Susan O’Connor on Writing For Games

Arstechnica has put up a series of articles on writing in games, including an interview with Susan O’Connnor. Susan wrote Gears of War and (as I’ve only just found out) Bioshock, in collaboration with their respective development teams. Her opinion of current games writing sounds much like Gordon Rennie’s. I linked to his ScottishGames interview back in January.

I thought that the Gears of War scripting was just about perfect for the genre. There were tiny hints of a greater story but they were never shoved down your throat. In fact, you didn’t really know what the greater story was at all and that was okay. It didn’t matter. Your job as Marcus was to get in, complete your mission objectives and get out. The cut-scenes were short, established your reason for being in that location, popped in a bit of world-building and then left you alone.

The real beauty of the Gears of War story was in the characters. Cole was an absolute maniac and every interaction with him showed that. His introduction was a voice screaming “Yeah, baby!” over the sounds of gunfire as you clear the corridor nearby. Even when you were pinned down outside a building with Troikas firing at your squad, Cole was always the first one over the sandbags to take out the operators (with varying levels of success). That’s the kind of integrated characterisation that you only get from considering the story in the early stages of development

Here’s a quote from Susan’s interview:

I see the same two problems crop up on Every Single Project. They are:

1. Non-writers write the story, and
2. There is no time allotted for testing the story, once it’s in the game

Everything in software dev is iterative. EVERYTHING gets tested. But not the story. On most of my projects, I don’t hear the dialog in-game until I literally rip the shrinkwrap off the package. It’s a heartbreaker. You see the problems, and there’s nothing you can do to fix them. All you can do is take two aspirin and lay down on the couch.

Read Ben Kuchera’s full article: Why writing in games matters: Part III—creating character with Susan O’Connor

[via Psychochild’s blog]

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