[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com>

> Statistically speaking, you're absolutely correct.  The vast
> majority of game designers see themselves as programmers, far more
> than any other hat they might wear.  Very few see themselves
> primarily as fine artists, filmmakers, or writers.  Most apply a
> programmer's sensibility to what's worth doing or not doing, what
> R&D sounds cool and what sounds like a waste of time.  There's a
> tremendous apathy to the craft of writing in the game industry,
> because the vast majority of game developers are non-writers.

I'm not a programmer.  I used to be one, but never for games.  I'm
not a fine artist, a film-maker, or a writer.  Designing massively
multiplayer games isn't painting or music, it isn't making a film,
it isn't writing, it is not even programming.  I'm not exactly sure
*what* it is, besides itself, but it's defintely not any of those
things.  Making a game is to what I'm doing what story arcs and
symbolism is to writing, programming is like grammar and spelling.
It's important, but it isn't the *point*.

> What will ever change that circumstance?  I think it will take a
> game that finally shows what interactive story can be, that makes
> a lot of money, that blows all this amateurish player-driven
> emergent "narrative" stuff out of the water.  Something that is
> compelling beyond gamer geeks, that provides what mass market TV
> and film audiences expect out of entertainment.  Only when someone
> makes a big pile of $$$$$$$ on story will the game developers
> start to regard it as important.  Even then, they'll resist it for
> a decade.

I don't resist anything that works for making these games better.
Stories don't work in this medium, at least not in any form you'd
recognize as real writing.  It's not as if it hadn't been tried, and
at this point saying they failed because they weren't competent is
meaningless.  If people *really* wanted a narrative story in these
games, they would have responded to *something* with more than a
collective shrug.

That amateurish player-driven emergent stuff isn't James Joyce.  It
isn't even Jackie Collins.  It's not supposed to be.  It fills two
important criteria: Even when it doesn't work very well, the players
tend to like it, and it makes them *care*.  If it sucks, but they
care, then making it not suck won't make them care any less.  In 10
years we may know enough about how it does that to start building
Art, for right now I'll settle for craft.

--Dave



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