Minor addition to the writing question list.
Also how is it like to write without having any idea how the character will sound?
When writing, most designers envision how the character sounds as they're writing - when the time comes for auditions, they provide a series of sample lines, a picture of the character in-game, breakdowns of the age, brief history, etc., and then the casting agency will run through auditions looking for someone who can deliver the lines as envisi
2 More:
How do you choose who writes each (major) character in a game, also who's allowed to do any writing?
Depends, sometimes it's just necessity (you have the most bandwidth, so you do X person, or you're already doing the main city where the character resides, so it's best if you write Y antagonist), other times we're able to purposely assign folks with skill sets to characters (which Josh did on Fallout New Vegas). For Fallout New Vegas, Josh broke down the companio
Something that seems to frequently come up when discussing the design of a game system is whether or not some aspect of that system adheres to reality. Or, more precisely, whether the outcomes of that system accurately simulate the results that the person making the argument expects, based on their particular interpretation of reality.
Generally, these arguments come from players, or from non-designers, or less experienced designers, and will take the form of, "But XXXX isn't realistic!" o
From a multi-part question on Twitter.
How do Project Directors and/or Lead Designers get selected?
To clarify the hierarchy at our studio, a Project Director isn't necessarily a designer, and at Obsidian, a Project Director is above all other disciplines except Feargus, who is all-powerful, even if he might debate that.
At the moment, we have four project directors - one from design (Josh Sawyer), another from design (me), one from programming (Rich Taylor),
Anyone who's curious about Fallout: New Vegas and Dungeon Siege III, we have three events lined up at Comic-Con if you want to check them out.
Thursday 7.22.10
1:00-2:00 Video Game Comics: The Next Big Thing
Some questions from forum goers/emailers: TheJokester
Do you have any recommendations on what schools would be good to go to for game development?
The Guildhall's pretty solid (a few of our designers on Fallout New Vegas were hired from there). They usually have strong portfolios based on classwork they've done, which they can usually use for quick submission in designer tests, too.
If you end up going to any gaming school, just make sure they put you in group
Questions from Davide Scalzo:
1) What do you think about the concept of emergent narrative?
1. I think the concept of emergent narrative is stronger than any enforced narrative. I think a blend can work well (and it's what I prefer whenever possible), but I think the stories players create on their own from interesting system mechanics and AI behavior has more weight and meaning than anything a designer tries to do. My favorite example is that no enforced narrative can r
Translation from PCAction.de, although I'd argue Google does a more amusing job than my original text.
Please introduce yourself (full name, age, company, position):
I'm Christopher Frederic Avellone (you want the full name, you got it, even the embarassing middle name that my Mom picked from some French emperor which I've never understood). My job? Creative Director at Obsidian Entertainment, which means I review and do a lot of design. I'm almost at the 4 decade mark (
Polygamer went live with an interview I did for them a while ago (Polygamer Interview), and here's the English translation for those who don't know much beyond their high school French... like me.
1] At Polygamer we ask ourselves many things about videogames, for example why it
In advance, I want to mention that I am using GTA as a theoretical example in this case. I actually don't remember what it did for difficulty levels - it was just a clear example to explain the terms I'm using.
Something that I've done a lot of thinking about is difficulty modes. Not just because it's something you have to consider on every project, but also because it ties directly into the core meat of system design - what causes your game to be challenging? What level of challenge is fun
Game design...
One game design question from Nicole Swimley:
How do you go about getting ideas into a cohesive format? And what methods do you use to start narrowing down what makes for a better design?
- Write one sentence about your game, tell it to someone you trust, then study their expressions to see if they get the hook. Repeat this to various people until you have a good sampling. Ideally, any game you do should be cool enough to explain why it's cool a
A question from Chris Norris:
Greetings, Mr. Avellone
I saw your lecture at Framework 09 and was deeply inspired. I am currently studying to be an animator, but writing and design speak to me more than art or animation does. I was hoping I could ask you a few short questions?
1) I've looked at transferring to a games design degree and they teach classes such as physics, programming (LUA, C++) -and- manage to pack one or two art classes in there as well. I am w
Some minor tips for interviewing... or deciding where to interview.
First off, know what you want to do. If you're not sure if you want to be a programmer or a designer, choose one and focus on that until you (1) realize you hate it, or (2) discover you love it. More than that, if you decide to be a certain discipline - art, programming, design, or production, research the field enough to know what sub-set of that discipline you want to pursue. For example, for design, knowing whethe
At work, we have a lot of rules for how to write. These range from punctuation (single-spacing after terminal punctuation) to spelling ("all right" vs. "alright") to structural (where a "goodbye" response should be relative to a "start combat" response and where that should be relative to a "friendly" response). Every project has a document (or documents) on the specific guidelines for that project. In spite of all the details, there are certain high-level principles that tend to be common. Okay
Alex Nistor:
Concerning Fallout 3 , I really was curious to hear your more in-depth opinion about it.
So you said you had a similiar opinion on it to Sawyer, but what was missing from that, in my opinion, was a breakdown of your pro's and Con's for Fallout 3.
Considering Bethesda made it in a similiar style to Oblivion, I just wanted to know specifically, how was the transition?
And like I said in the above comment, what did you like and not like.
Next question about game writing is from Jonas...
WARNING: This blog is a spoiler, so if you haven't played Knights of the Old Republic II you may want to stop reading here.
Hey Chris,
I'll try to keep this short out of respect for your time. I just found myself with a deep desire to know how much background material you tend to write for an average companion NPC in the party-based games you've worked on. I'm trying to get a feel for how much background mater
I get a lot of questions from folks regarding narrative design and getting into the industry (especially after the Trzynasty Schron interview).
When possible, I'll be posting the answers here as well in case anyone else has the same questions (or wants to comment or add to any of these answers).
To start it off, here's the 1st of 3 questions from Joey 😄
Do you feel that video game writing, and video game story creation differ from other forms of creative writin
Found this in the backroom, although the disk was probably still lodged inside the C64. Love the credits page.
And even found my old school handmade Wasteland Vegas map. The Scorpitron is clearly indicated in... uh... faded pencil. Along with everything else.
Happy holidays, all!
At work, I am often directly involved in an aspect of game design that not all designers really deal with: system and content tuning. This is the process by which system rules and content are adjusted to produce a specific effect for the player. E.g. you want the player to feel like he/she really gains a great advantage when he/she gets the raccoon tail in Super Mario Brothers 3, so you space out the frequency of raccoon tail powerups and you make sure that the raccoon tail's flight powers allow
Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords questions from Joakim... some spoilers follow.
1. K2 pretty much changed on how the force, the galaxy, the Jedi are portrayed. How did that work in terms that you were making a sequel to a very typical Star Wars game? (KotOR1, we have this evil dude who wants to blow up the galaxy just for the hell of it).
A lot of it came from deep-rooted feelings and opinions about the Star Wars franchise, both positive and negative, and especi
Got some general questions from Joakim, and wanted to post them in 2 parts in case folks were interested. If not, that's fine, too. Joakim had some Knights of the Old Republic 2 questions as well, and I'll post those in a few days.
1. If you couldn't be a game designer what would you be, and why? (in the game industry of course)
I would either be cartooning (I still do one-shots for the comic "Knights of the Dinner Table" from Kenzer & Co), writing game supplements (C
