But first, a principle. Good game VO — the kind that actually lands, the kind players remember years later — isn’t really a writing problem. It’s an attention problem. And attention, it turns out, is one of the most…
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From Playing to Watching: How Let’s Plays Changed What It Means to Be a Gamer
There’s something I’ve been turning over in my mind lately, and I think it’s worth putting into words. Here’s my hot take: the rise of Let’s Play videos and live streaming has fundamentally shifted what the gaming community is. Not just in size, but in its very nature. And I’m not sure we talk about…
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You Can Do Anything Except That
Some of the most disciplined people I can think of are fiction writers. To assign yourself the task of producing hundreds of pages of compelling original content — consistently, on a schedule, while also being your own harshest critic — seems like it would require not just a creative muscle but a kind of self-discipline…
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Sound High Level Thoughts
A few months back I was given the opportunity to put together and present a talk to the whole studio about game audio. Keeping it under twenty minutes meant staying deliberately high level — which was harder than it sounds, because audio is one of those topics where every thread you pull leads to three…
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Staring At The Summit
(Blogtober Day 12) One of my favorite books that delves into the history of game development is Ken William’s “Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The Rise And Fall Of Sierra On-Line.” Despite the rather long name and somewhat busy cover, this book was a pretty fun and interesting read. Ken Williams and his…
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Momentary Stars
(Blogtober Day 11) Something that took me a while to really understand in sound design and mixing is how to find the restraint that is sometimes needed to not make everything loud all the time. It’s a super easy trap to fall into, and boy did I ever fall into it early in my career.…
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Applying Vonnegut To Gaming Pt. 2
(Blogtober Day 10) So picking up from yesterday’s Blogtober entry applying some creative writing tips from the late author Kurt Vonnegut and seeing if I can apply them to game development… “Start as close to the end as possible.” This is an interesting one to try to apply to game development as there can be…
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Applying Vonnegut To Gaming Pt. 1
(Blogtober Day 9) Something I maybe have a bad habit of doing is finding a concept, opinion, or soft guideline talked about in one creative industry and considering how it might be applicable to game design and development. I’ve done this almost subconsciously for a while and I tend to keep it to myself these…