Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Fairfax]

I think the real question here is why do the gays have their own convention? They are ostracizing themselves and completely missing the point if they are going for "inclusivity".

When I was looking for the video, I saw somewhere on their website or twitter that the thing people liked the most was that it was a "safe space".

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, I know why they say they are doing it, that's not very important. Has anyone ever seen gay bashing in a "geek" convention before (I seriously don't know, maybe if you are such a flaming fairy who nobody likes, even the LGBT people?)? Safe space from what? A bunch of nerds with boners for men with big guns or big swords? Let me get this straight (no pun intended) - I'm not gay, but I'm also not straight, if you get what I mean. I don't see a reason for such segregation, done by the LGBT "community" no less. This is just a cover for them to feel like special little snowflakes for no reason whatsoever. Neither being straight nor LGBT is in any way interesting or noteworthy, so doing a convention this specific is not only pandering, it's arrogant as well. If they are doing it to get laid and find people with their interests, that's a thing I can understand, but hiding behind "safe spaces" is disingenuous. Maybe it's not very appropriate, but eeeh, who cares. They are also "allowing" "allies" there, so so much for that. It feels forced and it's just masturbation at its core.

 

[Lucky]

It's an upfront statement that you need to be cool with gayness if you want to be present, same as going to a party means that you're not going to be an asshole to the other guests. It's not all that complicated.

You bought into that?

It's funny how many years ago in a diminished sense, studios had the same numbers, the same priorities, smaller budgets even if counting for inflation. And yet.

Do you seriously think Fallout 4 would have been a good game had they had an extra year to work on it? Of course you don't. I hope. They would have added in more art assets - maybe.

Emil is a good writer I swear! He's just overworked! Get the fuck outta here.

One of the reasons for this is that the people writing the dialogue are in someways more restricted than they used to be in what they can write. The prevalence of voice acting severely limits revision and encourages keeping dialog trees simple in order to save money. The result is that content gets locked down early on and so projects don't get the chance to evolve as much over the course of development.

 

[Roguey]

Josh Sawyer says voice acting has never affected the way he writes dialogue.

 

[Lucky]

Source? That sounds unlikely. Good for him if he did, but that's not my experience.

 

[Roguey]

Source? That sounds unlikely. Good for him if he did, but that's not my experience.

From formspring, which is now dead.

It's expensive and can be hard to coordinate. It doesn't really have much of any impact on how we write, though.

In eleven years of making CRPGs, full voice over/lack of full voice over has honestly never factored into how I have written dialogue, structured a quest, etc. I have also never had someone come to me with a writing problem involving full voice over or lack thereof.

 

[Athelas]

Uh...

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/9/34...e-fallout-new-vegas-universe-with-10000-lines

How Obsidian expanded the Fallout: New Vegas universe with 10,000 lines of dialogue

The creation of narrative probably seems like a process that requires the freedom and openness for the author to do whatever they want with the story they're crafting — but when the writing team at Obsidian Entertainment was charged with penning the four downloadable expansions to Fallout: New Vegas, they were given a hard limit for the amount they were allowed to write.

For all four DLC packs, there could be no more than 10,000 lines of dialogue total.

That may sound like a sufficient amount, at first blush. That would allot 2,500 lines for each four-hour add-on, only slightly less than the 3,000 lines of dialogue that appear in an average motion picture. However, 10,000 lines of dialogue is a fraction of what appears in an average full, open-world video game. Mass Effect 2 had around 30,000 lines. Fallout 3 had 40,000. Grand Theft Auto IV had a staggering 80,000 lines of dialogue. Creating downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas required the same amount of speech as these full fledged titles, but its piecemeal nature and smaller price tag mandated a smaller budget.

According to Obsidian Entertainment chief creative officer Chris Avellone, who spoke during GDC Online about the process of writing the Fallout: New Vegas DLC, conceptualizing, coordinating, writing, and recording dialogue is an incredibly expensive process. Obsidian's limited time and resources had to be maximized with creative approaches to writing — even if that meant writing no dialogue at all.

"I will admit one bit of trickery I did was, because we had a limited number of voice lines, we started doing things like making some of the main characters mute," Avellone said. "So they'd only do like, hand gestures and symbols and non-spoken text. We were only able to get away with that for so long."

The studio had to streamline the voice-over recording process as much as possible to stay under budget. That process involved sending casting directors extensive rundowns on specific characteristics Obsidian desired for each voice actor. They then worked with the actors to give as much background on the characters in as little a time as possible, and passed along a script that had been annotated to provide important context to dialogue — things like intended tone and pronunciations of esoteric terms were bracketed, and placed in the script.

"All of these things are important because they're going to save you time when you're recording at the studio," Avellone said, "because studio time is incredibly expensive, and the last thing you want is some actor spending five minutes debating this line with you trying to get it fixed, when you have 300 more lines left to read and you have no idea how you're going to get it done."

Bethesda requires a process called "text lock" for each of their titles, during which the script is essentially frozen for two weeks and checked for problems. Every line of dialogue is combed for errors, quest text is examined for logic flaws, voice sets are lined up against dialogue to make sure that voice overs and subtitles match. Everything is examined, from major NPC conversations to "barks," the reactive dialogue that characters shout during gameplay. Each character has 35 to 50 barks, Avellone said, which further ate into the team's 10,000 line total.

Of course, all the preparation in the world can't account for how the interpretation of the script can change during the voice recording process.

"There is a chance the line changed at some point when the actor said it, they may have had a better take on it," Avellone said. "They may have switched words around. So, you want to make sure that for the purpose of subtitles, you managed to get the dialogue and subtitle matched perfectly.

"If anything has changed significantly in the studio, and hopefully it hasn't, you have to let the rest of the world know for the purpose of localization, because it's actually being recorded in seven other languages. You have to know immediately whether any line has changed according to context, and chances are, you may not have the liberty to change that line, which can create other problems."

 

[Roguey]

Avellone isn't a normal human being, he outwrites pretty much everybody.

There would have been a limit regardless of it was voiced or not. Feargus Urquhart had to give him a lecture about how he went way overbudget on the localization costs of Torment.

 

[Athelas]

Avellone isn't a normal human being, he outwrites pretty much everybody.

There would have been a limit regardless of it was voiced or not. Feargus Urquhart had to give him a lecture about how he went way overbudget on the localization costs of Torment.

The article mentions that the chief issue with localization was the cost/logistics of having to record it in 7 different languages, not the act of translation. I don't know about Torment - maybe they were working with a relatively small budget. IIRC Baldur's Gate 2 apparently has a higher word count than Torment and came out around the same time.
Chris Avellone, any comments?

 

[Fairfax]

Josh Sawyer says voice acting has never affected the way he writes dialogue.

From the style guide:

• Is the game going to have voice-acting, and will the characters also “speak”?

• In Overfall, there is no voice-acting, so those sections will be left for another time, another project (which is probably good because writing for voiced games could be another document this size all in itself).

The article mentions that the chief issue with localization was the cost/logistics of having to record it in 7 different languages, not the act of translation. I don't know about Torment - maybe they were working with a relatively small budget. IIRC Baldur's Gate 2 apparently has a higher word count than Torment and came out around the same time.
Chris Avellone, any comments?

Yes, BG2 (with Throne of Baal) has ~1.2 million words, but it's also a much bigger game. PS:T is relatively more 'wordy'.

 

[Lucky]

From formspring, which is now dead.

I think he's talking more about writing problems you might encounter when writing dialogue that is to be voice acted, rather than saying that voiced dialogue has no impact on the writing process. Voice acting being expensive and hard to coordinate has a big impact on writing when the developer is unable or unwilling to make it work, which is what often happens as other aspects of development tend have a higher priority in both the attention and funding they receive.
Take Avellone's example of that mute character. That's a viable solution that works because he's in a position to suggest it and the people he works with are receptive to the idea, while being allowed to put in the effort necessary to make it work, but Obsidian is an exception in that regard, rather than typical.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Limit = Strangely enough, there's often not a limit on basic prose nowadays (most companies assume it's cheap before they get a script from me). It's always good to give or get a word budget so there's no surprises on either side. Voice acted text, both writing and budgeting, is a much different matter b/c the expenses alone and the design implications add up quickly. Again, "writing for VO" is probably an entire Style Guide right there.

Lecture = To Roguey's point, Roguey's correct, I was lectured, but the lecture was from Brian Fargo, and it almost resulted in the loss of the companion text in PST. While I was told by my superiors they stood up for me during the conversations before and after the Fargo lecture (and even said it was okay if there was English-only game text for the English version that wasn't localized to cut costs), that defense and the English-only was later retracted by the same superiors, so I'm never quite sure what the real story was - to be fair, I don't think they even realized they told me two different stories. Either way, the lecture was deserved, it was a good learning experience for me, and for Black Isle, it also caused a lot of changes in our dialogue editor (Torment has a lot of duped strings in the String Editor, for example, because of how conversations can be copied and pasted, if I recall correctly).

I also have never thought that the amount of words in a game should be the subject of bragging rights or one-upmanship: The more words you have, chances are, you're not using environmental and systemic storytelling like you should.

 

[CptMace]

 

[Athelas]

This 'speculate baselessly about and potentially slander a developer until they show up to defend themselves' strategy is really paying off.

 

[Fairfax]

Limit = Strangely enough, there's often not a limit on basic prose nowadays (most companies assume it's cheap before they get a script from me). It's always good to give or get a word budget so there's no surprises on either side. Voice acted text, both writing and budgeting, is a much different matter b/c the expenses alone and the design implications add up quickly. Again, "writing for VO" is probably an entire Style Guide right there.

Lecture = To Roguey's point, Roguey's correct, I was lectured, but the lecture was from Brian Fargo, and it almost resulted in the loss of the companion text in PST. While I was told by my superiors they stood up for me during the conversations before and after the Fargo lecture (and even said it was okay if there was English-only game text for the English version that wasn't localized to cut costs), that defense and the English-only was later retracted by the same superiors, so I'm never quite sure what the real story was - to be fair, I don't think they even realized they told me two different stories. Either way, the lecture was deserved, it was a good learning experience for me, and for Black Isle, it also caused a lot of changes in our dialogue editor (Torment has a lot of duped strings in the String Editor, for example, because of how conversations can be copied and pasted, if I recall correctly).

I also have never thought that the amount of words in a game should be the subject of bragging rights or one-upmanship: The more words you have, chances are, you're not using environmental and systemic storytelling like you should.

What do you mean by systemic storytelling? You told a story in many interviews, about someone playing FNV who got a group of enemies from both NCR and Legion to meet while chasing the PC, and that ended up killing each other on the spot. Is that one example?
If so, I'd agree that it should be used more often. Games such as Mount & Blade, Civilization V and Crusader Kings excel at it. They create several memorable stories without ever having one. Much more memorable than the average Chosen One/Power of Friendship RPG.

I think environmental storytelling is vastly overrated, however. It's cool, makes the world richer and more authentic, but it's no replacement for actual storytelling. Or maybe I'm biased because I hated how most of it is forced and stupid in Bethesda games.

This 'speculate baselessly about and potentially slander a developer until they show up to defend themselves' strategy is really paying off.

Aye.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Systemic Storytelling = Sometimes an unexpected critical hit to a primary antagonist that you (the GM) had huge plans for is a far better story than what you (the GM) had planned. And it makes the players happier. And guess what? You didn't make the primary antagonist invulnerable so you could inflict your storyline on the players. It comes down to player agency and freedom - I learned that during the Fallout Van Buren campaigns that you need to, well, "let go." The player's story in the sandbox you've set up is often more important than anything you could have scripted. Also, I learned that such surprises should be viewed as GM opportunities.

I disagree on environmental storytelling, but I do agree it should be given at least the same focus as the actual story (in Old World Blues, we spent as much time laying out the environmental storytelling as we did the actual dialogue - tracing the paths and the actions of every NPC... NPCs you don't even cross paths with... took a considerable amount of time, but was still cheaper than voice-acted characters). I really wish I could share the design docs for that.

[FYI: Editing this post b/c I am tired. Expect more edits.]

 

[Infinitron]

While I was told by my superiors they stood up for me during the conversations before and after the Fargo lecture (and even said it was okay if there was English-only game text for the English version that wasn't localized to cut costs), that defense and the English-only was later retracted by the same superiors, so I'm never quite sure what the real story was - to be fair, I don't think they even realized they told me two different stories.

This 'speculate baselessly about and potentially slander a developer until they show up to defend themselves' strategy is really paying off.

>_>

 

[Chris Avellone]

This 'speculate baselessly about and potentially slander a developer until they show up to defend themselves' strategy is really paying off.

Exposing facts and metrics are worth it.

 

[Drax]

I also have never thought that the amount of words in a game should be the subject of bragging rights or one-upmanship: The more words you have, chances are, you're not using environmental and systemic storytelling like you should.

Meh. Systemic shmemick.
Barring the rare case of games where you could have a LOT of really bad text, in my experience as a "gamer", when a dev team is not comfortable in their writing skills, they just don't write that much.
When you have the comparison between FONV's 6 million ( ) lines of dialogue against FO3's 30 lines, there's a reason that goes beyond just a quantitative comparison.
See Failout 4's excelsior choice to have 4 standard (IM GOOD/IM BAD/WHAT?/GTFO) dialogue choices, it's not like they streamlined anything. They just suck.
...

Ok, I don't know what I was going for there.
No matter, I disagree. At least on principle.

Now, a random gif

 

[Athelas]

This 'speculate baselessly about and potentially slander a developer until they show up to defend themselves' strategy is really paying off.

Exposing facts and metrics are worth it.

Since you're here, how was GX Australia? Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any streams of any of the panels.

 

[FeelTheRads]

And guess what? You didn't make the primary antagonist invulnerable so you could inflict your storyline on the players.

Completely agreed. There's too much handholding and not only of the "make it easy" kind, but the kind of handholding where the designer is so proud of his work that he just wants you to experience it just as he envisioned it and anything else is seen as a failure.
I believe this is one of the main reasons why games get worse and worse because from it come all kind of problems: games get linear, too easy, too boring and in general too "directed".

That aside, Torment is a different kind of experience. I can't imagine how you'd reproduce some of the moments in it through systemic storytelling. Though I assume you didn't mean that everything should have been systemic.

 

[Fairfax]

I think what Athelas was saying is that many of MCA's recent posts came when we were speculating or criticizing stuff he worked on.
People bashing the OWB intro.
People speculating about his role in NWN2 and its companions.
When I said something wrong about his stance on KS.
Then the speculation about the word count in PS:T, writing for VO, etc.

Bashing PoE didn't summon him, though.

 

[Lacrymas]

Systemic Storytelling = Sometimes an unexpected critical hit to a primary antagonist that you (the GM) had huge plans for is a far better story than what you (the GM) had planned. And it makes the players happier. And guess what? You didn't make the primary antagonist invulnerable so you could inflict your storyline on the players. It comes down to player agency and freedom - I learned that during the Fallout Van Buren campaigns that you need to, well, "let go." The player's story in the sandbox you've set up is often more important than anything you could have scripted. Also, I learned that such surprises should be viewed as GM opportunities.

This is a fine point to talk about - how do you structure your narrative in such a way as to still be logical and meaningful even if the players can ruin your initial thread? This problem arises when you factor in that you write something down so you can order it and interconnect it, as opposed to just improvising. Sure, you can improvise during a pen and paper game, but what happens in a video game? I haven't seen any cut-up or controlled chance techniques in any games I've played and you've never written such things, so what gives? Well, that's not entirely true, as an interactive medium the whole thing is basically cut-up and controlled chance, but in a different context, one which isn't necessarily tied with the overarching narrative that binds it all together. This also factors in the basic premise that the conflict of motives between the protagonist and antagonist is the spark that begins the process that is the narrative. There is literature that doesn't have protagonists or antagonists, of course, but that's either postmodern or an itinerary, but I digress. It also factors in not introducing a new antagonist in the last 10% of the narrative out of nowhere, because it's cheap and misses the point.

 

[Cosmo]

I also have never thought that the amount of words in a game should be the subject of bragging rights or one-upmanship: The more words you have, chances are, you're not using environmental and systemic storytelling like you should.

Taking what you said here to an extreme, isn't that only valid in today's gaming world where 3D (even more so in 1st person perspective) is taken for granted ?
I mean this statement only works as far as you base yourself on the premise that every signicative element should be visually present and visually interactive, which not only is cost intensive, but eschews the fact that visual storytelling is as much a convention and a fabrication as its written counterpart.
And somehow i feel the latter has gradually been marginalized, to the point that today heavy writing in CRPGs is understood as being too linear, forceful and detrimental to interactivity.

And another thing, can you really base a RPG on systemic storytelling ? As you describe it, it's either the result of a happy accident, or it could only be as strong as the number of possible outcomes enabled by the system (or the systems' interplay). As i see it there will always be writing in CRPGs, and the more you'll have possible systemic states, the more the writing will struggle to properly account for them : how then do you prevent it from devolving into something extremely basic and/or ornamental ?

 

[karfhud]

Have you folks come across this document before?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g6PQTCUWxAm45GCvpqzfAEVAMyy_BcpYtrviyFdRWAE/edit

It's MCA's writing style guide for a game called Overfall and while in some parts it's specific to the game, it's also pretty broad in others.