作者：Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Christine Love最初是因为她的视觉小说《Digital: A Love Story》而被大众所知，她也在短短几年内迅速窜红并成为视觉小说圈中举足轻重的人物。

现在，她的作品包括《Don’t Take It Personally，Babe》，《It Just Ain’t Your Story》以及《Analogue: A Hate Story》等，并且这些作品都是基于数字框架去描绘一些复杂的个人故事。

她是少数一些能够用电子游戏形式去传达文字内容的开发者。在此她与我们分享了自己是如何设计游戏故事以及如何将这些故事融入到游戏中。

Digital a love story(from gamesetwatch.com)

为何决定将自己的写作技巧应用于电子游戏？

老实说，我一直希望能够以自己的想法去制作电子游戏。一直以来我都将自己当成是一名小说家，但是后来很多人都跟我说《Digital: A Love Story》其实就是游戏，因为它具有互动元素。所以我便开始接受这种说法。

而在我看来电子游戏可能是最有趣的讲故事媒体，所以我也很乐意致力于创造这类型作品。

能否向那些不熟悉你游戏的玩家简短地介绍下自己？

我的工作是制作具有大量文字内容的游戏。

通常我的游戏都是关于人与技术以及人与人之间的关系，并且我也总会从不同角度去看待各种事物。《Digital》和《Analogue》都是设置于电脑背景中，将玩家当成主角并向你阐述他们所看到的内容，就像你通过浏览别人的信息而解开一个谜题一样。

《Don’t take it personally，Babe》同样都将背景设置在未来的社交网络中，你可以在此监视一些高中生在私人社交网站中的文章。

所以我的游戏总是会出现一个（或三个）恋爱故事，通常都会出现许多不同的角色配音，并且也会参杂着各种文字表达。

能否描述下你的设计过程？并且是否每一款游戏的设计过程都一样？

我是在发展中不断完善这一过程。对于《Digital》，我并未做出任何规划，而游戏也确实有点令人困惑，人们不清楚如何触发下一个故事以推动情节的发展。因为我们所作出的任何决策都是即时的，所以结果只能是一些偶然事件。

《Don’t take it personally，Babe》是线性表达，而我也从《Analogue》中学到了许多经验教训：在我开始添加任何游戏逻辑前便已经存在了许多流程图，并且是以三幕式结构呈现出来。这是一种更为直观的游戏玩法。除此之外，作为我的第一款商业游戏，我与音乐家和美术家展开了合作，并且也投入了比前两款游戏（游戏邦注：只花费了1个月的时间）更多时间去进行游戏测试。

但是不管怎么样，整个过程其实都非常相似。首先我想出一个理念，然后我根据自己的想法将其建成模型，并用代码进行渲染。也就是我一开始的工作是努力完成游戏界面的设计，并开始绘图；但是更多的时间还是投入于写作中。

我们能否将《Digital: A Love Story》，《Don’t take it personally》以及《Analogue: A Hate Story》当成三部曲序列？因为尽管这三款游戏拥有不同的背景，但是我们却能从中感受到强烈的联系。

的确是这样的。除了一些连续性，以及《Don’t take it personally，Babe》中的内容，它们不并不存在真正的直接联系——因为第一款游戏发生在1988年，第二款游戏是在2027年，而第三款甚至是在1千年后的未来，但是如果从精神上来看，它们的确不可分割。

尽管《Analogue》拥有完全不同的背景和主题，但从根本上来说它就是《Digital》的续集；它们拥有非常相似的机制，只是《Analogue》的表现更加深入（从黑客行为来看）且内容更容易理解（从信息传递和分支叙述来看）。

你的灵感来自哪里？

这可数不尽了。我想说的是《Digital》和《Analogue》都是经过大量研究才创造出的作品，而我也将自己所感兴趣的各个时代的历史背景融入其中。

我不知道我所引用的朝鲜王朝中期女性的困境是否能够引起全世界的共鸣，但是就我本身来说我真的非常想了解她们所处时代的生活。

在创造《Digital：A Love Store》时你为自己设定了何种目标？

我想出了一个故事并希望在一个月内完成这个故事。而至始至终我都坚持了一定的设计目标，即创造出高度沉浸式描述并避免凸显主角性别，不过这只是概括的说而已。

analogue(from gamasutra)

《Analogue: A Hate Story》是你的第一款商业游戏——是何种元素促使你走上专业的游戏创造之路？而为了获得更广泛的用户你是否需要适当地约束自己的想法？

老实说我不断接收到各种邀请我出售游戏的买家，而我也决定正视他们的主意！

这样说吧，《Analogue: A Hate Story》是围绕着朝鲜历史中某一特定时代的婚姻而展开。并且说实话我并不确定我是否能够依此创造出具有商业性的游戏。

早些时候我们都决定以自己的想法去阐述我们的故事，并希望读者能够更加专注于我们想要创造的真诚情感而非商业价值。所以对于我们的想法能够得到认可我们并不意外。

一些主流评论家并未被这款游戏所吸引——也难怪，因为说实在的《Analogue》的确是一款稍显怪异的游戏，但是也有一些人给予其极高的评价。大多数玩过这款游戏的人都会喜欢它，但是那些厌恶妇女的人士却会轻视它。而不管是怎样的看法我都愿意乐观地接受！

是否真的认为玩家（至少是大多数玩家）能够长时间忍受游戏中大量的文本内容并欣赏其精彩之处？

我并不认为文本是阐述游戏故事的最佳方式或必要手段，只是因为它是一种更为简单的方法而已。

你的游戏是少数一些能够与现实真正连接在一起的游戏。它们好像总在描述着现实社会以及非理想化的自我。这是否是一种特意的设定？

其实并不是这样的。我希望透过游戏体现出真诚，但是我却不想将其与“非理想化的自我”混淆在一起。它们也会呈现出戏剧化或空想主义等元素。

就像在《Digital》中玩家可以通过黑客行为拯救世界，而在《Analogue》中经历了可怕创伤的幸存者将爱上她第一眼见到的人！我认为仅凭小说中某些非现实内容就判定它没有意义是错误的，但是现实性也不是我所追求的目标——我真正看重的是真诚和准确，而非现实性。

你现在是否还能抽出时间玩游戏？

近来我发现有好多游戏总是能长时间吸引我的注意力。虽然最近我并不是特别忙了，但是我却被抑郁情绪折腾得够呛，这导致我不能好好地享受游戏乐趣。这真的是一种让人沮丧的经历啊。

不管怎样我的确挑战了《质量效应3》，并且最近也刚玩完《狂飙：旧金山》（我认为这是我玩过叙述最清晰的一款游戏）。在过去一两年中我想尝试的游戏真的非常多，但是迫于工作和抑郁症的阻碍，我不得将这长串列表一搁再搁。但是最近似乎又出现了一些非常优秀的游戏呢！

如果要说我所钦佩的开发者，我并不想只是口头列出几个，因为有可能因此漏掉一些厉害人士。但是我却不得不提Anna Anthropy，因为她是推动我开始制作游戏的关键人物。虽然她所创造的大多数游戏都与我的类型不同，并且我们所采取的方法也不一样，但是我却仍然很佩服她！

最后，能否说说你的未来打算？

好像每次我在访谈中回答这个问题时都会事与愿违。也就是我要是说“我将在未来完成某个项目”时我最后就可能不能真正完成这个项目。

所以我不想再多说什么了，但是不管怎么样我都希望今后所做的事能与现在有所不同。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The art of visual novels: One writer’s approach to interactive fiction

by Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Christine Love originally impressed the masses with the visual novel Digital: A Love Story, and in only a few years, she has moved on to become a key figure among those writing interactive fiction.

Now, her portfolio also includes titles such as Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain’t Your Story, and Analogue: A Hate Story, all of which portray complex, personal narratives within a digital framework.

She is one of the few developers who can command words to do her bidding in a video game format. Here, she discusses how she designs the stories and the games that engulf them.

Why did you decide to utilize your writing skills in the video game space?

Honestly, I’m still trying to catch up to the idea that making video games is what I do! I always thought that I’d just end up being a novelist. Then everyone told me that Digital: A Love Story was a game, just because it had interactive elements… so I’ve sort of embraced that.

But I mean, video games are probably the most interesting storytelling medium to exist, so I’m really happy to be working with them.

Could you briefly introduce yourself for those who are not so familiar with your games?

I make games with lots of words in them.

Generally, they tend to be about our relationship with technology, about human relationships in general, and about seeing things from different perspectives. Digital and Analogue are both set inside computers, casting the player as the protagonist and showing you exactly what they’d see, as you solve a mystery by hacking and by reading through other peoples’ messages.

Don’t take it personally, babe is similarly set on a social network of the future, where you get to monitor the private social networking posts of a class of high school students.

So my games usually have a love story (or three), usually have a lot of different character voices… and usually have a ton of words.

How would you describe your design process? Is it more or less the same for each of your games?

I’ve sort of refined it as I go along. For Digital, I sort of just flew by the seat of my pants without any sort of planning, and it shows: it’s really very confusing, and hard to figure out how to trigger the next story event to move the plot forward. That’s because all that was just done on the spot, and it ended up being haphazard.

Don’t take it personally, babe was very linear, but I learned my lesson for Analogue: it had lots of flow charts prepared before I started putting in any sort of game logic, with a three act structure laid out and everything. As a result, it’s infinitely more intuitive to play through. Plus, as my first commercial game, I collaborated with both a musician and an artist, and I dedicated a lot more time to testing than I did for those first two, which were just one-month projects.

Past that, though, the process has largely been the same. First I’ll have an idea, then I’ll mock up what I think it’ll look like, then render that in code. So the first thing is to get as much as possible of the game interface finished, at the same time I do all the plotting; but the bulk of the time is spent just straight up doing a lot of writing.

And would I be correct in considering Digital: A Love Story, Don’t take it personally and Analogue: A Hate Story a trilogy of sorts? All three games, despite their radically different settings feel strangely connected.

Of sorts. Aside from some small continuity nods, and an easter egg in Don’t take it personally, babe, there aren’t really any direct connections — unsurprising since the first takes place in 1988, the second in 2027, and the third a thousand years into the future — but they’re certainly spiritually connected.

Analogue, really, despite the radically different setting and subject matter, is definitely a sequel to Digital; they have very similar mechanics, just with Analogue’s being a little deeper when it comes to hacking, a little more comprehensible when it comes to reading through messages, and a branching narrative.

Where do you find inspiration?

Oh god, lots of places. I’ll say this: both Digital and Analogue were very research-heavy projects, and cover periods of history that I find to be incredibly personally interesting.

I don’t know if I’d really call the plights of mid-Joseon dynasty women to be inspiring in most senses of the world, but it certainly did make me want to try to understand what life was like for them.

What sort of goals did you set for yourself when creating Digital: A Love Story?

I had a story I wanted to tell, and a month to get it done. There were a few design goals I adhered to along the way — have a super-immersive presentation, make the protagonist’s gender irrelevant — but that’s the long and short of it, really.

Analogue: A Hate Story was your first commercial game — What made you decide to, well, go professional? Did you find you had to restrict yourself in order to approach a wider audience?

It got to the point where I got so many emails from people telling me to sell a game so they could give me money, I decided to take them seriously!

Let me put it this way: Analogue: A Hate Story is a visual novel that revolves around marriage in a particular period of Korean history. I’m honestly not sure if it’s possible to make a game that’s any less commercially safe than that.

We all decided early on that we’d tell the story we wanted to, in the way we wanted, and just hope that people were more interested in sincerity than commercially safe pandering. I’m not really surprised we were proven right.

Some mainstream critics don’t really get the appeal — which is understandable really, as Analogue is certainly a really weird game — but the ones that do seem to think very highly of it. Most people who have played it seem to like it, and internet misogynists seem to despise it. I feel pretty happy about all that!

Do you really feel gamers (or at least a substantial percentage of gamers) can put up with text in their games long enough to fully appreciate the wonderful things text can do?

Evidently so! Not that I think text is what’s wonderful about telling a story in a game, or even crucial to it; it’s just easier is all.

Your games are the rare kind of games that I like to describe as being connected to actual reality. They have something to tell about society and our non-idealized selves. Is this a conscious choice?

Honestly, I’m not even sure I agree. My games tend to be sincere, sure, but I wouldn’t confuse that for being about “non-idealized selves.” They also tend to be very dramatic, and to be very romantic.

I mean, Digital is a game where you save the world via hacking, and Analogue is a game where a survivor of horrific trauma falls in love with the first person she meets! I think it’s wrong to suggest that fiction can’t be meaningful because parts of it aren’t realistic, but realism is not a goal I aspire to — sincerity and accuracy, sure, but not realism.

Do you still find the time to play games?

Lately I’ve been having a hell of a time finding games that actually hold my interest for the hours and hours that they last. I’m not particularly busy anymore, but I’ve also been hit by my depression a lot lately, which just renders me completely incapable of caring about any games. It’s kind of a frustrating experience.

That said, I did play through Mass Effect 3 anyway (spoilers: I cried a lot), and recently finished Driver San Francisco, which I thought was probably the most narratively clever game I’ve ever played. I’ve got a giant list of games from the past year or two that I’ve been meaning to work through, but work and depression got in the way of, so I’m pretty excited to keep whittling that down. I get the impression there’s been a lot of great stuff put out recently.

As far as developers I admire go… I don’t want to really just rattle off a list of my favourites or anything, because it will invariably fail to mention a ton of people. But Anna Anthropy is absolutely the reason why I got into game-making. Most of her games haven’t been my cup of tea, and we have very different approaches; but I still definitely admire the hell out of her.

Finally, could you give us some insight as to what the future holds?

I feel like every single time I answer this question in an interview, I jinx it. Like, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever mentioned a project as “what I’m doing in the future” that ever actually ended up being made!

So I’m going to say nothing here, but suffice to say, I would not expect what I’m doing in the future to be anything like what I’ve done up until now. (source:gamasutra)