Gamertell

In any story-driven medium, be it novels, narrative videogames, films, etc. you can’t have a very successful project without solid writing. While visual mediums like film and videogames (and from here, we’re speaking of games with central storylines, not Tetris) don’t necessarily rely on the spoken word as heavily, the writing is still an essential piece of the puzzle. With narrative becoming more and more important in gaming, and the industry growing at such an exponential rate, we’re increasingly seeing established screenwriters try their hand at writing games. But can these skills really be translated into such a vastly different medium?

At GDC 2008, 2k Boston mastermind Ken Levine gave a talk on storytelling in Bioshock. He revealed quite a few details about how the game’s story and world came together. To summarize very briefly, Levine stated that the narrative was actually written quite late in the development process, meaning that the game’s world and gameplay mechanics were established before the specific story details were written. It would appear that this organic, design-minded approach worked quite well for the format – seeing the title’s massive success and tremendous critical acclaim. He also left the audience with three bullet points essential for good storytelling in videogames: respect your audience, trust mystery, and empower the gamer.

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