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A better story: knowing how to ask the right questions

In an interview with Jim Rossingol at Rock Paper Shotgun,  Brad Wardell (of Stardock) reveals that he has been working on a collaborative project with Random House to fill out the backstory for his upcoming game, Elemental: War of Magic, in hopes of producing both a series of novels and a more comprehensive game world.

I'm terribly excited about this development, and I hope this is a huge success for both Wardell and Random House.

___________

Let me show you what I see:

We've seen plenty of games die on the table for lack of good writing - and this *even when* writers (or in Fable 2's case, stagers and cinematographers) are in the process from the very beginning.

What games have had (for the most part) are designers who come up w/ questions, and they bring in famous writers to answer those questions. The problem is, these writers never really have the ability to ask whether those questions are even the *right* ones to answer, or whether a reworking and reframing the question (or throwing out altogether) would be the better option.

I'm not saying that editors are the best people for creativity (they interact with writers to make good product), but the fact that the Random House guys said, "no, *never* just do generic fantasy" is a *huge* deal.

________________

Motivation, logic, reason, a realized world and history - these are key to *any* story, and if games want to mature into a strong medium alongside novels and film, then *this* is essential. The happy accidents of Doom and the auteurism of early RPGs are no longer acceptable.

(NOTE: I'd be interested to see if the big boys like Bioware already employ an editing and review process like this... they're smart enough to have lead writers and series bibles, but I wonder, if ME had an editor, if it would feel less nostalgic and more innovative than it does right now).

A quick update

I'm sure everyone cares, but my thesis work is coming along swimmingly, by which i mean, it's actually *coming along*. So, following Seth Godin's advice, I won't apologize... just wanted to keep everyone updated. Hopefully in a month or so I can pick this back up more regularly... until then, I have more important things to work on :)

North, to the future!

Sean

PS I'm also digging back in to the audiobook version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged ... I am simultaneously struck by the resonance her ideas have with current conservative values and philosophies (and offering interesting hypotheticals for the end results of liberal programs in a way that its adherents could utilize)... and the striking absence of these examples in conservative rhetoric. I didn't realize it was a a big jump from the "free market is in everyone's social interest" and "self-interest *is* the public good." More on that later, I guess.

Potentiality, or how an ebook reader got me thinking about the future

I can barely remember a time before books were digital in my life.

They still are, for a lot of people, and my foray into the world of Kindles and e-reader apps is by far the exception rather than the rule. But it still strikes me as odd that I’ve turned the page (apologies for the pun) and I am now in the both exhilarating and frustrating process of accommodating a new piece of technology into my life.

Like most new technologies for me, the Kindle was not a purchase but a gift, a piece of technology highly vetted by my father and now available to me for my own evaluation. (I have been using Kindle for iPhone for quite awhile; the iPod Touch running it was similarly a gift). At first I was quite excited by the sheer amount of free content - I spent a few hours combing through the Kindle Store, eagerly snapping up free-for-a-time and public domain works to access on my iPod. Gifts carry a bit more discretion, but when it comes to free, why be choosy?

On one level, I wish I had been more choosy - my Kindle archives are littered with discarded books, some that I will return to “one of these days” and others I will probably never read. On another level, I am left with a few really good PD books that I’ve been meaning to read (mostly Russian authors, though I worry about the quality of translation), as well as a good digital copy of the ESV Bible.

The ability to download sample chapters, the second major advantage of the Kindle, was an option I discovered soon after my raid into the public domain storage bins. Amazon allows Kindle readers to download a certain portion of the beginning of any book in the Kindle store for sampling, with a quick purchase option available at the end for interested parties. This was the game changer for me, and seems potentially revolutionary.