Contents
Editorial: Get Professional!
Chris Crawford
Producer: A Dirty Word
Tom Sloper
1992 CGDC Survey
Evan Robinson
Making It Real
Elon Guon and Katherine Lawrence
Conference Report
Chris Crawford
Editor Chris Crawford
Subscriptions The Journal of Computer Game Design is published six times a year. To subscribe to The Journal, send a check or money order for $30 to:
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Submissions Material for this Journal is solicited from the readership. Articles should address artistic or technical aspects of computer game design at a level suitable for professionals in the industry. Reviews of games are not published by this Journal. All articles must be submitted electronically, either on Macintosh disk , through MCI Mail (my username is CCRAWFORD), through the JCGD BBS, or via direct modem. No payments are made for articles. Authors are hereby notified that their submissions may be reprinted in Computer Gaming World.
Back Issues Back issues of the Journal are available. Volume 1 may be purchased only in its entirety; the price is $30. Individual numbers from Volume 2 cost $5 apiece.
Copyright The contents of this Journal are copyright © Chris Crawford 1992.
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Editorial: Get Professional!
Chris Crawford
The professional community of game developers has come a long way in the last few years. Five years ago we were a disconnected collection of technical people working in isolation. Today we are definitely a community, with a network of social contacts spanning the industry. But we have yet to establish a sense of professionalism in our members. Our values are still closer to those of the 20 year-old hacker than the 40 year-old electrical engineer.
You want examples? Look no further than the pages of this Journal. Most professional journals have no problem getting enough article submissions to keep afloat. With this Journal, every issue is a struggle.
But the problem goes deeper than that. Most of the submissions that I do receive are little more than opinion pieces. We seldom have submissions that dive into the nitty-gritty details of game design, openly discussing algorithms or computa tional techniques. A quick count of previous issues shows that, in the thirty issues of the Journal published so far, there have been a grand total of ten articles that reveal computational methods. Five of those articles came from my hand. Three came from Gordon Walton. The rest of the community has been generous enough to come up with exactly two articles revealing technical information — in five years.
But it’s not just the Journal that is starved for useful information. The Computer Game Developers’ Conference has the same problem. Our feedback forms abound with complaints from people moaning that there’s not enough solid information presented at the conference. They want specifics: code samples, sales figures, programming techniques, hardware parameters. The problem is, everybody wants the information but nobody’s willing to share what they have.
One of the invited speakers to the CGDC had to cancel after his superiors discouraged him from attending. Their reasoning was simple: why should you go to a conference to give away information when we could send you to another conference where you could take away information? At least one major publisher refuses to send any employees to the conference and discourages them from attending on their own time.
Sorry, folks — it don’t work that way. Let me tell you what does work. It’s a broad collection of values loosely termed “professionalism”. Professionalism recognizes the existence of an intel lectual community larger than that of any single company. This larger community — the profes sional community — sustains the efforts of indi vidual companies. To do so, it requires the support and contributions of both the individuals and the companies that it sustains. The most important manifestation of such support is a willingness to share information.
Every system of values is founded on pragmatic considerations, and the pragmatism here is simple: if I give my information to you, and you give some information back, then we both win. Since the value of this information is impossible to gauge, we cannot use normal market-based methods to transfer the information. We simply have to trust each other.
At this point we have to address the problem of proprietary information and competitive advan tage. Professionalism does not require you to divulge sensitive proprietary information. The professional recognizes the distinction between proprietary information and “good practice”. There’s an easy way to draw the line between the two. Simply ask yourself, “Have any of my competitors figured this out for themselves?” If not, keep it proprietary. If so, then you can treat the information as “good practice” and tell the world about it.
An even simpler rule of thumb is to ask how old the technique is. Any technique that has been in use in a product on the shelves for two years or more can be treated as good practice.
The solution to this problem will not be found by industry executives, whose concern is short-term and bottom-line; the solution must seep up from below. In truth, it’s your problem. So it’s time to look in the mirror. Are YOU really a professional?
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Producer: A Dirty Word
Tom Sloper
Tom Sloper has designed and produced over 60 games for systems as diverse as the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Sega Master System and Genesis; Atari 2600, 7800 and personal computers; IBM-compatibles, Apple II, Commodore 64, Colecovision, CP/M computers, handhelds, and Vectrex. He’s a 12-year industry veteran, who has done time at Sega, Atari Corp., and Activision / Infocom (he doesn’t like to use the M-word), and is, as of this writing, an independent consulting producer (which is why he can get away with saying these scurrilous things).
About four years ago, I first became a video game producer. I’d been doing the work of a producer for a few years, but this was the first time I was ever called by that title (it was a new title for the industry at that time). I didn’t care much about the title — I preferred the title I had back in the old days of the first video game boom: designer. But, as we gain experience and grow within our chosen field, additional responsibilities come our way and so our titles change to match those responsibilities. Or so I thought when I first acquired the title. But it became apparent to me, over time, that, to some, “producer” is a dirty word.
I was pretty much removed from the controversy at first, because all my work was with outside developers. When you’re working with developers in another company (or another state, or another country), you hardly ever run into anybody who gives a damn one way or another what your title is.
You could be called a “dogcatcher,” for all an outside developer cares, as long as you keep the milestone checks coming.
But then my company got more involved in internal development, and I began noticing that my title got people’s dander up.
I found myself starting up a project with a programmer who said he didn’t want a producer on his project. I wasn’t sure if the programmer just wanted to take charge of the project himself, or if he’d had a bad experience working with a previous producer, or what was behind the objection. But once I demonstrated to the programmer that I had something to offer to the project, the objections pretty well died a happy death... until it came time to put in the onscreen credits, anyway. “Just an individual case,” you might say. But it happened again. And again... every time I worked on an internally developed project.
More recently, as I’ve been investigating opportunities at various other game companies, I find even more evidence that “producer” is a dirty word. When I tell the interviewer that I’m a producer, an expression of distaste appears on his or her face; “we don’t use that title here,” he or she will say. “We have an equivalent position, but we use a different title” — usually “product manager.” Somewhat paradoxically, many of these same companies have a “director of product development,” though. I guess the title “director” hasn’t come into disfavor for some purposes (perhaps because it’s not a stand-alone title, requiring an “... of something-or-other” modifier — that makes it less highfalutin’, I reckon).
It got me to thinking — should I be ashamed to be a producer? Is it something I did wrong? Is it something some other producer did that gave us all a bad name? Or is it just something to write an article about finally, so I won’t feel so guilty the next time I read Chris’ exhortations to send something in to the Journal?
I don’t feel like a dirty word!
So what the heck is a producer, anyway?
It depends on whom you talk to.
At company A, the producer is a guy who manages and coordinates the development of the project. He has to balance the game’s features and fun factor against the company’s need to get the game done for reasonable cost and in time to get the product out on the market in the best selling season. He works with the creative team to make the best possible product; he plays the game and works directly with the team to tweak the game and eke out every byte of fun possible.
At company B, the producer is responsible for watchdogging the schedule and the budget. Someone else champions the game’s playability and must negotiate with the producer for more time or money to add features and make the game more fun. The producer is an administrator, whose job is mainly to get the game done on schedule and within the budget.
At company C, the producer is a wheeler-dealer who spends a lot of time on the phone shmoozing licensing agents and the like. He hangs out with the marketing staff, expounding endlessly and eloquently about where he thinks the game industry is headed. He blue-skies a great-sounding high-concept game, and finds outside people to make it for him... and he gets all the glory if it’s a hit (if it’s a flop, it’s the fault of the outside developer).
At company D, the producer has the projects handed to him. The executives tell him what games to make, and the producer manages the in-house people who create those games. He juggles personnel problems as well as schedules and budgets and game designs. He basically tries to put out fires faster than they flare up. If he’s lucky, he finds time to finish a project or two, and maybe gets to keep his job.
The details probaby vary from your company’s definition of what a producer is or should be. Because every person and company situation is different, the definition can’t help but vary, not only from company to company, but even from producer to producer. But it’s pretty clear that the primary universal role of a producer is to produce games.
Everybody on the game project produces something, of course. The programmer is key, but the days when one programmer would create a game all by himself are (with certain notable exceptions, I guess) pretty much over. These days there are usually two or more programmers working on a game (especially if you include the tools and engine programmers), and as many artists, a musician, a sound guy, and a designer. There are other people who have to work on the product, too: testers, manual/packaging writers and layout artists. These days, games are not the product of an individual or even (usually) of two individuals working together. A game is the result of a collaborative effort of everybody on the team. With all those people working on a project, it’s important for somebody to be responsible for organizing and coordinating things, taking care of the odd details, and making the game happen.
Every team needs a leader — and/or an A.D.T. (that’s a person who takes care of “Any Damn Thing”).
The lead programmer may want to be the big cheese on the project, but writing umpteen megabytes of good solid code in too-few months just doesn’t leave one guy enough time or energy to attend to all the details it takes to get a game done these days.
While the programmer is programming, and the artists are making graphics, and the sound guy makes a lot of noise, someone has to keep the wolves at bay. Someone has to report to the management (and Sales, and Finance, and Marketing) about the game’s progress; to review the marketing materials for accuracy and make sure the game’s special features are highlighted. Someone has to make sure that the contractors are paid and happy, and that personal (and personality) problems don’t get in the way of making a great game.
Anything it takes to get the game done. And that’s where the producer comes in; that’s the producer’s job.
The producer is, clearly, important to the success of the project.
So why is the title a dirty word?
Is it (a) because the programmer doesn’t want to give up the reins of leadership he used to hold back in the glory days? Or (b) some producers acted like glory-mad jerks and made a bad name for producerkind? Or (c) the other members of the team resent it when this guy, who didn’t actually “produce” anything you can see or hear, gets a sexy, glamorous listing in the credits screen?
The answer: it’s a little bit of (a) and not too much (b) and a whole lotta (c). The problem isn’t the job or the person, it’s the title itself.
People on the project, especially the all-important programmer(s), feel that their roles are cast in a less glamorous light if a (“non-creative”) contributor to the project has a title that sounds sexier than anybody else’s. It’s the old “Hollywood model” bugaboo again.
I’m not exactly clear on what a Hollywood producer does — I have this vague notion that he provides or arranges the financial backing for the film, and to some extent keeps the wolves at bay while the director does his more glamorous thing. It’s not my purpose here to argue about the Hollywood model — there have been enough articles in the Journal to cover that topic. I am concerned, though, with the effect it sometimes has on the development process of an electronic game.
It may be that the solution is as simple as eliminating the title, as has been done at many companies. I haven’t tried polling people at those companies to see whether they resent their “product manager” any less than they resented the same guy when he was called a producer.
I’m not sure that replacing the title with one catch-all title, though, is the solution. Each person’s individual strengths and responsibilities, as well as his/her unique work situation, should be considered before choosing a title or onscreen game credit.
Some alternate titles, and their connotations
“Product manager,” to me, goes beyond the development of the software — it also suggests that the person’s role encompasses the manufacturing and marketing aspects of getting a product out, possibly even to the exclusion of any direct involvement in the actual development process per se.
“Project manager” is a bit more to the point — perhaps it would work best in a situation where the person manages the personnel on the project as well as the project itself.
“Project coordinator” would be appropriate for a person who doesn’t manage the personnel, and who has no responsibility for originating the project or concept. Just a guy with a job — a job that sounds a little boring. Which, of course, it isn’t.
“Project leader” sounds like a guy who may be part of the development team and also serves a leadership role. Better be careful with this title — it may cause resentment almost as much as “producer.”
“Director” — forget it, this Hollywood credit would raise the hackles faster than you could spit! The glory-seeker would love it for his own, of course. It implies complete creative control, which is the problem we’re trying to get around in the first place.
If the Hollywood model is the problem, maybe it can also provide the solution. The mistake was in looking too high for the title — keep watching the movie credits, and some other titles will show up. Of course they need modifying for the game industry... How about “Best Game Grip Boy?”
Then again, what I do is pretty darn important. Maybe I should change my title to “Supreme Exalted Being... of Destiny.” (Insert crash of cymbals here.) Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Not!
I once changed my onscreen credit to “Interloper” just to get around the problem, but it worked for me because it rhymes with my last name and I have a sense of humor. I can’t recommend it as a title to go on anyone’s business card.
In conclusion...
I don’t think any in-house programmer has ever given a rat’s ass what title I had on my business card. The noises start up when the project team is created, and are heard again the loudest when it comes to the on-screen credits. So I think I’ll keep the producer title on my card. But don’t be too surprised if you see me listed as “Dogcatcher” on future in-house games. Of course, the programmer will have to agree to some little compromise on his credit listing, too...
Hey, look, when you have a job that you enjoy, you don’t need to fight over something as dumb as a title. As long as my title fairly and honestly reflects what I do, that’s good enough for me. You guys go figure it out and leave me to do my job in peace. When you get it figured out, make it so, and send me a memo or something. I’ll look at it later. Just don’t disturb me now, I almost got Mario and Yoshi past that damn on/off button in Donut Plains 3, where the flying Koopa keeps getting in the way...
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1992 CGDC Survey
Evan Robinson
Survey Methodology
550 surveys were mailed out in late February, 1992. 102 responses were received by 4 April, an 18.5% return rate. 4 surveys were subsequently received but are not reflected in the data. I attribute the improvement in response (from 8% last year to 18.5% this year) to the CGDC Board’s decision to include business reply envelopes. Not all surveys were completely filled out.
135 individual rankings of 50 companies were included with the returned surveys. Only 16 of the companies received more than 2 rankings, thus being included in our publisher information.
The week before DevCon, over 200 phone survey calls were made to gather a limited data set that would allow us to judge the match between returned surveys and the population at large. 48 responses were gathered.
At the 1992 DevCon, I presented basic developer and publisher information in a lecture. Notes from that lecture are in the 1992 DevCon Proceedings, but some of that information will be repeated here.
How Good Is the Data?
This was a major issue at the 1991 DevCon. To address it we added the phone survey this year and included Business Reply envelopes to encourage response. Our response rate was up greatly, and the phone survey allowed us to compare the self-selected sample of those who returned surveys to the population at large.
With 102 returned surveys, the developer data is even better than last year. By comparing the phone data with the returned survey data, we see that the distribution of job functions is similar:
1992 Phone 1991
Programmer 55% 46% 46%
Graphic Artist 15% 13% 11%
Music/SFX 6% 4% **
Designer 46% 44% 51%
Manager 44% 31% 23%
QA 10% 2% 4%
Other Job 17% 13% 11%
Mean Age 34.7 33.1 35.5
Mean Years Active 7.4 7.4 n/a
Mean Education BA BA. n/a
Support Floppy 89% 81% 81%
Support Cartridges 42% 44% 32%
Support Coin-Op 3% 4% 7%
Support CD 35% 35% 11%
** Graphics & Music/SFX were combined in 1991 and returned 11%
There are some inconsistencies between the 1992 Survey and the phone results. Notably the percentage of Managers and QA people in the two samples. But overall the similarity is impressive. Our developer data is quite good.
As last year, the limited number of responses for most publishers limits the quality of the publisher data.
Publisher Number of Rankings
1992 1991
Electronic Arts 20 20
Broderbund 12 12
Accolade 8 10
Disney 6 6
Maxis 6 2
Sierra 6 5
Three-Sixty 6 1
SSI 5 6
Konami 4 3
Sega 4 5
Spectrum 4 4
Acclaim 3 1
Activision 3 9
New World 3 1
Software Toolworks 3 0
Virgin 3 4
There’s no clear trend up or down in the responses for these publishers. I believe the nature of the industry is that we will never get as good data on publishers as we do on developers, because most developers have limited experience with multiple publishers. The exceptions are EA, Broderbund, and possibly Accolade. Their numbers are based upon larger numbers of responses.
So Is It Worth Reading?
Absolutely. Our sampling on developer data is much better this year. The publisher data suffers from the same limitations as last year, so except for the Big 2 or 3, consider the publisher data somewhat suspect. If you want to evaluate publishers, think of the survey data as collecting opinions from people. Then go collect some additional opinions from people who’ll tell you why they think this publisher or that publisher is good or bad.
Who Are We?
The development community divided itself sharply since the 1991 Survey. The number of people describing themselves as “Independent” dropped sharply, accompanied by rises in the number of “Company Principals” and “Employees”.
1992 1991
Principals 54% 40%
Independent 18% 46%
Employee 30% 5%
This realignment caught me entirely by surprise. Next year’s survey will be more representative of this year’s population distribution.
88% of survey respondents work full-time in the industry, 9% part-time, and only 3% are hobbyist or wannabes. I know there are more of the last category out there, and I suspect they are not returning surveys because 1) they don’t think we want their input; or 2) because they don’t hear about the conference and register early enough to catch the survey mailing.
Of the 102 respondents, 13 were female, 86 male. The mean level of education is a 4 year (Bachelor’s Degree). Virtually every respondent had spent at least some time in college. The mean number of years in the industry is 7.4.
Mean age was 34.7 (34.3 for males, 36.0 for females). Ages ranged from 22 to 60 (see graph, below).
Occupation
programmer/engineers 56
designer 47
manager 45
graphic artist 15
quality assurance 10
music/sound fx artists. 6
other 17
Write-ins included Writer, Art Director, Producer, Marketing, Publisher, Financier, and others.
Income Statistics
(in $1,000s) Mean Median
All 51.7 40.0
Male 50.0 40.0
Female 47.6 40.0
Manager 59.0 52.5
Graphic Artist 53.1 40.0
Designer 48.7 39.0
Programmer 45.7 35.5
QA 42.9 30.0
Music/SFX 40.0 35.0
Categories of Work Done
A smaller percentage of developers are performing conversions this year, but far more are part of companies that publish and/or distribute. I believe this reflects the trend away from small independent groups to larger groups and more employees in the industry.
1992 1991
Create Originals 94% 88%
Do Conversions 30% 40%
Publish Products 34% 18%
Distribute Products 32% 12%
Create Tools 32% n/a
Product Costs and Time
While we did not collect actual costs of product development, the percentages of development cost spent on various categories were as follows:
1992 1991
Design 13% 17%
Programming 37% 43%
Graphic Art 24% 16%
Music/SFX 7% 6%
QA 7% 8%
Management/Admin 12% 12%
Mean Months To Complete Original by Target Media
Floppy 14
ROM Cart. 11
Hand-held. 8
CD 14
Online 10
Mean Months To Complete Conversion by Target Media
Floppy 6
ROM Cart. 7
Hand-held 5
CD 7
Online 4
Mean time to sign a contract from walking in the front door is 132 days. Last year it was 75 days. The median is 90 days. There’s still very wide variation in the length of time it takes. One report was 2 years and still trying, one was 20 minutes.
Contract Terms
Mean royalty percentage on originals is down slightly from last year, but still in the 12% range. Mean advances for originals are up considerably, from the $50K range last year to the $90K range this year. Mean conversion advances are upon from the $30K range last year to the $70K range this year.
Miscellany
Percentage of original product development deals which include required sales quotas for the publisher/distributor to maintain a license: 37%
Percentage of original product development deals which leave copyright with the developer: 57%
Percentage of original product development deals which leave source code with the publisher: 72%
Percentage of conversion deals which include royalties to the converting developer: 63%
Only 12% of developers routinely use an intermediary, and 17% sometimes. 51% never do. The most popular intermediary is a lawyer, followed by an agent.
Publisher Information
Following is a chart of publisher ratings. Note that only the mean values of Tools & Technical Support and Ease of Negotiation are below the nominal average value of 5.5. Many of the remaining mean values are above 6.5.
(Not available)
Generally speaking, the individual publisher ratings indicate that developers are collectively more pleased with publishers. There are a variety of possible explanations that come to mind, but whatever the reason, publishers deserve credit for the progress they have made.
Next Year
Next year the survey will be better targetted toward the population we’ve become, with questions more suited for the majority of respondents. If you have questions about or for the survey, I can be reached on GEnie at EVANROB or HERO.GAMES, and on Usenet at herosoftware@cup.portal.com.
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Making It Real
Elon Guon and Katherine Lawrence
[This article is based on the seminar that Ellen and Katherine presented at the 1992 Computer Game Developers’ Conference.]
Ellen: This is a brief introduction to the “building blocks” of storywriting. I look at story as something you construct, not art but craftsmanship. You create and fit pieces together to create a complete work. We’ll cover the basics now, get into finer details in the Q&A.
My name is Ellen Guon. I started out as a children’s television scriptwriter, working on various shows: “Jem,” “My Little Pony,” “Bravestarr,” and “Dinosaucers.” I’m a published fantasy and science fiction author, with one book out and two more that’ll be published this year. I started in computer games as a Project Manager for Sierra on game conversions, and then was a lead writer and occasional director at Origin Systems for five of the Wing Commander games. I’m starting at Electronic Arts in their educational games department in a couple weeks.
Katherine: My name is Katherine Lawrence, and I’ve been writing for television since 1985. My credits include “Dungeons & Dragons,” “Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies” and most recently, “Conan the Adventurer” which will air this fall. I’ve worked in series development at Marvel Productions and Filmation Studios.
Development is where “Making it Real” starts.
First comes deciding what the series is going to be about. This usually means either obtaining the rights to a pre-existing character, like Spiderman or Conan, or starting from scratch by choosing a target audience. By target audience, I mean an age range, and gender. (Television executive perception is that there are shows with “boy appeal” and “girl appeal” though there has to be some cross-over to get good ratings.)
You wouldn’t expect 2-6 year olds to watch the same series as 8-12 year olds. Not that they don’t but one shouldn’t expect it.
Ellen: In a computer game, development begins a similar way. You’ll have a basic premise, such as is the project going to be a flight sim, an adventure game or an RPG, and you may have an existing universe to work within.
You SHOULD have a target market. If you don’t have a market in mind, I suggest you figure that out before you start. In any case, you’ll have similar guidelines to work within, just like a television show.
Katherine: Once you have the initial idea, and know who your audience is, you begin creating the backstory, the history of the characters, and the universe.
Let’s take an example, and follow it through. We decide we want to create an action/adventure show aimed at 8-12 year olds, since that’s what the network is most likely to buy this year, or so rumor has it.
Ellen: or in computer games, you know you want to do a flight sim, since that’s what’s selling this year.
Katherine: So we sit around and come up with the time period. Do we want “today,” futuristic, or from history? We choose historical, something vaguely medieval. And since we’re aiming it at 8-12 year olds, we want real adventure with risks, not strictly moral “feel-good” characters. We want characters that can DO something so the audience will identify with them.
Ellen: What Katherine is saying is KNOW YOUR MARKET before you start. Do your research. Figure out what’s going to sell to your selected audience. Doing a story that’s appropriate for 5-7 year olds won’t sell in an 8-12 market. Once you know your basic direction, you can start figuring out the details. Like story and character.
Basically, computer game development is similar in this regard to television. A good place to start is figuring out what your universe is. Once you have that, you can narrow down to specific characters and story. Again, all of this builds out of your basic approach to the project.
In the Wing Commander universe, Chris Roberts decided that he wanted to create a space combat game, a flight simulator. From that basic concept, the universe of humans vs. Kilrathi evolved. Later, when Origin realized that players were interested in the story aspect of the game as well as the space combat, the game evolved into characters and involved plotlines.
Katherine: Once you identify the universe, and the type of story you want, based upon the target audience, you begin creating characters.
You need your heros and villains. Because this is television, we have certain “rules.” We need a strong mix of ethnic types and genders. And we can’t have a lot of weapons with sharp edges since the studio and network might get sued if little Charlie decides to use a butcher knife to play Adventure! with his little sister as the villain from last Saturday’s episode.
Ellen: While those same guidelines don’t apply in the computer games industry, as we don’t have anything like the network’s “Standards and Practices” board, there still should be some sense of moral responsibility in your writing. The television guidelines are worth looking into just to see what guidelines exist.
When creating heros and villains, I tend to think in terms of shades of grey rather than black and white. “Flawed heros and redeemable villains.” There is no such thing as a perfectly altruistic person out there in our world.
Katherine: Well, perhaps Mother Teresa.
Ellen: If there were, would you want to buy a used car from that person? Likewise, no one thinks of themselves as being totally evil. To make a character interesting, as well as “real,” a hero should have problems, even a potentially fatal flaw in his or her outlook or character. Overcoming that flaw or problem is part of what makes your story interesting, part of the B storyline. (We’ll talk more about that later.) And a villain should be someone whose motivation you can understand, maybe even sympathize with. A villain...such as some of the world leaders we’ve had in this century...doesn’t think of himself as a villain, or as evil. They’re justified in their own minds. It’s these kind of innovations in a character that make you care about what happens to them.
The trick with this is to make the character flaws or problems believable, as well as use it discreetly. This was a problem in the “Back to the Future” movies, where they really slammed you over the head with Marty McFly’s problems about being called a coward.
Katherine: What Ellen said is what works in television as well. Even the worst villains on “G.I.Joe” had their vulnerabilities and the heros were never perfect.
Okay, you’ve got your main characters down. The next thing is to build the character inter-relationships. Not just who is in love with whom, but who has a grudge against whom, who yelled at whom yesterday, and what they want to do with the other character tomorrow. None of us live in a vacuum, nor should our characters.
Ellen: In WC2, Steve Beeman and I did this in a very direct and concise fashion. Those of you who’ve read Mike Harrison’s “WC Strategy Guide” may have seen our one-paragraph character descriptions which describe exactly how all the characters interact with each other.
One character may be a lover to the hero or heroine, or a parental figure, or a sibling, or a rival, or anything else. Once you lay out these inter- relationships, a lot of the character interaction in the story becomes very clear.
In WC2, Ralgha/Hobbes and Downtown have a very special parental relationship. Ralgha is a renegade Kilrathi who rescued Downtown from slavery on a Kilrathi planet. Now Downtown has grown up, is a combat pilot, and they’re serving aboard the same ship. When someone accuses Ralgha of being the murderer aboard that ship, Downtown very naturally is going to leap to Ralgha’s defense. There are many other examples of this in WC2, which are natural interactions based upon the existing relationships.
Katherine: The next and final step to building real characters is character quirks. Those little things that aren’t essential to survival, and may even be counter-survival, but are so very human (or Kilrathi).
It’s from these that stories can grow. For example, my first script sale was for the “Dungeons and Dragons” series from Marvel Productions. One of the characters didn’t DO anything, and I figured it must bother her. So I came up with a story that depended upon that sense of isolation and uselessness she felt when surrounded by all the other heroic types. That’s what CBS liked about it, and they bought it. (Yes, that’s one of the secrets to successfully pitching story ideas in television: find the least-utilized character and build a story around him, her or it.)
Ellen: In WC2 I used this trick of building quirks as well. Actually, Angel’s “by the book” attitude wasn’t a quirk that I put in, it was in the original game before I started working on the series. I thought about that, the kind of personality that’s so dedicated to everything being proper and military, by the book. What would happen to that kind of person when she realizes it’s only a facade that she’s put up between herself and the world, and it’s crumbling down?
In SM2, when Bossman is killed, that’s the first break in Angel’s armor: the scene where she asks Bluehair (the player) just to stay with her awhile, talk to her. She doesn’t want to be alone. Later, when her best friend, Spirit, dies, that destroys the last of the facade and prompts the love affair between herself and Bluehair. This is a case of the plot developing directly out of a character’s quirks.
Katherine: Remember, there are almost ALWAYS reasons for personality quirks. That’s why there are so many psychiatrists and therapists around.
Okay, you have your universe and your characters. Now comes using them to make the plot real. As Ellen said, and as in my example, plot can come out of character. It can also come from wanting to torture your character with a situation. (Sometimes I think all writers are sadists at heart, considering what we put our characters through.)
Ellen: Basically, stories break down into two kinds. In television we call them the A and B storylines. The “A” storyline is your action-based story. “B” is your character evolution story. A good plot needs both kinds of stories. Without both, you’ll either have a non-stop action story that has no character involvement in it at all, or a story that’s all characters that aren’t DOING anything. “Steel Magnolia’s,” while a terrific film, certainly comes to mind as an example of that second possibility.
The best stories interweave the A and B plots into a single cohesive whole. If you can, try to intersect the climactic scenes of both stories at the same point. A good example of this is “Star Wars,” where Luke finally figures out how to use that dratted Force and overcomes his various problems and insecurities (the B story) at the same time he’s trying to destroy the Death Star (the A story).
You can create tension in your storyline by interweaving these two types of storylines. It’s like a rollercoaster ride. What I prefer to do is alternate the high-tension scenes of both storylines, so that there’s always some kind of dramatic tension, either in the action or character development storyline. My favorite movie that illustrates this is “The African Queen,” which has Hepburn and Bogart professing their undying love for each other as they’re about to be executed. The tensions in both A and B plotlines build upon each other, especially when Bogart asks the German ship captain to perform their marriage ceremony before he has them executed. As the Captain says, “I now pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.”
Katherine: Not that either just an A story or just a B story won’t work. Flight simulations are just A stories, for example. But when the B story, the “character arc” is added, it becomes something “real.”
When creating your stories, however, you should also look down the road to the “pay-off.” How are you going to capitalize on what you’re doing? As in “Star Wars” where we get the payoff of feeling good that the Death Star is destroyed, and also identify with overcoming fears and insecurities. You don’t just need to have a conclusion, you need to grab the reader, audience or game player and make them not only take the journey with you, but perhaps even drag YOU along, they’re so involved in the story.
Ellen: The payoff is what you’re building to throughout the story. In the A story, that’s a physical victory, such as destroying K’Tithrak Mang at the end of WC2. The payoff for the B story in WC2 is a little more complex than that. At the beginning of WC2, you’ve been court-martialed, demoted, shipped off to the middle of nowhere, and basically had a very bad day. Everyone in the universe seems to hate you now, especially Admiral Tolwyn, who presided at your court- martial.
The A story of WC2 is simple: you destroy the bad guys’ space station. The B story payoff is that you’re restored to your original rank, your name is cleared, and most importantly, everyone thinks you’re a hero again. Especially Tolwyn. Earning his respect is possibly the most major payoff out of the entire story, even though it may only be part of the adrenaline rush of the ending for most players.
The payoff is the single most critical aspect of your game. Without this, there won’t be the emotional punch for your audience, a sense of satisfaction at the end of your story.
Katherine: For example, using “Star Wars” again, the emotional payoff isn’t the destruction of the Death Star, but that ceremony before the assembled Alliance when Luke receives his medal from the princess, and fulfills his dreams. THAT’S the reason people went to see that movie again and again, not just the incredible roller-coaster ride of the adventure.
Now you’ve got your series or game created, have the characters, and interweaved plots. Is your job done? Not necessarily. As “Happy Days” and “Wing Commander” have proved, there’s a definite market for spin-off stories. You can take all this work you’ve done and build on it. There are Secret Missions and “Mork and Mindy” as examples. When you’ve created a “real” universe with real characters and stories the game player or viewer like, use all that work and keep the audience coming back for more. That’s the real point of “Making it Real.”
Ellen: In other words, once you’ve put all this work into your story and characters, get the most mileage out of it that you can.
We’ve talked a lot about some of the similarities between television and computer games, and some “tricks of the trade” from television that you can use in games. But computer games are a very different medium, and there are some things you might want to consider when creating a story and characters for use in a game.
Computer games are interactive. Games have elements other than story, such as combat, puzzles and tasks the player must accomplish to win the game. When you’re creating a story for a game, you want to interweave these elements into your story, just as seamlessly as you’d add the character motivations and quirks, the background for the universe, etc. Make these ele-ments PART of your story, integral to the plot, etc.
Katherine: Whereas in television your primary concern is coming up with sufficient cliff-hanging act-breaks to keep the viewers coming back after the commercials.
Ellen: Chris Roberts said it very well, “People buy WC for the flight simulator, not the story. But the story is the glue that holds the missions together, that makes you want to play just one more mission every time.”
Katherine: And always keep in mind the ancillary rights. Video games have already been turned into television series, and there’s no reason a really good computer game can’t be turned into a movie.
But this is a two-way street. In another couple of years, some of you could well be up here, telling television or movie scriptwriters how to make the interactivity work. We all create magic with our writing, the only difference is the medium. That’s what makes what we do so important, and so rewarding.
Lastly, we both highly recommend J. Michael Straczynski's THE COMPLETE BOOK OF SCRIPTWRITING, from Writer's Digest Books. A new edition is coming out this Summer (1992). It covers radio, stage, television and movies, and is one of my own resource books. It can be ordered from the Writer's Digest Book Club, or found in most bookstores, including the chains.
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Conference Report
Chris Crawford
The 1992 Computer Game Developers’ Conference was held at the Westin Hotel in Santa Clara, California, on April 25th - 28th. Nearly 600 people from all over the world came to learn the latest poop on the industry.
We started off with a reception Saturday night hosted by Apple. It was well-attended and the mood was genuinely festive. The sense of community that was one of the fundamental goals for the conference has clearly been achieved; I observed a great many happy reunions of friends who hadn’t seen each other since the last conference. It was also obvious that there were newcomers to the conference; they sat in forlorn little groups, looking rather lost amid this sea of conviviality. I’m happy to say that by Tuesday such groups had long since disappeared as the newcomers were welcomed into the community and made to feel part of the group.
Sunday started off the conference editorial program, and the lectures and round tables were all well-attended. Indeed, the round tables, deliberately restricted to a maximum of 30 participants to preserve the intimate atmosphere, were all filled. This is clearly the most popular portion of the conference program. Fortunately, the board had kept open several time slots on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning for repeats of popular round tables, and so we were able to accomodate almost everyone who wished to be there.
As usual, there were some great lectures. The Fat Man’s lecture “Music, Art, and the Blue Sword of Gralfarniblurt” was a rousing success and an inspiration to its audience. My own “Lessons From Patton Strikes Back” was so good <ahem> that I’ll be printing a digest of it in a future issue, minus the food fight with two pounds of cake icing. Brian Moriarty wowed ‘em with his analytical history of a critical phase in the development of the cinema (complete with film clips), and although he steadfastly refused to draw parallels with the world of computer gaming, any dolt with two neurons to rub together could make the appropriate analogies. Brenda Laurel (“Virtual Reality Update”) dazzled her audience with her utterly unique combination of contrarian wit, profound insight, faux-sexual innuendo, academic rigor, and damn good horse sense. In “Battle of the Multimedia Platforms”, Stewart Bonn, John Baker, Kelly Flock, and Bill Davis titillated the audience with good-natured competitive banter and some serious insight into where the Big Boys think multimedia is headed. Sid Meier’s round table was so popular that anybody who got there “only” five minutes early was turned away at the door, and the repeat session also filled.
There were, I must admit, a few problems as well. One speaker began his lecture by announcing that he hadn’t prepared anything but would be happy to take questions; he had to be rescued from the crowd by the riot police. Another speaker accidentally included in his slide set a photo with somewhat inappropriate content of a sexual nature which then prompted outraged howls from parts of the audience. Oops.
The banquet on Monday night featured a speech by John Perry Barlow. Mr. Barlow is a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and an insightful observer of the software scene. He offered us a serious and intricate speech, with none of the rah-rah that some members of the audience seemed to expect. Indeed, his pungent comments on the moral state of computer games surprised and stung some attendees. He was at his best talking about “testosterone poisoning” in computer games, and documented his points by quoting the box copy from Populous II, whose lurid prose provides as good an example of testosterone poisoning as I have seen. All in all, I thought it an excellent and thought-provoking speech for those big enough to handle serious moral jabs.
After the speech, we recognized products that the attendees thought worthy of note. This year’s approach was in sharp contrast with last year’s conventional awards ceremony. This year we avoided the elitist tone by refusing to think in terms of awards and instead recognizing products that the attendees thought to be worthy of note, for whatever reason. Another nice touch was the actual recognition. Rather than asking one person to come forward, receive an award, and recite a little speech, we instead asked everybody who worked on the product in any function to stand up and be recognized. It worked very well and the feedback we’ve received has been most supportive of the change.
We also had some prizes. Craig Fryar of Apple Computer gave away a Powerbook and MicroSoft gave away some development environments. Since this was a costume banquet, Brenda Laurel and John Barlow gave away prizes for the best costumes. There were some truly outrageous costumes there. Does anybody know who that huge fish was?
Tuesday was a slow day. People had been staying up late each night, schmoozing to the max, and by Tuesday morning sleep deprivation was starting to take its toll. Nevertheless, the town meeting at noon was well-attended and the board was kept busy taking notes of ideas and suggestions for next year.
For me, the best part of the conference lay in the private conversations with other game designers. I had some stimulating and intense discussions with Sid Meier, Will Wright, Dan Bunten, and Brian Moriarty. Two lessons in particular struck me: first, I was surprised to learn just how literate these top designers are. In a field dominated by video-think, these people are voracious and enthusiastic readers on all manner of subjects. There’s a lesson here for aspiring game designers.
My second shock was the skepticism about optical media expressed by the designers I spoke with. I had always thought of myself as the Lone Skeptic of CD, the crotchedy old fart denying the impending revolution like some crazy anti-prophet in the desert. I found myself defending my claim that compact disk technology won’t go big time until 1995 — from people who thought that estimate too optimistic! Sheesh, it’s getting harder and harder to be a radical every day...
By all accounts, this was the most successful conference to date. The realities of interpersonal interactions guarantee that the comments I hear will be biased towards the positive; even so, the tenor of the congratulatory comments I received was stronger, deeper, and more heartfelt than in any previous year. People really seemed to mean it when they said, “This was the best conference ever!” More important, the written feedback forms bear out my anecdotal observations. The attendees were quite lavish in their praise, and the complaints were almost always tempered with reassurances that the conference as a whole was still a smashing success.
Next year’s conference will again be at the Westin Hotel — our nomadic conference at last seems to have found a home. The board of directors has already begun its deliberations for next year and we’ve — oh, but that’s a secret. You’ll be receiving a call for papers by September, and then a registration announcement by Christmas. If you missed the 1992 conference, you have a full year to kick yourself before the next one rolls around.
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