Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing is live!

It’s out!  We contributed to the Game Writers SIG book, Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing and it’s now available for purchase.  Whether you’re a game writer or a game developer, you’ll find this book of interest as it covers collaborating with writers and working with writers on contract.  In fact, we think you’ll like it so well, we’re going to pass along to you the friends and family discount.  You’ll get 30% off, but it’s only good till May 31st, so get truckin’!

Order our book or anything else at www.akpeters.com and use the discount code Friends.  Anything else about collaborating with writers you’d like to know?  Stay tuned next week for more tips on working in a team!

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Save the environment with game writers!

Happy Earth Day!  You may think game writing has nothing to do with the environment, and you’d be right.  Undaunted, I will now analyze whether you save the environment more by hiring a game writer in house versus outsourcing a writer, say, in another city.  I will use http://www.carbonfootprint.com/ to discern how many tonnes — yes, tonnes — of CO2 emissions occur in each case.

Remote emissions

I recently took a round trip flight from Los Angeles to Austin for a kick-off meeting.  How much did this flight emit?

• .561 tonnes of CO2

The meeting got us all on the same page, and I went home and completed the writing assignment remotely.  How much did working remotely emit?

• .779 tonnes of CO2 for house annually
• 4.562 tonnes of CO2 for food, entertainment, etc. annually

However, chances are this CO2 would have been emitted no matter where I worked or lived! 

Onsite emissions

Now let’s pretend that instead of living in LA, I lived in Austin, worked on-site and commuted 10 miles to work every day in a car without taking the highway.  How much would that emit?

• 1.826 tonnes of CO2 for car annually

Looks like outsourcing a writer is a clear winner compared to having one drive to work every day.  Even if a writer worked on-site for half the year, it wouldn’t catch up to the emissions of one flight.

But when I worked on staff at a game company, I didn’t drive to work.  I took the bus or carpooled.  So what if your on-site writer took the bus instead of drove?  How much would that emit?

• .717 tonnes of CO2 annually 

Aha!  So if you hire a writer on-site for about two-thirds of a year or less, who also takes public transportation, you would thus be saving the environment! 

How’s your carbon footprint?

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Fielding writer questions saves money

Got your attention? As US tax time heads into the final stretch, I know I’ve been thinking about the money I spent — all of it wisely, I assure you — in the last year. At the same time, we’ve started working with a new game developer where we agreed from the outset, due to time and money constraints, to only go as far as a first revision. How could we get it right nearly the first time if we weren’t familiar with their likes and dislikes? Simple — we asked lots of questions! But how can you make sure your game writers ask the ones that save time and money? Try these tips:

1. Be available — Our client e-mailed us to ask if we had any questions. If we didn’t ask any questions, they called to ask us for questions. We even had personal mobile numbers — which was helpful when we were trying to make a 10pm deadline.

2. Be thoughtful — No need to rush to answer. If you need to think about it, do so. I asked the client a question. Without an immediate answer, he hung up so he could think about it. When he called me back a half hour later, he had a reasoned, articulate answer.

3. Be cool — There’s such a thing as being too available — give your writer space to get the job done. Saying, “Call or e-mail” if you have any questions should be sufficient. If you’ve shown you’ll keep the door open, the writer will walk through it.

With all of these in place, I had no problem pre-approving script ideas before I set them on page by asking specific questions. Whether you want to save money or just want a better first draft, you can follow these steps to get the script good faster. Have any questions?

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Game writers offer 4-hour work week!

To hire or not to hire a game writer, that is the question.  I’ve been researching productivity recently and came across Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5.  Apparently it was quite the thing in tech circles last year.  We’ve often said that hiring a writer, whether on contract or not, frees you up to focus on your strengths.  We’ve never said you’d get a 4-hour work week out of it.  Maybe we should start.

One of the key components of the 4-Hour Work Week means you automate as much of your work as possible.  For Ferriss, that means he outsources just about everything, so much so that I half-expect unions to be denouncing him over breakfast every morning.  He allegedly hired someone in Asia to troll the internet looking for hotties to date.  You may have already spotted the real flaw in the automated system: Ferriss may have the 4-hour work week, but no one working for him does.  Still, some people swear by his methods and some have actually seen their families at the end of the day once they’ve instituted his suggestions. 

You already know this industry strives for work/life balance.  I’d like to offer up a suggestion: hire a game writer.  It doesn’t mean you give up control, it just means fewer inane conversations about whether the villagers would worship squid monsters and a decrease in the likelihood you’ll be writing lines like “Uh!”  “Huh!”  “Look out!” at ten at night.  Leave that to us — Lord knows we’ve been working that late all week.  Maybe you’ll end up traveling the world with the time you save, or maybe you’ll finally get together with your raid group.  It’s up to you. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make another developer’s week that much shorter.

What would you do if you had more free time during the work week?

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Got cross-discipline? Why you need it in game development

Only a week or so ago, we had a designer/writer say you don’t need specialist writers.  But the fact of the matter is, everyone is somewhat specialized — few indeed can say they program, model, produce, and write.  And if you know anyone, send them our way   To make a good game, we don’t need to roll up every talent into one person.  We do, however, need to find a way to get the various disciplines working together.  I’ve rounded up a few links on how game developers have been doing just that.

Inside Game Design: Media Molecule
Kareem Ettouney loves the small core team of different disciplines.  He sites other larger companies following the same model.  I’ve worked in a small core team of different types of designers and a programmer on staff — and I loved it!

Getting Coders and Artists to Communicate 
Chock full of great tips for building communication between any two disciplines — whether it be in person or e-mail.  These producers advocate getting out of the way of communication, especially if you’re a control freak, which none of our readers are   Producers should create the opportunity to create, then reward it when it works.  These suggestions dovetail nicely with helping a writer “get it.”

Why Your Game Studio Should Practice ‘Shared Design’
Instead of putting experts from different disciplines, Crystal Dynamics’ Arnab Basu suggests putting your designers across different areas.  Put junior and senior together, let them get their hands on every project coming out of the gate.  This process includes interfacing with external teams, especially in “stunt” design — bringing someone on for a short period on a specific challenge.  Seems like you could use a writer in there who could flexibly move between projects.  I’m just sayin’.

The Secrets Of Portal‘s Huge Success
You know this panel had to show up somewhere.  Kim Swift saw the importance of cross-discipline here, saying there’s a story story and gameplay story.  We like to say they’re ideally the same, but we’ll give them a pass. Working these stories together created a game that was better than the sum of its parts, which is the result of any good cross-disciplinary work.

Sharing the Design
You can still share the design, even if you’re not playing well with others.  This article shows how the old ownership model can still play in in cross-disciplinary design.  Split the work based on strengths, develop a common vocabulary — especially with outsourcers, then keep coming back together to communicate.  A good model for a designer working with a writer whether on staff or on contract.

Found any other great cross-discipline success stories out there? 

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How to direct game writers or actors

While at GDC, I attended a presentation by Hollywood director Mark Travis.  He covered such topics as staging characters and the environment, all relevant when writing or directing cinematics.  In the process, however, he revealed a great tip for talking to actors which can easily be applied to working with game writers.

First, I’ll set the stage, so to speak.  Mark brought up two actors who proceeded to read a scene from a movie.  While sitting and reading doesn’t lend itself to great acting in general, I’ve been to enough dramatic readings in Hollywood to know that their performance was a bit lacking.  I was wondering how he was going to address this issue, when he proceeded to give this little lesson.

Whenever an actor performs, it’s scary.  They’re taking a risk by letting it all hang out there.  The worst thing you can do after they’ve taken this risk is punish them for it.  The first thing out of your mouth should be a compliment.  By doing so, you make the environment safe for them to take even more risks. 

That alone would improve your relationship with writers and actors, but the next part is even better.  After the compliment, say, “You gave me a great idea of a new direction we can go in!  This time try…”  You’re basically saying “Change everything,” but the actor or writer hears, “You’ve inspired me… let’s take it further.”  Two words: Brill iance.

The actors, having had the secret of directing revealed to them, performed the scene again, unruffled.  I can imagine a writer would have done the same.

Have you found any good tools for directing game writers or actors?  Think this trick would work on you?

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When to bring writers in on your game

I’m still recovering from post-GDC blahs, so I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. While at GDC, I attended a couple lectures and panels on outsourcing. While we always encourage game developers to bring in writers early, it may be the best time to bring in writers is both early and late.

According to one GDC session, there are three stages of production.  The core team of any project generates the creative aspects. If you’re working on a story-driven game, a writer should be part of the core team.  The second stage, agile, would include key art and tech.  Finally, the scalable section includes outsourcing content, such as writing.   

 

Of course, there’s more than one way to go about bringing in writers.  Do you agree or disagree with this method?

More from the 2008 Game Developers Conference

End of Day 2 at the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA:

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GDC Daily Video Blog

Watch us as we bring to you our daily report from the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA:

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Top 3 problems plaguing game production: the writer solution

Our buddy over at Gameproducer.net asked readers to volunteer their biggest problems in game production.  So far, the comments center around these three issues:  time, money, and the team itself.  We thought we’d offer up a few solutions for dealing with these issues when working with game writing and story.   

TIME
When you’re racing to meet milestones to make your hard and fast ship date (do those exist?), writing sometimes comes in last.

• Hire writers.  Many developers write content for their games and rely on a number of excuses not to hire writers.  when crunch time hits, it’s better to focus on your core strengths.  A producer should spend his/her time producing; a designer should focus on designing.  The only thing worse than someone spending too much time on tasks they’re not suited for is having to spend even more time to fix the resulting work.
• Hire outside writers.  By doing so, you will take a lot of pressure off of your core team, so they can focus on key tasks.  The outside writers can help prevent burn-out, which itself can cause production delays. 

MONEY
I know what you’re thinking: “You just told me to hire writers, but my main issue is money!”  When it comes to managing money, people most often stumble not because they have too little money, but because they don’t wisely use the money they have.

• Use your writers to save money.  If you have a story-based game, writers can help you reduce scope without sacrificing story quality, thus cutting down on your costs.  Opposed to programming, art, and music, you’ll also notice that simple text takes less time and is actually pretty cheap.  If you’re going super-low budget, you may in fact only need text and programming to make a game. 
• Use your writers, not your team.  You do not want your $250,000-a-year creative director spending his time writing “Good job!” “Excellent!”  You will save money by hiring writers at a reasonable rate and letting your team do what it does best. 
• Hire outside writers instead of internal writers.  If you expect intermittent need for a writer, like many developers, an outsourced writer can save you money.  As long as you stipulate it in the contract, you will not have to pay for the downtime when you have nothing for the writers to work on. 

YOUR TEAM
One of the commenters on Gameproducer.net pointed out that if a producer has a bad team, the producer is 50% at fault.  Whether that’s true or not, here’s a few tips on how to make sure that, at least, you’re managing a great writing team.

• Go with experienced writers.  Writers with some experience working in games will be a lot easier to manage.  This fact almost goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. 
• Help your writers “get it.“ If you’re working with experienced game writers, they should already get the game medium, but you need to go the extra step and help them “get” your project. 

Of course, finding writers who share your vision and work values will also make your team function better, but this idea doesn’t only apply to writers.   

What do you think?  Do you experience other production issues related to writing?  We’d love to hear about it! 

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