作者：Michael Thhomsen

游戏需要写作内容。通常我们认为游戏写作只涉及故事叙述，所以，我们很难在缺少故事模式的游戏中看到写作的价值。但是，对许多游戏而言，以写作模式点缀的效果即为系统增添深度和剧情，否则整个游戏只会是无意义的重复或循环模式。即使不存在单个故事情节，写作仍可成为游戏的基本创意工具，并令游戏更具趣味性和竞争性。

Valve的《魔兽争霸2》（以下简称Dota2）完美地平衡了人物和技能描写，其中整合的系统允许玩家持久作战。几年来，《Madden》系列有效利用编写模式，为传球或者错失职业模式分数增加了环境渲染描写。《求生之路》的每一关卡均设置了丰富的人与人之间的剧情，并融合了无止境的多人射击重玩模式。

有时，创作并不指代讲故事，而是利用环境和设定的结果，推动玩家陈述自己故事的工具。它们呈现的生动互动模式能够运用于多种不同的游戏中。在此，游戏并非编织某个故事，而是为玩家塑造出可行的选项和结局，让他们不再局限于同时适用多人射击游戏和脑力训练游戏的简单机制。

塑造游戏角色

Valve的《Dota 2》包含许多类似传统故事游戏的相同元素，但它们处于未接合的状态。《Dota 2》并不打算陈述某个特定的故事，而是通过巧妙地情节展开，以此渲染和加深玩家在每一回合中的体验。

Valve的Marc Laidlaw指出：“从任何意义，甚至从广度上说，我并不认为《Dota 2》是一款叙事游戏。因为其中并不存在情节发展。该游戏每次均以同种方式展开，然后结束，且游戏中只存在两种可能的结局，尽管到达结局的方式多种多样且无穷无尽。我们可能会围绕该游戏构造一些叙事成分，比如‘来自秘密商店的故事’，但我们并没有带着明显的叙事思路编写游戏中的对话。”

“我们努力确定某一时刻或转折点，作为英雄真正转变并成为焦点的关键时刻。但是那一时刻总存在英雄的背景中。我们认为每个英雄塑造人格方面的最大危机就在于他们的过去。对于整个世界和每个英雄而言，游戏本身更是个危机，它并不只是个人故事。”

Laidlaw表示，他们投入95%的精力撰写《Dota 2》中的对白，他们需要与美工合作，理解每个英雄的视觉设计以及广泛的个性。

Laidlaw指出：“对白撰写的困难之处在于，我们需要想出适合只有1或2个主要特性的角色的几百句台词。首先，这需要大量依靠双关语。通常，这些主题尤为关键——它们是我们用于区分每个角色的唯一元素。”

“久而久之，在不断练习和增强自信心的作用下，我们慢慢擅长编写出富有主题的对话，它们不再是无病呻吟的话语。而在这些语言的提醒下，玩家会禁不住点击英雄，进行回复。更让我惊讶的是，编写同样重复的回复性对话对我来说更加轻而易举；可能你会认为在撰写90位英雄的对白之后，我再也无法找出更多的词汇表达‘前进！’或者‘我去！’这类言语。然而实际上，我们总会不断地涌出新创意，所以我们从不会局限在重复老套的对白中。”

同时，《Dota 2》这类循环制游戏的对白可以暗示玩家在游戏中该如何表现。Laidlaw指出：“反馈是获得出色体验的核心，而提供反馈的途径取决于游戏中的英雄。有些英雄可以轻易地迎合玩家，且无需摆脱角色特点；有些英雄太过于严肃，性格特征太强烈以至于不可能做出一些愚蠢的事情，但他们仍有办法让玩家知道自己的决定富有意义。”

《Majesty》这类战略游戏为Valve编写提升玩法的标志性对话提供了尤其重要的参考。有时，Laidlaw怀疑增添过多的对话实际上会伤害整个游戏的体验。他承认：“我担心赋予每个角色过多的台词可能会削弱角色效果，同时，游戏不可能让每句台词都成为标志性话语。”

“结果证实我们的担心是多余的，大量用户在《Dota 2》上投入相当多的时间，角色具有如此多种组合，甚至当这种多样性转变为个体时，情况仍是如此。粉丝们仍然能记得一些他们最喜欢的标志性台词，即使这些角色各有不同。”

游戏中设置的播音系统同时方便玩家控制游戏中的喧闹情况。Laidlaw指出：“一开始，我们在游戏中添加了定制的播音工具，因为这些声音是从游戏世界之外传送过来的，所以他们可以直接满足玩家的需求，同时也可以用来与游戏中的英雄对话。最近，我们刚刚运行这项工具，结果我们发现不少粉丝正在建造自己的播音系统。我想，我们将会看到许多粉丝将自制的播音工具用于同玩家的直接交流。这似乎就是人们想要在游戏中增添的元素。”

以这种方式开发游戏写作元素，使Valve有机会将大量粉丝引入游戏开发过程中。Laidlaw解释道：“最困难的部分是和一系列角色合作，因为实际上，Dota社区已经和这些角色保持长久的关系。”

“我们会同时创造和再造游戏角色。粉丝喜爱且要求游戏必须包含原创性，同时，他们希望可以同《Dota 1》中自己所爱的英雄建立清晰可靠的联系。有时，这种要求非常容易满足，而有时我们又无法实现这些愿望。这种情况下，我们宁愿重新创造我们的游戏场景，但我们是经过了一段时间才对此举充满信心，并且获得粉丝的真心接受。”

Twitter的作用

在EA Tiburon开发的游戏《Madden NFL 13》中，他们以真实世界的体育记者和分析员在比赛中场时所作的Twitter评论，美化逐渐壮大的Superstar Mode。作为一款模拟职业体育运动的游戏，《Madden》努力借鉴真实比赛中的赛后分析和点评，增加游戏中的剧情。玩家在游戏中除了收集数据，取得联赛排名，还可以体验到当众受到熟悉球员欺负时的侮辱感，或者是使某个人从狗嘴里吐出象牙时的自豪感。

EA Tiburon创意总监Mike Young指出：“我们确实想要了解人们使用Twitter的情况，所以我们的早期任务就是找出人们的谈论话题。比如，Adam Schefter经常以枯燥的方式宣布有关签合同、交易等新闻事件。一些人士对新闻总有固执己见的看法。或者像Todd McShay这类人更多谈论的是选秀前景。”

“接着我们必须找出人们反映在Twitter上的真实个性。他们使用了感叹号、标签和大写字母了吗？他们主要讨论某支队伍吗？他们是暴躁、粗野还是风趣幽默呢？Mark Schlereth总在谈论他的公司。研究这些问题确实是制作真实游戏场景的关键。”

透过Twitter，我们能够合理地感知这些人的表达方式，我们将关注点转向规模问题，即塑造出符合具有30年历程的Superstar Mode的特征。

Young指出：“游戏会经常变化，所以开发者所面对的真正挑战是，游戏中不能设置重复的情景。通常我们会在Tweet中发现相似场景，然后我们以此为灵感进行创作。比如，我们看到类似于Curtis Martin被选入名人堂（Hall of Fame）这样的场景。”

“Skip Bayless表示，‘他得再三考虑’是否将Curtis Martin纳入名人堂。我们如何借鉴Skip Bayless的话语描述类似的玩家呢？当我们使用选秀模式时，媒体人士会评价此内容并作出反馈。我们可以向这些业内人士证明这种方法确实有效。”

Superstar Mode中设置的故事可以多种多样：后进生、优等生、无法面对退休的老员工、参加过多个团队的旅行者，或者可能永久改变游戏的传奇人物。添加Twitter并不是为了支持其中某个因素，而是为了深化玩家所做的每个选项的情感语境。

Young解释道：“游戏中的任何事件都要考虑大量的标准。玩家曾经是个优异的选秀选手吗？未来的名人？年龄呢？一个新人？如果发生受伤事件，那么我们可以更加具体地加以报道。所以比起Kyle Orton，如果Tom Brady受伤更可能让人觉得这是件大事。”

“因此，我们获知了不少以前从未听说过的事件。它使得世界更具真实性，让玩家觉得游戏很特殊。当Ray Lewis退役后，我感到十分失落，因为他曾经为我们的生活带来了很多欢乐。整个Twittererse都在讨论他的事业，以及他是否曾进入名人堂，由此可见对玩家来说这可不仅仅是一个电子人物从名册上消失的事情。”

无限的叙述循环

在制作《Dota》的续作之前，Valve以《求生之路》两个系列重新推出第一人称多人射击游戏，它结合了诸如《Quake》这种疯狂的竞技射击模式以及《半条命》这种丰富故事情节。《求生之路》两个系列完美地展示出如何赋予每个体验永久的重玩价值，从而形成一款多人游戏，否则，它只能是充斥着剧情、角色和情感的传统单人模式游戏。

正如《Dota》一样，《求生之路》的角色对白引发玩家投入大量的情感，而这些情感表达既有对即时目标的评价，又有对即将发生更大事件的暗示。Chet Faliszek表示：“我们从来没有在一个游戏场景中试图呈现所有事物，因为我们清楚玩家将会多次体验同场战役，所以，每次我们只向玩家展现一部分的故事。”

“在撰写战斗中的特定台词时，我们仔细查看了地图，标出玩家可能会提到或讨论的区域。我们可以控制玩家在看到某个区域时说话的可能性，或者在他们开口之前，控制他们同目标的距离。因此在教区时，如果你让Coach接近并查看大部分标志，他会读出来。有时你会发现，角色会洞悉剧情，比如在普通区域内，他们会说 “这些人看上去不像感染者”。

游戏的灵活对话方式不仅提示大概的叙事片段，还解释了并不显著或叙事性的瞬间场景。Faliszek表示：“有时，我们收集某个数据段，并同其它数据比较。如果Nick打算谈论一匹马，他此时靠着雕像吗？Ellis还活着吗？丧尸离Ellis有多近？他们停止战斗了吗？以上这些情况均有助于控制特定战斗中台词出现的次数。所以，尽管这些特定台词并不多见，但却总能发挥巨大作用。”

再棒的台词，听多了也会厌烦，但如果你只让Nick在10%的时间内在某一地图中对自己的服装作出评价，玩家并不会因此而被激怒。我们总会确保角色说出某些言辞，如果什么也没有，至少会发出‘重新装载’这类字眼。这赋予所有台词存在空间，让它们成为游戏世界的一部分。那样整个游戏故事就不会在无声状态中进行。”

AI Director是《求生之路》具有重复体验价值的主要因素，它决定了游戏中每道关卡的全新难度和不同敌人。它更像是运用在游戏对话系统中的技术，但是Valve发现在将AI Director控制在战斗范畴中至关重要。

Faliszek解释道：“我们从不把台词链接到真实的Director代码中，因为玩家可能已在游戏中投入了成百上千小时，所以他们可能会清楚那些提醒的含义，获知下一关卡的情况。为了保持玩家的沉浸感，只能让你的角色知道你所知道的情况，比如玩家周围的生物有哪些。”

“我们利用Director提供某个状态的提示；比如玩家的强度等级是多少。通常，我们也利用它协调生命值与其它状态，从而选择讲出某句台词。你可以侥幸在吵闹的环境下轻声细语，但是，当你的角色在低强度情境中大声尖叫时，这种方式并不管用。”

同样，Valve也会慎用直接评价玩家表现的对话，因为他们担心会破坏玩家基于环境而形成的剧情错觉，Faliszek指出：“揣测意图确实是件可怕的事情，我们极力避免这种情况。”

“同样，我们试着不去破坏对话中的第四道墙，但是还是有例外情况。如角色被友盟误伤时确实会有所回应，同时常常还提供建议，比如建议玩家使用生命装备或药片治疗其他玩家，以此让玩家关注角色状态。实际上，Coach甚至还会给受伤的角色打气，鼓舞他们一定要挺住。”

游戏中的另一主要问题是，游戏中存在成千上万句有关对话、情节以及特征描述的台词，如何在不让它们彼此脱节的情况下将这些台词顺畅融合。Faliszek指出：“虽然这听起来像许多片段，但我们确实记录了某个段落不同版本的有价值的文字，然后在运行中以编程的形式将它们拼接起来。”

“如果音频能够顺畅连接，那就有必要去收集每回录音中的复制音频，那样角色就可以随着多种版本发展。有时，我们需要使用整个录音文件的音频，有时，我们只需不同的片段。为了确保它能生效，我们会在游戏外对它进行测试，然后我们在场景中体验并播放音频，并由此测试出某些意外情况。对于游戏中的上万句台词，在它们正式运用前，我可能已经在游戏体验过程中重复听了不下50次。”

注意写作原则的原因

从电影和小说角度，我们能更容易理解游戏情节塑造，而情节和发展作为结构支柱支撑着具有局限性的舞台。这种巴洛克风格的结构将场景分为两个部分：其一为故事，其二为游戏。虽然这两个部分互为补充，但是本质上它们是互不相容的。

这种游戏设计方式并不见得是坏事，但这里存在其它多种可能的形式，其中有些并不需要故事情节，而有些却受益于写作元素。同样，《俄罗斯方块》受益于音乐和美术的制作，但该游戏并不被称为交响乐或者伟大的图画，游戏可以通过写作表达出许多想法，即使它并不打算采用传统故事模式。

Young对于《Madden》利用Twitter元素进行装饰的现象表示：“我们只是看到了玩家个性的表象。我们过去构造不是让玩家与团队互不交流的故事，就是让玩家频频受阻的这类故事。我们其实还有许多方式可以扩大玩家的话语权。”

游戏可以整合所有的这些创意形式——比如戏剧性、视觉、听觉和表现性，将这些元素合并到同一机制中。在寻找最佳方法时，我们常常忘记“最佳”一词的定义具有相对性。与其考虑形式化的限制，不如运用丰富多彩的可行工具制作出自己想象的事物。

Laidlaw表示：“我总觉得游戏行业的优势在于产生出多种类型的游戏，这些游戏可迎合不同口味的大众需求。同时，我认为优秀的游戏如果结合出色的写作，可以达到完美的境地，即使这并非游戏强调的重点，而有趣的写作总会时刻受到大众欢迎。”

“我从未觉得因为游戏不属于叙事媒介，我们就可以在对话编写上少下功夫。Valve因塑造出优秀的人物而出名，我们也不能因为游戏中的角色只是一些上下视角中看到的小生物而对此掉以轻心。”

游戏并不一定要涉及故事情节，但是从《摇滚乐团》、《Wii健身》、《生化奇兵》到《Madden》，我们难以想象没有写作艺术，这些游戏将会是什么面貌。写作能够赋予系统深度和环境，否则，整个游戏就是设置一系列单调乏味的规则来决定最后的赢家和输家。也只有在系统中的用户才会发现输赢之间的戏剧性差异。写作是吸引玩家继续体验游戏的强有力工具，无论这是游戏中师傅的微妙鼓励，还是激烈战斗中某个神奇英雄的嚎啕大哭。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不留版本的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Storytelling Without Stories: Writing for Infinite Replayability

by Michael Thomsen

What goes into writing for a game without a linear narrative? A lot, say Valve and Madden veterans, who explain the keys to writing for games which will be played again and again.

Games need writing. We often think of game writing as exclusively related to storytelling, rooted in Aristotelean maxims of time, place, and prescribed resolutions, which makes it hard to see the value of writing in games without a single player story mode. But for many games the art of embellishing play with writing has helped add depth and drama to systems that might otherwise have seemed pointlessly repetitive or cyclical. Even without a single story to tell, writing can be an essential creative tool for games that would rather be about fun and competition than allegories and plot twists.

Valve’s Dota 2 is an ideal balance of written characterizations and lore, which merge with a system of competing against other players in perpetuity. The Madden series has made particular but effective use of writing for years, adding small bits of contextual flourish to a dropped pass or a missed career mode goal. Valve’s Left 4 Dead games merged an infinitely replayable multiplayer shooter with lush interpersonal drama written into each level.

In these cases writing is less storytelling than a tool that enables players to tell their own stories, using the context and plotted consequence chains planned for them. They represent a model for dramatic interaction that can be applied to many different games. The point is not to weave a particular story but to characterize the available choices and consequences for players in a way that takes them beyond simple mechanism, something as applicable to multiplayer shooters as it is brain trainers and exercise games.

Filling in the Faces on the Game Pieces

Valve’s Dota 2 has many of the same elements of a traditional story game, yet they’re left in an unassembled state. It doesn’t aim to tell any one particular story but instead dramatizes and deepens the player’s experience within each round with artfully deployed writing.

“I don’t feel that Dota 2 is a narrative game in any sense — not even in an open sense,” Valve’s Marc Laidlaw said. “It doesn’t feel like a narrative to me because there is no possibility of development. It starts and ends the same way every time, with only two possible outcomes, although the various ways of reaching those endings are infinite. We might compose some bits of narrative around it, such as the comic, ‘Tales From the Secret Shop,’ but no sort of recognizably narrative thinking goes into the way we write dialog.”

“We do try to identify a moment or turning point in a hero’s background that would have been the key moment that thrust them into the spotlight and made a hero of them. But that moment is always somewhere in the hero’s background. We assume the big personality-shaping crisis for each individual hero is somewhere in their past. The game itself is more of a crisis for the entire world and every hero in it, it’s less of an individual’s story.”

According to Laidlaw, 95 percent of the energy spent on writing Dota 2 went to dialog, a process which begins by working with the game artists to understand the visual design and broad personality types of each hero.

“One of the tough parts was coming up with a few hundred lines for each character when each hero has only one or two major traits,” Laidlaw said. “Initially this led to a heavy reliance on — ahem — well, some would call them puns, others would call them motifs. In a lot of cases, these themes were our lifeline — they were the only thing we had to work with when it came to distinguishing one hero from another.”

“Over time we have gotten better at making our dialog thematic without making it simply groan-inducing. This is the result of both practice and of growing confidence in the role of lore, and how much of that can inform the moment to moment responses a hero can make to player clicks. What surprised me a little is that it has gotten easier to write dialog for the same repetitive categories of responses; you would think that after 90 heroes, it would be impossible to find more ways of saying, ‘Onward!’ or ‘I go!’ But in fact we usually have enough new ideas that we almost never feel compelled to repeat old ones.”

Dialogue in round-based games like Dota 2 can also cue the player to how they’re performing. “Feedback is the core of a good experience, and the way in which you provide that depends upon the hero,” Laidlaw said. “Some heroes can easily turn and address the player without breaking out of character; others are too serious, too much a part of the world, to do something silly like that, but they still have ways of letting the player know their decisions are meaningful.”

The RTS game Majesty was an especially helpful reference point for Valve in modeling just how iconic dialogue can enhance gameplay. For a while Laidlaw wondered if they might actually hurt the overall experience by adding too much dialog. “I was worried that having too many lines per character would dilute the impact, and make it less likely that any one line would become iconic,” he admitted.

“This turned out to be less of a concern because so many people play Dota 2, for so many hours, and in so many possible combinations of characters, that even its great variety effectively gets ground down to a small set for any one individual. Each fan can still connect to a few favorite iconic lines, even if they’re different for everyone.”

Having announcers in the game also adds an element where players can control their own preferences for how chatty the game will be. “We are starting to add custom announcers to the mix, and because these voices sit somewhere above the world of the game, they have the chance to address the player directly — as well as talking down to the heroes in the game,” Laidlaw said. “We’re just starting to play with that, and we are already seeing fans creating their own announcers. I think we will see a lot of fan-made announcers talking directly to the player. It seems to be something people want.”

Approaching the development of the game’s written elements in this way provided a natural opportunity for Valve to involve series fans into the development process. “The toughest part is working with a set of characters with whom the Dota community has such a long and lasting relationship already,” Laidlaw explained.

“We are simultaneously creating and recreating characters. The fans love and appreciate and even demand originality, at the same time that they want clear and faithful connections to the heroes they loved in DotA 1. In some cases this is fairly easy to achieve, in other cases it is just impossible. At this point we have started erring on the side of creating our own universe, but it took us a while to feel confident in doing that, and that the fans were truly open to this.”

The Computer Narrates You

For Madden NFL 13, EA Tiburon has embellished their already sprawling Superstar Mode with between-game Twitter commentary from real world sports reporters and analysts. As a simulation of a professional sport, Madden enhances its drama by attempting to mirror the post-game analysis and opinion-jockeying that accompanies the physical sport. In addition to playing for stats and league position, one feels the sting of pride when being hectored in public by a familiar persona, or else enjoys the prideful satisfaction of having made an infamous curmudgeon say something nice.

“We really wanted to capture each person’s Twitter usage accurately, so the early task was to figure out was what did each person talk about,” Mike Young, Creative Director at EA Tiburon said.

“Adam Schefter focuses on breaking the news about signings, trades, and things like that in a very dry way. Some personalities are opinionated about the news. Others, like Todd McShay, mostly talk about draft prospects.”

“Then we had to figure out how each personality actually translates on Twitter. Do they use exclamation points, hashtags, all caps? Do they talk about a certain team more than others? Are they snarky, corny, witty? Mark Schlereth talks about his chile company all the time. Studying them really was the key to making it as authentic as possible.”

With a reasonable sense of how each of these people appear through the keyhole of Twitter, the focus shifted to a question of scale, creating characterizations to address the huge number of possible situations that come up during a 30 year Superstar Mode.

“So many permutations can happen in our game, so it is a real challenge to cover all the scenarios and not be repetitive,” Young said.” Often we would find the real Tweets for similar situations and use that as inspiration. For example, we would see something like Curtis Martin elected to the Hall of Fame.”

“Skip Bayless said ‘he had to think twice’ about him going into the Hall of Fame. How do we make our Skip Bayless say something like that about a similar player? When we were done with the scripts the media personalities reviewed the content and gave feedback. For a couple of the personalities we were able to show them the feature in person which really helped.”

The story in a given playthrough of Superstar Mode can be almost anything: the underachiever, overachiever, the veteran who couldn’t face retirement, the journeymen who went from team to team, or the mythic legend who changed the game forever. The addition of Twitter is not meant to favor one over the other but to deepen the emotional context of each choice the player makes for themselves.

“For any one event it will be factoring in a ton of criteria,” Young explained. “Is the player a former high draft pick? A future Hall of Famer?  Age? A starter? That way when something like an injury happens we can be pretty specific. So if the event happens to Tom Brady it will feel like a much bigger deal than if it were Kyle Orton.”

“That brings to the surface things that you wouldn’t normally hear about. It makes the world feel real, the players feel special. I actually felt sad when Ray Lewis retired in the game because of how we bring it to life. Seeing the entire Twitterverse talk about his career and if he is a Hall of Famer or not makes it much bigger than a digital guy disappearing from the roster.”

The Infinite Narrative Loop

Before turning its attention to the Dota revival, Valve re-conceived the multi-player FPS with the two Left 4 Dead games, combining the manic intensity of competitive shooters like Quake with the lush story atmospherics of Half-Life. The games are ideal examples of how, in moment-to-moment experience, a perpetually replayable game, multiplayer or otherwise, can be as full of drama, character, and emotion as a traditional single-player story game.

As with Dota, a huge amount of the emotion in Left 4 Dead comes from character dialogue that must both comment on the immediate objectives and hint at a larger story. “We never try and say everything in one playthrough, because we know people will play the same campaign multiple times, so we can leak out bits of story each time,” Valve’s Chet Faliszek said.

“For campaign specific lines, we go through the maps and mark up areas for the players to mention or to talk about. We can control the chance of them speaking when they see it and how far the player can be from the object before they speak. So for the maps of The Parish, if you get Coach close to most signs and look at it — he will often read it. Other times you will notice, characters will talk about a plot point — these bodies don’t look infected — when they are in a general area.”

The games’ flexible approach to dialogue most not only hint at broad narrative pieces but account for momentary circumstances that aren’t necessarily broad or narrative. “Other times we take that piece of data and then compare it to other data,” Faliszek said. “If Nick is going to talk about a horse — is he by the statue? Is Ellis alive? How close is Ellis? Are they out of combat? All of these conditions help control how often a campaign specific line will play. So while there may be fewer of them, the campaign specific lines end up taking the bulk of the work.”

“‘Clever’ lines can become tiresome if you hear them too often, but if you choose to only have Nick make a comment about his suit while in one map and only 10 percent of the time — players won’t become irritated by the line. We also always make sure the characters are saying something, if nothing else at least, ‘reloading’. This gives a bed for all the lines to live in and become part of the world. That way the story points don’t stick out of the silence.”

The AI Director was a major part of what made Left 4 Dead so replayable, creating new spikes in difficulty and varied enemy encounters throughout each level. It might seem like the technology could have been applied to the game’s dialog system, but Valve discovered it was actually important to keep the AI Director confined to combat.

“We never link the lines to actual Director code because players play for hundreds if not thousands of hours, they would learn what those warnings meant and be tipped off to what is next,” Faliszek explained. “To keep players in the world, your character only knows what you know about the creatures around them.”

“We do use the Director to give us a clue on one state; what is the player’s intensity level. We often use that in conjunction with health and other states to pick a line. You can get away with saying a quiet line in a loud situation but it doesn’t work when your character is screaming at high intensity while the character is experiencing a low intensity situation.”

Valve was likewise careful to not use dialog to comment too directly on player performance for fear of breaking the dramatic illusion built up with the environments and characterizations. “Guessing intent is really scary and something we try and avoid,” Faliszek said.

“We also try and not break the fourth wall with dialogue, but the characters do react to friendly fire and often offer suggestions like use a health kit or pills to other players as a way to bring attention to a character state. Coach will even actually ‘coach’ other characters to hang in there when they are injured.”

Another major concern for games that stitch together thousands and thousands of lines of dialog, plot, and characterization on the fly is how to blend lines together without them sounding disconnected. “While it may sound like fragments, we actually record various versions of a paragraph worth of text and then programmatically piece them together at run time,” Faliszek said.

“If the audio is going to play right next to each other, it is always worth picking up the duplicated audio in each take just so the actor flows with the various versions. Sometimes we need to use the entire take and sometimes we can just use the various stubs. To make sure it will work we test it outside the game and then we play through with a setting to force the audio to play so we can test even the rare occurrences. For the 10,000-plus lines of dialogue in the game, I have probably heard each one 50 times by the time we ship.”

Write a Reason to Care About the Rules

It has been easiest to understand game dramatics in terms of film and novel, plots and progression serving as structural pillars in between constrained arenas of play. This structure has a kind of baroque purity that distinguishes its two parts: here is the story and here is the game. While the two compliment one another, they are essentially counterpoints that must play against each other.

There is nothing inherently bad about this approach to game design, but there are many other possible forms, many of which have no particular need for story but which can still benefit from writing. In the same way that Tetris benefits from music and art even while it cannot be called a symphony or a great painting, there is a world of expressive possibility that can come from writing, even when it does not intend to be taken as a traditional story.

“We’ve just scratched the surface with reflecting the personality of players,” said Young, regarding Madden’s Twitter embellishments. “We have stories about players and teams being far apart during negotiations or players being on the trade block, things like that. There are still plenty of ways for us to expand this feature down the road by giving you a way to have a voice.”

Games have the extraordinary capacity to combine all of these creative forms — the dramatic, visual, auditory, and performative — into an amalgamated whole. In the rush to find a set of best practices it’s often forgotten that what defines “best” is relative. Instead of thinking about formal restrictions that must be adhered to, it would be more productive to imagine all the things you might do with the rich palette of tools available.

“I’ve always felt the strength of the game industry is the staggering amount of variety in types of games, the fact that there are games to suit every possible interest,” Laidlaw said. “I’ve also always felt that good games can be made even better with good writing, even if that is not the game’s real emphasis, and that entertaining writing is appreciated no matter where it appears.”

“I never felt like we ought to work any less hard on our dialog just because the game is not a narrative one. Valve is known for creating great characters, and we didn’t want to compromise any of that just because this time our characters were these tiny little critters you mostly saw in a top-down perspective.”

Games do not always have to be about storytelling but it is hard to imagine them without the art of writing, from Rock Band to Wii Fit and from BioShock to Madden. Writing can help give depth and context to a system that might otherwise be a flatter and duller arrangement of rules for the purpose of determining a winner and loser. It’s the human in the system who finds the distinction between winning and losing so dramatic. Writing can be a powerful tool to make that person return again and again to a game, whether it’s because of the subtle encouragement of a trainer, or the arch cries of a mystical hero in the heat of combat.(source:gamasutra)