The following is a video recording of a remote talk delivered at the excellent Yorkshire Games Festival in February 2023. In this 20 min pre-recorded talk, Hannah speaks about how naming the tools of story (and equipping ourselves with centuries of story theory) will help us tell better stories within games. The talk is a 101 introduction to story vocabulary and how it can apply to game storytelling. The theory being: the more you can name what you're doing, the better you can practice it, and the better you can advocate for it in game development!

Play the video below. There's a full transcript below and closed captioning on the video. Bear in mind the transcript is verbatim, so you will have a better time just watching/listening to the video.

We hope you enjoy! And if you feel like you'd like to read more on this subject, we have a brand new discount code for Hannah's book Writing for Games: just head to the Routledge site and use the code LLJM20

Okay. Hello and welcome to "Call it What it is!" (Why Approaching Story Like a Craft Helps You do it Better).

Now, I actually, I had a different title in mind for this talk when I was just pitching it to the organisers. And it was something along the lines of "Literary Theory: It can be useful and fun".

And I was advised that that would not be a particularly attention-grabbing name for a talk. So I put an exclamation mark in the title, and I instead focused on the word "craft" which actually turned out to be a really useful framework for what I want to tell you today about storytelling.

So let's get to it.

Just a little introduction to me. So I'm Hannah Nicklin. I'm the CEO and Creative Director at an indie called Die Gute Fabrik, which is based in both the U.K. and Denmark. I'm based in Yorkshire, hurray!

Here I am- but we're sort of based all around Europe and the world.

Now, I've been working in video games for about a decade but crossed over a little bit before then as well, and I've been practicing as a storyteller ever since I sort of graduated from my playwriting Masters, way, way, way down in the 2000s.

I have done a PhD at some point in interactive practises, including games influence practises as an anti-capitalist practice. But that's a whole other thing.

And if you really want to know more about that, you should definitely just pop my name into Google. You'll find my website, and there's a link to everything that you need to know there.

So let's go ahead and think more about what it means to think about storytelling in games as a craft.

And I think we have to start from a position of what games aren't. Games aren't special, they aren't important. They aren't exceptional, they aren't revolutionary, and they aren't the medium of the modern age.

I say that because I think that, I understand why games historically has tried to shout out about how special it is in order to just be paid attention to alongside other art forms.

But actually, if you have in your head that games are especially good at telling long stories or especially good at interaction then there's a lot of long-durational interactive theatre practices, for example, that would beg to differ.

Just because games can do a thing doesn't mean that they are inherently that thing. And that, as practitioners allows us to think about how we can make them better, more important, more exceptional and more whatever it is that we want them to be.

So I asked us today to consider games a craft and to consider storytelling a craft too.

So if a thing is a craft, it has tools, materials, components you can name, and it has a lifelong practice along which you can specialise in their use. So story is a craft.

It's not just a magical piece of kind of powder you can sort of sprinkle on the top of the game at the end. It's something for which you need to use tools in order for it to happen to be put together.

It has components that need placing, and games is the medium in which you are all sort of sat here, hopefully, interested in practicing the craft of storytelling so we can finally use this sort of craft metaphor to also think about storytelling in games as something which deals and materials, a piece of oak is different to a piece of beech wood.

A piece of porcelain is different to a piece of stoneware. They're technically both clay.

Technically, both wood, right? But they'll have different grains and be used for certain things and have certain qualities about them.

Now you can choose to work with or against their grains. The most important thing is that you do so thoughtfully, so that's hopefully what I mean when framing this within craft is to think about the tools, materials and components of storytelling as practitioners interested in specialising in the area.

And I'm going to now offer you five takeaways, five craft thinkings in order to helpfully hopefully help you build a toolkit and a vocabulary for expressing story as a craft practice within the material of game.

Vocabulary Matters

That's just the first thing because if we name the components we can do two really important things, we can communicate with others about our specialism.

We can ask for the tools we need in order for our practice to be effective and then also just within our own minds, if we can properly name the components of story, then we can do thinking in our heads that we don't have to go through physically in order to discover that this isn't working and I'm not sure why.

If you know the difference between plot and narrative, you can say to yourself, I think that this plot is too complicated and I need to make some decisions about cutting in order that the narrative design be more effective.

Here are some meanings and the last thing I guess I have to say before telling you the meanings is that there's a hill on which I long ago died, where I'm sort of buried under the grave marker. It's not narrative-driven games, it's story-driven and that's just because the word "story" and "narrative" mean different things.

And I think it's just really useful to know that, and to be able to express that right, I think people started using narrative because it sounds fancier. Sounds more technical, right?

And sometimes as a storyteller within video games, you often get the feeling that people don't respect your practices, as something technical.

But it is just as technical it has components, it has vocabulary and if we can use them properly, then we might be able to better communicate that to non-specialists in the area in which we specialise.

So there we go. There's a hill, I'm dead on it. But here we are.

Story

Story is the total thing that you will communicate. The story world is the world in which that total thing is set. Plot are events that you may choose to show in order or out of order. Narrative is the entire design of the telling of the story.

So, therefore, narrative design as a term makes a tonne of sense. That means the design choices you make within a game with the telling of the story at their heart.

There we go, knowing those things allows us to understand that narrative design is not writing. Narrative design is design, with the story at its heart within the game design context, writing our words, both of which can be used to tell a story and both of which are part of telling many stories.

But writing isn't the beginning and ending of storytelling, and they are different practices in which you will have to develop different skills.

So writing as a sub-discipline of storytelling, really beautiful example of beautiful storytelling without a single word of dialogue, The Gardens Between which is a game from, like, three or four years ago now. So I recommend that you look that up if you're interested.

So within that context, we can understand that game storytelling is so much bigger than writing. It's also not just narrative design choices. It can be the situation of the player, the players sort of way that they encounter the thing.

It can be art. It can be aesthetics, and it's also mechanics. It's the physicality of play, game feel, all of these things.

So if you are the lead on a project with regard to storytelling, you need to have input into these things, depending on how prominent story is. And that brings us to the next thing.

What's the Verb?

So there's a really, uh, sort of old, I mean, definitely dead theatre director called Stanislavski. Sorry. That's a bit of a funny way to say, historical character called Stanislavski. He liked to action lines in a script and we're essentially asking; "What's the verb of this line"?

So if my line is, "Where's my breakfast"? And I were to action it with "to accuse" or "to beg", I would deliver the line in these two different ways.

"Where's my breakfast?!"

"Where's my breakfast?"

Alright, there you go. I'm not an actor, but hopefully, that demonstrates what I mean by actioning.

And we can also use that concept really usefully in games in a couple of ways. So one we can talk about the many registers and modes of game writing, right?

So there are lots of different ways words can work in a game, and sometimes a tutorial might be a main verb to explain how to play.

But a secondary verb might be to give to characterise a character, so to give the player a sense of a character, in which case you may want to think carefully about whether or not you give those tutorial lines to the character or if you speak as the game and then the characters sort of commenting as they go through the tutorial.

Lots of different things here but hopefully that one example gives you a sense of what you can do with the question. "What's the verb?" "What does this writing need to do?"

Equally, when we come to writing itself, we can dig deeper in there and ask, "What's the verb of this writing"?

"Is it to move the story forward?"

"Is it to reflect on or update the player on something that's happened?"

"Is it to give them a clue?"

Or "is it to develop their character", right?

And then within the style of dialogue, I think one of the big problems with dialogue in a lot of kind of indie games, a lot of people starting out within the discipline is that they tend to have the same voice across all text in the game, right?

So the characters speak like the game speaks to the player, and also they're all sort of just the author.

They're just the writer's voice, and very often those are kind of lighthearted kind of comedy, quips, that Marvel-style thing, which isn't always the wrong choice but the important thing again is that we do things thoughtfully.

In that context, if you're trying to write characters which are convincing, even if you're trying to write comedy, the big question for like, how to write good comedy right is not- I mean there are lots of things that I can't go into right now, but in terms of this sort of verbing stuff, right- it's not like that one kind of comedy where it situates the comedy in the heart of we're laughing at this story.

There are lots of other kinds of comedy so you can have character-driven comedy where the comedy is situated in the dissonance between what the character thinks of themselves and what the world thinks of them.

Think Basil Fawlty, right, in Fawlty Towers.

That guy thinks he's super competent, and it would all be fine if the world just sort of got in line and did it was supposed to. The world is very aware that Basil Fawlty is not very competent, and therein is the sort of tension from which comedy arises.

Again, I'm going to link to my book at the end, and I go into much more there about comedy and kind of citing where from where arises here I'm just going to add that writing for characters in games It's also useful to ask yourself, what should this do on the screen as well?

There's lots of different types of dialogue out there in different mediums and formats, right?

In a book, we've got all of our attention we've just got the words on the page, and the book is a certain size and format, and we expect lines to feel like full sentences.

It's fine if they go over many lines, but it's accompanied by a narrator often or just descriptions of what's going on around that that line.

And that's a very different piece of dialogue to the kind of dialogue that would be in a script which expects, for a, you know, a body on a stage and the full attention of the audience. It expects for that to be accompanied by delivery.

Now, neither of those things is like like the kind of writing you get in games without VO, which I would say is closest for writing for reading like speaking.

So it's not writing for speaking, and it's not writing for reading. One is the script, the other is a book.

I think it's closest for comics and I would really recommend digging into good comics because they also got limited real estate on the page.

They're working with visuals. There's amount of pacing that needs to occur if you get good, character-driven comics, take a look at how those lines are different to lines in books and lines and scripts, and you can sort of, critically sort of pull them apart and think about them as a practitioner.

We're going to keep going because we've only got 20 minutes for this talk.

Genre

Genre is a beautiful thing because it's a bunch of work that's just been done by the body of storytelling throughout the ages, onto which we can hang things because that shape of storytelling is already in our players' heads.

The challenge of storytelling and games is that there are two competing genres are often there's game genre. And then there's story genre. These are just some examples, right? It's not exhaustive.

Please don't @ me. But for example, the expectations of story in a block-pushing puzzle are really different to the expectations of story in an adventure game.

The amount of story, the amount of character development, the verb of the writing will be different things. The mask, the verb of story in a block-pushing puzzle is probably just to support and lighten the puzzle-solving tasks, right?

It's delightful rewards the, you know, the verb might be "to reward". Or it might just be to situate as opposed to an adventure story where it might be "to drive" that it might be story-driven as an adventure game, right, in which case you'll want character development, you want clear situation. You want to make some decisions about all of that context, equally story genres, beautiful things already shaped in people's minds, off which you can hang certain expectations.

But again, you can work against those expectations. The important thing is to think about your practice as a craft and to work with it thoughtfully.

That leads us to:

Form, Format and Formula

We've got three new pieces of vocabulary here, not new, I'm sure you've heard these words before, but in this context I offer form.

Form is just a shape or container, right? I like to describe my practice as historically, as I worked across different art forms as form-driven so I would often sit down with a story and not just say "what's the story", but actually "in what form should I tell this"?

"Is this an installation work"?

"Is this a piece of live performance"?

"Is this a piece of digital artwork?"

I made those decisions to support the story, that's what I meant by being form-driven, and we can be form-driven in game design as well.

You're not going to sit there and go, "guys, I think this should be a piece of theatre, actually". Right?

That's not what you're going to be doing. But instead, you can be thinking about your process of, "Okay, I've been asked to put this game genre together with this story genre, and actually that form, is not compatible or is grating in a difficult way and I need to talk to my creative director about that.

Format, another beautiful thing.

It's a commonly used shape, so format might be something like a heist or a body swap or an audition. Now you'll watch, like film, TV where those formats appear. You know how they work, and the pleasure is watching them play out or watching them be subverted, right?

Again, all of the things you can get from players' heads to help support your storytelling and formula is just something that I encourage us to think about when we think about the craft of storytelling and games, ask yourself, "What's the formula that builds the story in our players heads all of the things which come together to make it effective?"

It's just a useful little piece of vocabulary. So I encourage you to think about how storytelling, defines or fits into the design that you are being given or working with.

Final thing:

Structure

Story structure is essentially the shape of the action. So it sort of describes the tension, the stakes at play, either for a community or a hero or a number of people. It's not the same as the plot, the events.

But it is the dramatic moments that give the storytelling momentum. And often these diagrams there sort of describing dramatic tension, right? Like how tense is the action in this moment? That's where you get these line drawings.

Now I offer structure as part of your practice as a storyteller within the craft of storytelling in games, in particular wanting to highlight that one of the most commonly used structures is the hero's journey, and I would just suggest that you just learned that there are others.

It's very film influenced, and it doesn't mean it's the wrong like structure for the story that you're trying to tell. But it's not the only one.

And because film theatre, when they use the hero's journey there very often, you know, 2,3,4 hour pieces of dramatic storytelling. A lot of video games are a tonne longer than that, which can make the hero's journey feel quite thin.

One central character where everything serves their forward arc, where N.P.Cs and environment are just there to be exploited to develop that character, it can often because sort of victory has to kind of be inevitable in that context, right?

It can cause a kind of bagginess the story structure, if you stretch over too much time and that jeopardy, especially in a video game where you might die a lot, that jeopardy can also get really deflated.

Finally, the psychological focus of a single hero is often in film shaped by, you know what the camera chooses to tell you, the pacing, both things you might hand over to a player. And in that context, there are other examples of structures you can use, and I'm just going to touch on one here.

The ensemble cast, think Star Trek, think Bojack Horseman, think The West Wing, right?

This story structure is favoured by long-running TV shows, and it takes a community in context of the environment and one another from which drama emerges.

Having different characters you can focus on gives you variety allows you to tell longer stories over generations.

Tone can vary between comedy and drama in a single part of that story, telling and conflicting points of view mean that you don't always necessarily know what sort of truth is which can be a dramatic tension that the player can investigate.

In that context, this is a story structure which I have sketched. That's my sketch. You can probably tell.

I tend to think about that storytelling in an episodic format. Even if you're not delivering episodes, maybe a certain area of the game can be considered a chapter or an episode from your point of view is the designer and then you need to think about what the main plot is and how each chapter develops that main plot.

What the "A Plot" is like the single sort of question or theme for that particular area or chapter.

Maybe it's one character being developed. Maybe it's a you know, one question being developed. A "B Plot", which you still can switch to, is sometimes useful. It's normally something that contrasts interestingly with the A plot and then "C Plots" are just little things.

Little funny asides. A really famous Star Trek DS9 "C Plot" is two people trying to sell self-sealing stem bolts. So there you go.

Okay, so we've hit the 20 minutes and I'm going to conclude.

I'm asking us to try and think about writing for games, storytelling in games, all of those things as components of a craft of a practice, we can develop over time.

So we start by not saying games are inherently anything and understanding that as a thing, a material that we work with thoughtfully we can make them all of the things that we imagine and hope that we can be.

If a thing is a craft, it has tools, materials, components you can name, and it has a lifelong practice where you can specialise in their use.

Finally, Writing for Games has a tonne more vocabulary, a tonne more story structure that little aside on comedy in case you want to go find out more, go to WritingFor.Games

It's a book. What I wrote. So I hope you like it if you do read it. And then finally, here are three texts for better storytelling in any medium, I recommend that you read Stephen Jeffreys Playwriting, How to Be an Artist and What It Is. Beautiful investigations about what it means to tell a story from different perspectives.

Finally, super, super grateful for you coming and listening to me today. And I'm really excited to learn more from you about the stories that you want to tell.

Do find me on Twitter if you want me to link to any more of these resources if you can't find them and I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your festival, take care.

This is an additional article from our wonderful 2022 Game Writing Intern Halima Hassan. As part of the internship (and as well as working on the studio's upcoming game) Halima also went through a mentoring process with our Studio Lead Hannah Nicklin. Early on they identified together that Halima would like to conclude the mentorship by working towards a portfolio which she could use professionally. Which takes us to now! We hope that you enjoy this insight into Halima's journey. And stay tuned 'til the end for a bonus extract from Writing For Games on designing your own portfolio.

Halima's Journey

Part of the writing internship included mentoring with Studio Lead Hannah Nicklin, and during our first mentoring session we defined some of the goals I wanted out of the experience.

One of those goals was to have a portfolio assembled at the end to showcase some of my writing and experience.

I did not have a portfolio entering this experience, only a handful of articles and stories that I mostly kept to myself and shared with folks when asked. From entering a creative space from a non-creative background, and speaking with folks who have dwelled in here for some time, I came to understand the value of a public collection of work; something for others to peruse, that establishes and confirms you as your chosen creative.

Practical and Personal Considerations

Having mostly only written for myself and to myself prior to this experience, I found the idea of a portfolio kind of tricky and - unexpectedly - uncomfortable.

There were the practical considerations: What pieces should I choose? Should I write something new? How can I assemble something that shows not only what I’ve done, but also what I have the potential to do?

Then there were the more personal concerns: What if these pieces don’t actually do me any justice? What does that even mean? Why is it so hard to be perceived!?

I knew I wanted a games writing portfolio, specifically. Although I have only been writing for video games and interactivity for the past year, it has become an area I would like to explore even more.

I worked with Hannah to create my portfolio and began by looking at the portfolios of peers that I really admired, and identifying what I liked about them. I found myself drawn to simple and personal presentations of work.

The Right Tools

Studios are constantly pushing what narrative in video games looks like, but there are a few skills that I learnt from Hannah that I should try and demonstrate through the pieces I choose for my portfolio: writing a range of dialogue (barks and conversations), familiarity with a game writing tool (e.g. Inky or Twine - although understanding that companies might have custom tools that was more about demonstrating tool literacy), adapting your writing to different genres or house styles and world building.

Each piece would be presented alongside a few lines describing intent and the skills I was highlighting within the piece of work.

I decided to write some new pieces for my portfolio using exercises from Writing for Games as a guide, since I cannot share any of my recent work yet. I knew quickly that I wanted to showcase some of my speculative writing and my interest in folklore and mythology, specifically Somali folklore.

This, alongside the reminder from Hannah that: "your practice belongs to you", led me to a key realisation about this entire portfolio creation and sharing process that helped me feel less weird.

The portfolio is a never ending project and will be revisited and updated as time goes on. What will always be important to me is that whatever iteration of it exists online is true.

By true, I mean meaningful to me; it is important that I'm proud of what I put out there. The rest is extra. And with that foundation, I knew I wanted to draw on my heritage for inspiration for some of the pieces, because my background is important to me as a person.

I enjoy exploring relationships and human emotions in surreal contexts, so I made sure to include that, too.

I’ve collated my portfolio on Notion because I wanted a simple and clear setup that is easy to update (and the site is free, so added bonus!).

I settled on three projects: the first, Satiated, was assembled using Writing for Games as a guide, specifically, exercises 2, 4, 11 for those with access to the book (I recommend trying to request it through a library).

I created a game design document for the interactive story I had in mind, and within it, linked character sheets and scenes of dialogue. I also rewrote the same scene in the style of a modern Western as a challenge to myself (my love for Red Dead Redemption 2 rears its head again).

The second project in the portfolio is the interactive scene that I first wrote for the second stage of the writing internship application process.

All the dialogue/interactive scenes are written using Ink markup and can be played in the browser: I exported the Inky scripts as HTML and I’m hosting them on a Neocities site, also free! Stories written in Inky can also be exported and hosted on itch.io, I chose Neocities as I was already building a static page on there.

I chose Inky as that is the tool used by the studio for their upcoming project, and one I became comfortable using during my internship.

I also think it is quite accessible and I believe it is easy to integrate with Unity, so a good option for people interested in interactive fiction and game developers.

Finally, I included a sample of prose, an excerpt from a novella I'm working on. The idea of this novella came from a seed given to me by the teacher of a short story writing course I took a few years ago.

Ultimately, I enjoyed putting this portfolio together, even with the mixed feelings that I started with. Trying to promote myself in this way is new to me (and many others entering this industry).

I have by no means figured it all out, but I hope in sharing my thought process there is something helpful here for folks in a similar position to me. I’m grateful for the support I got from Hannah and from the lovely folk who helped me edit pieces and check the portfolio for coherency.

So here it is, my game writing portfolio; if you take the time to give it a look, thank you, I really do appreciate it.

If you're someone who often reads game writing portfolios, or are an experienced peer, feel free to give me feedback, I’m happy to keep working at it. In the meantime, I’ll be over here, writing and trying my best not to overthink!

Thanks to Halima for writing up and sharing her journey with us all, and now to wrap up, a short extract from Writing for Games which summarises some key things to think about when putting together your own game writing portfolio. A large part of Part 3 can also be used to produce work that can go into this format so do consider finding the book in your local library if you think it might be useful.

Extract From: Tools for Finishing (Writing for Games)

One of the most useful things you can do as a writer for games moving to a new project (or looking to) is have a clear, accessible and easy to read portfolio website. Whether it’s built in Tumblr, Squarespace, Wordpress or from hand, it doesn’t matter. It does need to work well on mobile, and in most common browsers. And you need a URL that you can still be proud of when you’re ten years down the line.

You might still need to put together custom portfolios for certain applications or studios, but in general a public portfolio site linked to an active twitter profile is one of the most effective means of reaching out for work.

What makes a good game writing portfolio? When I’m recruiting writers, at minimum I want to see:

Landing Page

A landing page with a picture, a short summary of you and your experience, and 3 clear representative writing samples. A clear ‘contact’ button with an actual email address.

About Page

An About page which is a longer description of you and your practice, plus a CV-like list of crucial credits, qualifications and experience.

Portfolio Highlights

Writing samples: one short dialogue sample which shows you have a good ear for character, line length, naturalism etc., one story-led design proposal, one interactive writing sample including well-written choices (a video if not playable in-browser). Each sample should have a clear statement explaining the brief, context from which it’s excerpted, and any awards or review quotes or accolades associated with the work. If you’ve worked with/for someone on the sample, ask for an endorsement quote from your manager/collaborator you can include on the page.

Wider Portfolio

A larger portfolio section with more examples of work – if you’ve worked in different mediums it might be useful to set-up a subdomain which is games.yournamewebsite.com as the ‘home’ for all of this, and link to your ‘full’ website with poetry and fiction and TV writing from the root domain. Have a clear ‘games writing portfolio’ link from that root portfolio though.

Optional

Blog, link to social media.

These portfolio pieces are crucially all things you don’t need previous experience to work on. You can, in fact, take a year to develop pieces for your portfolio (see next section for a possible model for this).

And as I said – this is what I want to see – but it’s also worth taking a look at people a couple of years ahead of you career-wise in areas you’re interested in working in, and seeing what they provide (don’t use very established writers as an example, because by the point someone is operating on an established reputation, they will have outdated portfolios.)

One very useful thing you can reach out to mentors for is a portfolio review. If the kinds of companies you want to work for aren’t advertising entry-level positions, reaching out for a couple hour’s portfolio review as a piece of mentoring from their story team could be a very valuable insight into what they’d want to see and a way to get them to be aware of you, maybe even recommend you to others.

Finally, don’t be afraid of cold-outreach. Some people hate receiving cold-emails, which is fine, they probably won’t remember you because they won’t read it. But occasionally taking the time to do some cold-applications is good practice and might result in making someone aware of you when they are recruiting, or someone else is.

We hope this short extract was useful, thanks for reading!

Editor's note: Welcome our latest post in a regular series where we invite members of our team to talk about One Cool Thing (not necessarily from games) and if/how it influences/reflects on their work. While we're not able to talk about the exciting things we're working on right now, we hope this will be a nice little series of introductions to the interests & practices of our excellent team.

Here's our Assistant Producer, Úna-Minh Kavanagh, on being content and alone with your thoughts.

For previous articles in this series, check out our Writing Intern, Halima Hassan on revisiting old comforts, composer Eli Rainsberry on Road to the West & Cowboy Bebop, programmer Daria Radu on Dancing Games, story tech Florence Smith-Nicholl's on Environmental Storytelling and Archeology, tech lead Katrin-Anna Zibuschka on Co-operative Experiences, deputy tech lead Roxanne van Dam on "Doing the Disco", writer Harry Josephine Giles on Brave Sparrow, writer Sharna Jackson on Joana Choumali, tech artist Angus Dick on Fantastic Planet, creative producer Ben Wilson on Leaderboards, and our former story lead Char Putney on Randomness.

A Walk in Kerala

I’m at my happiest when I’m alone with my thoughts. Not all the time, but in general my creative energy comes from quiet, small, thoughtful interactions with the world. I like to vanish and absorb the world in that state. And in that spirit: for my One Cool Thing I'd like to share with you a walk I once took on the vibrant streets of Thiruvananthapuram, in the Kerala province of India.

Unexpected Encounters

In March 2017, I visited Kerala, and took a walk along the dusty paths by the coast in Thiruvananthapuram.  I was on a group tour, but I decided to separate from the group to explore on my own. When I get curious, I feel like I disappear for a while, and that didn't feel like something I could do as a group; so I walked. And as I walked it felt like reality split away into two worlds: I left behind the tourist Thiruvananthapuram, and found a place less opulent, less of a construct for tourists; not just a straight line, but made of many different paths.

Of course while I’d like to imagine that I was ‘incognito’ for my morning ramble, I was nevertheless a foreigner touring in India. Not only was I clutching a clunky DSLR camera, but I was also wearing cargo shorts and oversized sunglasses. I was someone that local Keralites could spot a mile off. So I don't mean I vanished to them, but for me it felt like sinking deeper into the place.

Greeting people with a ‘namaskaram’ (a polite greeting) and a smile, an older man soon jostled up to me with an inquisitive look in his eyes and clutching a bag of bracelets. Where was I going? He wanted to know. How long was I here for? Did I want a tour? I politely declined and continued to weave the walkways.

Hot tea sat on a window’s ledge as a woman hummed to herself; the sun beat down as on my path as a dog rooted through a pile of plastic. I wandered and collected the moments like photographs. “Namaskaram – hello!” I repeated. I drifted about and moved towards things I was drawn to. I wasn't 'at work' or on a deadline like you often are when you move through a city; I followed my interest rather than any specific route.

When I think of my ideal creative process I think of this walk. I think that's because in my memory it exists as a series of vignettes, revealing itself to me, unravelling, in a way which was natural and easy. That quality of moving towards the things that intrigue me; trusting in the flow: that's is something I aim for when I write.

And that’s how I ended up in Ish’s shop

The key to shopping for clothes in India (and indeed like my shopping experiences in Vietnam), is to act as if you’re not interested and be as vague as possible. It’s a skill which I felt well-versed in and ready to practice. So of course rather than looking at clothes, I chatted to the purveyor about anything but.

Ish was handsome with a broad, welcoming smile and thick black hair. His shop was laden with clothes and jewellery. We started chatting outside and as we discussed in-depth about where I had been in Kerala, I found myself gushing about the mountains of Munnar, Aleppy’s quiet backwaters and mere glimpses of Kumily.

“But have you been north?” he asked. I admitted that I hadn’t.

“You must!” he enthused. “Snowy mountains – fresh air for the soul. It’s great. Do you mind if I show you where?”

He beckoned me towards his shop and flipping on the air conditioning (I was still a tourist, after all) he produced a book on India.

“This is Kashmir where I’m from,” he announced, prodding a finger at the well-thumbed pages.

And there they were. Snowy slopes, pristine lakes and an exceptionally blue sky. It did look marvellous. And as someone that prefers cold weather to hot, I was already jealous.

I asked him what he was doing in Kerala rather than Kashmir and he answered: “I follow people like you!”; he spends ten months of the year down in southern India. He follows the tourism season and the ‘money trail’.

“It’s not so bad” he told me. “I get to fly.”

We spent over half an hour shooting the breeze without a question of shopping. His good nature made me want to linger and I almost forgot his wares.

I eventually picked out a red kaftan that I liked and tried it on.

“So, tell me. What’s your best price, Ish?”

His smile broadened and a laughed escaped his lips, “Well, 2000 rupees would be mine, but I don’t think that would be yours.”

I smiled – he knew the game and was willing to play. To-ing and fro-ing we eventually settled on a price much lower than the quote but a fair one nonetheless and he added a magnet for good luck.

Handing me a bright, yellow bag, I left with a spring in my step back through dusty paths. I had found my flow, and it had taken me to Ish. He wasn't an end point, but a moment of connection.

When I sat down to think of 'One Cool Thing' to offer you, I thought of this walk, Spring of 2017, in Thiruvananthapuram. I think about moving through those dusty streets, how it felt. That's my ideal form of creativity: wandering, playful, flowing, connecting. Vanishing everything but the here and now: trusting in my feet.

This is the third post in a series called Redux, where Game Designer and Co-Owner Douglas Wilson takes some of his old game design posts from our former 2010's blog, and re-posts them here, sometimes with additional commentary. Some of these posts have been linked from various places, and so this is our attempt to save them from the abyss.

[This post was originally published on February 19, 2012]

Thanks to a recommendation from my friend Mike, I recently finished reading The Master of Go (1951) by Yasunari Kawabata, a famous Japanese author and Nobel laureate. The book, though semi-fictional (some of the names and details have been changed), follows the story of a famous game of Go from 1938, between the Go master Shusai Meijin and his younger challenger, Kitani Minoru.

I only know a little bit about Go, and my grasp of the game’s subtleties is pretty tenuous. Nevertheless, Kawabata’s book was still very enjoyable! A deep understanding of Go might provide some additional color to the story, but it certainly isn’t necessary. The book is primarily a character portrait, as well as a chronicle of a specific subculture and a specific time in history (keep in mind that in 1938, World War 2 was looming close on the horizon). Kawabata's overarching argument seems to be that the Meijin-Minoru game marks a fundamental shift in how Go was played (at least in Japan). The end of an era, so to speak.

The book is an easy read, and I suspect that most game designers will find it rewarding. For the discerning reader, The Master of Go offers some useful lessons about game design and game culture more generally.

Typically, we tend to think about Go as the shining exemplar of “elegant” game design. It features a simple ruleset, yet also boasts infamously complex strategic depth. There’s certainly some truth to that evaluation. But if Kawabata’s tale has anything to teach us, it’s that any competitive game – even Go – is necessarily riddled with awkward ambiguities.

The climax of story, at least as Kawabata tells it, revolves around Minoru’s (Black) controversial move #121. To understand why Black 121 was so controversial – and indeed, even reviled by some – you need to understand three things about the Meijin-Minoru game. First, the game spanned several months. Between each session, the players would break for several days. Second, each player was given a limited amount of total time (40 hours) to contemplate their moves (note that Minoru came close to using up all his time). Third and most importantly, the Meijin-Minoru game was played with a tournament rule that was relatively new at the time (as far as I understand it) – that of the “sealed play.” The sealed play requires that the final move of each session remain unannounced. Instead, it is written down and sealed inside an envelope. The idea behind the sealed play is that neither player should get the break period (several days) to contemplate their counter-move.

Black 121 was precisely such a sealed play. In fact, the move was so unexpected that the game’s announcer, upon opening the envelope, literally had trouble locating it on the chart. For those of you who actually understand Go, here’s a diagram of the infamous moment:

Instead of playing in the current battle zone in the bottom-right quadrant, Minoru (Black) used his sealed play in the upper-left quadrant. The move was such that it required Meijin (White) to respond in the same quadrant of the board, away from the main action. In essence, Minoru had taken advantage of the sealed play, giving himself several days of extra time (off the clock!) to contemplate what he would do in the region of the board that actually mattered. (Someone correct me if I botched that explanation!)

Meijin (the Master) responded quickly with White 122, without showing much emotion. But during the lunch break, Meijin expressed his true anger, revealing that he had been on the verge of forfeiting (in protest). According to Kawabata, Meijin had exclaimed: “It was like smearing ink over the picture we had painted.” Kawabata, taking Meijin’s side, recounts that he had felt “a wave of revulsion” upon realizing what Minoru had done. Like the Master, Kawabata sees the game of Go as a work of art:

“The Master had put the match together as a work of art. It was as if the work, likened to a painting, were smeared black at the moment of highest tension. That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the forms of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony as of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary. That Black 121 having been a source of wonder and surprise and doubt and suspicion for us all, its effect in cutting the flow and harmony of the game cannot be denied.”

From there, the story takes another interesting turn. Right before the lunch break, Meijin had played White 130. As it turns out, that move would prove to be the fatal mistake that would eventually lose him the game. Kawabata theorizes that the Master, in his outrage over Black 121, had lost his presence of mind, leading him to make a critical error just nine moves later. We’ll never know the truth of course, but Minoru’s trick certainly casts a certain “shadow” over the game.

Was Minoru “wrong” to play Black 121? Can we indeed call it an “ugly” move?

An Ugly Move?

Perhaps Kawabata’s judgment is not so fair. Interestingly, a number of Meijin’s and Minoru’s contemporaries comment that the time was ripe for precisely such a tactical maneuver. Moreover, some have argued that the Master was notorious for similar such tricks. Arguably, Minoru had simply given Meijin a taste of his own medicine.

Videogame designer David Sirlin, in his book Playing to Win, writes against the notion of the “cheap” move. Sirlin argues that the point of competitive games is to play to win, and that any move is fair as long as it falls within the agreed-upon rules: “The game knows no rules of ‘honor’ or of ‘cheapness.’ The game only knows winning and losing.” As Sirlin sees it, good players respond not by complaining about “cheap” tactics, but by searching for a counter-strategy. He admits that in rare cases, some moves might be so powerful that they do “break the game.” But he claims that these cases are very rare, and that players should, as a rule of thumb, assume that any tactic is fair and continue playing.

Sirlin certainly makes a compelling argument. The problem, however, is that his perspective assumes that the rules are indeed agreed upon and unambiguous. In Meijin’s defence, we might point out that he was playing a different game than he had thought he was playing. Admittedly, using Sirlin’s reasoning one might counter-argue that Meijin can only blame himself for assenting to the sealed play the first place. But whether or not we should “blame” Meijin, Kawabata’s larger point still stands: “New rules bring new tactics.” In adding a new rule to make the game more “fair,” the officials had also changed the very game itself. It wasn’t the same game that Meijin had grown up playing.

The question, therefore, isn’t simply whether Black 121 was “cheap,” but also what changes we should (or shouldn’t) make to existing games. When we add new rules and regulations, how do we change the culture around that game? For Meijin and Kawabata, Go symbolized an entire way of life, both literally and figuratively. We can at least understand why they would feel sad to see that culture transform. Change can be difficult.

Moreover, both Meijin and Kawabata seem to be arguing that winning isn’t actually everything. Romantic or not, their claim seems to be that the “old” culture of Go valued the aesthetics of play, not just the result. Obviously, this argument is somewhat problematic (again, see this contemporary discussion of the controversy). But personally, I can’t help but feel a little sympathetic to that point of view.

The Well-Played Game

If we believe that the beauty of play is indeed located in the back-and-forth between well-matched opponents (see Bernie DeKoven’s work on the Well-Played Game, or Dave Hickey’s famous essay on Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), then it’s crucial that the games both players think they are playing actually match one another. Possibly, the Master would have insisted on different rules (for example, less total time) if he had known that Minoru would play with such tactics. Arguably, Meijin had already sealed his fate before the first move was even made.

In fact, Black 121 is not the only point of contention during the Meijin-Minoru game. Throughout the story, unexpected issues arise. For instance, when Meijin falls seriously ill, the organizers pressure Minoru into assenting to a modified play schedule. At times, Minoru feels like the Master is failing to live up to the “contract” of how the game is supposed to be played. At one point, he himself comes close to quitting (rage-quitting!) altogether.

Sirlin is therefore a little too idealistic when he writes that “There’s no weaseling out of defeat by redefining what the game is.” Whether we like it or not, there is always a certain degree of gamesmanship in negotiating how, where, and when the game should be played. This applies not only to tabletop games like Go, but also to computer games. Sociologist T.L. Taylor writes about how even a game like StarCraft runs up against rule ambiguities and thorny tournament disputes. As T.L. phrases it, rule negotiation is a “consistent feature” of computer gaming. Total systemization is a myth; it is impossible.

For us game designers, the takeaway lesson is this: new rules and regulations might fix some problems, but inevitably they introduce new ones too. Of course, this isn’t to say that we should necessarily shy away from altering existing games. But Kawabata’s tale does usefully remind us that even a seemingly minor alteration can change the entire culture of a game. Sometimes change is inevitable, but it’s at least worth contemplating carefully.

2022 Afterword

10 years later and I barely remember reading the book itself. But I do remember writing this post! At the time we were working on local multiplayer games via Sportsfriends, so I was thinking a lot about cultures of competitive play, house rules, tournaments, and so on.

Certainly, the focus of Gute Fabrik has shifted since. Still, I think there's a lot to learn here, about how videogame systems are always messily intertwined in larger contexts of social rules and interpersonal relations.

Lead image: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Go (13×13) -- 2021 -- 6733” / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Almost three years on since our mutant soap opera Mutazione’s original launch, we're delighted to offer a final free content update to our award-winning game.

New Sounds & Seeds

This final content update includes a new selection of plants for players to collect for the standalone Garden Mode; a toy-like version of the magical musical gardening mechanic which also features in the story mode of the game.

In Mutazione's gardens, each seed has its own corresponding musical sound or instrument which plays as it grows. As you plant different seeds together across the 8 unlockable gardens, you build beautiful compositions that thrive and shape as time moves on.

Some of these new seeds are quite rare, and you may need to use the 'seed-sharing' feature to share and trade with other players to collect them all. You won't want to miss the super rare Indigo Beak, one of our all-time favourite Mutazione plants - it features a beautiful vocal sound in the Mood Melancholia performed by singer Stefania Secci Rosa. Or maybe your garden composition would be enhanced by the soothing Spooky organ melodies of the curious Federfern. There are 11 new seeds in all, and we’ve saved some of the best for last!

This final content update brings us up to over 120 different plant species (and instruments) in total, in turn consisting of thousands of individual music files specifically hand-crafted by our composer and audio designer, Alessandro Coronas. We’re super proud of his work.

Looking Back

Since the game’s initial release in September 2019, we’ve rolled out a number of updates: freeform Garden Mode with Cloud Garden, the opening up of the Seven Gardens in Garden Mode, and the small durational update on the community of Mutazione two years on, which you'll find in the Penpal epilogue.

Of course we're equally as proud of this final content update, but bringing this chapter of Die Gute Fabrik's work to a close is also a little bittersweet. The story of this game is something that we’ve lived with for years - as far back as the late 2000s, when Creative Director Nils Deneken began drawing sketches and dreaming up the world, which you can see from this gorgeous thread he posted on Twitter.

We want to wrap up by offering a heartfelt thank you to all the players who have enjoyed the game along the way; every kind tweet, review you've left, email you've sent, and piece of fan art makes the hard work we put in feel worth it.

Return to Garden Mode

Meanwhile, just because this is our final content update doesn’t mean this has to be the end of Mutazione. There are still new seeds to collect, and an almost limitless number of musical soundscapes to arrange for yourself in our beautiful standalone Garden Mode that you can access anytime:

• Experience a special garden 'Cloud Garden', not playable in the main game.
• Find new seeds, instruments and animals.
• Seed share with your friends! (PC/Console only)

That's us for now! And when we say 'bittersweet' - one of the 'sweet' parts of that is that we're moving onto new and exciting unannounced projects, so stay tuned and keep an eye on our socials for more announcements from us in the future.

Special thanks to our publishers Akupara for all their dedication to bringing our musical, supernatural and story-driven adventure Mutazione to so many new audiences. And thanks, too, to the platforms, public funders and peers who have helped us made the game possible. Don't forget to check out the credits when you play the game!

PlayStation 4 | Steam | itch.io | Apple Arcade | Xbox platforms | Nintendo Switch

You can find links to all stores, merch and more at: mutazionegame.com

We’re once again excited to be supporting one of the most accessible and interesting game dev events this year, the Game Devs of Color Expo (GDoC), happening September 15th to September 18th, with online events as well as IRL, to get tickets and check out their excellent lineup, head over to their website here.

In the meantime, here's our brilliant Exec. Assistant Úna-Minh Kavanagh with some of her highlights from the upcoming programme.

As a person of colour myself, it's always encouraging to see events like GDoC as this wonderful expo centres around people who often lack the voice or power to enact systemic change. Now more than ever we need to be experience these kinds of talks and open our minds to groundbreaking and exciting ideas.

The speakers, interviews and talks at GDoC cover everything from establishing progressive studio culture and music licencing to diverse character creation and effective social marketing.

Please note: for event times wherever you are, check out World Time Buddy for easy-to-access time zone conversions. Below are just some of the cool events that stood out to me while browsing through GDoC's jam packed schedule.

Let's Build Awesome Studio Cultures

Date: Friday, September 16th (4:30 PM to 4:55 PM CET)
Hosted by: David Kwan

As rightly noted in the event's description, 'studio culture will make or break teams'. In this 25 minute talk, the conversation will focus on how we all play a role in creating and sustaining healthy studio cultures.

Key questions surrounding this short talk include what we must learn from the hardships of what has come before in order to make our futures better as well as how we can create safe harbours for team members.

This is a topic that has always interested me as growing up in Ireland and working across many workplaces, I've been a part of many working environments that have thrived (and many that haven't too!).

Unionization and Diversity in the Game Industry

Date: Friday, September 16th (11:50 PM to 12:15 PM CET)
Hosted by: Game Workers of Southern California

In recent years we've seen more and more game developers come together in vocalising how we can combat crunch, harassment, discrimination, and job insecurity that have plagued the game industry.

In this talk, participants will learn all about how people can wield collective worker power against injustices as well as what exactly labour unions are and their part in history. The question posed is what do unions mean for developers of colour as they work towards inclusion and representation in games.

As a journalist who has been in a union themselves, I'm very interested in the contrast or similarities one for the games industry could look like and what kind of supports they could offer.

Characters Not Clichés

Date: Saturday, September 17th (4:15 PM to 4:40 PM CET)
Hosted by: Ruel Pascual and Adam Hines

Given that our work at DGF is driven by excellence, intentionality and care, I think this will be a really insightful talk by Adam Hines and Ruel Pascual on character writing.

Night School Studio creates games that 'build worlds that are rooted in characters facing both pivotal moments in their lives and within the larger world' and I'm also very excited to hear more about OXENFREE II: Lost Signals. I very much enjoyed the writing of the first game when I played it many moons ago.

This is just a small selection of the many talks you can attend at the Expo. You can find out more about the Game Devs of Color Expo here.

This is the wrap-up reflection of our wonderful 2022 Game Writing Intern Halima Hassan, you can also read our 2021 intern Ida Hartman’s reflection on her time with us here. Writing on our current project will be locked soon, so it will be a couple more years before there will be funding and material for a new internship, but we thank everyone who has applied to the previous two positions, and will be writing up our own reflections before the end of the year.

The time has come to look back at my experience with Die Gute Fabrik as the studio’s 2022 Game Writing Intern; a time that has helped me develop and transform my own practice in an invaluable and permanent way. I was recently telling a friend how amazing and fortunate it is to have the time to discover and delve into something (a practice, activity, story) that inspires you to create or grow as a creator. For most people, it is the delving part that is tricky; even just finding the time and space to learn, let alone an opportunity that will support you in doing just this.

At the time I applied to the internship I told myself “if I give it my best shot, I will be fine with whatever the outcome is”. Which was fine until I heard back after the first round, and I finally acknowledged how badly I wanted it. I wrote in my notes that day “this first step is an achievement in and of itself, to have gotten this far”.

Actually getting the position didn’t really feel real until the internship began. Suddenly, in a matter of weeks, I was inducted and supported to WRITE for a VIDEOGAME, alongside remarkable writers. The experience has been one of learning and of listening, and being given time and resources to develop and practice.

Learning and listening in particular arose from the writers room format. This is the first time I’ve worked in a writers room, and I really enjoy collaborating with others and bouncing ideas with an incredible group of people, each with their own unique creative backgrounds.

Being Creative Within a Formed World

My internship began almost 2 years into the development of Die Gute Fabrik’s current project, so when I joined a lot of the bigger arcs of the story were already set. And I’ve found being creative within a formed world to be challenging and incredibly enjoyable. Imagining, exploring interesting themes, and improving my writing within a clear and already-formed brief has really enabled me to grow as a writer.

Throughout the internship I was able to see a little into the processes of other departments and specialists; programmers, artists, musicians to name a few. I was able to see how videogame development relies on us all working together. If a game and process is story-driven, you need to produce writing consistently for the smooth running of the game-making operation.

This relates to the main hurdle I encountered during the internship, which became my major breakthrough. In my personal practice, I enjoy sitting with an idea for some time before drafting it; world-building for ages before getting to the ‘point’ (telling the story). I find a lot of security and comfort in detailing the background even though, as I’ve discovered, the true joy for me is - ultimately - imagining interactions and writing dialogue. Although I only encountered generosity, flexibility and patience from the team, I was keen to keep up the writing responsibilities I was trusted with. So, I asked myself: Why do I feel most secure in the background, preparation work? Why am I hesitant to dive in and write?

At Die Gute Fabrik they schedule regular ‘Practice Talks’ where creative practitioners from other artforms are invited in to talk to the studio over lunch about their practice. During the first few weeks of my internship we had a talk from freelance audio storyteller, writer and producer Ross Sutherland.

Ross spoke to us about what he called ludic writing: a creative, game-like strategy for supporting writing. Essentially: make up a game and then play this game in order to generate stories. He also shared some examples of ludic writing from his experimental audio fiction podcast Imaginary Advice. The refrain that stuck with me from his talk was this: artistic constraints force creative innovation.

I had to view this new way of working - for pay, for a deadline, within a vast system of other people who needed me to deliver in order that they could work - as a playful constraint: here are the ‘rules’ for this ‘game’, how can I create within these rules? What if I trusted my instincts, what if I followed the first idea that came to my mind and played with it, rather than over-scrutinising?

I had my answer - it free’d me up to see preparation as not about having everything before I could start, but building simple frameworks in which I could play and find the work.

There has been a lot of serendipity involved with my journey into games writing. Rediscovering games  during the pandemic, as an escape and a way to stay connected with others safely; to following games people online and joining game-focused Discords. Then to finding this rare internship. I’ve gotten a chance to learn more about game writing, a chance to write for a game, invaluable mentorship and (soon, as part of the mentoring part of the internship) a portfolio of work that will support me in my career as a writer.

I hope more studios begin to offer internships modelled on the one here at Die Gute Fabrik, that will enable folks to experience this industry in an equitable and non exploitative way. Specifically: with good pay and clear and structured support and guidance. Such opportunities enable individuals like myself to explore burgeoning practices freely. I wish this for people considering entering any creative field, without the means to securely explore new paths on their own.

After five incredible months this is what I know; I want to write for games, I want to work with others to make games and I want to try my hand at making my own game, too. I’d also love to connect with more creatives in and out of this industry, feel free to reach out to me on the many corners of the internet I like to lurk in! Otherwise, watch this space for my brand new portfolio, and other exciting announcements too ✌🏾

It can be quite complicated to know how to mark Pride when you're a company based in Denmark, with workers from ~12 countries, and feel a bit uncomfortable with the corporatising of Pride.

There's which Pride to mark, for one thing: Pride Month in the USA marks the Stonewall Riots, but Pride in the UK, for example, is connected to the Gay Liberation Front, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., then there's the many, many rolling Pride Weeks across Europe. Copenhagen Pride happens in August, and this year EuroPride is in Belgrade in September.

We are a team that includes LGBTQ+ people, more than a third of us are somewhere in there, and to be quite honest there's a certain pressure in the shadow of USA Pride to perform Pride in June, which is anyway a strange thing to do in a place or realm of work.

I personally, as Studio Lead, am eager not to put the labour of representation on a team whose labour is being employed to make a game. In my opinion, one of the best things a workplace can offer in terms of proactive and radical inclusion, is that you don't have to do work advocating for your inclusion (although obviously we're not perfectly 'there' - subconscious and implicit biases will persist, which makes the work always a verb, never a noun, and something I don't consider we will have 'done', ever).

Die Gute Fabrik, under my leadership, believes this: that a radical revolution in systems of healthcare, mental health, education and work, borders, plus tired ill-fitting binary, heteronormative, cis-centred, white supremacist, ableist concepts such as 'family' and 'sexuality' and 'bodies' and 'gender' is essential. That queer utopias are necessary. And that LGBTQ+ folks shouldn't have to market themselves.

We're here, some of us are queer. And in light of all the above, we decided to share with you some of our favourite or upcoming recent works of game by or involving LGBTQ+ creators. Buy their games. That's something.

Dreamfeel’s If Found

The award-winning Dreamfeel’s If Found uses the central mechanic of erasure to explore the diary of a young Irish woman called Kasio as she reflects on her return to Achill, the challenges with her family, friendships, and the looming black hole about to destroy the earth.

Humble Grove’s No Longer Home

Humble Grove’s No Longer Home features music by our own Eli Rainsberry, and is a semi-autobiographical story-driven adventure game set in a magical realist house-share in contemporary London. The apartment's inhabitants are preparing to leave as their university graduations approach and must deal with immigration restrictions splitting up the two central characters that render their futures precarious and uncertain. Strange and mundane, careful and intimate.

Thirsty Suitors by Outerloop games

The upcoming Thirsty Suitors by Outerloop games is thrilling to see for a game at the AA level (rather than indie or III) end of games. With writing and story by the incredible Megna Jayanth, Thirsty Suitors just won an award at Tribeca, before it's even out! A "game about culture, relationships, family pressures, and expressing oneself", Thirsty Suitors is a cinematic, turn based action/fighter with RPG elements, where you have to reconcile with (fight) your exes, with incredible visuals and a unique style. Check out the trailer here, and follow the team on Steam or Twitter to get it when it comes out.

The Queer Games Bundle

For the past couple of years the Queer Games Bundle has collected (and it's definitely collected rather than curated, so you'll need to be prepared to go in curating for yourself what interests you) a huge number of itch.io's tiny indie experimental games by people who identify as queer in some way. In 2022 that's 413 creators’ tiny indie experiments. They split proceeds between all creators. Check it out for an insight into the experimental works happening at the fringes right now.

We Dwell in Possibility by Robert Yang & Eleanor Davis

We Dwell in Possibility by Robert Yang and Eleanor Davis is a beautiful free browser-based game made for the Manchester International Festival in the UK, they describe it as "a queer gardening simulation shaped by intimacy and politics – designed by Robert Yang, a videogame developer whose work explores gay subcultures, with visuals by cartoonist and illustrator Eleanor Davis."

The Queer Games Avant Garde - Bonnie Ruberg

The Queer Games Avant Garde - edited by Bonnie Ruberg - is a book which collects an important recent history of queer games practices at the edges of games practice, i.e. where most of the interesting stuff happens. It platforms many different voices from the past couple of decades, sets up histories that otherwise might be forgotten, and is a great place to start if you're someone from outside of or adjacent to games wondering where all the queer games practices are at.

Dream Askew by Avery Alder

Dream Askew by Avery Alder is one half of a tabletop game game book about a queer community after the apocalypse. Alder's The Quiet Year is a masterpiece of the genre of accessible tabletop games for people trying to imagine futures together, and Dream Askew focuses particularly on queer experience as part of that. Highly recommended.

Editor's note: Welcome our latest post in a regular series where we invite members of our team to talk about One Cool Thing (not necessarily from games) and if/how it influences/reflects on their work. While we're not able to talk about the exciting things we're working on right now, we hope this will be a nice little series of introductions to the interests & practices of our excellent team.

Here's our brilliant Writing Intern Halima Hassan on how she feels inspired in revisiting old comforts and specifically, the TV series Friends.

For previous articles in this series, check out composer Eli Rainsberry on Road to the West & Cowboy Bebop, programmer Daria Radu on Dancing Games, story tech Florence Smith-Nicholl's on Environmental Storytelling and Archeology, tech lead Katrin-Anna Zibuschka on Co-operative Experiences, deputy tech lead Roxanne van Dam on "Doing the Disco", writer Harry Josephine Giles on Brave Sparrow, writer Sharna Jackson on Joana Choumali, tech artist Angus Dick on Fantastic Planet, creative producer Ben Wilson on Leaderboards, and our outgoing story lead Char Putney on Randomness.

Revisiting old comforts

In the episode of well-known long-running TV series Friends "The One Where Old Yeller Dies", Phoebe walks in on the gang in the middle of watching the film Old Yeller. They've seen the film before and are sad in anticipation of the tragic ending, which Phoebe is confused by, as her recollection of the film is one that ends on a happy note.

It is gradually revealed that Phoebe is oblivious to the 'true' endings of many sad stories, since her mother decided to protect her as a child by only showing her the good parts of stories. Phoebe is challenged to re-visit the works as an adult, and it's interesting to me to think about this process of re-visiting.

Personally, the pandemic has reduced my tolerance for unhappy media. I know this isn't a unique feeling; a close friend of mine and I have bonded these last few years over how - in the context of the uncertainty and low-level fear that came to the forefront of our lives - we have reached for entertainment and activities with lower stakes, and that guarantee comfort. For me that's things like re-watching Friends and listening to Fallout Boy.

So, as part of my One Cool Thing, that's what I want to offer you:

Old Comforts

I find myself, for the third time in the past two years, rewatching Friends from Season One. I know this show really well, but that doesn't stop me from replaying an episode to fill the air with familiar sounds and laughing enthusiastically at jokes I've heard several times before. I know what I'm getting. It is a marked relief, to experience something I know every beat of, and which cannot surprise me.

Personally, I find that returning to a piece of media or an experience with a memory of it already formed and feelings already attached can be a thrilling process. I return with a transformed perspective and (possibly) with new priorities and values, afforded by the time that has passed since the first experience.

Questions, inevitably arise such as:

• Will I enjoy this as much as I once did?
• How accurate is my memory of this thing?
• Will who I am now agree with who I was when I first experienced it?
• How do I feel about the ways I’ve changed?
• Am I prepared for the revelations that may result from the re-watch/encounter?

I find that tension really interesting; that things you admired before might disappoint you now, realising you’ve come a long way from the person you once were. Reckoning with those experiences, this new reality, can be a cool thing to do.

Not every trip down memory lane takes you to the comforting destination you once knew. I love looking back, but to re-experience some of the bigger comforts of my past is trickier. It is always a small loss to have your memory of a piece of art altered when it’s viewed from a changed perspective. But revisiting a more loved and familiarly comforting place from your past feels higher stakes.

New Starts

I’ve moved around a lot in my life and there are so many memories tied to the different places I’ve lived. In re-visiting media and art, I also find myself thinking about these places a lot. A few years ago, my brother and I decided - on a trip to visit family in Sweden - to revisit the neighbourhood we lived in as children. The excitement I had quickly wore off on our arrival as, unsurprisingly, a lot had changed.

From minor things like how small everything seemed (looking at it from my adult perspective). To more jarring moments of meeting with the present - for example, several current members of the neighbourhood approached us with suspicion, asked us why we were there, and suggested we should leave. As if they could not imagine this neighbourhood once meaning a lot to us, that we might be connected to or have once belonged in this place.

I think there is some kind of safety about approaching old media and art, compared to that experience. While picking an old hobby back up might not always result in a positive outcome or reflection on your past self, when you do it, it's a reflection held within a safer space, and on your own terms.

What does it mean to re-visit? To reflect on old-new-starts? The comfortable space of re-visiting old stories makes me feel like I have more agency on how I reflect on the re-visiting my own storied past. I am able to choose to think about the aspects of my old homes and experiences that brought me joy, and how I can recreate them for the life I live today. I loved living near the woods, trips to the beach to swim and to the barn to hold baby rabbits.

Now, I’m always at peace when I am near trees as they evoke that old comfort from my childhood and I’m currently on a quest to find fun outdoor swimming spots near me. The rabbits, I think, will remain just a warm memory!

The act of re-visiting in media and art has given me a useful tool for reflection on my own life. So, that's the cool thing I'd like to offer you in turn: is there an idea, place or piece of media you'd like to revisit? Or do you learn something about yourself in how you feel strongly about what you don't want a later or adult perspective on? Perhaps the visit will be confined to your imagination (a moment to reminisce, appreciate or let go), perhaps it'll involve a trip to the library or a search online. Such different methods to rediscover that thing that once brought you so much joy.

One more reflection.

I find revisiting to be a way to appreciate all the things I've been (e.g., a Fall Out Boy fan), the many things I am (a Fall Out Boy fan) and wondering about all the things I'll be (Fallout Boy 4eva).

We're delighted to welcome Úna-Minh Kavanagh to the Die Gute Fabrik team as Executive Assistant to the CEO -  a complex job which involves a bit - or rather a lot - of everything!

We first came across Úna-Minh when she applied for our 2022 Writing Internship - she was one of our excellent shortlisted candidates - and while we're sad we can only resource one position for the thousands of applicants for the internship, we always think of the folks we meet through the process when other relevant positions open up. That's why we were so delighted to invite Úna-Minh back to chat to us about becoming part of the Production Team at the studio and as a crucial support to Hannah Nicklin our CEO and Studio Lead.

Úna-Minh will now be working behind-the-scenes on our Production Team, and hope you're just as excited to hear from her here and - unlike our other recent additions - on our socials too, where she'll also be posting updates and news from all of us at Die Gute Fabrik.

Who are you and what’s your background?

My name is Úna-Minh (pronounced Oona-Ming (or /uːnə-mɪŋ/ in IPA) and I’m a proud Irishwoman who also happens to be based in Ireland. As I’ve had my hands in many pots over the years, it can quite the challenge to settle on an exact title for myself but let’s just say in a concise nutshell, I work as a journalist, author, and multimedia content producer.

In 2009, I moved away from my hometown and headed to Dublin - or the Big Smoke as we like to call it - and began my degree, a B.A. in Irish and Journalism in Dublin City University which is basically journalism through the Irish language!

The Irish Language (Gaeilge/Gaelainn) is an innate part of me for a few reasons. I’m a fluent Irish language speaker and at home in County Kerry, there were but three of us in our family, myself my mom and grandad. My grandad was a native Irish speaker from one of the Irish speaking regions in predominantly the west coast of Ireland, known as Gaeltachtaí and so, we spoke a mix of Irish and English at home.

Irish is part of my professional and personal life and when my head is not stuck in a book, I’m also doing other cool things like foraging for wild food which I’m frankly pretty taken with. Seriously, come to me when the zombie apocalypse happens, I'll sort you out!

Aside from zombie-prep, I’ve been working as a freelancer since 2016 and when the opportunity came to work with DGF, it took little convincing for me to take it on. Challenge accepted.

I've worked with many, many different teams over the years and without a shadow of a doubt, DGF is the most diverse team I’ve been a part of.

What’s your practice?

When I left DCU, I went straight into a job as a journalist and worked in a company that focused on writing stories about the Irish diaspora. This was a crucial part of my 'hands-on' training. I had done a short stint as an intern in a fast-paced newsroom and to be able to go straight into the workplace was a thrill. I was eager to learn and quickly got to grips with adapting on the fly. Interviews? Check. Hunting down sources? Check. Being first on the scene? Check! It's a buzz and in one way it was the golden age of social media; fresh and new.

After a few years in the news and entertainment industry, I quickly decided that instead of pursuing a Masters, I would take some time off to train in a cookery school to enhance my skills and transition into food and travel writing. It was a fantastic experience and I filleted many a fish, but it left me in a bit of a pickle because following it, I had to 'break into' another industry.

I continued to build up my portfolio and in 2016, I decided to take the leap to go completely freelance. And it was the best decision I ever made.

Not only did it allow me incredible flexibility and work from home, but it also forced me to 'grow up' quickly. Now I was in charge of everything, from setting my hours to doing the dreaded invoice chase.

While the vast majority of employers have been solid, you often have a rogue invoice to hunt down and I've learned to be firm and put my foot down. After all, it's all about a mutual respect.

During my freelance career I've been privileged to be able do such a vast variety of things. I've hosted talks, panels, social media masterclasses, I live-stream and manage the team that brought the official Irish language translation to Among Us and I've published four books, including my memoir and I co-authored a book with Lonely Planet. I'm one of those people who can't sit still. The world excites me!

So how do I do my work well?

Simply put, I write what I know. This is something that I always consider regardless of the brief and if I don’t know it, I do a lot of research. Aside from that I have a few productivity and life tips I stick to:

• I use a plugin called Boomerang to pause my personal inbox. What it does is send a message back to the sender telling them that I'm not looking at my emails so expect a delay. Too often people presume that we're glued to our emails!
• Because I'm on multiple socials, I bulk schedule content. So for example, if I'm out foraging on the beach, I'll record several videos and save them to drafts to spread them out a couple of weeks. I use Postoplan to do this which has its own network of interconnected apps.
• I meditate every night before I go to bed. It's just for 10 - 15 minutes using an app called 10 Percent Happier.
• Every time my feet touch the floor in the morning I say: "Today is going to be a good day"

These days most of my writing and narrative work is done through my Dungeons and Dragons campaign which I’ve been a Dungeon Master for, for many, many years.

I also love D&D because it requires quick thinking and I must adapt to a very flexible narrative when the players catch me off guard and the dice misbehaves.

What bit of story in the world are you really excited about right now?

I finally got around to playing Disco Elysium (DE) and what a trip that was. I can’t stop thinking about it and how immaculate the writing was. It was complex and at a certain point you just had to simply go with it. Some games offer choices which end up being false choices but with DE, everything seemed to have some sort of impact on the story.

It was a fascinating, brilliant, and utterly chaotic journey. I’m itching to replay it already and for those who have, you will definitely get me when I say that Kim is my bestie and I would do anything for him!

What was the best advice about writing you ever had?

Many moons ago, I interned at a news organisation called Storyful. It was there that I got to work with a brilliant journalist called Áine Kerr (the Co-Founder and COO Kinzen) and it was she who imparted to me some key words of advice about writing:

“Write as if you’re talking to a friend”

At the time, I’ll be honest, I didn’t get it but over the years as I’ve honed my craft it’s made more sense. Being convoluted is not useful nor is it inspiring. This isn’t to say that everything has to be written simply, it just means it should make sense.

Can you tell us something unexpected thing about yourself?

I don’t think it’s CV worthy, but I can speed list all 32 counties in Ireland in the Irish language and under 11 seconds. I learned it in Primary School and the ability never left me since.

Where can we find you?

I’m all over the shop! You can find me on Twitter. Check out my good news only website and I stream in both Irish and English over on Twitch. Míle baochas!

(Header image credit - Julian Dasgupta)

So, as well as trying to steer the good ship Die Gute Fabrik, over the past year or so, CEO and Creative Director Hannah Nicklin (who also was the writer and narrative designer on Mutazione) has been writing a book designed to help people learn more about writing for games. We wanted to use the blog to share a series of extracts for the book, as a resource, and so you can find out if this is a book that you might find interesting or useful. See extract 1 here, and extract 2 here.

As part of this series of extracts, we're also excited to offer this special discount code: JML20 - use it to get 20% off the book at launch, pre-order or buy the book now!

About the Book

Writing for Games: Theory & Practice is an approachable and entry-level text for anyone interested in the craft of writing for videogames - and specifically focuses on writing, not narrative design or environmental storytelling. The book is aimed at both game design students and writers interested in games writing as a practice, and aims to provide anyone interested in becoming a better writer in the context of videogames.

It's broken into three parts: Theory considers the craft of both games and writing from a theoretical perspective, covering vocabulary for both game and story practices. Case Studies uses three case studies to explore the theory explored in Part One. And the Practical Workbook offers a series of provocations, tools and exercises aimed at giving the reader the means to refine and develop their writing, not just for now, but as a part of a life-long practice.

Today's Extract

This extract is chosen from the very beginning of the book, where I lay out some useful first principles, this part is from pp.23-25 of the book, where I differentiate writing from narrative design, consider the layers of writing in a game and discuss why vocabulary in talking about the craft of both writing and games is vital for its practice.  There are some footnotes in this extract so if you see a number like (1) skip to the bottom if you want to read the footnote.

The Material Context of Games

The next few chapters will cover a variety of essential vocabulary in specific areas: from games studio structures, to story structure, and story components. But before we run the gamut, I wish to lay down one more set of foundations about storytelling in games.

• Here’s the most important thing: Games are really hard to make.(1)

Theatre is also hard to make; dance, ceramics, quilt making, all of it. I know. All media and art forms have their own challenges, but when you make a film, sure, you have to write a script and hire actors, and direct and film and edit. But you don’t also have to invent gravity, and build the actors as puppets made out of flesh and bone and weird perspectives.

That you have to define ‘up’ and ‘down’ and ‘sky’ and ‘ground’ is also part of the joy and inventive potential of games, but please believe me when I say the defining thing about game development is that it is a goddamn miracle if any game functions at all, and still if it functions on most computers, most of the time.

It can take half a year for a team to resource, design, implement, and fix the display of italics in onscreen text (this happened to me). It can take several months to build the tools for defining the logic of, implementing, and displaying a character’s dialogue in the right format. A large part of game development is project planning, MVP(2), and communicating with others about what’s needed, what’s a priority, and when a change is being made – so that other departments can understand how it will have a knock-on effect.

The material context of writing and storytelling in games is that you rarely work alone – especially as a writer – and the practice of writing will as much be about communication, priorities, project planning, spreadsheets, and resources, as often as it’s about being able to actually do it.

Then you face the huge lack of common vocabulary for what we mean when we talk about story in games.

Narrative Design Is Not Writing and Vice Versa

Writing is not narrative design, and narrative design is not writing. One of the common misconceptions in videogames around storytelling is that narrative designers can write and vice versa. Sometimes you get people who do both (often you will be expected to be a dual narrative designer/writer in a small indie development team), but this problem is endemic and often means that the actual brief or recruitment copy for a piece of work isn’t clear about what’s wanted. And it’s even possible the people writing the job description don’t know what they need.

So, let’s set this out as clearly as possible, in this book, these are our definitions:

• Narrative design is the practice of game design with story at its heart. You are the advocate for the story in the design of the game. Narrative is (and we will dig down more into this in the next chapter) the design of the telling of a story. Not just a plot in a world with characters, but also the decisions around in what order the plot is communicated, how characters and the environment build together, structure, pacing, choice design, voice, perspective, role-play relationships, UI, the key decisions around tools, player agency, and much else. It is storytelling through design.
• Writing is the building of characters, worlds, plot, structure pacing, cadence, dialogue, UI text, choice text, exposition, characterisation, character journeys, format, genre, and medial expressivity (i.e. What is this sentence to be read as? Is it a line of dialogue like in a script, a book, for speaking, a comic?). It is storytelling through words.

Even if you are practising – or wish to practise – in both of these areas, separating them is extremely useful, as you will develop both strands through different processes, and both will provide different solutions to a challenge or problem. It’s also useful to be able to articulate the difference to others. If you’re hired as a narrative designer, but the team that hires you isn’t willing to include you in design discussions or consider design proposals from you, then you are not actually being given the means to do your job. If you’re hired as a writer, but someone is suddenly asking you to co-design a dialogue system, it can be empowering to assess that as a narrative design task and ask for more resources (money, time, or hiring a collaborator) to do so.

The Different Layers of Writing in a Game

Not all writing is storytelling. Some writing will be a part of communicating how the player should and can interact with the interfaces and mechanics of a game. One affordance of writing for games is focusing on the utility of your writing. A game may need several levels of ‘voice’ or ‘register’, from the ‘creative’ register of the story and its characters, to the register of tutorial instructions, UI, inventory descriptions, and quest reminders. Sometimes they combine in conventions such as inner monologue – in many games, characters will converse naturalistically in all manners except that the player character will also talk out loud to themselves in an extremely unnaturalistic manner in order to give the player hints and reminders. And the writing of a UI text is not a simple thing – it is a sub-discipline which also works with genre and formal conventions.

When writing for a game you will need to think about how these registers intersect. Perhaps you’re writing for a game where the characters individually don’t have distinguishable voices because the game voice is the important thing (this is most common in jokey or internet- humour-driven games, where the voice of the game is referential, and characters frequently break the fourth wall). And don’t forget – your choices (if offered) will have a register too! Does the game UI describe the choices, or does a narrator in the world offer them or does the character? Following is one choice expressed in three different kinds of ‘voices’:

• Move on.
• Priya wants to leave.
• Priya: Come on, let’s go.

(More on choice voice, later.)

You also need to think about how the writing in the game sits in the layer of importance for the player. Are they front and centre (in a story-driven game), are they holding two parts together (cutscene writing), or are they part of the supporting framework (a small dialogue encounter in a puzzle-driven game, or ‘barks’(3) in a battle)?

For example, games with puzzles can be simplistically split into story-driven and puzzle- driven. In the former, all the puzzles should move the character or the story forwards; in the latter, the joy should centre on a puzzle well-solved, and the writing is more focused on a supportive background for the puzzle-solving. Neither of these approaches are inherently better – instead consider the effect you want to have and how the working with the affordances of your game can help you achieve it. [...]

Why Is Vocabulary Important?

The key thing about working in games is that it’s an extremely broad interdisciplinary practice, so it will be common for you to need to communicate with people with widely different training and media/artform backgrounds from you. Understanding the vocabulary of game development will help you understand what kind of background or foundation from which a person might be speaking to you. This will be the subject of Chapter 2.

The act of learning the basic building blocks of storytelling vocabulary benefits everyone; if you are already a game developer without story expertise, it will allow you to understand the storytellers you communicate with. If you are someone who wants to tell stories with games, understanding the specificities of storytelling deeply enough to communicate them clearly will help you fight for the story in the design meeting, development process, and the game’s production. This will be the subject for Chapters 3 and 4 – the first is a grounding in story structure ideas, and the second a run through key story components.

As a writer it’s vital to be able to articulate your practice to yourself and your peers – not only does it help you practise your craft more effectively, but it also allows you to better critique (crit)(4) other works, and therefore understand how they have their effects, and in turn help you better understand how you can learn from them.

Footnotes

(1) ‘Nobody told me when you make a video game you have to make the whole thing’ (Esposito, 2018).

(2) Minimum viable product: part of the Agile practice of design. The idea is to make the design idea, tool, or piece of gameplay in its most minimally functional way, and then to test or play it in order to know in which direction to improve and build on it.

(3) Barks: One-off lines which reinforce character and the drama of a moment, delivered not as part of conversation, but to liven up travel, battle, or the exploration of an open world area.

(4) I set out a detailed proposal for a critical methodology in Part III of the book, but for now we can loosely define ‘crit’ as the practice of analysing and understanding how a work uses its affordances to achieve its intended effects.

End of extract.

That discount code again

Remember, as part of this series of extracts, we're also excited to offer this special discount code: JML20 - use it to get 20% off the book at launch, pre-order or buy the book now!

(Header image credit - Last Stop by Variable State [Presskit], which is one of the case studies in the book)

So, as well as trying to steer the good ship Die Gute Fabrik, over the past year or so, CEO and Creative Director Hannah Nicklin (who also was the writer and narrative designer on Mutazione) has been writing a book designed to help people learn more about writing for games. We wanted to use the blog to share a series of extracts for the book, as a resource, and so you can find out if this is a book that you might find interesting or useful. See extract 1 here.

As part of this series of extracts, we're also excited to offer this special discount code: JML20 - use it to get 20% off the book at launch, pre-order or buy the book now!

About the Book

Writing for Games: Theory & Practice is an approachable and entry-level text for anyone interested in the craft of writing for videogames - and specifically focuses on writing, not narrative design or environmental storytelling. The book is aimed at both game design students and writers interested in games writing as a practice, and aims to provide anyone interested in becoming a better writer in the context of videogames.

It's broken into three parts: Theory considers the craft of both games and writing from a theoretical perspective, covering vocabulary for both game and story practices. Case Studies uses three case studies to explore the theory explored in Part One. And the Practical Workbook offers a series of provocations, tools and exercises aimed at giving the reader the means to refine and develop their writing, not just for now, but as a part of a life-long practice.

Today's Extract

This extract is chosen from one of the three short case studies which forms the middle part of the book - this is part of a case study exploring the use of format to support character exposition in LAST STOP by Variable State. The full case study is longer, but this part is from pp.162-163 of the book. It's worth watching a youtube video of this chapter in the game, or playing it, before considering the case study.

SPOILERS WILL BE PART OF THIS DISCUSSION.

The Heist

In ‘Paper Dolls’, Chapter 3: Imposter Syndrome the player plays as John – a middle-aged public-sector worker, who’s a single father, living in public housing in (what feels like) East London with his 8-year-old daughter. In previous chapters you meet his acquaintance Jack – a young yuppyish tech professional from the north of England, who sometimes gets John’s mail. John and Jack are presented as chalk and cheese: John public sector and Jack private. John is photocopiers and phonelines, Jack is programming and videogames. John is middle-aged, unwell, and portrayed as having an unhealthy lifestyle; Jack is a lean runner in his 20s.

The more you have them side by side, class and geographical backgrounds also feel contrasted; John has a ‘local’ London accent, but Jack is from the north. And while it’s clear John is barely scraping by in his increasingly gentrified neighbourhood, Jack is the reason it’s being gentrified. This characterisation is set up by accent, language, location, the kind of work they do.

Body-swap comedies work best when the swapped characters are very far apart in perspective, because the essential conclusion of a body-swap comedy is to understand the others’ perspective: ‘the grass isn’t greener, it’s just different, and now I understand where you were coming from’. By the time we reach Chapter 3, they’ve swapped bodies, come to terms with the weirdness of it, and are trying to work out how to survive in the meantime. As a player, we’re ready to begin the process of not just acknowledging their differences, but also finding common ground. That’s important not just for the conclusion of the format, but also because the warm burgeoning friendship between the two will provide the emotional underpinning for the eventual decision about their fate that the player will face at the end of the game.

Chapter 3 of ‘Paper Dolls’ is the most successful piece of storytelling in the game (in my opinion) because it uses a subformat to both shortcut the process of character exposition for Jack (with whom we’re less familiar – we start the game as John) and their growing closer.

It does so by combining the metaformat ‘body-swap comedy’ with the subformat ‘heist’ to produce an excellent piece of comedy writing. The writers use the contemporary version of ‘explain the heist as you commit the heist’, which is the paciest form (lots of cutting back and forth from planning to execution), and in a comedy setting this allows for a lot of prep to go wrong and comedy to arise from immediate set-up and bungled pay-off.

Comedy arises from several sites in this chapter – from character, format, and pastiche. In character terms, there’s the slightly surreal-minded 8-year-old daughter commenting on the plan as they make it around the breakfast table (think a Phoebe presence in the television series Friends), to John’s self-awareness (Chandler) next to Jack’s supreme confidence that they’re going to pull it off (Joey). The chapter’s longer segments at Jack’s office also contain a parody/pastiche of a videogame company, a videogame practice, and a videogame stealth sequence – all of which add to the lightness and provides other sites for comedy outside of the faster-cut set-up/pay-off sequences.

The aim of the heist is for John to convincingly impersonate Jack for a single day without arousing suspicion. Because it’s a comedy, the obvious outcome is that they’ll fail amusingly – this also means the player knows they can’t really succeed. The process of going through it is – for the player – a chance to get to know Jack, the pleasure of taking part in playing out a well-known format, and a coming together of the swappers by the end. Because it’s a comedy, it has to go awry, but this failure brings them all closer together; they are united through failure. They both get fired.

That failure also unites the characters in an additional and interesting way: as workers. In the initial thematic set-up of John struggling under the boot of a gentrifying London you have – before now – seen Jack as the person pushing him out. There’s no doubt he is part of the gentrification of the area, but through this chapter we understand that while Jack might live in fancy non-council apartment, he still rents, and while he works in tech, his position is still precarious and exploited.

In exploring Jack’s workplace (and the circumstances under which John gets him fired – refusing to work unpaid weekend overtime) you realise that their apparent class differences aren’t as great as they might appear at first; both of them are exploited and maltreated by their bosses. One boss is a petty tyrant of old, the other is ‘your buddy, a team player, we’re all a family here’. There are two generational models of the exploited worker and renter class here – they can find solidarities as well as differences.

End of extract.

That discount code again

Remember, as part of this series of extracts, we're also excited to offer this special discount code: JML20 - use it to get 20% off the book at launch, pre-order or buy the book now!

So, as well as trying to steer the good ship Die Gute Fabrik, over the past year or so, CEO and Creative Director Hannah Nicklin (who also was the writer and narrative designer on Mutazione) has been writing a book designed to help people learn more about writing for games. We wanted to use the blog to share a series of extracts for the book, as a resource, and so you can find out if this is a book that you might find interesting or useful.

As part of this series of extracts, we're also excited to offer this special discount code: JML20 - use it to get 20% off the book at launch, pre-order or buy the book now!

About the Book

Writing for Games: Theory & Practice is an approachable and entry-level text for anyone interested in the craft of writing for videogames - and specifically focuses on writing, not narrative design or environmental storytelling. The book is aimed at both game design students and writers interested in games writing as a practice, and aims to provide anyone interested in becoming a better writer in the context of videogames.

It's broken into three parts: Theory considers the craft of both games and writing from a theoretical perspective, covering vocabulary for both game and story practices. Case Studies uses three case studies to explore the theory explored in Part One. And the Practical Workbook offers a series of provocations, tools and exercises aimed at giving the reader the means to refine and develop their writing, not just for now, but as a part of a life-long practice.

Today's Extract

This extract is chosen from the beginning of Part Three pp.183-186, where I begin to introduce a number of practical exercises for STARTING. Tools for beginning. It's a simple starting technique I call 'seeds'. Professional writers rarely have time to sit around waiting to be inspired, part of working as a writer is building a toolkit to help you on the days your mind is empty.

Tools for Starting

Everyone starts to formulate a story in different ways. Some with a world; some with characters; some with a theme, feeling, or question. If you’re brought in halfway through a game dev process (highly likely) you may already have the key player verbs, genre, and world chosen for you, and have to shape the story around those affordances. In that case then, instead of just using these tools for ‘starting’ something, consider that they might also be useful tools for you to develop and understand what might be missing from your brief as started by someone else.

But for ease we’re just going to call these ‘tools for starting’, in this section I'll offer the following tools for starting:

1. Seeds (characters, world, or story),
2. Form-driven design – cultivating soil for your seeds
3. Character
4. Other character techniques
5. World sheets
6. Applied story: story-driven puzzle design
7. Brief setting

I tend to have a quite form-based practice. So, I’m also going to remind you of other approaches that I’ve noted before. If this stuff doesn’t suit you, take a look at

• Lynda Barry’s What It Is (for very visual people)
• Michael Atavar’s How to Be an Artist (very similar to me, but more of it, really)
• Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way (more spiritual, freer and instinct-driven practice)

Seeds

What if you have no idea at all? You’re in the remarkable and once-in-a-career position of being given carte blanche to do what you want. Some storytellers are full of ideas and just need support in developing them. But many people struggle with the empty page; that’s where defining your seed strategy can come in handy.

‘Seeds’ are the tiny ideas, words, concepts, or strategies which get your creative cogs turning. What works best will be personal to you and the way your brain works. You may even already have seed strategies but not know about them. Here are a number of seed strategies that I know of:

• Collage making – Cut, stick, and build from a collection of magazines to make characters, places, or worlds.
• Redacted. Blacking out lines and words in a newspaper, magazine, or book until you have a fun line of dialogue or story.
• ‘Like X but Y’ – Smashing together existing stories/genres/locations/characters. ‘Like When Harry Met Sally, but queer, and set in the Italian anti-fascist punk scene’. Make yourself a Frankenstein monster of a story. Transpose characters. Steal with abandon. Change names and details until it’s something new.
• Images, scraps, and moments in your notes app – Encouraging yourself to note down every time your brain amuses itself with a line, memory, image, etc.
• Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages (Cameron, 2016) or other stream of consciousness techniques – Let your preoccupations rise to the surface. Wake up, put pen to paper, and just write, write about whatever, if you can’t think what to write, write the word ‘and’ until you have something to say. Write to yourself, someone else, or something made up. If stuck on where to start, turn on the radio, or look on Twitter, or pick a line from a book by your bedside and write that as the title, then write from there. Set a timer for one, three, and five minutes, and see where you get each time. Collect them at the end of the week, and then look through them for cool lines, ideas, thoughts, images, or themes.
• Cuttings – Interesting stories from newspapers, screenshots of tweets, etc. kept in a scrapbook or folder on your computer; organise it how you like.
• Create a biscuit tin or book of scraps – Whether images, words, themes, and pull them out until you feel inspired.
• Exquisite corpse – Character seeds gathered from hundreds of photos, magazine cut-outs, and postcards. Go to charity shops and vintage shops and buy old postcards, photos, or read the inscriptions in books and base a character on them. Cut up a hundred heads, outfits, and backgrounds and pull them together until you meet someone you can hear the voice of, etc.
• Oblique Strategies – Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies offer means of turning ideas on their head for when you feel stuck. You can print these on cards (or buy them preprinted) and pull one out as a seed for a new direction.

The idea is that you discover the best means for you of accelerating ideas for a story or game. Maybe it’s a scrapbook, maybe it’s your folder of interesting news stories, maybe it’s one of the aforementioned strategies adapted to your own needs.

It’s worth saying I don’t think I’ve ever – in my entire game writing career – been in the position of starting from scratch, but it is very useful as an exercise nevertheless, and it’s also useful sometimes if you’re stuck halfway through a story. Pull out a seed, strategy, or scrapbook, and let it guide your mind.

Here’s a list of word-based seeds that I print, cut out, and put in little tins to use in writing workshops. Sometimes I add to them, but there seems to be enough here that someone always finds something. It’s okay to pick a seed up, find it’s not for you, and put it back. I offer these as an example only. Depending on where you're from and who you're working with/who you are, you may wish to adjust the contents.

• The sea
• A sad fox
• An antique suitcase, locked
• Mermaids
• A bird that fell from the nest
• A religious medallion
• The Golden Gate Bridge
• Rooftops
• City parks
• An ancient ruin
• Your ‘go’ bag
• A run-down spaceship
• A game you used to play when you were a child
• The first song you hear when you turn on the radio
• A specific geometric shape
• A confession
• Commuters
• A busy badger
• A well-known book from your childhood
• Silly monsters
• Punching Nazis
• That day in nature
• Someone you loved
• Why can’t this fly?
• Seven bad mistakes

Exercise 1 (2 × 0 .5 days)

Pick a short form of creative writing you work with easily and instinctively, such as a one- page short story, two-page script, short poem, four-panel comic, one-page pitch for a longer work, etc. The idea is that it’s a format you don’t need to think too much about. You’re going to create many of these – at least five.

On the first half day: Pick three to five of the seed strategies listed earlier (and feel free to invent your own), try to make sure there’re some big variations (i.e. visual and written), and prepare a number of seeds for each strategy. Take your time with the prep. Spend some time gathering seeds thinking about what feels light, exciting, and sustainable for you.

On the second half day: Whatever short form of writing you’ve chosen, produce a plan or a quick draft of a new piece of writing using each of the seed techniques you’ve prepared. At least one new idea per seed strategy. Pick from seeds until you have an idea for a theme, character, poem, scene, or design proposal – whatever it is you’re working on. Develop them in ways that feel natural – make notes or draw sketches or whatever works.

It’s okay to use more time after the exercise to finish any pieces you enjoy, but this exercise is about starting. The point here is working out which techniques you like the most. Work quickly and messily. Don’t focus on the works; focus on what gets your brain moving most pleasantly - if nothing comes, that strategy isn't for you. Spend the end of your half day reflecting on what suited you best and why.

End of extract.

That discount code again

Remember, as part of this series of extracts, we're also excited to offer this special discount code: JML20 - use it to get 20% off the book at launch, pre-order or buy the book now!

Editor's note: Welcome our latest post in a regular series where we invite members of our team to talk about One Cool Thing (not necessarily from games) and if/how it influences/reflects on their work. While we're not able to talk about the exciting things we're working on right now, we hope this will be a nice little series of introductions to the interests & practices of our excellent team.

Here's our brilliant composer Eli Rainsberry on Road to the West.

For previous articles in this series, check out programmer Daria Radu on Dancing Games, story tech Florence Smith-Nicholl's on Environmental Storytelling and Archeology, tech lead Katrin-Anna Zibuschka on Co-operative Experiences, deputy tech lead Roxanne van Dam on "Doing the Disco", writer Harry Josephine Giles on Brave Sparrow, writer Sharna Jackson on Joana Choumali, tech artist Angus Dick on Fantastic Planet, creative producer Ben Wilson on Leaderboards, and our outgoing story lead Char Putney on Randomness.

Road to the West

There are probably too many music cues from Cowboy Bebop (1998) that I comb through my head whenever I feel the need to get inspiration from its soundtrack; particularly the up-tempo, bebop jazz that Yoko Kanno and her band Seatbelts created for the series.

And as I slowly started collaborating with Die Gute Fabrik last year, elements of what we talked about for the development of music for the Next Thing included the usage of music cues in television - both animated and live-action shows - in ways that helped support characters, situations, or places, as well as titular themes that evoke all of the above so well. A lot of anime was brought up. And of course, Cowboy Bebop came up as a reference, too.

Whilst some shows usually have repeated music cues to represent certain moments, or certain characters, that are performed more frequently throughout a series, Cowboy Bebop was, to me, a show that wouldn’t do that as much. Instead, more pieces might be used more individually, or, in certain cases, no more than a couple of times. It felt like a way to connect a piece of music, as well as visual storytelling, with a single, specific scene or feeling. In a way that makes it feel like a 'rarer', more standalone experience.

The cue, ‘Road to the West’, was performed during two instances in the series: at the beginning in “Session 1 (Asteroid Blues)”, and very close to the end, “Session 25 (The Real Folk Blues, Part One)”.

As I listened back to it both in isolation and between the separate scenes, I found that I really appreciated and thought more about the following:

• Its minimalist arrangement. You hear only two instruments in the piece; a tenor saxophone and a synthesiser. With the synth acting as a bed for the saxophone’s sombre song, this not only allows you to focus on what the melody is intending to communicate, musically, but also enables space during parts of both scenes to fully convey what’s happening on screen, especially through sound design and dialogue between characters. I thought about how it felt like the dialogue in both scenes was also as minimal, yet intentional, as the music was.

• How it's conveyed in both places and situations. Both times this cue is played, conflict is involved in some way; whether it be during, or concluding scenes. As you listen to this piece, the sounds of fight and combat are present and overwhelming. There’s also flight involved: you see protagonist Spike Spiegel navigating the action, flying his Swordfish II in pursuit. Both situations are high in tension and intensity. And yet, if you hear ‘Road to the West’ in isolation, without context, you might not imagine this piece to initially be paired up to such high stakes situations. In its contrast, I appreciate how this piece carries both scenes with a calm momentum, with a flow that makes action feel represented as gracefully as the music sounds.

• And yet, the music also hints at a feeling of finality with both place and situation (note this bit may contain spoilers if you haven’t watched Cowboy Bebop). I found that this cue was used in two scenes which led almost unavoidably to either loss, defeat, or death. The first time we hear the piece is right before two characters face their fate following a chase from Spike during “Session 1”. Hearing it once more in “Session 25” almost felt like a heartbreaking omen for what was about to come in the very last Session.

‘Road to the West’ is a testament to Yoko Kanno’s versatility with the range of music she’s composed for Seatbelts. It was inspiring for me to not only hear how the piece was performed in the first place, but also to hear it just once again much later down the line; a careful choice, that I felt brought extra meaning and intention to the final episode.

I still find a lot of appreciation towards musical tropes and structures in the shows that I watch, and it can be satisfying to hear the right kind of music for the right kind of situation each episode!  But in this case, I really admire the idea of having this more minimal approach, placed for intentional impact and with care. I think this is what often draws me to return to ‘Road to the West’.

Header image: Just Dance Presskit.

Editor's note: Welcome our latest post in a regular series where we invite members of our team to talk about One Cool Thing (not necessarily from games) and if/how it influences/reflects on their work. While we're not able to talk about the exciting things we're working on right now, we hope this will be a nice little series of introductions to the interests & practices of our excellent team.

Here's our brilliant programmer Daria Radu who's going to talk a little bit about DANCING GAMES. For previous articles in this series, check out story tech Florence Smith-Nicholl's on Environmental Storytelling and Archeology, tech lead Katrin-Anna Zibuschka on Co-operative Experiences, deputy tech lead Roxanne van Dam on "Doing the Disco", writer Harry Josephine Giles on Brave Sparrow, writer Sharna Jackson on Joana Choumali, tech artist Angus Dick on Fantastic Planet, creative producer Ben Wilson on Leaderboards, and our outgoing story lead Char Putney on Randomness.

Dancing Games

There is always a slight surprise in some people’s faces when I tell them that I, a software engineer, dance. I have definitely danced more than I have programmed in my life, and it has always been my safe and comforting space. It is my favourite means of expressing myself creatively (though to be clear, I do not do this professionally, you won't see me at your local dance competition any time soon!).

Dancing has always been a part of who I am, how I work and how I live. My childhood birthday parties regularly included a dance competition, my favourite reality show was the Romanian version of “Dancing with the Stars”, and my favourite movie series was the Step Up series. So when one day my mother brought home “this dancing game she heard of” for the Nintendo Wii, it marked the beginning of a long journey of mastering dance games. The game was Just Dance 1.

Therefore, to no surprise to anyone, my most played video game(series) of all time is the Just Dance series.

Games using motion sensor controls have consistently prevailed in my favourites list, making my most used consoles the Nintendo Wii, followed by the current Nintendo Switch. The basis of Just Dance is simple. Hold a controller in your hand and follow the moves showing up on the screen. You can play it alone or locally together with your friends. But there is something very specific that makes the Just Dance series work, and for me, it's the multitude of variants in which you can play the game and make it your own.

Pick Up and Play

First of all, it has a low entry point. At the point of writing, Just Dance is available on most consoles, even a PC variant - if there is a lack of controller, the game allows you to use your smartphone as one, making the game easy to spin up at any gathering. And I highly recommend doing it. I have amazing memories tied to combinations of songs and friends (none of them dancers) that are unforgettable - from my American friend waking up from his chair to burst into dance as soon as we hit play on “Cotton Eyed Joe”, to the yearly tradition of dancing the Just Dance “Rasputin” version every New Year’s Eve, and more recently of me and my best friend’s Christmas sessions of “Make It Jingle”.

Second of all, the game is an adversarial game. Everyone is scored individually on how well they follow the moves presented to them. And yet - it never feels like a competition. The feeling of several people dancing in the same room, at the same time, maybe even doing a group dance (in a duo/trio/quartet setting), always creates a sense of entertainment that I have not yet found in another game. As the scores update live during the dance, you get the occasional shout of “Ha! I passed you!”, and when the song ends and we maybe even get an unexpected winner, we rejoice and move on to the next song, while the “fight” of the previous song is left behind.

Third of all, it works as a solo game too (or at least for me, as a dancer). I love the hype I get from the characters in the game. And I love challenging my own scores and trying to do better as I learn the dances. My favourite challenge I have created for myself was to dance “blindfolded” and see how much I can score by what I remember of the dance.

The game works because its main rule is so simple, meaning it leaves so much room for people to create their own game-within-the-game. Or even just dance together without having to come up with the moves themselves. So I recommend everyone to play a dancing game at least once in their life. It’s an experience that sticks - and that you co-create.

Lastly, the making of Just Dance is actually really impressive. It “cross-stitches” together many threads of art and engineering (as games often do), and it always innovates: from eccentric costumes, to new choreographies, to motion capture turned into 3D models. One of the unexpected aspects of their game making is their collaboration with the Inspira Stop Motion studio, which most recently resulted into a fully stop motion animated dance sequence of Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr Blue Sky” that you can see in Just Dance 2022.

To end this on a cheesy quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”

So take out your favourite console and start dance-gaming!