Fiction writing for games... a catch-22

Motivation? Who needs that?
Let's score points!

28 years ago my dad got home from on of his several trips to the U.S. (remember I live in Mexico City) with an Atari 2600 home console and some cartridges to play, among them the awful Pac-Man port (to me at the tender age of 6 it was fantastically good and addictive). My dad had no way to know it, but with that fateful purchase he was showing me the path that would shape my hobbies, friendships and even choice of career.

Let's try an compare, for just a second, those first home games to the ones we have today, setting aside the obvious differences in technology, theme an game type trends, the real big difference between those games and their modern descendants is the staggering amount of time and effort spent on creating a rich back story and a credible three dimensional world for the game.

Video games in their initial conception were little more than "digital ports" of the real world games of dexterity often seen at county fairs an amusement parks, the addictive component of Pac-Man didn't come from trying to achieve a lofty goal like rescuing a lost love or atoning for past sins, it came from the pure and unadulterated rush of competing with oneself (or maybe some friends and family), and beating the game.

You hat to read the
booklet to get the back story

And then, the first RPGs were released upon the unsuspecting gamers and were received with thunderous approval, the rich depth of the characters, the movie like score, the intertwining plots, side quests, witty dialog and sheer size of the game world changed the face of what we play forever, titles like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and The Legend of Zelda influenced much more that their own genre, those games (and many more) showed game developers that deep, rich worlds and relateable characters were a sure way into the hearts (and thus wallets) of gamers all over the world.

And as with everything that is successful, it evolved, everyone involved got better, stories became more intricate, worlds got bigger, non playing characters got a lot more lovable, technical advancement allowed for cleaner scores rivaling those of big Hollywood productions, better and faster consoles gave us voice acting, we got to hear not only the sounds of the places we were going through, but the dialogues, and in more recent days, we've come to the point were recognizable movie and TV stars are part of the ensemble of character of a given game.

Who the...??
They will pay!

Ever since the firs RPGs were successful, fiction writers for the game industry have been in hot demand, today every single game released, even most of the "low tech" apps for phones come imbued with some form of back story that justifies the game mechanics and goals (the evil green pigs have taken the eggs from the nests, now the birds are angry and they are getting even), some time it makes real life sense, some times it requires some amount of suspension of disbelief, and some times its completely out there, but I guarantee it, 99% of the games released today, no matter the platform, length or price range come with some form of "in-game" justification of what the hell is going on and why.

Modern life has seen to it that we need those intricate and long back stories to keep us focused on the game instead of on one the other hundred things demanding our attention, on the other hand having to spend that much effort on the creation of the game makes developers shy away from experimenting and going off in new directions, its just too expensive. So, in order for costumers to buy games, developers need to spend insane amounts of time and money developing this worlds, on the other hand, that expense is making the whole industry stall.

July 2011 has just been announced as one of the worst months in sales for the industry, and my take is that all the sequels and remakes of the same games is to blame, some one has to break out of the pattern, one way to go is to create content for established story lines that require little or no work on the part of the developer (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Star Trek, Naruto, etc.) but those come with an inherited licencing cost. Another viable way is for developers to use their own previously established time lines and use them for different games (Bungie with Halo, Blizzard with Warcraft or Diablo, etc) out of that option I think Valve has shown the most potential, having 2 very different games set in the same universe, Half-Life a Fist Person Shooter and Portal a puzzle type game.

I'm big on creative minds, and what has me interested right now is seeing who will come up with a solution that will help them sell content-rich games and at the same time gives them the freedom to experiment on new game mechanics, the technical tools are certainly out there, with the kinect, the ps-move and all the possible interaction with handheld devices, the money is out there too, micro-transactions seem to be the way of the future, now all we need is someone combining it all, I see interesting proposals in the near future, Star Wars: The Old Republic (a story driven MMO where your choices have influence?), Microsoft's Kinect Fun Labs (a place to get user created content for a proprietary piece of hardware?), etc.

It will be interesting to see who comes up with the next big thing.