October 10, 2005
Susan O'Connor speech
This is a story. Pretty much everything I write here is a story. Like most, this one is true. It's from my perspective alone, so it's limited in that regard, and I took the time to write it, which is also a drag for those who had to wait from last Wednesday to read it.
That's when it happened. Wednesday. Up on the second floor of the Highland Center campus of ACC, where I'd gone several times before to listen to people talk about games for the price of gas money. This time it was Susan O'Connor, who works freelance out of Austin to write for games.
Write. For games.
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. She's also the reason why there's a Game Writer's Conference carved out of the Austin Game Conference coming up later this month, and will be on the panel next Wednesday organized by the Austin Game Developers.
EDIT: Bob McGoldrick posted the slideshow file.
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Good stories are like that, she explained. Different people remember different details. This is as true of movies and books as of games, she said, and just like movies and books, games are unique in the way they tell their stories. Being the newest of the media, she said, the way games are best suited for storytelling are still being developed and debated -- few textbooks on the subject exist.
Story isn't very important in many games, which is a shame, she said. Amidst all talk of reaching a wider audience, O'Connor asserted that while lots of people like games, everyone likes good stories. Being prepared to do them and do them right will set game projects apart.
Are games a storytelling medium? O'Connor sidestepped some of the more complicated debate on the subject and just acknowledged that some prefer to think of games as an "experience" medium, but stories can contribute to a broader experience if done right.
So how is that done? By leveraging the medium, telling different stories, and telling better stories.
For the first part of that, O'Connor referenced Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray of MIT, extrapolating that with each new medium, new storytelling methods had to be developed. Early filmmaking was too much like live theater, but eventually methods such as dissolves, cuts, fades and flashbacks became common enough to be recognizable, even by those who don't make films. Likewise, new media can influence the old -- books written after the advent of refined film techniques started using the same methods in narrative form. "Films are feeling more like games," O'Connor said. "So we're at an exciting apex right now."
But with each new medium, the old media leeches ideas, while the new stumbles, she explained. Games aren't films, but boring cutscenes keep getting used to advance plot. Unfortunately, the most she could say about what methods could be used to capitalize on what games are is that they are "emerging," and that game developers are "nifty people" who are smart, creative and passionate about their craft. (Leaving open the possibility that they might also come up with the right answers.)
To tell better stories, O'Connor suggested the model include three things: conflict, internal logic and premise. The first two are easy -- all games have some kind of conflict (or at least a crisis) that must be resolved somehow. Internal logic is also necessary for the game to be believable and make sense, for the gameplay as well as the story. Developers still have to make characters believable for themselves, and should ask themselves the question -- if they don't believe in the characters, the players won't either.
Premise is the fiddly one. Most games don't have a premise -- what the game is "about" -- as O'Connor put it, "stuff just happens."
Why does this matter? O'Connor suggested it as the difference between school and real life. Few tasks in the real world are graded or given by rote direction. Few solutions result in a clear-cut "right" or "wrong." The more stories are like real life, she said, the more they let us practice life's possibilities. The "hero's journey" is eternal, but the hero's not always very believable, or much fun.
In her conclusion, however, O'Connor suggested why so much of the game industry chooses to gloss over story as a way to make games better. Money and time are still the main resources spent on a game project, and too often those in charge of a project approach the game's story as an afterthought, as in, "I guess we need a story now."
But, for the sake of connecting with players, and compelling them to follow through the game to the end rather than forcing them to do nothing but the objective (putting them "on rails"), story is still a way to go.
Endnotes:
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- Getting the show started was a bit rocky. O'Connor brought her iBook, loaded with her slideshow, but discovered she couldn't hook it up to the projector. She ended up exporting it to PowerPoint, loading it onto Bob McGoldrick's USB dongle, then playing it on the PC already hooked to the projector. Many suggestions before this point were raised by the audience, causing Bob to comment that this was definitely the right audience for technical support. I cracked that they were mostly wannabe game makers -- "They just know what they want to work, not if it'll work." She set up her iBook on the podium to read her notes and had her husband flip through the slides.
- O'Connor is a fan of Guardian game blogger Aleks Krotoski, who recently suggested some under-the-radar books that would make good games. Her description of a shared favorite, "Geek Love," admittedly sounded like a Tim Schaefer plot, but at least someone might be able to pull it off. I'd play it.
- When she was talking about leveraging the strengths of games as a storytelling medium, she brought up Neil Young of EA talking about embracing games as an "emotional medium." I held my tongue the first time it came up, but the second time, I was ready with my crack. "Neil Young is known for Majestic and the Wing Commander movie." Second big laugh of the night.
- First big laugh of the night? When she was talking about her writing for MMOGs (her credits include the first expansion pack to Star Wars Galaxies, for which she wrote "some training missions") and how you really can't do it because people want to play their own way and it's a sandbox and so on. I suggested that the idea that most people could be left entirely to their own devices was a fallacy. "If people could entertain themselves, there would be no entertainment industry. No one would pay for this." Lollercaust. I am such a jerk and should shut my huge mouth.
- I left wishing I'd heard more about more of what makes stories good or how they're crafted, but questions from fellow audience members (many of whom just took the opportunity to rattle off their favorite story moments in their favorite games) suggested that it probably wouldn't have gone over well.
When we finally figure out how to reliably make story part of the gameplay, rather than an appendage to it, games will become a powerfully emotional medium, so much so that I think it will become a problem. Thanks for the writeup.
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