Topic: Tips needed for a games-related presentation

[alkis21]

On February 5th, the scriptwriters union of Greece are holding a conference titled "Script and Digital Games". I've been invited to deliver a presentation. The idea is to bring together two parallel (at least in Greece) worlds, those of professional TV & cinema scriptwriters and computer game scriptwriters, exchange ideas, maybe even discuss possibilities of collaboration.

Now, I am no stranger to the art of holding a microphone (so to speak), and I have given speeches in the past, but those were related to boring topics such as neural networks and nanotechnology, nothing as interesting and important as computer games. Furthermore, I'm kind of worried that I will be speaking to people with little to no previous experience in gaming, who perhaps consider them as childish and a waste of time. Apart from presenting my work, I want to deliver a message: that computer games can (and have done so in the past) offer professional, well-written scripts. I'm interested in proving that game script writing has more similarities to movie script writing than people may think and that is what my presentation will be focused on.

Most of the people in this forum have written scripts so I would be grateful if you had any particular pointers for me.

[Dualnames]

First of congrats with that

Secondly..I'm clueless..

[Raider]

The thing about movie scripts is that they follow what is called the Three Act Structure. This is a basic layout on which 90% of all Hollywood stories are based. I suggest taking a look at this structure and try to collaborate it into your speech. If games followed this basic story telling process that the movies do, would they interest the public more, would they interest these people more? This structure is used over and over again to put bums in seats at the theater. Maybe find out what these scriptwriters are into and splice it into your ideas.

These guys are all about sticking to the basics but finding an original way to tell the story. Excite them, relate to them, you can't go wrong. Talk about how you can connect to people through compelling stories as easily in games as you can in movies. Games can be interactive stories that relate to people through the action of doing rather than watching.

I had some other stuff to say but it has escaped me. 

Hope it helps...

[Snarky]

Well, first of all, how long do you have? Giving a 15-minute presentation is very different from giving a 1-hour one. Are you supposed to teach actually useful techniques, or just introduce the topic for an unfamiliar audience?

I would start by gauging your audience. You don't want to spend your presentation addressing concerns they don't actually have, or talking about things they already know. Don't you think people who go to a conference called "Script and Digital Games" are already open to the idea that games can have good scripts? And since they're professional scriptwriters, they probably have the basic knowledge about how scripts are written, and so on.

Also, think about the other presenters and what they will have talked about. Are you the only one representing the gaming side? Should you stick to adventures or cover games in general?

Maybe you can start off by showing a clip from a game with a cinematic look and high production values (and a decent script). For example: Fahrenheit, The Pandora Directive, Blade Runner or Dreamfall. You can show how playing it two different ways produce different scenes, both of which need to work dramatically. (Fahrenheit has several excellent examples of this in the early chapters.) It's a pretty basic point, but to people used to dealing with a linear story it's probably one of the biggest differences. (Blade Runner would also let you make a number of points about how different interpretations and versions of the film have been incorporated in the different paths and endings of the game.)

Once you show that games can look like movies, I don't think it'll be hard to make them realize that the two have things in common. From there, I think you should quickly move on to how you actually write an adventure game script, and especially how you solve some of the unique challenges (dialogue for all kinds of generic actions, room-specific actions that can be performed at any point in the story, repeated actions, dialogue trees, etc.). If you use any tools like mindmaps, wikis, or anything like that, show it! And you can also talk about how having the player perform specific actions compares to watching a character do it in a movie.

Personally, I'd also be interested in the topic of what it means for the audience involvement that they're playing a game, and working very deliberately towards "winning" (which can make some dramatic devices problematic). You don't have to talk about it, of course, but the ending of Diamonds in the Rough would probably provide some interesting material for that theme. (I wouldn't worry too much about spoiling the game for them. If you convince them that they can learn from you they'll probably buy it anyway.)

[hofmeier]

Alkis:

Perhaps worth noting is a paper which was presented at Michigan State University's 2008 "serious video game" summit Meaningful Play. The paper is a design proposal for a dialog-tree editor, but the introductory text has several morsels regarding the difference between writing for a conventional script, and programming a multi-linear conversation.

"Authoring dialog for video games is a considerably more complex writing task than creating the script for a movie or television program. The process of a conversation is nonlinear and cannot be captured as a simple script. Rather than a simple linear progression of topics, the game instead seeks to convey a set of scenes, themes, or ideas. Even if the NPC has only one path in the conversation, the player must have options from which to choose, so that the game creates the illusion of influencing story progression. Hence, the dialog must be described in a more complex format than a script."

Edit: Forgot the link. (It's a PDF.)

It's an interesting read - Hopefully it'll serve to inspire you a bit! Good Luck!

Off Topic Note: Regarding the "Three Act Structure" - there is an excellent short piece by Billy Collins which relates all narrative pacing back to Aristotle's Poetics, which first proposed / utilized the formula. That sounds academic and boring, but the writing is really very concise and engaging. And it's short. And great. Do read it.

[Mods]

The script writing process can in effect be quite similar, but I'd say the actual result of writing a script for a game and one for a movie is completely different. Vastly in fact.

With a game, like a point & click, you are writing dialogue for everything, even inanimate things. There is a far greater challenge for a game writer than there is a script writer because everything has to be seamless within the world.

In a movie a character might enter a beatiful location, ignore it, get one line out of the way and move on - simply because there's no time to expand on it or any need for it to happen in the plot.

To be perfectly honest I'd say that, for budding writers at least, there is a lot to learn from writing for GAMES if you want to write for FILMS. There really isn't much to learn the other way round though. True enough it can be hard to write a great movie and also a great game, and the comparison between a point and click and a movie is vastly different to that of the latest 3D action game and a movie. But as you'll possibly be showing Diamonds in the Rough you'll be able to explain that a writer has a lot more freedom (but very sore fingers) when writing for an adventure game. Also there seems to be far less post-modernism in the adventure game scene than in say the movie scene these days - which is a good thing.

So maybe you should be the one that preaches a little, and tells the movie script writers they should take on the challenge of writing for a game

My 2 cents.

Some other things you could mention:
-- The Dig, its collaboration with Steven Speilberg
-- DOOM, or other game > movie flops
-- Chateau Macabre, and other AGS game > movie hits

[Snarky]

So, did you give the presentation? What did you talk about, and how did it go?

[LUniqueDan]

I'd really like to see that kind of conference! You lucky you. 8)

Here my 2 cents :

1- Stay with the same objective. It's the cement of your speach.
Ex. The main point of games is to be fun... here's how I try to achieve it.

2-Always links what you say to what they know.
Example: Linearity of movies vs non-linearity of Game plays.

3-Think for them without being pretentious.
Ex.: I think that scripting for a movie need to be done backward, it isn't? It's the same for me when I wrote my game puzzles.

4- A fair use of Lieux-Communs (common ground?) is always liked.
Ex.: In (any greek blockbuster), this happenned that way, but this kind of scipting is usually no liked by game player because it makes players feel useless.

and 5- Don't be affraid to give exceptions when needed. You'll be in front of intelligent peoples.
Ex. Some video games story are more weak (like FPS) some other are way stronger.

Good Luck!
Give us news when it's done.

[Jakerpot]

and 5- Don't be affraid to give exceptions when needed. You'll be in front of intelligent peoples.
Ex. Some video games story are more weak (like FPS) some other are way stronger.

Like FPS? Do you ever played Crysis or medal of honor? Excluding RPG`s, the story is essential to a good FPS. I think racing games have much less story than FPS`s... If this was just an example without really exemples, sorry  but i was just trying to help too...

And well, FPS aren`t just shooters, they are a game that try to make you feel like the main character, the industries are trying even more to make the player feel like he is in the game. This is why there is customization, to make the character look like the player, or make someone that the player would like to be.

Good Luck  and don`t forget to use a valid deodorant 

[Snarky]

Guys, the presentation was February 5, so the only thing left now is the debrief. Hey, tell us what happened, alkis!

[Jakerpot]

o.o i skipped that part...  :

[LUniqueDan]

*knocking my head on the wall*

Alkis!! give us news.

[Nikolas]

Alkis!! give us news.

You know, a guy can be busy in real life as well! Did you see him post anywhere else?

Relax and at some point the news will come, I'm sure!

[Trent R]

I bet the presentation was so good, that he's been asked to show it all across Europe.

~Trent

[Ryan Timothy]

You know, a guy can be busy in real life as well!

??  I don't get it...   There is a life outside of AGS? 

[Matti]

I bet the presentation was so good, that he's been asked to show it all across Europe.

Or the presentation was so bad that he is too embarrassed to post again and talk about the outcome, especially since he was online for just one day after he started this thread and thus wasn't able to take all the great ideas into account..