vision of one person( from Shadow of the Colossus by Fumito Ueda to Psychonauts by Tim Schafer or Killer 7 by Gouichi Suda, or also Metal Gear Solid by Hideo Kojima).
Tim Schafer
simultaneously haunted by the idea that you may be completely mistaken and may be taking enormous risks.
It’ s also a fascinating experience because an original project allows you to construct your own vision, to test your convictions on the ground, to experience an extraordinary professional and human adventure with a team, with all the alternating periods of torment and euphoria that this implies.
Indigo Prophecy was all of that. This adventure taught me an enormous amount of things by forcing me to think about my vision of the future of this medium and how to make it evolve, sometimes by remaining true to its still-young traditions and sometimes by breaking away from them.
While Indigo Prophecy broke apart in the final acts, the first half remains one of the most engrossing gaming experiences in recent memory. Mr. Cage wrote over 2,000 pages of design and dialogue for the game, ensuring that every scene and line worked with the larger whole. Cage is candid about how he wanted to make the game.
The purpose of this organization was to have an“ auteur” approach to game creation, i. e. to create a context that gives one person full power to express his / her vision. This specifically made it possible to adopt strong-willed stances without constantly seeking compromises at all costs, which would have been disastrous for a project that claims to be innovative.
It is fundamental to have the director embodying the vision of the project: it is extremely rare for a truly original game to be developed without the creative
Tim Schafer, who is named by everyone who enjoys good writing in games, also wears more than one hat when working on a game. In interviews he discusses his first
job in the industry, which was with LucasArts, calling it“ half creative writing and half
programming.” That background proved to be important for his style of game design. In a 2003 interview, Schaefer commented on how coming from a crossdisciplinary background provided him with a procedural way of thinking when it came to writing.“ I mean it would be really hard to do if one person was doing the writing and one person was doing the programming,” Schafer told Game Studies.“ Because I’ ve never written my dialog in a script program. I’ ve always written it in SCUMM, or whatever language— into the code itself.”
This sort of thinking and leadership role is common in other art forms, but gaming more often features a team approach. It’ s clear why inflectional games often have an outspoken and strong-willed name behind them. We’ re seeing personalities start to emerge that are able to work within the boundaries of the business and improve the state of game writing— a good thing.
While many of us wanted gaming to go mainstream, it was hard to imagine that with a broader audience story would take a back seat— the Michael Bay effect, in other words. Luckily for fans of story, we get enough games like Bully, Psychonauts, Half-Life 2, and Beyond Good and Evil to keep us hopeful for the future. Good writing is out there, and it’ s our job as fans to make sure we support it as much as we can.
ORIGINAL Publisher 104 | WGSA MAG July 2013