Quick note: I’m nominating Disco Elysium as the pinnacle of game writing (TM).
If you haven’t played this tremendously heartfelt and involving game, get on it immediately. This game looks superficially like one of those classic “hunt-and-click” adventure games from Lucasarts, but plays like its own tormented, hilarious, luminous revolutionary. And I mean that in all senses of the words.
I dug Planescape, but I’d say 60% of those deep backstories were just window-dressing that didn’t deepen the experience for me. They were nice but totally unnecessary… and never funny.
Elysium is a completely new level of depth. Almost every single character has something interesting to add or connect, or is just flat-out hilarious. When the lady you harass outside the bookstore ends up being connected to the guy from the boardwalk… you know the one… wow. That hit on all kinds of levels. Nothing in Planescape hit me like that.
Is there no Drafts folder in your Gmail app on Android?
Yeah… me neither.
Google continues to “do no harm” by slopping shovelware out there for us goofs to consume. The latest mind-numbing basic feature that is confounding me is this ridiculous situation with drafts.
If you’re on Android (obscure OS) on a mobile phone (obscure device) using Gmail (obscure mail platform from inept service), and you happen to create a draft of an email (obscure action), good luck finding that draft ever again on mobile, or on PC for that matter.
There’s little coverage and no answers in top search results. Google itself likes to point you to related answers, like how to find your drafts folder on a tablet and how to create a draft email in Outlook.
Your drafts folder is NOT the same on your PC, as well.
IMHO this is a symptom of a tech misery that’s approaching us fast. There’s a dearth of talented coders and tech wizards who can maintain and assess complex, interlinked systems. We see the result in a myriad of ways: links that don’t work, apps that cough and spit out blank screens, crashes, bluescreens. I foresee a near future when AI agents with different agendas are roaming the environment, causing even more chaos and intractible problems. Once we have active dynamic elements on the scene like multiple AI — many of which will be created anonymously or artifacts of programmers and corporations long gone — solving mysterious problems will be a thousand times more difficult than before. I also expect there to be AI agents for good that will patrol environments, fixing bottlenecks and snafus, but I don’t think they’ll outnumber the chaotic, misbehaving ones, nor will they have the access to interlinked systems to fix problems.
Moink whattt? Moink meat is a new delivery service (Moink box) that ships you ethically-sourced beef, pork, salmon, lamb, and chicken. Moink – a farmer-run venture that supports small, family farms – is part of a growing groundswell of consumers who are aware of the grievous, heart-rending ethical failings of the American agribusinesses and is trying to ensure we get food that isn’t sourced in misery.
Meat is big business and the largest sector in American agriculture… and it’s also horrific. Pretty much all of the meat brands you know are drenched in that misery: Smithfield, Tyson, Hormel, Sanderson Farms, Koch. Offenses include inhumane working conditions, crowding animals into hellish warehouses in hellish temperatures, killing them in vicious ways, using dangerous hormones, neglecting animals in diseased conditions, and salting animals with unnecessary antibiotics. Aka undiluted evil that isn’t just soul-crushing but also bad for your health and the planet.
Moink and other services aim to redirect consumers to more ethical sources of these table staples. And for you Texas readers, I’ve found a new source of ethical meat at our favorite supermarket, HEB.
For months, I’ve been buying Applegate Naturals lunchmeat, which are clearly marked as “humanely raised” and antibiotics-free… but also not economical. Their sliced ham, turkey breast, and chicken breast run about $1.21 to $.96 per ounce.
Recently, in the meat section, I discovered an alternative! Frick’s meat products are much cheaper and come in a variety of formats; I like the smoked sliced ham, biscuit ham slices, turkey breast, and braunschweiger sausage, at $.52 to $.23 per ounce. Looking at the Frick’s website, the emphasis is on artisan quality, not on ethical sourcing. In my opinion, they’re burying the lede. If you dig into the FAQ page, though, it clearly says, “Annual Humane Handling Audits are required of our suppliers and reviewed by our Sr. Management. Our suppliers follow the American Meat Institute Guidelines – A Systematic Approach to Animal Welfare, developed by renowned humane handling expert Temple Grandin.”
So there you have it. If you need ethical cruelty-free meat in Texas, look for Frick’s. And if you need to supply a family with ethical meats, check out Moink.
Wanna know how to use Vimeo’s slideshow maker? Interested in a review of this new free feature?
Surprise! You won’t find it here. Well, only a truncated one. Why? Because we don’t recommend it. We tried to use it for a project recently and invested a fair amount of effort, only to discover that it wants you to buy into the pro version if you want to make anything longer than three minutes.
We’re pretty disappointed in Vimeo for making this limitation invisible on their webpage. The page is frothy and very light on details, and there’s very little info on how to use the slideshow maker in a practical way.
They do set you up with a few sample slideshows, though, and it looks pretty nice. Some decent license-free music selections for your soundtrack. Video assets are fine. Fun titling and fonts. Transitions are mysterious, though, and it wants you to set up every new image as a “scene” even though there appears to be the ability to chroma-key out backgrounds and composite multiple images together.
Tails of Iron gameplay has been on our minds lately. It was one of the April games that came with a Playstation Plus membership, and a lot of reviewers have been saying this little 2D RPG is worth a ride. I disagree.
I liked the Tails of Iron gameplay and style at first. Hand-drawn art, simple 2D action, epic revenge story writ small and furry, right? Well, it started to wear on me. I don’t mind difficult battles, but Tails of Iron’s gameplay felt unfair.
The boss battles are tough, but even the minor minions can be problematic because of timing issues. Your character’s attacks, especially the charged ones, can be quite slow, locking him into moves for a long timespan. And some of the enemy attacks are quick. That’s a problem, because no one likes to get beaten because they’re defenseless. (To be fair, some of the enemy attacks are very slow, and often they are defenseless after a strong attack or signal an attack with one of two alert graphics.)
But that’s not all. Many of your foes also can instantly turn 180 degrees (it’s 2D and there’s no turn animation). So an attack that was harmless a microsecond ago suddenly is landing right in your back when you tumbled past your foe to avoid him.
And sometimes you have multiple foes coming from both directions.
And sometimes your foes don’t signal their attacks at all.
And the health bars on your foes are hefty, so you have a choice of pecking away at them forever or performing slooow heavy attacks to burrow through their health slightly faster… at significant risk.
The developer describes Tales of Iron as “an epic RPG adventure with punishingly brutal combat” and “soulslike.” This game has grand ambitions, but lacks the polish and tuning to claim these monikers. Someone in marketing is smoking some serious ego to think that they can sell this awkward 2D slasher as “punishingly brutal.” Instead, I’d use descriptors like “arbitrary” and “frustrating.”
ToI also triggered one of my pet peeves with its unexciting loot. You pick up new equipment during the game, but they’re generally just incremental upgrades to your already prosaic items. A little more green bar here; a little more red bar here. None of them felt that different from their predecessors, and ToI kept throwing up alert tags to tell me that I needed to inspect items that I’d already equipped. Umm, no.
Lastly, I found it annoying that they cribbed a storytelling technique from the much-better Don’t Starve games and made it worse too. In Don’t Starve, characters talk with instrument voices and it’s charming (and also free of localization concerns). In ToI, characters talk with icons (presented in cartoon bubbles) and instrument voices. Then, because it’s impossible to do real storytelling with icons, the dialog is followed by the narrator speaking, telling you what the icons meant.
I’m sorry, what? Why did I sit through the icons and instrument voices? What was the purpose of that if it was never intended to transmit information? It’s ornamental? Sorry, that’s a no sale.
There were numerous chances for humor in this game, but in general they play it boringly straight. A grinder in which you play a tight-lipped morose rat. It was ironic to be assigned in one mission to clear the farmer’s basement of vermin as a rat, since killing basement rats is a cliche level-one AD&D mission. But no, not even a subtle wink. We have heard that there’s a faction of “Moleshevik” rodents that you encounter later in the adventure, and we’re 100% here for it, but we didn’t get that far.
Sorry, I wanted to like this game. But the Tales of Iron gameplay isn’t up to snuff.
Need to upload an image instead of a webcam selfie? Here’s how.
I’m a desktop guy so I hate it when a site requires me to be on mobile to buy something. Recently I hit something even more pernicious: a site that required me to snap a selfie to buy something. Yes, really. They have a desktop site, but when you go to check out, the selfie requirement forces you to use mobile or a webcam-equipped computer.
Using a Picture as a Webcam Upload
For a variety of reasons, I wasn’t eager to recreate my cart contents and switch to mobile, but I found there’s a workaround: the FineCam virtual webcam app. This handy free app has a feature to share content with others, which is exactly what I wanted.
Unfortunately, FineCam doesn’t really have a “presenter mode” where you can make your selfie image front-and-center. If you use it normally, your static image will be overlaid with a live image from your cellphone camera.
Here’s what you do instead:
Launch FineCam on your PC
Launch the FineCam app on your phone
Initiate a connection to your phone from the FineCam app on the PC – but don’t approve the connection on your phone
Click the Content button on the PC’s FineCam app and upload the photo you want to send to the website as your selfie
Jump to the vendor website and “send” the selfie image they want.
The Last of Us plot and writing work are a revelation and a clear sign once again that videogame writing can hold up to massive scrutiny. I mean, we in the videogame industry have always held it in high esteem because it’s a monumental work that IGN called “a masterpiece.” Edge dubbed it “the most riveting, emotionally resonant story-driven epic” of the console generation. Okay, that’s a sizable statement.
Who do we have to thank for The Last of Us’ outstanding plot? In the original Last of Us game’s credits, Neil Druckmann is given the writing credit, with Jacob Minkoff garnering a designer credit. Druckmann and Bruce Straley have director credits and, in interviews, are attributed with the overall leadership by copresidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra. (Druckmann stepped into Balestra’s shoes in 2020.) The game was developed by game industry heavyweight Naughty Dog, which is also the home of Uncharted, another world-beating action-adventure franchise noted for cinema-quality storytelling.
To us, it seems like the multi-talented, award-winning Druckmann is the guy who deserves the bulk of the credit for The Last of Us’ plot greatness. A former programmer, Druckmann also cowrote several Uncharted titles, a few comics, and a good piece of HBO’s The Last of Us as well. He and veteran screenwriter Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, Scriptnotes podcast) share creator/writer/executive producer credits on The Last of Us (the TV show) and he directed the second episode, his first experience directing a TV production.
Congrats to Druckmann. But we’re also cautioning him: don’t let your game writing work get criminally overlooked in the movie as happened to Rhianna Pratchett on Tomb Raider.
That Time “The Last of Us” Plot Got Overshadowed
… by a rogue HBO server? Or worse yet, by an error by the show’s production team? Yep, it happened.
While we’re talking about The Last of Us, we might as well highlight this astonishing visual mistake in the infamous Bill and Frank episode (“Long, Long Time”). As you’ll see here, there’s a massive change in light and color values as soon as the camera cuts to Ellie’s face. The warm tones in the scene flash brightly blue and the overall light levels spike.
What happened here? We’re not talking about a soap opera here; this is The Last of Us, a pillar in the HBO empire, a major cinematic undertaking.
Whatever the case is, it’s a bit gobstopping for us to see a cinematographic mistake of this magnitude in this show. Maybe it’s just a glitch on the HBO server, but we’re hoping that HBO doesn’t let the production pressures erode their standards.
Back in 2001, we at 3DO Redwood City released our baby, Army Men: Green Rogue, a game that attempted to recast the hoary Army Men franchise into a darker yet more retro mold. Were we successful?
Apparently not. I just found out that two Youtubers with a series called “Worst Games Ever” profiled AMGR. As you might guess, this wasn’t a compliment, although to be fair the show is fairly genial and humorous. It was a good opportunity for me to review our work on this project and apply the ol’ 20-20 hindsight and the view was indeed revealing.
You may not be familiar with Army Men, but it was a genius idea at the time: take ubiquitous plastic army men, which were already experiencing a renaissance because of the Toy Story movies, and make them the heroes of a new, kid-oriented videogame series. That’s what we were famous for at 3DO. The first entrants in the series were turn-based tactical affairs, which were generally well-received. Then our executives pushed the titles into more action-oriented efforts, spinning off new heroes and launching a set of helicopter-combat games and even a platformer starring the daughter of one of the army officers.
As you might expect, reviewers started to tire of the seemingly-boundless flogging of the series, and eventually the series (and the company) ran out of steam. Still, when launching AMGR, we had hopes it would find an audience. First, it starred a faceless supersoldier who looks unlike the usual WWII grunts. Second, there was the retro gameplay, which keyed on the fact that, if you picked up the same kind of weapon powerup over and over (i.e., the grenade launcher, while avoiding the other weapons), you armed yourself with more and more powerful versions of that weapon, including guided versions of some weapons, or versions with a vast area-of-effect. Eventually you got a pretty spectacular uber-weapon that could ace platoons of foes with little effort, making aiming at different elevations a moot point. Third, the constantly-advancing camera and multiple foes meant a kind of bullet hell lite experience where you had to be constantly dancing around incoming fire while laying down your offensive ordnance.
It wasn’t AAA-level fun, in my opinion, but it was different and surprising without being weird or obtuse, and for that alone we thought AMGR had a chance to be recognized by reviewers who were tired of rote Army Men titles.
See that big meter on the bottom left? Above the gun? Yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to fill up to get the fun.
And we were wrong. The reviews were terrible. Journalists saw the Army Men label and recoiled in horror, expecting dreck and reviewing it as such. Almost all of them failed to mention the upgradable weapons and the biostrike smart bomb.
The upgradable weapons are indicated with a very large 8-chambered UI meter in the bottom left of the screen, right above your weapon indicator. It’s hard to miss, but when you’re a bleary game reviewer with five other, much sexier games sitting ignored in your inbox, why bother? You can easily pan an Army Men game after 10 minutes of bored play, using the worst weapons in the entire assortment and never seeing a single boss, without anyone ever asking what that meter is. And that’s what our droll and amiable Youtube reviewers did.
Looking back, I feel that was our fault. We made it far too easy to ignore these core features of the game. A simple hard pause and a few dialog boxes would’ve done wonders. “Hey, you just picked up your first weapon powerup! Here’s how they work.” “Biostrike powerup? Press this button for boom!” “Want to slow down the game? Try kneeling.” “Hey, that weird numbered powerup you grabbed? Here’s what it does.” (Honestly, I don’t remember what those do.)
We also failed in production to make key moments of story meaningful, which added to the slapdash feel. (Story, anyone?) I remember asking if some of our in-game dialog could be made more audible and relevant, and there was some dithering about the idea of stopping the game to emphasize the story (a cutscene, maybe?) but nothing was done. Specifically, there was a moment where the enemy yell something like, “What is that thing?” and our faceless hero without a history says something to the effect of “I’m… I’m a monster!” Would that have been more affecting if it hadn’t been drowned out by explosions and death screams? I’m gonna say yes.
Some other flaws I’m seeing clearly now: Weapons not autocorrecting generously for terrain was a huge mistake. Offscreen enemies shooting at the player was not good. The terrain itself should’ve been much flatter — roads instead of paths — so the flaws weren’t so pronounced. “Our world” environments like kitchens and bathrooms should’ve been introduced immediately (this was one of my big gripes but I was shot down because of the “gritty” feel we were targeting). The “I am Omega Soldier” powerup animation is dorky and not explained, nor is it clear what effect it has. The audio levels and voiceovers are rough and many of the battle dialog bits are heavily repeated. And of course the hero’s movement and the movement of the camera are jerky and laughable.
In retrospect, like many other games and movies, AMGR was full of good intentions (really!) that were badly implemented or communicated. I wish we could go back and make a few tweaks so people could appreciate the (modest) value that we delivered. Please let me go back. I just need a time machine, two more weeks in the schedule, and the total compliance of management. That’s not too much to ask, right?
He would have skewered the reviewers even more. He recalls pretty clearly some early reviews that completely missed the point/style/ how to play the game, which was frustrating because, although it wasn’t an AAA title, it was a pretty fun game for what it was.
He likes to focus on YouTube comments like the person who said they loved the game and played the electrons out it when they were 12 or 13. “That was what we were aiming for.”
A decades-old Best of Show ADDY Award? We just got one! What a weird feeling.
Back in 2010, your Game Writer Guy worked with Haley Miranda as the primary writer for a Scion (Toyota) webgame centered around the tC coupe. The project was difficult but fun, the client was happy with the result, bills were paid, and everyone rode off into the sunset.
We’ve inserted a sample gameplay screen here, which is linked to our favorite scifi/humor literary rag, Space Squid (obviously an influence on the content.)
The thing no one remembered to mention to us was that the project went on to win a Best in Show ADDY that year at the American Advertising Federation conference in Rochester. Here’s a summary of the escapade, which I pulled from the LinkedIn profile of one of the team members:
HMG helped Scion/Toyota fuel excitement for the launch of their next-generation tC coupe with a multi-dimensional immersive online game that drew over 60,000 targeted players. The 8-week story-driven journey across the U.S. challenged players with skill-based games, scavenger hunts, and real-world missions. Scion music, art, racing and lifestyle communities were heavily integrated into game play to ensure interaction with the brand culture. Top scoring players were flown to Los Angeles to compete in a live version of the game for a chance to win the new Scion tC.
Results Over 60,000 unique visitors Stage-to-stage retention rate of over 94% Returning visitors spent 5+ minutes on the site 3.5+ million Google results Best In Show, American Advertising Federation (ADDY)
And here’s a link to the Addy awards page describing the win, with detailed commentary on the game from the judges.
So… congrats to us and everyone on the Unlock team! We are (or were) #1!
At first glance, you may be scoffing at the idea. AI writers? Horning in on my NPC dialog and the text in my design docs and back-of-box marketing material? Never! Not on my watch, good sir!
Okay, sure. But let’s change the scenario slightly. You’re some overworked slob and you oversee two high-school dropouts and one depressed PhD rejectee on the backstory team for a hardcore RPG knockoff of Skyrim. You have to generate 3000 pages of lore for the game that flesh out the kingdom’s deities, civilizations, beliefs, myths, and daily life. TEN novels’ worth of books, letters, journals, shopping lists, and memos. And you’re responsible for making sure every word of that matches the master worldbuilding guidelines and is complete in three months.
Tell me that ChatGPT isn’t whispering in your ear every night. Hey buddy! I can write all of those pages for you. How do you know your little team isn’t already suckling on my infinite content stream right now?
Yeah. Game writers and AI writing tools are a thing, and probably are already tangoing all over game project deliverables. If you oversee content quality, you need to address ChatGPT posthaste.
ChatGPT Tips for Game Writers
Know your team and discuss AI tools.
Don’t assume that your team is going to think about AI writing tools like you do. Get it out in the open and make sure your expectations are clear.
Use the tools if appropriate and if approved by management.
As above, don’t assume that management is okay with AI tools. Discuss it and put a plan together.
We do think there’s a place for ChatGPT and other tools in quality game writing IF (big if) there’s a careful strategy to build appropriate and human-filtered content that matches the mission. But… are you ready for some risks?
The first big risk here is that someone misses something critical and suddenly your game’s being mocked for years on social media because the AI made some boneheaded assumption.
The second big risk is that there’s certainly some chance of blowback if gamers find out that your game was built with AI tools. Are you willing to take that risk?
And the third big risk is a moral risk and a reputational risk. Game development is a creative field that relies on the respect and participation of talented creative people. Do you want to be in the vanguard of moving game development toward a dilution of human creative involvement? A lot of AI art tools are getting heat for cribbing elements from talented human artists, but the same is true of AI writing tools that crib phrases, styles, and word usage from writers who are getting no participation in the output. Do you want to be part of that… or to be known (fairly or unfairly) as the flagbearers for that?
Know the strengths and weaknesses.
Before you commit to using ChatGPT, generate at least a dozen writing samples in different styles and see if you really like what you’ll be getting.
Do it for the right reasons.
Are you tempted by ChatGPT because of its potential to open up new horizons? Or are you just desperate because the schedule’s so tight?
Don’t get hemmed into doing something unwise just because it’s there. If ChatGPT looks like the easy exit to a terrible schedule quandry, maybe you should be thinking about how you got in this quandry in the first place. Be aware of the choices and options you have. Don’t let management or your publisher force you into using it just because they failed to give you adequate time to do your job.
Some Other Writer Angles
I’m also the editor-in-chief at a genre-oriented literary journal, where we’ve been talking about this issue quite a bit. From that perspective, the challenge is similar but different; we’re trying to maintain content quality and detect AI-generated writing in our submissions (stories sent in by writers for publication). Some specific and time-honored formats are particularly susceptible to abuse. Obviously hack writers will always be terrible, but we fear to think about what a skilled and unethical writer could do with these tools. And they’ll get better… the tools and the hacks.
We’re thinking of requiring some kind of human verification for submissions. Perhaps 2FA or even a credit card charge of a few cents that is immediately refunded after the writer verifies the amount.
And of course there’s some talk about what the effect will be on fiction writers and publishers. Will this augment or devalue art? My vote is sadly the latter. I think there will be some amazing AI-augmented works that we’ll all admire. They’ll be astounding. And of course the most famous 1% of human writers will continue to flourish in the limelight. But the rank and file writers will suffer in obscurity, just like realist painters and advertising artists suffered when photography took the fore. Follow the money. The gatekeepers are already struggling to tell the fakes from the originals, and the fakes are basically FREE. That’s the collapse of the economy.
I do fear we’ll be looking back on this development with regret. Fingers crossed that I’m wrong.
