I did say we were going to make an excursion in order to explain where I nabbed the needed insight to make some of the design update for Frontier. I didn't tell you I was going to drag out an old debate that is, to some, deader than the animals and plants long ago turned into coal and loam and peat. I'm sorry. I'm going to do it though. You're going to wince, a lot of you.
It is a long detour, but it also just happens to be where I discovered how to make a better random mission generator. High irony from a game that has such a linear plot and can be described by some as "just another pretty shooter".
I'm glad and a little irritated at the result of looking it up. Because the result is a multi-thought pileup in my headspace highway. I usually like those, but let me list them out. You'll see why I got irritated. The post "this is why I'll never be an adult" mirrors some of the unfortunate cycles of my creative life. The meme – not the way the article features it but the way the meme has used the phrase "ALL THE THINGS" resembles the reason for this cycle in both fortunate and happy and unfortunate and unhappy ways.
Here's a concept I don't hear discussed that often, but I think it a useful distinction: a “story game”. What's a story game? Here's a concise explanation, in just five paired similes:
Gamer geek. That's me. Have been since forever, since before computers. Games are what I love to play. Computers have only made it … “worse”. I've been avoiding discussing specifics games, though. Why I'm done with that.
Studios have repeatedly tried at three dimensional movie making. A new technology enters the market, it amazes, people go in droves, a small number of the movies are great in this format if any, the marketing hype continues, people feel bored and betrayed, sales drop off, studios return to flat format, and we breathe a sigh of relief until a new tech comes along later. Later enough that there are still enough people who weren't disappointed to the point of annoyance that the hype machines can re engage. The cycle is reborn. We seem doomed to repeat it.
We are until two crucial things happen. Then it is here to stay. For good. You may even like it. Just... until then we'll all pretty much hate it. Why?
Yesterday I figured out something very profound for myself at the end of the day, today I'm trying to do something similar, but I don't think it has had enough time to gel yet let alone distill.
This has been said at length before by people more experienced in writing fiction than myself and in much greater how to detail: fiction is a lot easier to write if you actually plan it, top down, adding more detail as you go, and in a systematic way.
I'm not going to repeat all their work here as advice, I'm just going to talk about why in particular it may help me write fiction for the games I work on now (the “near now” -- roughly the next few years) and may in the future help me write Frontier. Scratch that. May in the future be absolutely crucial to creating it in a way that isn't merely sandbox but also has movement and direction.
