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What Star Trek taught me about writing games
Author
This is just a general thought about what writing for games SHOULD be.
I''ve just watched Star Trek: Voyager episode 264, aka Human Error. The episode deals with the pursuit of fantasy by a cyborg, 7 of 9 (a regular on the series for those who haven''t seen Voyager).
Background:
Every Star Trek series puts a different spin on the Pinocchio archetype. In Voyager, the "mechanical man", so to speak, is a female cyborg from a hive-mind civilization known as The Borg. As the series progresses, she is encouraged to pursue socialization and general emotional stimulation. In this episode in particular, she is engaging in a fantasy of intimate relations inside a virtual reality simulator known in Trek-ese as The Holodeck.
In the middle of the episode, there is a moment which for me represents the pinnacle of writing for interactive media. 7 of 9 is playing piano, but is using a metronome to keep time. In typically Trek-nocchio fashion, when one of the NPCs in the game turns off the metronome in order to "loosen her up", she falters and wants to quit. Then, the moment: the NPC challenges her, encourages her, and refuses to let her quit. It''s a much more poetic moment onscreen, of course, but what I want to get at is this: shouldn''t NPCs in games do this? Taunting bots take a stab at the sentiment, but they''re a relatively minor phenomenon overall. Shouldn''t NPCs in general have an opinion on the task the player is attempting; one way or the other, shouldn''t there be "chatter" about opening that door, or fighting this next battle, or whatever it is that the player is doing to soldier on?
I''m interested in what people think.
ld
<Insert technical jargon here>
Seriously though, I agree for the most part. All my games do this. The writer must recognize that every person in the game is REAL and not merely background. I''ve written two RPG scripts somewhat similar to Final Fantasy in presentation, and I''ve actually found that the NPC dialogue is harder to write than the actual story. I try to make each person real. To each have separate individual elements of personality that come forth in the little amounts of dialogue that they have. Of course, this doesn''t mean that every person comments on the task at hand. Some have their own lives to worry about, or, in some cases, are uninterested in talking all together(something you NEVER see with NPCs in games).
However, I do feel that overemphasizing the NPC/Playable Character relationship might tarnish the overall realism of the game, depending on the situation. In my games, for the most part, most of the NPCs don''t really know the scale of what the characters are doing. They''re just going around worrying about their own problems. This is probably different in many other games, but the interactivity between the NPCs and the PCs truly should reflect the overall situation of the game.
Essentially, I agree with the overall implications of your post, in how the NPCs should be more realistic and, truly, more meaningful. However, there''s a fine line between being useful and being unrealistic. It''s a very delicate line to walk, especially with a portion of the game that most designers tend to spend little time on.
Seriously though, I agree for the most part. All my games do this. The writer must recognize that every person in the game is REAL and not merely background. I''ve written two RPG scripts somewhat similar to Final Fantasy in presentation, and I''ve actually found that the NPC dialogue is harder to write than the actual story. I try to make each person real. To each have separate individual elements of personality that come forth in the little amounts of dialogue that they have. Of course, this doesn''t mean that every person comments on the task at hand. Some have their own lives to worry about, or, in some cases, are uninterested in talking all together(something you NEVER see with NPCs in games).
However, I do feel that overemphasizing the NPC/Playable Character relationship might tarnish the overall realism of the game, depending on the situation. In my games, for the most part, most of the NPCs don''t really know the scale of what the characters are doing. They''re just going around worrying about their own problems. This is probably different in many other games, but the interactivity between the NPCs and the PCs truly should reflect the overall situation of the game.
Essentially, I agree with the overall implications of your post, in how the NPCs should be more realistic and, truly, more meaningful. However, there''s a fine line between being useful and being unrealistic. It''s a very delicate line to walk, especially with a portion of the game that most designers tend to spend little time on.
<Insert technical jargon here>
Seriously though, I agree for the most part. All my games do this. The writer must recognize that every person in the game is REAL and not merely background. I''ve written two RPG scripts somewhat similar to Final Fantasy in presentation, and I''ve actually found that the NPC dialogue is harder to write than the actual story. I try to make each person real. To each have separate individual elements of personality that come forth in the little amounts of dialogue that they have. Of course, this doesn''t mean that every person comments on the task at hand. Some have their own lives to worry about, or, in some cases, are uninterested in talking all together(something you NEVER see with NPCs in games).
However, I do feel that overemphasizing the NPC/Playable Character relationship might tarnish the overall realism of the game, depending on the situation. In my games, for the most part, most of the NPCs don''t really know the scale of what the characters are doing. They''re just going around worrying about their own problems. This is probably different in many other games, but the interactivity between the NPCs and the PCs truly should reflect the overall situation of the game.
Essentially, I agree with the overall implications of your post, in how the NPCs should be more realistic and, truly, more meaningful. However, there''s a fine line between being useful and being unrealistic. It''s a very delicate line to walk, especially with a portion of the game that most designers tend to spend little time on.
Seriously though, I agree for the most part. All my games do this. The writer must recognize that every person in the game is REAL and not merely background. I''ve written two RPG scripts somewhat similar to Final Fantasy in presentation, and I''ve actually found that the NPC dialogue is harder to write than the actual story. I try to make each person real. To each have separate individual elements of personality that come forth in the little amounts of dialogue that they have. Of course, this doesn''t mean that every person comments on the task at hand. Some have their own lives to worry about, or, in some cases, are uninterested in talking all together(something you NEVER see with NPCs in games).
However, I do feel that overemphasizing the NPC/Playable Character relationship might tarnish the overall realism of the game, depending on the situation. In my games, for the most part, most of the NPCs don''t really know the scale of what the characters are doing. They''re just going around worrying about their own problems. This is probably different in many other games, but the interactivity between the NPCs and the PCs truly should reflect the overall situation of the game.
Essentially, I agree with the overall implications of your post, in how the NPCs should be more realistic and, truly, more meaningful. However, there''s a fine line between being useful and being unrealistic. It''s a very delicate line to walk, especially with a portion of the game that most designers tend to spend little time on.
if there is one thing star trek has taught me it is that there are no ugly people in the future.
There are good writers working on Star Trek, and I don''t know why I find people''s high opinion of them to be somewhat distasteful.
Aside from the relevance of the subject matter, there are much better writers working on shows like 24, The West Wing, the first few seasons of X-Files, etc.
But I guess that''s an entirely irrelevant opinion...
Aside from the relevance of the subject matter, there are much better writers working on shows like 24, The West Wing, the first few seasons of X-Files, etc.
But I guess that''s an entirely irrelevant opinion...
I think the problem here is one of implementation, not of writing. How are you going to code ''opinions'' for a character in a game? It''s not that no-one thought it would be a good idea, it''s just that it''s not that easy to do well.
[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost ]
[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost ]
quote: Original post by Tacit
There are good writers working on Star Trek, and I don''t know why I find people''s high opinion of them to be somewhat distasteful.
I find all the psuedoscientific bullshit turns me off somewhat: "If we modify the main deflector dish to emit a beam of phasic posi-magnetron particles, we might be able to generate a harmonic wave variance field to collapse the sub-space quantum singularity"
I also think the story lines are a lot less interesting than the old series. In the original star trek, the crew generally had to find some vaguely plausible solution to their problems (only occasionally did they resort to the technobabble solution) and the situations they were put in were generally more compelling. The more recent Star Trek + spinoffs, it is generally a soap opera in space. The ''plot'' of the episode basically serves as a background for some rather tedious whaffle about a particular characters personal life. Not always true, there are a lot of excellent episodes, but that is the general feeling I get after watching ST:NG or any of the newer ones.
Too true. Classic trek is the best. Or ST2:The Wrath of Khan. In TNG they always use "subspace fields" to explain everything that''s currently (and often permanently) impossible.
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"It''s groin-grabbingly transcendent!" - Mr. Gamble, my teacher, speaking of his C++ AP class
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"It''s groin-grabbingly transcendent!" - Mr. Gamble, my teacher, speaking of his C++ AP class
Hey,
One thing to think about in the feild of NPC oppinion is this: Is the player really going to give the NPC oppinion any value? In other words, does the player really care what the NPC''s oppionion is, or is he just going to do what his initial idea was?
''I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow of freaks...'' - TOOL
[TheBlackJester]
One thing to think about in the feild of NPC oppinion is this: Is the player really going to give the NPC oppinion any value? In other words, does the player really care what the NPC''s oppionion is, or is he just going to do what his initial idea was?
''I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow of freaks...'' - TOOL
[TheBlackJester]
Author
I think it depends on delivery. Bosses always had an opinion, although it was invariably "You''ll never catch me! Ha Ha Ah!" Nevertheless, they were a shitload better than the passionless endings of Deus Ex, I have to say. For all of the meantime beauty, the game''s endings were a slap in the face in signed & sealed in triplicate.
However, opponents have been the only characters to have even simplistic opinions in the overwhelming majority of games I''ve played. There haven''t been a whole lot of "Should we be doing this?" or "I''ll be over there" or even "You suck. Let me do this" moments in any of the games I''ve played, and my thought is that this is a worthwhile interactive element.
ld
However, opponents have been the only characters to have even simplistic opinions in the overwhelming majority of games I''ve played. There haven''t been a whole lot of "Should we be doing this?" or "I''ll be over there" or even "You suck. Let me do this" moments in any of the games I''ve played, and my thought is that this is a worthwhile interactive element.
ld
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