A Writer's Ramblings

Skyrim's Story Was Ultimately Disappointing

2012-01-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Since my full-time job now entails coming up with story elements for video games, I've been paying more attention than ever to the stories in all of the games I play. Story has always been important to me, but now I'm paying attention to every nitty gritty detail, including how the story is delivered and the how the game world changes as a result of the story.

I finished the main storyline in Skyrim over the Christmas break, and I have to say it left me feeling pretty disappointed. It wasn't the story itself. I actually quite enjoyed the plotline of being dragonborn and searching out clues as to why the dragons were returning. Granted, it's not the best story I've ever come across in a game, but it was intriguing and kept my interest. My disappointment came from the lack of impact completing the story had on the larger world of the game. The only indication I got that I actually finished the story was the Xbox Achievement I unlocked. There was no cutscene or other indication, and when I traveled back to the town where I made my home, no one seemed to realize that I had just saved the world, and that was a big let down.

From a development perspective, I completely understand the reasons why the world didn't change. 1. They want you to keep playing long after you finish the story. 2. The amount of additional writing, not to mention VO recording, that would need to happen in order to have all of the characters acknowledge your accomplishment would be staggeringly huge. I get that. But I still would have liked to have some acknowledgement of my accomplishment, otherwise what's the point of having a story?

I was actually so disappointed that I just turned off the game and don't plan on going back. I might have continued playing if the story experience hadn't left me feeling like I had spent hours upon hours playing for basically nothing. I know not all gamers play games for the story, but I do, and in my opinion Skyrim fails as a story-driven game.

Preparing for War

2011-12-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

OK. Maybe that title is a little melodramatic, but at times that's what it feels like. In April, if everything goes well, I'll have a daughter. The thought fills me with happiness, longing, fear, and trepidation. Since my motherhood journey has suffered some detours, I've had more than enough time to think (or perhaps stress is the more appropriate word) about my parenting philosophy. I've always known I wanted to raise a daughter to be herself and not be afraid of going after any dream or goal. I've been a feminist my entire adult life, so trying to protect her from gender stereotypes is a natural part of that goal. But I never imagined how hard that might actually be. It's enough to send my GAD skyrocketing through the roof.

To put it metaphorically, I feel like there is a massive pink train driven by princesses with perfect hair bearing down on me, and I feel somewhat powerless to stop it. My first encounter with this came with registering for baby clothes and finding at least 90 percent of all the clothes for girls are pink. Soon I found it wasn't just the clothes, but the toys as well. If my daughter ends up liking pink on her own, then that's fine. I just don't understand why I'm supposed to practically bathe her in pepto bismol from the minute she's born. This forced color-coding of babies led me search out more information on the topic. My first source was Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein. And while I don't wholesale agree with everything Peggy says in her book, most of it makes a lot of sense and makes me a little angry. It starts with the color pink and morphs into princesses, Barbies, Bratz, and a whole ecosystem of playthings that reinforce the message that being pretty is important, while failing to balance that message with the importance of intelligence, honesty, or really any other trait that's needed for success in life.

Granted, I don't expect my daughter's toys to teach about what's important in life. That's my job as a parent, and I whole-heartedly accept that. I just wish there was more out there to help reinforce my views. My husband doesn't quite understand the intensity of my feelings. When having a conversation with him on the topic, he quipped "You played with Barbies and you turned out just fine." Maybe. I am successful and have made my mark in a male-dominated field, but I also struggle with self-confidence, have never been happy with how I look, and have battled anxiety and depression. I'm not trying to lay this all at the feet of the perky blonde doll, but I think it would be foolish to claim that she and the culture surrounding her hasn't played at least a small part.

And this is where the feeling of hopelessness begins to settle in. I'm not foolish enough to believe that I can protect her from everything. It's entirely probable that a well-meaning relative will buy her something with a princess on it. I will probably not have the iron will to deny her a Barbie doll when she laments that she's the only girl at school that doesn't have one. And these situations bring up insecurities about myself. Like, how in the world am I going to teach her to have a positive body image when I don't have one myself? How can I teach her to distinguish being a woman from being beautiful when she'll be bombarded by millions of things that tell her otherwise. It makes me want to cry, but then I find sites like 7Wonderlicious, Princess-Free Zone, or Pink Stinks, and I know I'm not alone. But nothing has given me more hope than this video that I found today (thanks again to Peggy Orenstein!)

"...and here I stand with this sword in my hand." Bring it on!

It's hard to dance with a devil on your back...

2011-12-03T10:21:00.001-08:00

By all accounts, 2011 was the worst year of my life.

I started the year pregnant (my second try) and managed to pass through the first trimester with no problems only to have my hopes devastated midway through the second trimester. I spent my birthday getting seaweed stuffed up my cervix in order to dilate it so a D&E could be performed the next day. When you've tried and failed twice to have a baby, the feelings of inadequacy start to set in. It doesn't matter how many doctors tell you it wasn't your fault or that there's nothing you could have done, you start to wonder if there's something wrong with you.

But I forged ahead and tried not to let it get to me. I tucked away my feelings and tried to focus on something I could do right - writing. I gave all my effort to my job at IGN, thinking I was good at what I did, and that I was appreciated. Turned out I was wrong on that front too. A couple of weeks after busting my ass during E3, I was let go. It would have been one thing if the whole site shut down, but that wasn't the case. I was specifically selected from a group of editors and, for whatever reason, deemed not valuable enough to keep on. People have commented that I've seemed overly angry at this situation. Perhaps I have been, but when you're already lying on the ground, and someone comes up and kicks you, I'd expect you'd get angry at them too. Plus the anger was easier to express than the hurt.

Things could have gotten much worse if I had floundered around looking for a job for an extended period of time. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. A group of people decided I was worth taking a chance on and offered me a dream job. Now I get to do what I love everyday, and I'm surrounded by some of the most talented people I've ever worked with.

But before I had even been at my new job a month, I got a surprise. I was pregnant. While trying again had been the plan all along, I had hoped to be more established in my new job before taking the plunge. My exact reaction to seeing the positive pregnancy test was, "Fuck!" Besides still trying to settle myself into my new routine, I also had not mentally or emotionally prepared myself for what I knew was going to be an extremely stressful experience. But it seems life doesn't care whether you're ready or not.

I coped by shutting down. I refused to talk about the pregnancy unless I had to and tried to forget that I even was pregnant. I had bottled so much up that my first visit to the perinatologist ended with me in tears. And then I started getting sick. This time around the sickness was particularly potent, which then required me telling some people at work (something else I had hoped to avoid until the last minute.) No matter what I did, it seemed this pregnancy refused to be ignored, and I've spent the last four and a half months "waiting for the bomb to drop," so to speak. Because expecting something bad to happen would make the blow less severe if it did come, I reasoned.

But then, over the Thanksgiving holiday, a couple of things happened. I don't believe in God or fate or anything like that, but even I have to admit that sometimes you find things - books, songs, even people - at the exact moment you need them. I had picked up Peggy Orenstein's memoir about her own struggles having a baby, called Waiting for Daisy. I had already read Cinderella Ate My Daughter during my previous pregnancy and loved it, and had hoped this book could maybe help me to de-stress a little bit. It ended up doing much more than that.

I don't know exactly what I had expected, but I hadn't expected to see my exact feelings being uttered by someone else, someone whose experience had been worse than my own. Parts of the book were very difficult for me to read, and I ended up putting it down more than once because I was crying too hard to continue. What struck me most about Peggy's experience was that no matter how hard things got, she never seemed to abandon all hope. She was able to come to terms with what was happening to her. I couldn't say the same for myself.

In the prologue she talks about returning to a ceremony of the religion of her youth, not because she necessarily believed it, but because she hoped to find "the courage to close my own book, one way or another, on this anguished chapter of my life." The same day I finished reading Waiting for Daisy, I heard "Shake It Out" for the first time and felt my baby kick for the first time. It seemed the universe was desperately trying to tell me something.

I've spent the last three years of my life, consumed by my inability to have a baby. I've made myself numb in an effort to avoid being hurt, but I've realized that is no way to live. I'm writing this on a Saturday. On Monday, I have a full anatomy ultrasound. This is the point where we discovered the problem the last time around. But rather than trying not to think about it, I feel a strange sense of peace. Even if this ultrasound comes back fine, there's no guarantee there won't be problems in the future. And I've decided I can no longer let the fear of tragedy keep me from living my life. As in the lyrics to "Shake It Out," "I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope." I know that no matter what happens, I'm going to be OK. It's hard to express in words the depth of this epiphany I've had, but as a writer, I felt I had to try.

Game Writing So Far

2011-09-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

As noted here, I started a new job as a Game Writer at KIXEYE in August. Lots of you have wanted to know about my experience thus far, so here's the scoop. It's awesome! Seriously, I can't think of one thing to complain about. Great people, great games, and the ability to actually get paid for writing fiction. I consider myself very, very lucky. I've had the opportunity to come up with some very interesting characters including a slightly nympho passive-agressive AI, a slightly unstable programmer, a resentful housewife, a religious fanatic, and a ruthless mobster, among others.

That said, I'm not always writing stories or even dialogue. If you've played any social games, you know there's lots of words in them that don't really have anything to do with story. I'm talking about stuff like item descriptions, instructions, and even what it says on your Facebook wall if you choose to post something. I have to write all of that stuff as well. And that's where the challenge comes in. Thesaurus.com is my new favorite website simply because I have to come up with a gazillion different ways to say the player has destroyed something, sometimes all in the same day. For example, in the past two days I have had to come up with 30 different variations of smack talk that basically said, "We're better than you. Prepare to die." Believe me, it's a lot harder than it sounds.

There's also the question of writing for space. I'm no stranger to editing myself, so this one isn't that big of a deal, but sometimes it can be really hard to come up with a short-enough word, even with the help of Thesaurus.com.

Besides coming up with the story, I've also had a hand in suggesting how the story gets delivered to the player. We're going to be trying a couple of different things in our games, and I can't wait to see how the players respond to them. I haven't seen some of these things in social games before, so I feel like we're going to be breaking new ground. So that's game writing so far. It's pretty much in line with my expectations, and I'm loving it.

Mr. Big with 1,000 Faces

2011-08-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

As part of my attempt to become a really good game writer, I've been reading some textbooks on the topic. I'll go into more detail on what I think about the books in a later post, but one thing they all have in common is a chapter dedicated to the basics of story, which makes reference to Joseph Campbell's A Hero with a Thousand Faces. If you don't know what that is, click the link.

Anyhow, as I was walking to public transportation the other day, thinking about what I had read, it occurred to me that Sex and the City has managed to do a similar thing with the lead male character, Mr. Big.

You may be reading this and thinking, "I had no idea she liked Sex and the City." It's understandable, as I am about as un-girly as you can get. I abhor the color pink, I only own a few pairs of shoes (one of which actually gets worn with any regularity), I will only wear a dress when it is absolutely unavoidable, and I think paying hundreds of dollars for shoes or a purse simply because they have a specific label is ridiculously stupid. Those are the elements that Sex and the City has become known for, but it really only scratches the surface. Underneath all that glitz and frivolity is a story that's beautifully written with real women characters. (Note: I'm referring to the television series, not the movies) The show is almost universally adored by women the world over, and I think the main reason is because we can all see pieces of ourselves in Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha, even if we don't always want to admit it. That's why I like it. And men who simply dismiss it could actually learn a lot about women from it.

Ok, now back to the topic. Mr. Big, for those who are not familiar, is Carrie's main love interest throughout the story. They get together, they break up, they have an affair while he's married to someone else, they become true friends, they get together again, and break up again before finally getting married. He's a successful businessman with commitment issues, yet Carrie can't seem to help loving him.

Even if we never had the rollercoaster relationship that these two had, I think we have all dated our own version of Mr. Big. He's the guy who seems out of your league, the one who can make you feel underdressed in a formal gown simply because he's so perfectly put together all the time. He's the one who can say the perfect thing and the most maddening thing at the best and worst possible moments, respectively. He makes you feel like you have to act a certain way around him. He disappears from your life for awhile only to reappear when you least want him to. He likely played with your heart or strung you along. But despite all of that, you couldn't help yourself. Some of us may have married our Mr. Bigs. I didn't, thankfully, though he was very much an on and off presence throughout college.

The point is I've come to realize that Sex and the City did not only a fantastic job of representing the universal female archetypes, but also a very modern male one. The fact that you never learn Mr. Big's real name until the very last episode of the show is another way they managed to make his character just anonymous enough for us to see our old boyfriends in him. He may have been played by Chris Noth, but Mr. Big really does have "1,000 faces" in the real world.

Diner Dash Facebook Fail

2011-07-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

After sifting through the mountain of e-mail that accumulated during my vacation, I came across a note from PlayFirst, alerting me that Diner Dash on Facebook would be shut down in August. The note didn't offer any reasons, but obviously it's not monetizing like PlayFirst would like. Unfortunately, the game's failure is their own fault.

Diner Dash had the makings to be a great Facebook game. It retained the core gameplay, but added social elements. Where PlayFirst went terribly wrong was in their monetization strategy. Like many traditional publishers attempting to enter the social space, PlayFirst got greedy. The amount of things you had to pay for in that game was ridiculous. When it launched, it cost 40 Facebook Credits (That's $4.00 for those of you who don't know) to unlock any restaurant other than the starting diner. This is a completely asinine price for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that you can download an entire Diner Dash game (five restaurants and 50 levels) for $6.99. WTF? Why would anyone pay more than half the cost of an entire game for a single restaurant?

Recently, PlayFirst made it possible to unlock the next restaurant by earning five stars in the first one, but it was too late. Diner Dash fanatics like myself had already stopped playing in protest. A quick browse through the official forums after launch made it clear the core Diner Dash fans felt the same way I did.

The failure of this game illustrates how clueless many traditional publishers are when it comes to social gaming. They try to put a price on your progress. The best social games can be played without spending a penny. It will take you longer to level up and achieve your goals, but it is possible to play continuously for free. Diner Dash wasn't like that. They gave you one restaurant and charged for everything else. The game was basically like demo, where you had to shell out the cash to get the full experience. There's nothing wrong with the gameplay obviously, as the franchise has sold millions of copies, so the monetization strategy was its downfall. It just ended up feeling like a crash grab, and players (even if they've never played another game before) can tell when you're just out to make a quick buck.

Hopefully PlayFirst has learned its lesson; it's just a shame that one of my favorite gaming franchises had to be the one to fail.

Activision Is Working on Facebook Games

2011-07-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

Activision is one of the biggest forces in the industry when it comes to retail releases, but they've been conspicuously absent from the social gaming space. However, in an interview with Industry Gamers, CEO Bobby Kotick says the company is working on these games, but some of Kotick's comments make me think Activision isn't likely to give us anything interesting in the space.

Rather than trying to start from a good game design, it sounds like Activision is going after analytics people to make these games. Don't get me wrong; analytics are definitely important, but they don't make good games. I can't say I'm surprised. I expect nothing more than 'Ville copies from the company who practically single-handedly killed the music game genre, plans to milk the Call of Duty franchise into oblivion, and bullies and fires some of its best creators.

Not to mention the fact that Activision is sooooo far behind everyone else in this space. I think the only way they could become a viable player is to buy a company that's already successful, and I predict that very thing will happen within the next year. However, being late to the game has slimmed the pickings considerably. Zynga is going public, Playfish and PopCap are already owned by EA, and Disney owns Playdom. If Activision hopes to catch the audience those companies do, then they're going to have to go for smaller companies like CrowdStar or RockYou.

LittleBigPlanet Could Have Been Free to Play

2011-07-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

IndustryGamers has an interesting story up today about how Sony had originally wanted LittleBigPlanet to adopt the free-to-play business model. Then-president Phil Harrison is the one who suggested it, which means he would have been somewhat ahead of his time in this thinking. LittleBigPlanet was released in 2008, when the free-to-play business model was just starting to gain traction.

The article doesn't say why Sony eventually decided to release the game as a traditional retail product, but I think it was a missed opportunity. Sony could have emerged as a leader in this market. I very much believe the free-to-play or freemium business model will be the dominant one in the industry in a few years.

Sony is, of course, toying with free-to-play on PS3 now with the release of Free Realms. While that game has been hugely popular on PC, Sony has yet to release details on how it's doing on the PS3. Of course, the PSN outage has likely had an impact on that. I can only hope they've got more free-to-play stuff in the pipe for PS3.

My Game Writing Career Begins

2011-07-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

My career is about to take a shift into new territory for me. I've wanted to do in-game writing for some time, but now I'm finally going to be doing it for KIXEYE. Who is KIXEYE? Previously known as the Casual Collective, KIXEYE makes social games targeted at core gamers. They've got three games currently available on Facebook and other social networks - Desktop Defender, Backyard Monsters, and Battle Pirates. They're growing quickly, but cautiously, are profitable, and have a smart take on social and where it's headed. The dev team also includes Paul Preece, the guy who made a little game you may have heard of - Desktop Tower Defense.

This job would be awesome for the game writing aspect alone, but it's even more exciting because I'm going to have the chance to make a major impact on all of KIXEYE's games, and may make an impact on the concept of story in social games as a whole. Since social gaming is really still in its childhood, and the idea of story in these games is in its infancy, it's a super exciting opportunity for me.

As I get my feet wet, I'll share my thoughts on game writing, and will continue to offer my take on general industry news. I'm thrilled about this next step and can't wait to share my experiences with you.

EA Buys PopCap

2011-07-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

Despite inside sources saying it wasn't happening, today the rumors have been confirmed. Electronic Arts has purchased casual gaming masters PopCap for about $1 billion in cash and stock.

A couple of years ago, this news would have made me kick and scream, lamenting the eventual downfall of what was a great game maker. But not anymore. EA has proved that they're getting better at keeping their noses out of things. The best example of this is Bioware, who continues to produce top-notch games. As long as the same thought process applies to PopCap, we shouldn't have anything to worry about.

The more interesting fact about this news is the price tag. While I can't be 100 percent sure, this may be the biggest acquisition in terms of money the industry has ever seen. EA paid just over $600 million for Bioware and Pandemic, which at the time was the biggest. But that's not to say that PopCap isn't worth it. They've turned out creative games that appeal to everyone on a regular basis, and are one of the only traditional game makers who understands social and has made great games for Facebook.

Hey PopCap, so now that you're all rich and stuff, can we please get Plants vs. Zombies for Facebook?

Reinventing Books

2011-07-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

Between copy-editing the official WoW magazine, I came across a very interesting article on Kotaku. The piece talks about a Scottish company that wants to revinvent classic literature on gaming devices. The first thought that came into my mind, was "Oh no, not more Dante's Inferno," but as I read on, I became more intrigued. This company doesn't want to turn books into games, but rather recreate the book in an interactive form where you observe the events of the book and can explore the world in which it's set. The company says its goal is to expand the reach of a book to new readers, but I'm somewhat skeptical. While I think this type of program sounds really interesting, I doubt that someone who isn't interested in books is likely to pick up what they think is a game and then enjoy it. I still think this will only appeal to the existing readers. How many gamers dropped Heavy Rain because they thought it was too boring? Now imagine an experience where you don't have any control over the action, you just watch it.

I think that will be a tough sell to gamers, but as a writer of novels, I find it really interesting to think that my work might one day take on this format. What do you think?

Here We Go - Zynga Files for IPO

2011-07-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

The news is no surprise. Those of us who cover the social gaming industry have been hearing the murmurings for a while now, but Zynga has now officially filed for an initial public offering. The New York Times is reporting that Zynga plans to offer up 10 percent of its shares at a valuation near $20 billion. That last number is double what I had been hearing.

This is exciting for me, not because I particularly want to see Zynga get rich, but because it will finally validate social gaming to the rest of industry nay-sayers, who have been claiming it's a bubble. With Zynga going public, we will all know exactly how much money they are making and the facts will do away with all the speculation. According to the filing, Zynga pulled in a profit (not revenue, but profit) of $392.7 million in 2010. To put that in perspective, EA actually a posted a profit loss for their most recent fiscal year.

Social gaming is real business and it's here to stay. Now wev'e finally got some official numbers to back it up!

Bungie Helping Indies Publish Mobile Games

2011-06-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

The much-anticipated details of Bungie's Aerospace project have been revealed. Turns out it's not a game at all, but a program designed to help independent developers publish mobile and social games.

The first project is a mobile game from Harebrained Schemes, but I'm quite excited by the fact that yet another big name from the gaming industry is looking to enter the social space. Insomniac announced it would be creating social games, and Valve has hinted that they're interested in the space as well.

Facebook games are already evolving at an unbelievable pace, and I'm hopeful these respected companies can help push things along.

Why Social Gaming Isn't a Bubble

2011-06-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

IndustryGamers has an interesting article from a product manager at Activision about what social gaming companies need to do in order to be successful. There are some good insights in there about how companies need to look past the raw numbers and learn why their players are playing.

The article is a good one, but it starts with the asinine quote that Denis Dyack spouted a while back about social gaming being a massive bubble that's going to crash hard. Yes, social gaming is the new big thing, and it's attracting lots of VC money, but there's one key difference between social gaming and other bubbles like the dot com crash of 2000. These companies are PROFITABLE. When VC's were throwing millions around in 1998-99, they were backing companies that had no real strategy for making money. Basically anyone who had a website could get funding. That's what led to the crash. When the VCs wanted to see some return, there wasn't any because these "businesses" weren't really businesses at all.

Social gaming is very different. It's based on a business model that works. Whether you call it Free to Play or Freemium, this business model is so successful, that numerous subscription model MMOs have made the switch. Lord of the Rings Online actually made more money after switching to the free to play model than it did before, and games like Free Realms and Wizard101 have been successful with this model since their inception.

After covering the social gaming space for more than a year, I know that the majority of these companies are turning a profit, and they're growing because their profits are growing. Are there some foolish VCs jumping on the bandwagon backing companies that don't deserve it? Sure. Will every company that makes a Facebook game survive? No. But that's no different than the rest of the gaming industry. Some developers and publishers are successful; some aren't.

Dyack calling this industry a bubble represents to me a trend I'm seeing in a lot of old-school gaming industry folks. They don't understand social gaming, therefore they bad-mouth it. Quite frankly, I think a lot of these folks are practically shitting their pants because they can't turn the same sort of profit margins as the big social gaming companies.

Old-school developers need to wake up and start figuring out ways to use social to make their games better rather than dismissing it and ignoring it. I think the industry is primed for some major shifts in the next few years, and social is driving them. Those who don't pay attention will become extinct.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Violent Game Law!

2011-06-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Cout this morning delivered it's decision in the EMA v Brown case, which would fine retailers for selling "violent" video games to minors. The court struck down the law in a 7-2 decision. The court basically affirmed the lower court's decision that the law violated the first amendment of the constitution. What's that mean for us gamers? It's good news. It means the court has officially recognized games as having the same rights and freedoms of other forms of art, like books and movies.

From the decision: "This country has no tradition of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence. And California’s claim that “interactive” video games present special problems, in that the player participates in the violent action on screen and determines its out-come, is unpersuasive."

Justices Thomas and Breyer were the two dissenting voices, so pay attention to those two - they are the enemies.

You can read the entire opinion of the court here.

Blogging Here Again

2011-06-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

I got laid off from my job at IGN, so my official blog is now moving here because I quite frankly don't want to give them any traffic. I'll be posting on all sorts of topics here, not just games, so stay tuned. This is also the best way to get in contact with me. Leave comments, and I will look at and respond to them.