Who says technology and creativity can’t go together? Now you can satisfy your twin passions of video game design and writing by combining the two. Not that scripting a video game is easy. As any writer will tell you, it is extremely difficult to write in a genre that has very few, if any, standards or methods for writing. To meet the peculiar challenges of writing for video games, companies have devised their own script writing standards on the basis of methods of game design. These standards are usually ad hoc or proprietary in nature.
Another, and possibly bigger, challenge faced by script writers involved in video game design is that this genre has one of the highest levels of interactivity. The choices made by the audience (in the form of multiple gaming paths) have a great impact on the kind of writing the script writer has to produce. Not only does the writer have to weave an intricate and creative story for the video, he also has to keep the players’ moves in mind at the same time. Scripting story lines and plots for video games is a challenging, albeit a highly rewarding task, particularly in the scope for creativity it offers.
Guidelines for writing a good video game design script:
- Today’s video game players are sophisticated and expect considerably more than simple repetitive scenarios of battling the baddies as they advance towards the goal. Video games today need to have a complex history and a wide range of choices that keep players engaged and interested enough to play the game again and again.
- Before you start working on the individual scenarios of the game design script, write a succinct executive overview in prose. This works as your calling card when you shop your script to game developers. Potential buyers will only be interested if you have narrated a unique and interesting story from start to finish. The overview can be any size but it has to take the reader through all the major stages of the game.
- Provide the game world with a background and history. A good video game is a complete world unto itself. Game designers need to visualize the kind of fictional world you want to create in order to create it effectively.
- Make a flowchart involving all the stages of the game. A video game is a highly complex creation, involving multiple decisions at every stage. Each decision leads to a different path that the player can choose. A flowchart helps you and the game developer to keep track of all game paths.
- Create multiple sub-quests and provide each one with its own prose overview. Each sub-quest is a miniature story in itself. You can keep the story simple but it has to be compelling enough to make the player want to go on to the next one.
- Provide bios and character descriptions for all important characters. Your game designer will need to visualize the whole picture before starting the project. A detailed written description of characters helps to bring them to life.
- Provide interactions between player and non-player characters. This needs to be done only if your story involves such interactions. In this case, the dialogue and flowchart that you write may be crucial to the development of the story as it can propel the player on to different paths that lead to the goal.
- Write short cut scenes between major points in the story. Cut scenes are incorporated for the purpose of enhancing or describing the story, as well as a reward for achieving major milestones in the game.
- Write the storyboard script. This is the last stage in the process of writing a script for video game design. This part is very similar to writing a movie script. You need to write each scene in detail with the help of all the supporting materials that you have already prepared.
