Arcane University:Writing

This is the main page of the Beyond Skyrim Arcane University Writing tutorials.

General

Purpose

A writer needs to have profound knowledge of the mechanisms of the game, the history and lore, and most importantly, the unique feeling and methods of making the player feel richly rewarded by his presence in the game world. Writing is a vast field. It includes the most creative opportunities to shape a new concept of a game. But it is also the most critical step because it can provoke structural difficulties, which are hard to overcome in later stages, especially if those stages are not sufficiently considered before. These include the capabilities of Level Design and Implementation. Those have to be able to realize the scenario and still achieve an interesting and evenly paced game experience. Like all fields of game development, writing must be evaluated by the finished content. Did it help the game? Or did it create issues? But even more than any other field, it is a first big step, setting frames and borders and sketching the world and characters. It can potentially annihilate the opportunities of other departments to work with the given writing if those borders are too tight. On the other side, it can also push other departments into completely new experiences and levels, unleashing their potentials, which is the real intention.

Categories

There are different uses for writing when working on games. Also, there are many methods and as many writing styles as there are authors, and all of them are legitimately following their visions. It makes no sense to block ideas, concepts would starve. But before having great ideas, its good to have a decent understanding of how these ideas could be potentially used and how much space is available for them.

World and Plot Drafts, Environmental Writing

There are the lore texts and world primers, which try to sketch out a world entirely. Those can include the most details and fantasy and give you great inspiration. But sadly, those also often lack the condensed and defined shape of exposition and dialogue that will make it later in the game. Also, they lack the direct tie to the player and his/her current situation in the world, his intrinsic motivation (more about that below). It can be seen as a general brainstorming, and the more ideas are discussed and combined and filtered, the better. This might even take several years. But ultimately, when the world is far in the implementation process, this lore should be solid and not altered too much, to avoid inconsistencies and reworks in the following departments (Level Design, Implementation and sometimes even the 3d-Design or Concept art, such re-iterations can be avoided by taking decisions together and building workarounds rather than deleting everything since the team also has a responsibility to accomplish the set schedule).

Exposition and Dialogue

This is where it gets interesting. As we will discuss below, games offer only a tiny amount of space to place your info and dialogue. This information has to be chosen very carefully, packed and placed well and include everything relevant, but nothing else. Unlike environmental writing, it cannot contain all details and there has to be a filtering and selection process between the above stage and the “in-game writing”.

“Why discussing in-game writing deeply when writing is a free, creative and individual process?”

You will find that there are general limitations that have to be mastered inside the game. Each game has its own ways to bring texts, words, and dialogues to life. These have to follow the general pace of the player’s situation. It should also be the right amount of information, and it should be relevant. One can find some general rules working with Dialogue and Exposition. You are free to do it your way, but it might be useful advice on what some experienced game writers said. We gathered some condensed excerpts of their speeches for you.

What is Exposition and its general purpose?

Exposition is the direct dialogue that carries the narrative. It should be split into slices to make them digestible most important info at the end of dialogue just one piece of important information at once (per dialogue) the type of information chronologically gathered should follow logical order characters presenting this information should have valid reasons to give them “The general purpose of dialogue is to move the player forward!” -> Dialogue does not offer the space to tell a background story in general.

Common examples of wrong use of Exposition

• “Let me tell you how our people started in stone age…” -> The writer's history encyclopedia issue. player reaction: fall asleep.

• “The evil empire killed all good people…” -> The oversimplification issue. player reaction: perceiving an artificial, inorganic and generic the story.

• “Dragons used dirty bombs and nuked our battle mechs with Magicka” -> The Publicity-exaggeration issue/ commercial keyword issue. player perception: artificial, un-immersive overcooked story.

• “Once in the days of old, we captured the Mines of Moria, and Whiterun, and….” -> The lead level designer showing off random unrelated locations in the game issue. player perception: what bulk of irrelevant information, tired.

• “Oh, and when you go there, gather 20 Goblin skulls for me!” -> The Quality department realized the emptiness of contents/tasks before shipping, added random things issue. player perception: it's generic, artificial and impersonal and un-immersive.