During my time as a game developer I have learned that as a rule about half the work you do will ultimately be scrapped. This is a standard part of the iterative process that allows us to perfect out creations. Throwing out what doesn’t work is just as important as perfecting what does. This “fail faster” methodology allows us to refine our games to their best state. In this blog I would like to talk about how I adapted my work in order to make a better overall experience.
In terms of narrative content there has been three levels of decision making. High level Ideas of the narrative such as the overall plot has been decided by consciences during designer meeting. Slightly lower level decisions such as narrative arc and character designs where decided by a small narrative task force containing myself and two others. Finally the lowest level narrative such as individual interactions and dialogue was done exclusively by me. Whenever one of these levels made a decision it would often mean that much of the lower levels work had to be adapted or thrown out.
A little under the midway point of development serval members of the team began expressing concerns about the narrative. Specifically they were concerned about how narrative was being implemented into gameplay. Up until this point narrative had been conveyed using storyboards and world interactions. These were both narrated though the perspective of the main character and the story boards were to contain minimal art.
Many people on the team were worried that these were two intrusive and took away the players ability to be imaginative. Myself and the other designers met to try and solve this problem and made multiple major changes. The first was that storyboards would no longer have dialogue and would instead be told entirely be art. This decision was made in order to encourage player imagination by leaving somethings unsaid. In addition it was decided to restrict narrative interactions in levels to a specific area. This was done to make sure that these interaction were not too intrusive to the core gameplay and exploration. Finally it was decided that all in game dialogue would be told in the second person. We wanted the player to be able to project them self onto the main protagonist and as such we wanted to give as little character details about themselves as possible.
These changes were undoubtable good and helped tell a more interesting narrative but they also lead too much of my work becoming obsolete. After these decisions were made I meet with the narrative task force to discuss what parts of our narrative would no longer work. It was decided that with the simple way our narrative would be told our story would also need to be simplified. We initially had a full backstory for the planet and the protagonist but it was decided that these would be cut. While these were not at all bad elements they no longer fit in with the direction the game was taken and thus had to be scrapped.
Finally after all the meetings I sat down and looked at my work to see what could be adapted. I looked at the story boards I had initially envisioned and tried to take the core concept for each one. I then worked with another designer and together we decided what images were needed to convey these concepts without dialog. He then sketched these images and turned them over to the artists in order to create the final drafts for them. In a similar way I looked back at the dialogue that I had written and tried to determine what the goal of each interaction was. I found the most important interactions and condensed it down to four interactions per level. I re wrote these interactions to be in second person and was careful not to over inform the player. This was done so they could use their logic and imagination when engaging with them.
Overall while these changes required a great amount of work they greatly improved the narrative. If we had not iterated we would never have adapted to our problems and the narrative would still be in a state where it had various issues. This is one example of why I always strive to encourage change and am never overly attached to my own work. No idea is ever made in its perfect form and it is only though its iteration and refinement that a positive experience is made.
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