My apologies to those who've missed my posting of late, the last few weeks have been a maelstrom of chaos at times. My stepson (and dad to my two grandsons) spent a few days in the hospital, at first the doc's were certain it was his gall bladder, but later some "House" wannabe diagnosed some torn cartilage and acid reflux and discharged him with extreme haste. Three days later, a visit to Jose's personal doctor put him back on the track of gall bladder problems, a second gastroenterologist rediagnosed a gall bladder problem, and followups confirmed. 16 days after Doc 1 discharged Jose from the hospital, he had his gall bladder removed. The pain of the previous 3 weeks finally disappeared.
While Jose was down with the symptoms and after the surgery during recovery, Irma and I took care of our two grandsons on the days that Jose has custody (4 days a week). They're 9 and 4, and quite the handful. We ended up the care three weeks ago when Jose was recovered enough to return to doting parental duties. So what do I do? Come down with a nasty 3 day stomach bug that had me unable to eat for a weekend. Then, barely a day after I returned to work, A cough developed that turned into Bronchitus. Another week of Phyuck! (and really strong cough medicine that turned me into a drooling zombie...)
So... I"m finally back to work, though not fully back to strength. And I've done no writing for more than 6 weeks. Mother told me there'd be days (and days and days) like that..... ;-)
In the meantime, Reader Matt (probably missing my commentary and trying to stir me from my apparent hibernation) asked me if one reason I quit writing IFGS and started writing "for real" was because of the limitations of putting out my story the way I envisioned it when the actors (NPC's) have to ad-lib everything, since the players haven't a script. In response to that (and Matt, I'll be sending out a more detailed response later this week when I gather my thoughts in specific), I've put together some more thoughts on the differences between writing IFGS and "for real".
To a large degree, when you write for IFGS, you have to give over control of your story to your NPC's and staff, since there is no way to fully predict how players will act and react to your story. Having said that, in the mini-game series, (and to a lesser degree, in Sha'te Valley), I put an incredible amount of time in trying to tailor the story line to the known players characters and predict how they will act, and for the most part, I was successful. Though I can't put emotions into the PC's heads, I had some luck in getting them to "feel" the way I wanted them to in order to move the story forward. I made the antagonist characters larger than life (almost cartoonish) villains who had obvious character traits, strengths and weaknesses and made certain that the actors portraying them got the background as to why they acted the way they did (at least as far as the needs of the story went). Tailoring the NPC's backgrounds made it fairly easy to target PC's "buttons", for example, by understanding how Ray portrays his PC ranger, Evro, I was able to make Phorix a character that Evro would be torn over, (Good guy gone bad? Bad guy with honor? Wrong place at wrong time?). Thus, I was able to lead the PC's down the (8 lane wide concrete highway) plot path I'd laid out.
In my writing, I don't have to be so cartoonish about the antagonists or protagonists. So long as I make it reasonable, I can lead the reader down the plot path that I choose, without making it so blatently obvious. Antagonists can be subtle, more believable, and hence, more to my story liking.
Beyond that limitation, IFGS writing has to satisfy a "sanctioning committee" (SC), whose job is to make sure the game is safe, doable, and complies with IFGS rules in such a way that PC's won't feel 'cheated'. There was a degree of conflict between what they felt was fair, and what I felt was an important part of the storyline, unfortunately, I had a long term view of where the story went, and that by the end of the series I was working on, the PC's would feel successful, but within any given minigame, some would feel like they ended up on the dirty end of the stick. I chose my PC's such that they would see the long term and not file complaints against the SC for an unfair game, but the SC wasn't able to take the long term view. Mostly, I suspect, because they had other games on their review docket, and had to treat all the game designers the same, giving me a break could cause designer number 2 to cry foul if he didn't get the same break. So, in the interest of fairness, some blandness was required in the overall game design.
I can be unfair to my characters when I write, they won't complain. 'Nuff said.
Anyway, there's a lot of other reasons why IFGS writing is different for me than fiction writing. There are a lot of similarities, as well, perhaps I'll touch on them next time. I promise, it won't be nearly two months before I continue...
TTFN,
Jim
While Jose was down with the symptoms and after the surgery during recovery, Irma and I took care of our two grandsons on the days that Jose has custody (4 days a week). They're 9 and 4, and quite the handful. We ended up the care three weeks ago when Jose was recovered enough to return to doting parental duties. So what do I do? Come down with a nasty 3 day stomach bug that had me unable to eat for a weekend. Then, barely a day after I returned to work, A cough developed that turned into Bronchitus. Another week of Phyuck! (and really strong cough medicine that turned me into a drooling zombie...)
So... I"m finally back to work, though not fully back to strength. And I've done no writing for more than 6 weeks. Mother told me there'd be days (and days and days) like that..... ;-)
In the meantime, Reader Matt (probably missing my commentary and trying to stir me from my apparent hibernation) asked me if one reason I quit writing IFGS and started writing "for real" was because of the limitations of putting out my story the way I envisioned it when the actors (NPC's) have to ad-lib everything, since the players haven't a script. In response to that (and Matt, I'll be sending out a more detailed response later this week when I gather my thoughts in specific), I've put together some more thoughts on the differences between writing IFGS and "for real".
To a large degree, when you write for IFGS, you have to give over control of your story to your NPC's and staff, since there is no way to fully predict how players will act and react to your story. Having said that, in the mini-game series, (and to a lesser degree, in Sha'te Valley), I put an incredible amount of time in trying to tailor the story line to the known players characters and predict how they will act, and for the most part, I was successful. Though I can't put emotions into the PC's heads, I had some luck in getting them to "feel" the way I wanted them to in order to move the story forward. I made the antagonist characters larger than life (almost cartoonish) villains who had obvious character traits, strengths and weaknesses and made certain that the actors portraying them got the background as to why they acted the way they did (at least as far as the needs of the story went). Tailoring the NPC's backgrounds made it fairly easy to target PC's "buttons", for example, by understanding how Ray portrays his PC ranger, Evro, I was able to make Phorix a character that Evro would be torn over, (Good guy gone bad? Bad guy with honor? Wrong place at wrong time?). Thus, I was able to lead the PC's down the (8 lane wide concrete highway) plot path I'd laid out.
In my writing, I don't have to be so cartoonish about the antagonists or protagonists. So long as I make it reasonable, I can lead the reader down the plot path that I choose, without making it so blatently obvious. Antagonists can be subtle, more believable, and hence, more to my story liking.
Beyond that limitation, IFGS writing has to satisfy a "sanctioning committee" (SC), whose job is to make sure the game is safe, doable, and complies with IFGS rules in such a way that PC's won't feel 'cheated'. There was a degree of conflict between what they felt was fair, and what I felt was an important part of the storyline, unfortunately, I had a long term view of where the story went, and that by the end of the series I was working on, the PC's would feel successful, but within any given minigame, some would feel like they ended up on the dirty end of the stick. I chose my PC's such that they would see the long term and not file complaints against the SC for an unfair game, but the SC wasn't able to take the long term view. Mostly, I suspect, because they had other games on their review docket, and had to treat all the game designers the same, giving me a break could cause designer number 2 to cry foul if he didn't get the same break. So, in the interest of fairness, some blandness was required in the overall game design.
I can be unfair to my characters when I write, they won't complain. 'Nuff said.
Anyway, there's a lot of other reasons why IFGS writing is different for me than fiction writing. There are a lot of similarities, as well, perhaps I'll touch on them next time. I promise, it won't be nearly two months before I continue...
TTFN,
Jim
