Birthday, Book, Boring Scenes
should we do a barv
My birthday's coming on 11.11, and November is also the month when we put together the first draft (or, rather something we call "assembly" in filmmaking) of the book. Not listening to Christmas music yet, because I feel properly scared (not because of the birthday, but of the looming perspective of facing What We Have Missed in the book). But hey, I'm liking how this work is shaping up.
That said, to celebrate all this, you can support me with a nice donation: not gonna lie, I'm going to buy an iPhone 16 Pro to replace my 12 Pro Max and take nicer pictures for you. Or, if you feel abhorrent, please donate to your local pet shelter in my name.
Should we do a barv?
I've never played the Dragon Age games and haven't played its latest instalment, Veilguard, but this scene (and the buzz around it) has caught my attention, and I can't stop thinking about what's wrong with it and how it could have been done differently. Sorry for the link to some shady YouTuber - I couldn't find the scene anywhere else.
The “anti-woke” crowd is happy to blame DEI again, but what I see here is not a DEI problem (again), but more like a narrative design issue.
First, I understand and appreciate the intention. The question of whether an apology is enough (not just for misgendering), and what form it should take, is always relevant. However, the execution presents us with a lecture that lasts several minutes—quite long for any cutscene—and treats the player as if they're a child who’s never had to apologize for anything.
For me, the problem is in depriving the player of agency. Even if I’m totally supporting the idea of chosen pronouns, I don’t want to sit with my hands on the table and listen to this. I want to be able to express my opinion by doing something.
As my experience in designing interactive stories on issues like living with HIV, school bullying, or human rights shows, if we want to educate players who see this as 'woke bullshit', we should let them act upon the situation. Making a moral decision for their character puts them in a meta-position above the game, giving them the opportunity to make a choice and then reflect on it. We as game designers can then provide the game's reaction to their choice. However, as long as the player is passively observing, the educational intent is lost.
Let me know what you think!
Book progress and forced humongous alien spaceships
We’ve done most of the interviews, and I’m immensely grateful for this project allowing me to talk to all these incredible and diverse creators. I even got to talk to a magician, yay!
Speaking of diversity: among all the game devs and writers we have interviewed for the book so far, cis white males constitute a minority. As you might guess, our list of potential interviewees wasn’t based on their identity, but solely on the outstanding narrative qualities of their games.
This calls for the best quote I’ve seen lately:
If we are ok with writers forcing humongous alien spaceships or kakodemons invading Earth, why should we treat having more than human 2 genders in games differently?
Currently playing:
Citizen Sleeper + CS2 demo: bought it after we had interviewed Gareth Damian Martin for the book, on the same day “Citizen Sleeper” had 1 million copies sold. A narrative-driven and systems-based game with an amazing soundtrack.
Alan Wake 2: an exception, because I can’t play horror games. A study in agency and author’s POV.
1000XResist: I’ve just started, but it seems like weird shit in the best way, and everyone who played praises the narrative. It’s also pleasantly quiet.
Mediterranea Inferno: almost finished, brilliant work with interactive dialogue.
If you want to see my updates and thoughts on games in real-time, they're on my Bluesky! I’m also posting about how I hate running because I need to run a 10-km race at the end of November, so add me now, absolutely.
In other news:
Ross Berger, “Dramatic Storytelling and Narrative Design”: at first, I was afraid that this book was going to be about the same things as ours, but turns out, it’s rather a nice pairing for “The Game Narrative Toolbbox”. Both books offer a practical approach and perfectly complement each other. If you’re new to narrative design, they’d be a great start.
Jason Schreier, “Play Nice”: there is your horror story about the chaos management and bro culture at Blizzard. But what I’m missing at halfway point are its moments of greatness: how exactly did they come up with those iconic games? Which decisions lead to specific features that made those games successful? So far, feels like the book is mostly concentrated on the company culture and management issues, even though it’s a captivating read.
Game designers sure can, but are they allowed? I recently was researching a topic of humour in games and in an interview Tim Schafer said something along the lines of that companies are so self censoring out of fear to be offensive that they just can't allow games to be funny. I think the same stands for the roleplaying element. In part I blame shareholders pressure to please everybody and in part modern fan culture. When actors or writers are receiving death threats or face cancelation over the villainous roles/hot topics they are playing or writing, it's hard to blame the developers choosing to play it as safe as possible. That's why we can't have agency to fully support the cause or be a total jerk about it as a the guy in the video says as well. At least not in a Bioware game unfortunately.