Tag Archive for 'storytelling'

Realization: Hideo Kojima is Video Gaming’s Béla Tarr, Except Not Talented

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 9:36 PM on September 14, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/l3

I didn't intentionally position Tarr so he was looking at Kojima all like, "You think I'm this fucking guy?" But it worked out pretty well.

Béla Tarr is the director of cult classic Hungarian films such as Sátántangó. Hideo Kojima is the designer of massively popular Japanese video games such as Metal Gear Solid 4. These two men actually have quite a lot in common, save for the medium they work in, their popularity, and their pretentiousness when discussing their craft.

Let me describe Sátántangó to you, briefly. The opening consists of an eight minute shot of the camera doing almost nothing while watching a bunch of cows:
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Lazy Author Hates Cellphones For Making Derivative Clichés Implausible

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 8:06 PM on April 12, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/pfr

New York Times columnist Matt Richtel whines in his latest editorial that setting fiction in the cellphone-and-Internet era makes coming up with good stories sooooo haaaaard:

Technology is rendering obsolete some classic narrative plot devices: missed connections, miscommunications, the inability to reach someone. Such gimmicks don’t pass the smell test when even the most remote destinations have wireless coverage.
[...]
I recently finished my second thriller, or so I thought. When I sent it to several fine writer friends, I received this feedback: the protagonist and his girlfriend can’t spend the whole book unable to get in touch with each other. Not in the cellphone era.

Oh, poor pitiful you, Mr. Richtel. Your entire toolbox of tired plot devices that have been done to death is ruined, forcing you to come up with new and interesting ideas. How awful. At this rate, TV producers won’t be able to have computers make sci-fi beeping noises when someone uses Photoshop. Soon you’ll have to write thrillers where characters die because their partner’s iPhone “fixed” an important “typo.” Or romantic comedies where a woman gets angry at her husband because he can’t explain what he was really doing last night with her best friend in 140 characters, minus her Twitter name. It would be terrible!

For the record, on the off chance that Mr. Richtel’s cubicle is five feet away from my mother’s, I don’t actually think he’s a lazy, whiny hack, and I’m just coming off that way to appeal to the Gawker readers. The column makes some interesting points and brings up some valid issues, though it doesn’t seem to discuss many solutions to them other than “blow up the cellphone tower.” In this day and age, where everyone is always connected, that’s the kind of plot device that people can’t relate to.

Gameplay Format – Because Video Game Writers Need To Go On Strike Too

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 3:08 PM on January 29, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/MdW

I was looking for a decent way to write a script for a video game but found nothing. So I decided to create my own.

I call it “gameplay format,” because if a screenplay is a movie script, a “gameplay” should be a game script. Now, “gameplay” is already used to describe the experience of playing a game. That’s precisely why I called this format a “gameplay,” because it describes exactly that.

In filmmaking, screenwriters aren’t supposed to talk about shots or blocking or directing all that much; at most, they make minor suggestions. The screenwriter’s job is to describe the action. Why not give the “gamewriter” the same job — talk about what happens when the player’s character does what, and leave things like controls and programming to the designer and programmer?

I decided to try creating a format based on a screenplay, and I’m writing a surreal dystopian comedy/thriller game to test it out. It will be called “Status Quo”. But I want to make sure I’m on the right track as far as it being readable by humans.

I will say two things: I envision this as a 2D sidescroller simply because I can’t program or model in 3D to save my life, and centered underlined text is a “level heading”. If I have to say anything else, then this format isn’t easy enough to read, and I have failed. MISERABLY.

So, please let me know if this is comprehensible, and whether I can improve it (the format, not the game necessarily). Without further ado, after the jump, level one of “Status Quo”:

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The Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts Of Storytelling in Games

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 2:56 AM on January 19, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/DjA

Aubrey at Wolfire Games recently posted a discussion he had with another game developing friend, Jack Monahan, about mastering gameplay, and what that means to the player and about the game. Eventually they drifted off to talking about how story factors into this, and it took the comments thread a little while to realize that they didn’t mean to say “a good story gets in the way of gameplay.” Actually, what they criticized was a situation where “the story is the best part of a game,” which I agree is a bad thing. If a game is trying to be a narrative, it should have the story and gameplay complement each other without either taking precedence; I will now elaborate on that to the amusement of the audience.

If a game developer feels they cannot tell a good story, or if they can’t get a writer…actually, scratch that, if they aren’t a writer already and they can’t get one, then they should probably be making a simulation game. By “simulation” I don’t necessarily mean Microsoft Flight Simulator or SimCity, that’s just the term I use to say “non-narrative” because “documentary” doesn’t always work (i.e. Space Invaders isn’t exactly based on real life, but it doesn’t tell a story). But assuming a developer feels up to telling an epic tale of some grizzled space marines fighting against insectoid/reptilian aliens in a palette of gray and brown, there are a few things I’d really rather they didn’t do. I will now follow in the footsteps of Our Great Noodly Lord The Flying Spaghetti Monster and give you eight of them.

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