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 Features
Screen/Play:
Technical Narrative Design
 Marketing
When presenting content to game marketers, be sure to convey only
that information which they require. They may be interested in
the core outline of your story, and in the major characters. A
twenty-page document outlining the plot and characters in great
detail may create additional work for them.
One approach that has served me well is the inverted pyramid of
journalism. If you read the first couple of paragraphs in a newspaper
article, you've got the basic facts of the story. Subsequent paragraphs
add more explanation and detail, but the first lines will tell
you what you need to know. This format works well when presenting
content to the marketing team. A terse, fact-driven synopsis, followed
by a longer document that explains the story content, will deliver
all appropriate content to the marketing team in a way that's easy
to read and understand.
It's also important to separate types of information. For example,
some information is necessary to contextualize the game's action.
This data appears on the back of the box, or in magazine articles.
Lead a team of fierce adventurers into the land of the Orcs. Drive,
fly, and shoot your way through a modern battlefield. And so on.
"If there's privileged information, such as spoilers,
it's imperative that
you label them as such."
But if there's privileged information, such as spoilers, it's
imperative that you label them as such. If the design documents
are haphazardly furnished to the marketing department, and they're
left to pick and choose which elements to emphasize in the ad campaign,
the developers might not be satisfied with the decisions that are
made. For instance, I know of a company whose developers were furious
to learn that the marketing team had spoiled the surprise ending
of their game in the marketing copy on the back of the box. But
why was the information presented to the marketing team? Was it
labeled as a shock ending? Did the story synopsis simply present
the identity of the game's villain as a fact, or was it presented
as something that was better left for the player to discover while
playing?
Production
When presenting story content to your producer, first determine
the producer's needs. Are you writing a document that's intended
to motivate the team, and to contextualize the game's content for
them? Or are you putting together a list of characters and locations
that will be used to determine the number of artists needed to
create assets for the game?
A story document intended to inform the team of your game's storyline
can help get everyone on the same page, but that's only if everyone
reads the documents. While working on a game a couple of years
ago, I printed up a series of mission summaries for each of the
levels. The summaries included the characters featured in the mission,
the location, the major events, and the significance of the action
in terms of the storyline. Character artists, level designers,
and other developers noted that up until that point, they hadn't
really been sure what the game was about. This proved to be a useful
tool for inspiring the team.
But if your task is to furnish content whose focus is the determination
of necessary budget and manpower, you may want to present your
story documents as a series of spreadsheets indicating general
locations (Swamp of Dread, Caverns of Despair) as well as specific
mission areas (Lord Krygul's Palace, Lair of the Green Dragon).
A similar document citing character models that will need to be
created will also be useful.
Conclusion
The recurring theme in this article has been the notion of delivering
content to the audience in the format that is most desirable for
the reader. In this case, the craft of the writer is in great part
the ability to determine what the audience needs, and to calculate
how best to furnish that data.
In the next installment of Screen/Play, we're going to take a
look at the process of scripted cinematics, and some of the pitfalls
of this particular story delivery method. Until next time, good
luck.
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