the best way to write game story is to force the player to write it, every textwall is empty but to proceed the player must write a 500 page story. this has no effect on gameplay
Even better! not going to lie though, if someone was actually able to make a game with writing a story as the actual mechanic with like prompts and stuff, I would probably want to give it a try. :)
@@Artindi Have you, perchance, tried the game Storyteller? It's similar to what you said; the game gives you a title to fill out, and you have to put characters in a comic book frame to tell the story. Each character/actor has different reactions to the world around them, and motivations usually have to be established to do stuff (except for Baron and Butler), and each scene has different mechanics revolving around it. Modding community ain't half bad either.
It would be even better if "burn down an orphanage" was the good ending because of some crazy series of coincidences that are explained in the final cut scene and were not foreshadowed at all. So this options really saves the universe and the other option somehow leads to its destruction and the only small clue that this will happen is hidden somewhere in an optional quest. People love plot twists!
The nerdy elf orphan who wanted to be an artist was actually the reincarnation of Reltih Floda, the elven warlord who plunged the world into chaos 100 years ago!
Its even better to have a linear story where the entire plot can be easily derailed by the player having more common sense than the protagonist! For example, we all know that video game players are stupid and wont think to grab a clearly marked plot important bag of money that's right in front of them that's in the exact same path they need to take to save the protagonist's cat. After all, the story says that money needs to burn so that the protagonist is forced to continue with your perfect story!
yeah, it's pretty hard to keep a player on track. And even when the succeed it can just be a bunch of bs that keeps the player on track, like knee high fence. "hm... I can't go this way." :)
@@Artindi I feel like keeping players on track is much more of an issue in pen-and-paper roleplaying games than in videogames. Videogames are bound by rigid programming, so it's much easier to tell the player "[you can't/you have to] do this". There's no game-master to negotiate with. Or throw physical objects at.
To be clear, both hand crafted stories and dynamic, emergent stories can both be enjoyed, but if we are going to give the player the option to impact the story with their choices, forget the hand crafted stories.
Of course by their design-which is a lack of design-even the ideal “the player truly controls the plot and world!” game shouldn’t hold a candle to a linear story of similar competence. This is probably why Homer didn’t make multiple versions of each book of the Odyssey
@@healthy_stool Yeah, true though. I think here it's just good to remember that every medium has its strengths and weaknesses-you can't expect to do it all and give the experiences of a game, book, and movie all in one, for instance. Games can't really tell as much story in volume as a book, but it can be immersive in a unique way. Or, uh, the illusion of immersion. It's kind of impossible to give players unlimited choices to control the plot and the world, but you can make choices feel like they matter, at least, so, yeah?
The best way to write a video game story is to make it really meta but for absolutely no reason. Start off by scolding the player for killing enemies, but have no alternative option. And in case they really go out of their way to not kill enemies (which the game is totally not designed for - remember, we only want to bitch at the player, not give them an actual choice) don't give them any reward for it. As a matter of fact don't even change the dialogues. Oh and don't give standard enemies any character, you don't need that to feel sympathy for them.
Spec Ops: the Line is pretty good BUT it does that thing that it scolds player for... playing it. The "choices" don't matter and it hints the REAL choice is... not playing violent video games and put down the game you bought. Bonus points how it tries to gut punch saying you're killing aMeRiCaNs (somehow I was supposed to feel more sorry defending from white people that shoot me, rather than brown-skinned ones). It DOES give character to enemies and your character becomes more violent as you go on but in the end the self-absorbed idea that "you always have a choice of not playing" tries to blame players do what devs chose to do in their story. ...but it ends up glamorizing war and violence while ALSO providing interesting commentary on trauma and war crimes and the gameplay is good if you like Mass Effect so it rocks.
my favourite is how superhot mind ctrl delete has an unskippable (the only way is to edit files) 8 hour wait-time when you finish the game to teach you about "consuming"
If you’ve ever heard of Brandon Sanderson-while he was making the book Stormlight, he tried to fill all the pages with as much info story and magic system explanations as he could. While writing it he just knew something was off, so he rewrote the rough draft and was much more satisfied by putting the story into more sections. He says the lesson there is, “Bigger is not always better.”
Brandon Mull can do the same thing sometimes, his books are great, but often I get the sense he is just trying to show off his world building skills, (I mean, I'm always impressed, but sometime the story lags a bit because of it.)
@@Artindi Brandon Sanderson accualy did a good job with his world building. He has a whole cosmere that all his main books take place in and many characters from other books show up on other planets in other books. It’s so cool, he’s my favorite author and only two of his books have disappointed me. (And he has like dozens of good books and they are all worth the read)
You should do an episode on difficulty. It’s really fun when the game neuters the normal mode so the “hard” mode has all the fun stuff. It’s also especially great when a game makes itself hard in a completely tedious way, and calls itself inspired by dark souls or something to cover it up.
I would especially like to see a deeper look at the difference between "real" difficulty which actually challenges the player's skills, and "fake" or "artificial" difficulty which depends on factors the player has no control of, such as RNG, trial-and-error puzzles, or insane moon logic that requires the player to do something completely counter-intuitive to progress.
That would be a good subject to touch on. I'll have to see if it will fit into its own episode or if it will be part of a larger subject like balancing in general or something. Thanks for the recommendation! :)
Subsequently, neutering the hard mode by removing mechanics to make it harder is also great! (Megaman Zero 2 and… Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue (GBC)?)
Step one: Force your main character to enter a radioactive chamber and sacrifice themselves as the ending. Step two: Give your main character multiple companions that are immune to radiation. Step three: Eh fuck it, we already got their $60.
Step 4: add 10 different battle passes that each cost $15 and they're the only way to continue Step 5: Make one of the companions sacrifice themselves for the main cha- Step 6: fuck it we got another $150
@@a__ghost_ Fill the collab with skits even though that’s basically a dead trend “So let’s-“ [STATIC] “Main Guy!” “Other Guy?? What are you doing here? And why do I suddenly have an inexplicable and unquenchable thirst to b̴e̵r̵a̵t̶e̷ ̵a̸n̵d̷ ̶m̸u̵r̶d̸e̸r̶ ̸y̸o̷u̴ ̶g̴r̴u̸e̶s̴o̶m̸e̸l̸y̴?̵” “This topic is waaayy too big for one guy, and I need the advertisement for my show, so let’s do it together!” “UGHHH, fine, Dad, let’s do it tOgeTHeR”
Actually, I will say, 2:40 gives me a hilarious idea for a game about solving moral dilemmas but with the satirical twist that all your choices are extreme in one direction or the other. Seems like the kind of game I'd expect to have some kind of shock factor with a social statement about extremism like many of Nicky Case's games, and the length is fitting too, it very much shouts "goofy game jam idea".
Ah yes, when the story and the gameplay are contradicting each other, for example: The Witcher 3 (Don't get me wrong, great game, but still) - Story: "HURRY UP AND COMPLETE ALL THE MAIN QUESTS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND THE WILD HUNT FINDS AND CAPTURES CIRI!" Gameplay: "Chill, you have all the time in the world. You can do side quests, explore the map, or just goof around to your heart's' content."
I'll accept that over forced time limits. Fallout 1 runs on timers to endgame, Fallout 2 had limitless time despite stories having similar stakes (Vault runs out of water then super mutants attack vs village is dying then Enclave assaults it and captures hostages).
Breath of the Wild Story: "HURRY, LINK! I CANT HOLD HIM BACK ANY LONGER! YOU HAVE TO SAVE ALL OF HYRULE NOW!" Gameplay: "Relax bro, Go to a nice spa, buy a house, build an entire town from scratch, fill out your picture book, you got time! 😁👍"
It would appear CDPR learned nothing and made it even worse in their next game; Cyberpunk 2077. Story: "YOU HAVE TERMINAL BRAIN CANCER AND WILL DIE IN 2 WEEKS IF YOU DON'T FIND A CURE!!!! OMG CHASE EVERY LEAD YOU HAVE!!" Gameplay: "Ayyy, you really wanna go to all those bajillion little markers on your minimap and find all the side content. No? Maybe you wanna hang out in your apartment with one of the romance options? How about sit at a bar and drink some booze in a lengthy animation? Oh, wait, I know! You really, really wanna do a sidequest about a guy with a malfunctioning junk, that's WAY more important than your brain cancer!"
Not gonna lie, I also noticed the similarity with TWA. This is how I got to your channel in the first place, and I totally support developing this series. The biggest difference between HTF and TWA I see is that while TWA is usually about either lazy writing or graphomany, this series covers deliberate self-sabotage.
Found 4 more tips to fail: First: Make your character incompetent during cutscenes, getting captured, knocked out etc. despite you managing to beat enemies left and right during gameplay. Or make the character have superpowers during cutscenes and you being forced to watch the character doing cool things you couldn't do during normal gameplay, maybe throwing in a quicktime event thrown in where you least expect it. Second: Make sure that there is a huge disconnect between what the player and what the character would do. For an example, make a character go on a revenge spree, then, before the revenge, switch to another person's perspective to give more insight. Then switch back to the original character and make the player decide whether the character would do what the player wants but what makes no sense for the character. Or a choice that would make sense for the character but what the player wouldn't do, given new insight. Or scratch that and take all the choice away anyway. Third: Make EVERY choice morally ambiguous or bad. Because everyone knows that in real life, there are no situations where one choice of action is clearly better than the other. Fourth: Railroad the player into doing a despicable action and then shame them for it!
Second: Assassin's Creed 2, you get to final boss and Ezio, who spent entire game killing people, decides to be a pacifist or the game won't sell well in Catholic countries. (You fight the Pope, who is clearly a villain and WALK AWAY for no reason despite how many lives of actually innocent guards it took to get there). Third: Many "edgy" games think this is deep. Reason I like Mass Effect is that often there IS a best outcome and the default state for 2 or 3 doesn't include it so you feel like you earned i.e. Wrex surviving or more NPCs with flavor text. Fourth: Spec Ops: the Line LOVES blaming player for the story they wrote. The game is good and writing is decent, it is a good commentary of war and trauma screwing people up... It should really stop pretending the player not dropping the joystick is to blame for what happens.
Please note: Walls of text are acceptable in every kind of game EXCEPT text adventures. They're too wordy and you need to stand out so let's do away with all those descriptions and immersive scene-setting. Tell don't show. Your players want to play the game not imagine it.
That part about linear and non-linear storytelling. There’s something about that that really invoked critical thinking in me. My game is inspired heavily on Final Fantasy 3 from my childhood, but that doesn’t mean I have to design the story to be so straightforward point to point with only side quests. My story would actually be made worse by that due to what I am trying to convey. I could have a part of the story where they are fighting the bad guys in a dense forest. Using fire magic would basically instantly win the encounter but the whole forest burns down, upsetting the druid party member. That could create a whole new line just to gain back that respect within the party itself else she’d just straight up leave and never come back. One party member can regenerate from death but it causes them to transport into a random crystal to regrow on the planet, meaning the player can choose to sacrifice her for something important or not take that risk and lose out. Story critical NPCs could be killed. Story critical villains could be saved. I already have it so that a very common feature is the party splits up in order to take advantage of not drawing too much attention in public areas, I can explore that with tough choices changing based on if the party is full or split, allowing multiple ways players can engage one scenario from how they managed to get there. Could’ve been using rumors in town and immediately heading there or regrouping and taking a longer, harder path with all 4 party members. All of these I came up with thanks to this video. Wow. I’m very glad I found this channel.
@@Artindi Oh definitely. With how the plot works, it makes a lot of sense for me to heavily limit the content of each act so that there are an amount of branches I can actually handle instead of so many the game had 20 different endings. I got friends who can help tell me “bro too much” and bring me out of my game development trance of just adding more and more and more. Most likely for my game, I’m gonna not have any examples of killing or saving story critical npcs. For the sake of it not taking so long.
@@Artindi they probably mean the “oh look at this retro/kids game!! oh wait the characters are evil!!! AHHH!! JUMPSCARE!!!! MOMMMYYYYUYYY!!!!!” horror games that all the washed up roblox youtubers play
Sad thing is that FNAF 1 was actually a good shakeup for the genre, but series fatigue crept up on it, on top of everyone copying FNAF's formula at the time.
You forgot to give to the player some choices at one moment in the story, but only one option is clearly the correct one, and if the player select any other option he either get a gameover or after few lines of dialogues he has to choose again until he take the obvious pure hearted choice.
Thank you maybe, probably. I’m a game developer in unreal engine and the 2 things I can’t do are stories and 3d modeling/animation. Thank you for teaching me how to fail!@@Artindi
Bonus tip for extra credit: No one likes to sit through long, unskippable cutscenes. They want to interact with the game, right? So, they’ll probably just walk away if they’re bored of the cutscene, and that’s not good. You want them to stay in their seat to pay attention, but you can’t just tell the story through gameplay, because you’re bad at game storytelling, and you desperately need the player to take in whatever drivel you want to force feed them. Thankfully, a recent invention called “forced walking sections” had been created to have your cake and eat it too! During a bit of gameplay, simply and jarringly throttle their character’s speed to a walk, making them walk to a designated point. Because they’re forced to go so slow, you can make story graphics and dialogue pop up as the player goes past them, ensuring they can’t miss or skip any exposition, no matter how innane it is. The best part is, pushing the left stick foward is the closest thing to sitting there that you can get, but the interaction required is still not zero. This means forced walking sections are everything you- I mean the player loves about unskippable cutscenes, but now with that secret ingredient of having juuuuust enough interactivity to stop them from just walking away to get something real quick, because their finite time is not important.
As someone currently attempting to make a non-linear story for a game, I can absolutely understand why so many games give only the illusion of choice... it's hard to craft this stuff! But, of course, that's why it's good to keep things simple when you're first starting out and just in general to focus on making the choices matter that players would feel like should matter, rather than fussing over every little thing...in my opinion, anyways. I'm still learning of course. But seriously, I have so much respect for people who do non-linear games well!
Hey, here's a trick you might find useful to fail at making your game, you create the illusion of choice as mentioned in the video, BUT also make a super duper secret ending which in the end only depends on one dialogue choice in the mid point of the game, where you aren't even notified that something interesting happened or just make it impossible to access without external help from wiki or game code observation because if not the players might discover it by accident!
The best game story is to lock it behind a paywall where players must pay per paragraph, but it's random loot, so you won't know which paragraph fits in the story where.
I love these videos. Upping my potential for failure with each new release! I'll have to give that channel you mentioned a look, and take their advice as gospel instead of sarcasm. That way I can fail well at the story too!
one of the best games that incorparates the story and gameplay together is Lobotomy corparation, with the story explaining the difficulty, the visual artstyle, the enviroment and even players restarting. it's one of the best games to play interms of writing
this was a very helpful episode to me, the game i'm brainstorming rn has a story that i really love, and gameplay that i really love... but i wasn't exactly sure how to put them together in a way that feels fluid and pleasant. i would like to be less reliant on dialogue and cutscenes and lean more toward interactivity. in turn, though, i might need to slim down the story when it comes to details.
I don't think having "the illusion" of your desicions mattering is always 100% a bad thing. You can have it be a thematic thing in the story and narrative, so sadly, telling people to do that isn't ALWAYS gonna make them write a bad videogame story.
You are correct. Anything that can be done in a video game can be done really well if done right. Even if it's a cliché or something that most would consider a bad choice. :)
It can also spice up linear gameplay: some real old games got extra replayability by letting you choose path, something as simple as going into forest or through the bridge in that Capcom m D&D beatemup. With games that have more involved story, you can have option to, say, follow a caravan or climb the ramparts to infiltrate the same castle AND write it as a story choice, both paths to same end but adds to the replay value.
I like how someone can always think of a game that represents something said in the video. Ha ha. I've never even heard of YIIK, but I'll claim the call out. :)
Just found your channel and I really like this series. I’m really wanting to work on a heavily story based game and I was wondering if an entirely linear game would be a bad design, but I guess you just have to pull it off properly.
Glad you like it, and yeah, I think most stories should ether be completely linear, or completely dynamic. So no, I think an entirely linear game is great design. assuming all other game design aspects are done right. :)
This reminds me of issues with VR titles like Bonelab and Blade & Sorcery, they are utilizing the revolutionary medium of Virtual Reality, yet can seem to find a way to put their story in other then clipboard, notes, and slates of walls of text.
Since my current game (FFF Voltitan Vol.3 )is a visual novel/ 3d mecha game hybrid I integrate the gameplay to the story by having the player's performance in the game have narrative consequences for example the enemy of the next level adapts to how the player defeats the previous enemy and how they defeat the enemy can fulfil a flag for a ending's condition. The narrative and gameplay also have a feel of a retro super robot anime.
0:18 I love this like... I wouldn't call it a crossover, what would it be called though? 617 episodes?! so cool, and I think this was a good way to do it. thank you for the vids :D
i wasn't entirely sure how serious you were since i don't personally know the limits of such a series but it definitely reads as hyperbole as well lol, so i'm not really surprised. d(^v^d)@@Artindi
shoutout to Hardspace Shipbreaker, which had a good story, delivered as unskippable cutscenes where your colleagues _phone you at home after work_ and monologue at you for minutes at a time. truly a horror game
Disco Elysium on its way to just straight up be a book where you also read books (it is one of the most engaging and incredible experiences in video games ever made and is great because of its format and it couldn't actually just be a book, because it was a book, and it was good, and no one cared, until it was a game)
Walking dead telltale is a good example of a movie with a walking sim, but it has more interactive mechanics, like choosing what to say based on the situation
Best way for the multiple endings to happen is make it so there is either a single choice made at the start of the game, ie you chose to steal some bread on your journey from the windowsill of a house vs asking nicely from the obviously mean neighbor who won't give it, that makes every single other options during gameplay flavor text, or you make *every* choice alter your "karma" that is unseen and unknown by the player, ie you have 51% bad and 49% good therefore you get bad ending, but 50/50 is a neutral ending, but every event has different weights that you can only figure out via data miners dumping all that online so people have to make guides based off it and now the player is doing a pre-determined set of choices that they don't always wanna do but have to for sake of a third ending that isn't satisfying in either direction, because it's neutral
Wait you're telling me GameMill Entertainment invented time travel and took notes from this video while they were developing The Walking Dead Destinies??? HOLY SHIT
Remember, your story and gameplay should be entirely disconnected. Just because your game lacks any fall damage doesn't mean your protag cant break his leg in a fall. You've heard the term "ludonarritive dissonance" before, so gamers are probably used to a little bit of extra suspension of disbelief. But also doing things in gameplay rather then cutscenes is also really cool. You played a game that did that once and, like, it was badass! You gotta put as many story moments into your gameplay as possible, people love that stuff, and for some reason most games don't do it much. So when you need a character to die, don't do it in a cutscene and leave the player to escape whatever danger kills them after. Instead, you should have the player carry this character on their back, slowing them down to really emphasize how they're trying to save this person at their own expense, before they're forced to leave them behind in order to not die themselves. Yeah, that sounds super cool! Oh, how do we force them to leave the character behind? Yeah, we'll just take one of those door puzzles where you need to push a crate onto a button, and remove the crate. Now they *have* to leave them behind no matter what. Of course the door can be opened by another button on the other side, ya know, makes sense, but we removed all the crates, so there's mo way to keep it open while rescuing the character! ...wait, we added a gun that swaps the player and another character? And the character is a straight shot from the player, so they could just swap places with the character, both keeping the door open and allowing the player to rescue the character? And we've had them do this multiple times before in previous puzzles? Better disable the gun's function for literally just this and only this one segment with no explanation. We can't let player agency get in the way of the story, the character needs to die so the story can play out exactly as we originally wrote it, they need to be sad he died! And the player needs to do it in gameplay to make it extra sad! Even if we have to literally disable basic game functions and turn the "gameplay" into basically just a worse cutscene, the story will clearly be good enough that players won't mind. I mean, it worked for CoD, right? Everyone knows about "Press F to pay respects"! Man, we are smart. (Yes this is about one specific game how could you tell)
Even better when the player's dialogue explains everything that happened in the past at perfectly convenient intervals. Player (just woken from a 1000-year cryostasis): "Huh, that's a plant I've never seen before. It must be a highly evolved Zega-Flytrap clone that was created by High Magistrate Bruno when the War of the Corps raged on planet Oswan VI in the year 3329 A.D., 952 years ago. How interesting."
This reminds me so much of the Kings Question remake. At one point, you're given a choice to save either: a) A pregnant woman and one of your most loyal subjects or b) a blind old goat. And yes. This choice is 100% serious and the game will guilt you for not saving the goat.
@@Artindiif you’re still thinking of doing this, I think instead of just following all the advice you give and making a game out of it, just crank all of your tips to 11 in a funny way so it’s actually enjoyable (like for example maybe have storytelling “choice” sections where after you pick what you’re going to do and you see what’s going to happen next, the game “glitches” and puts you back in the same spot, so when you pick the other option, the same thing happens)
I've played quite a few Pokemon ROM Hacks and fan games, but in the most part, when they made a new story or simply modified an exisiting story, I had found that story to actually be worse than the original games, which really isn't a high standard. I've seen stuff that contradicts confirmed canon facts, I've seen a lot of "important" events and characters that serve no purposes, and lot of other horrible stuff story-wise. Strangely enough, the best story I've seen from a Pokemon fan game actually comes from a game whose main selling point wasn't even the story. It's a simple idea: Pokemon Fire Red, but you play as a Rocket Grunt. What they've done with the story was actually very amazing, they made it happen parallel to the original Pokemon Fire Red story, but you get to see everything behind the scenes, everything is explained in a way that not only makes sense (such as why Team Rocket was at Mt. Moon), but also doesn't deny anything from the original game. And at the end, you also get some 4th wall-breaking storytelling, in the same way that Undertale does. This last point is actually what I absolutely love in video game story-telling. Explaining game mechanics in a way that makes sense within the story setting of the game is super cool, but making use of illogical yet extremely common game mechanics to make the story go meta about you as the player or other out-of-the-box concepts, I crave that kind of plot twists!
I do take issue with the concept of nonlinearity still converging on the same ending vs a binary choice in non-linearity, because it has been done before well albeit in a somewhat niche setting. 999, Virtue's Last Reward, and Zero Time Dilemma (the Zero Escape trilogy) do a fantastic job of letting the player experience many different endings to inform the player (and NPCs kinda) about things that can progress other timelines to a final ultimate ending. I know it is niche, but the compromise can absolutely be done
Don't forget to not have the story and gameplay converge to make the mechanics of your game feel like their part of your world, that might make the player feel like their actually experiencing the setting and take advantage of the interactive nature of the medium. In fact, just have characters act completely irrationally for the sake of gameplay even if a entre section or boss fight could be avoided if the cast would just talk to each other!
Sometimes I feel like the story in a linear game assumes that I'm competent and know what I'm doing when I don't. According to the story of half life 2, I'm a new member of the resistance going off to find the nearest base and escape from the combine forces. In reality, I'm going in whatever direction the game's level design points me in without a clear idea of what we're doing, where I am, or what's going on. And I would like to know what's going on. I want to know that I'm not working for the bad guys.
Heres an idea: - Don't explain the story or give any context to where you are and where your going. Leave it open ended so the playerbase can make up some fanfiction to feel smart. - Add an open world with no quest tracking or logs; only add NPCs that talk a little and leave it up to the player to figure it out. (NPCs should talk in some old medevil english) IMPORTANT NPCs should only say their dialogue *ONCE!* - Don't mark anything of the map. Leave it blank with some structures squiggled on and make it the same style as the terrain of the points if interest is even harder to see *Bonus points* DO NOT mark where you've been so the player will get stuck going in circles. - punish the player for minor and easily made mistakes *bonus* force the player to redo a chunk of the level when they die with all of the enemies respawned. - *DO NOT* give the player a way to beat the boss or allow the player to use strategy to exploit the weaknesses of the boss; that is what the open world is for: increaseing your power level
Some questions. - What about Telltale video games?... those are based only on cinematics that activate depending on the options you choose, so it's like a kind of interactive movie or cinematic? - And what about visual novels? - And does what was said in this video change anything if the player is previously announced that the video game will be more linear and therefore would not generate so many illusions/expectations that would be betrayed in the end? Of course, then I guess fewer people would probably be attracted.
Great questions. :) Interactive/visual novels can have many endings or possible outcomes, some can seem more desirable than others on a subjective level, but any ending should be just as valid as any other ending. If a certain ending became the official win condition or lose condition, the intended use of the medium would no longer be a free discovery of story, but rather an official challenge to achieve the target outcome set by the medium. A game must have a conclusive measurable outcome established by the medium, such as a win, a loss, a state a maintained condition, (such as in king of the hill) or a performance based outcome, without this there would be no defining factors setting "game" apart from any other recreative activity. Because this distinction between "interactive novel/visual novel" and "game" are definitionally opposed, they are mutually exclusive. So you could ether have a game, perhaps with a visual novel style story such as in Ace Attorney, or an interactive/visual novel, perhaps with game like elements such as in Detroit: Become Human, but it can only be one or the other with the main distinction based on the presence of an objective goal establish by the medium. However this doesn't mean that we can't still refer to certain forms of entertainment as a "game" colloquially to avoid confusion as I would do with Detroit: Become Human. Thanks for the thoughtful comment. :)
Remember, right out of the gate you have to overwhelm and bore the player with your plots at the expense of the exciting game they bought. Never let the opening be comprised of quick, effective teaching through level design, or poignant and lush storytelling through environmental details and visual cues. You HAVE to frontload the game with text so that, at best, your fans will say “It gets really good hours into the experience.”
the best way to write game story is to force the player to write it, every textwall is empty but to proceed the player must write a 500 page story. this has no effect on gameplay
Even better! not going to lie though, if someone was actually able to make a game with writing a story as the actual mechanic with like prompts and stuff, I would probably want to give it a try. :)
@@Artindi Have you, perchance, tried the game Storyteller? It's similar to what you said; the game gives you a title to fill out, and you have to put characters in a comic book frame to tell the story. Each character/actor has different reactions to the world around them, and motivations usually have to be established to do stuff (except for Baron and Butler), and each scene has different mechanics revolving around it. Modding community ain't half bad either.
@@notsodogninja35 That sounds honestly pretty sick. Do you know if it's on Steam?
It is. 15$ for a smallish puzzle game with pretty good modding capabilities, if you know where to look@@trouslinabone
Also free on mobile if you have a Netflix account but it's not the latest update so some puzzles won't make as much sense@@trouslinabone
Man, I thought "Burn down the orphanage" was the good ending 🗣
I never said which one was the good ending. 0.0
just use the military's playbook and say there were terrorists inside.
Saving those innocent orphans from having to live in this hellish world 😉
@@EdKolis Average Villain Speech
It would be even better if "burn down an orphanage" was the good ending because of some crazy series of coincidences that are explained in the final cut scene and were not foreshadowed at all. So this options really saves the universe and the other option somehow leads to its destruction and the only small clue that this will happen is hidden somewhere in an optional quest. People love plot twists!
That sounds about right. :)
The nerdy elf orphan who wanted to be an artist was actually the reincarnation of Reltih Floda, the elven warlord who plunged the world into chaos 100 years ago!
It's not that but Everhood's ending has you doing something terrible but ends up well for the universe, honestly quite incredible
@@EdKolis This story sounds a little familiar, but I can't put my finger on it. I think it had something to do with some failed austrian painter?
Its even better to have a linear story where the entire plot can be easily derailed by the player having more common sense than the protagonist! For example, we all know that video game players are stupid and wont think to grab a clearly marked plot important bag of money that's right in front of them that's in the exact same path they need to take to save the protagonist's cat. After all, the story says that money needs to burn so that the protagonist is forced to continue with your perfect story!
yeah, it's pretty hard to keep a player on track. And even when the succeed it can just be a bunch of bs that keeps the player on track, like knee high fence. "hm... I can't go this way." :)
Wow if only there was a game like that!
@@Artindi I feel like keeping players on track is much more of an issue in pen-and-paper roleplaying games than in videogames. Videogames are bound by rigid programming, so it's much easier to tell the player "[you can't/you have to] do this". There's no game-master to negotiate with. Or throw physical objects at.
Gotta love Forespoken, truly the game of all time.
@@generalrubbish9513 ah yes harassing your friend into giving you a gun in a medieval world.... classic
To be clear, both hand crafted stories and dynamic, emergent stories can both be enjoyed, but if we are going to give the player the option to impact the story with their choices, forget the hand crafted stories.
Of course by their design-which is a lack of design-even the ideal “the player truly controls the plot and world!” game shouldn’t hold a candle to a linear story of similar competence. This is probably why Homer didn’t make multiple versions of each book of the Odyssey
@@healthy_stool Yeah, true though. I think here it's just good to remember that every medium has its strengths and weaknesses-you can't expect to do it all and give the experiences of a game, book, and movie all in one, for instance. Games can't really tell as much story in volume as a book, but it can be immersive in a unique way. Or, uh, the illusion of immersion. It's kind of impossible to give players unlimited choices to control the plot and the world, but you can make choices feel like they matter, at least, so, yeah?
Out of curiosity is the next video gonna be level design because I really need advice on how not to fail at that.
@@rushalias8511 proly.
2:20 this shit killed me cause a stupid amount of games do this
The best way to write a video game story is to make it really meta but for absolutely no reason. Start off by scolding the player for killing enemies, but have no alternative option. And in case they really go out of their way to not kill enemies (which the game is totally not designed for - remember, we only want to bitch at the player, not give them an actual choice) don't give them any reward for it. As a matter of fact don't even change the dialogues. Oh and don't give standard enemies any character, you don't need that to feel sympathy for them.
You described the opposite of Undertale lol
Undertale is shit, good comment
Last of us 2?
Spec Ops: the Line is pretty good BUT it does that thing that it scolds player for... playing it. The "choices" don't matter and it hints the REAL choice is... not playing violent video games and put down the game you bought.
Bonus points how it tries to gut punch saying you're killing aMeRiCaNs (somehow I was supposed to feel more sorry defending from white people that shoot me, rather than brown-skinned ones).
It DOES give character to enemies and your character becomes more violent as you go on but in the end the self-absorbed idea that "you always have a choice of not playing" tries to blame players do what devs chose to do in their story.
...but it ends up glamorizing war and violence while ALSO providing interesting commentary on trauma and war crimes and the gameplay is good if you like Mass Effect so it rocks.
my favourite is how superhot mind ctrl delete has an unskippable (the only way is to edit files) 8 hour wait-time when you finish the game to teach you about "consuming"
If you’ve ever heard of Brandon Sanderson-while he was making the book Stormlight, he tried to fill all the pages with as much info story and magic system explanations as he could. While writing it he just knew something was off, so he rewrote the rough draft and was much more satisfied by putting the story into more sections. He says the lesson there is, “Bigger is not always better.”
Brandon Mull can do the same thing sometimes, his books are great, but often I get the sense he is just trying to show off his world building skills, (I mean, I'm always impressed, but sometime the story lags a bit because of it.)
@@Artindi Brandon Sanderson accualy did a good job with his world building.
He has a whole cosmere that all his main books take place in and many characters from other books show up on other planets in other books.
It’s so cool, he’s my favorite author and only two of his books have disappointed me.
(And he has like dozens of good books and they are all worth the read)
@@RandomizedTH-camr012 Yes, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love his books. (slowly trying to build a collection of all of them.)
Sanderson is an amazing writer, love his books
@@Artindiit's always people named Brandon...
this video could be considered a puzzle game
0.0 Your right! :)
You should do an episode on difficulty. It’s really fun when the game neuters the normal mode so the “hard” mode has all the fun stuff. It’s also especially great when a game makes itself hard in a completely tedious way, and calls itself inspired by dark souls or something to cover it up.
I would especially like to see a deeper look at the difference between "real" difficulty which actually challenges the player's skills, and "fake" or "artificial" difficulty which depends on factors the player has no control of, such as RNG, trial-and-error puzzles, or insane moon logic that requires the player to do something completely counter-intuitive to progress.
That would be a good subject to touch on. I'll have to see if it will fit into its own episode or if it will be part of a larger subject like balancing in general or something. Thanks for the recommendation! :)
Uncharted. And first Halo.
Subsequently, neutering the hard mode by removing mechanics to make it harder is also great! (Megaman Zero 2 and… Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue (GBC)?)
Just multiply enemy's health pool
Telltale Games do feel like this sometimes. Like choices affect side characters that don’t change the outcome of destiny.
Step one: Force your main character to enter a radioactive chamber and sacrifice themselves as the ending.
Step two: Give your main character multiple companions that are immune to radiation.
Step three: Eh fuck it, we already got their $60.
Later add dlc
Step 4: add 10 different battle passes that each cost $15 and they're the only way to continue
Step 5: Make one of the companions sacrifice themselves for the main cha-
Step 6: fuck it we got another $150
Fallout 3 would be more than awsome if
SPOILERS AHEAD
1-> Joinable Enclave
2-> Better Ending
3-> Better Gunplay and Power Armor models
Imagine this guy making a collab with Terrible Writing Advice on artist collaboration
That would be pretty cool, and an appropriate subject too. :)
@@a__ghost_ Fill the collab with skits even though that’s basically a dead trend
“So let’s-“ [STATIC] “Main Guy!” “Other Guy?? What are you doing here? And why do I suddenly have an inexplicable and unquenchable thirst to b̴e̵r̵a̵t̶e̷ ̵a̸n̵d̷ ̶m̸u̵r̶d̸e̸r̶ ̸y̸o̷u̴ ̶g̴r̴u̸e̶s̴o̶m̸e̸l̸y̴?̵” “This topic is waaayy too big for one guy, and I need the advertisement for my show, so let’s do it together!” “UGHHH, fine, Dad, let’s do it tOgeTHeR”
Actually, I will say, 2:40 gives me a hilarious idea for a game about solving moral dilemmas but with the satirical twist that all your choices are extreme in one direction or the other. Seems like the kind of game I'd expect to have some kind of shock factor with a social statement about extremism like many of Nicky Case's games, and the length is fitting too, it very much shouts "goofy game jam idea".
Ah yes, when the story and the gameplay are contradicting each other, for example: The Witcher 3 (Don't get me wrong, great game, but still) -
Story: "HURRY UP AND COMPLETE ALL THE MAIN QUESTS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND THE WILD HUNT FINDS AND CAPTURES CIRI!"
Gameplay: "Chill, you have all the time in the world. You can do side quests, explore the map, or just goof around to your heart's' content."
Yeah. Playing skyrim feels that way too sometimes. Alduin is supposedly burning down the world and her I am sorting my cabbage collection. :)
No way, ludonarrative dissonance?
I'll accept that over forced time limits. Fallout 1 runs on timers to endgame, Fallout 2 had limitless time despite stories having similar stakes (Vault runs out of water then super mutants attack vs village is dying then Enclave assaults it and captures hostages).
Breath of the Wild Story: "HURRY, LINK! I CANT HOLD HIM BACK ANY LONGER! YOU HAVE TO SAVE ALL OF HYRULE NOW!"
Gameplay: "Relax bro, Go to a nice spa, buy a house, build an entire town from scratch, fill out your picture book, you got time! 😁👍"
It would appear CDPR learned nothing and made it even worse in their next game; Cyberpunk 2077.
Story: "YOU HAVE TERMINAL BRAIN CANCER AND WILL DIE IN 2 WEEKS IF YOU DON'T FIND A CURE!!!! OMG CHASE EVERY LEAD YOU HAVE!!"
Gameplay: "Ayyy, you really wanna go to all those bajillion little markers on your minimap and find all the side content. No? Maybe you wanna hang out in your apartment with one of the romance options? How about sit at a bar and drink some booze in a lengthy animation? Oh, wait, I know! You really, really wanna do a sidequest about a guy with a malfunctioning junk, that's WAY more important than your brain cancer!"
2:07 side eyes telltale games...
Not gonna lie, I also noticed the similarity with TWA. This is how I got to your channel in the first place, and I totally support developing this series.
The biggest difference between HTF and TWA I see is that while TWA is usually about either lazy writing or graphomany, this series covers deliberate self-sabotage.
Thanks! And I also support developing this series. :)
All that is left is an overarching narrative in the sponsor segments (if you have any)
These videos are sometimes confusing because of how they’re worded, but at the same time, extremely helpful!
Thanks! Also you should see the first draft scripts. 0.o
Found 4 more tips to fail:
First: Make your character incompetent during cutscenes, getting captured, knocked out etc. despite you managing to beat enemies left and right during gameplay. Or make the character have superpowers during cutscenes and you being forced to watch the character doing cool things you couldn't do during normal gameplay, maybe throwing in a quicktime event thrown in where you least expect it.
Second: Make sure that there is a huge disconnect between what the player and what the character would do. For an example, make a character go on a revenge spree, then, before the revenge, switch to another person's perspective to give more insight. Then switch back to the original character and make the player decide whether the character would do what the player wants but what makes no sense for the character. Or a choice that would make sense for the character but what the player wouldn't do, given new insight. Or scratch that and take all the choice away anyway.
Third: Make EVERY choice morally ambiguous or bad. Because everyone knows that in real life, there are no situations where one choice of action is clearly better than the other.
Fourth: Railroad the player into doing a despicable action and then shame them for it!
Second: Assassin's Creed 2, you get to final boss and Ezio, who spent entire game killing people, decides to be a pacifist or the game won't sell well in Catholic countries. (You fight the Pope, who is clearly a villain and WALK AWAY for no reason despite how many lives of actually innocent guards it took to get there).
Third: Many "edgy" games think this is deep. Reason I like Mass Effect is that often there IS a best outcome and the default state for 2 or 3 doesn't include it so you feel like you earned i.e. Wrex surviving or more NPCs with flavor text.
Fourth: Spec Ops: the Line LOVES blaming player for the story they wrote. The game is good and writing is decent, it is a good commentary of war and trauma screwing people up... It should really stop pretending the player not dropping the joystick is to blame for what happens.
"It's only a game. Why put effort into the story?.....So anyway, I'm thinking of adding loads of cutscenes and audio logs"
YOU'RE STILL DOING THESE? this makes me happy.
this series is funny AND useful..
When Im ready to make the worst game ever, I'll rewatch this series.
Sounds good! Can't wait to play your horrible game. ;)
Please note: Walls of text are acceptable in every kind of game EXCEPT text adventures. They're too wordy and you need to stand out so let's do away with all those descriptions and immersive scene-setting. Tell don't show. Your players want to play the game not imagine it.
Or if you want to show, then show, rather than let the player play.
Trials in tainted space is text based but it's 18+
thank you, i was just about to succeed at this one
Glad I could help.... I think....
YEAHHH. i already binged the entire series.
Edit: i love that you finnaly mentioned TWA, i love that guy
There were enough people pointing out the similarities, so yeah, it was about time. But mostly it fit for the subject matter. :)
That part about linear and non-linear storytelling. There’s something about that that really invoked critical thinking in me.
My game is inspired heavily on Final Fantasy 3 from my childhood, but that doesn’t mean I have to design the story to be so straightforward point to point with only side quests. My story would actually be made worse by that due to what I am trying to convey.
I could have a part of the story where they are fighting the bad guys in a dense forest. Using fire magic would basically instantly win the encounter but the whole forest burns down, upsetting the druid party member. That could create a whole new line just to gain back that respect within the party itself else she’d just straight up leave and never come back.
One party member can regenerate from death but it causes them to transport into a random crystal to regrow on the planet, meaning the player can choose to sacrifice her for something important or not take that risk and lose out.
Story critical NPCs could be killed. Story critical villains could be saved. I already have it so that a very common feature is the party splits up in order to take advantage of not drawing too much attention in public areas, I can explore that with tough choices changing based on if the party is full or split, allowing multiple ways players can engage one scenario from how they managed to get there. Could’ve been using rumors in town and immediately heading there or regrouping and taking a longer, harder path with all 4 party members.
All of these I came up with thanks to this video. Wow.
I’m very glad I found this channel.
Sounds interesting, watch out for scope creep though, ether way. Glad I could help. :)
@@Artindi Oh definitely. With how the plot works, it makes a lot of sense for me to heavily limit the content of each act so that there are an amount of branches I can actually handle instead of so many the game had 20 different endings.
I got friends who can help tell me “bro too much” and bring me out of my game development trance of just adding more and more and more.
Most likely for my game, I’m gonna not have any examples of killing or saving story critical npcs. For the sake of it not taking so long.
Your game is never gonna be released (jk best of luck
I wonder how you're gonna deal with failing at a horror game, considering the state the genre is in currently
What is the state? Can't say I'm always in the loop with horror games.
@@Artindi they probably mean the “oh look at this retro/kids game!! oh wait the characters are evil!!! AHHH!! JUMPSCARE!!!! MOMMMYYYYUYYY!!!!!” horror games that all the washed up roblox youtubers play
@@Mayorfoxia82 Ah, that makes sense.
Sad thing is that FNAF 1 was actually a good shakeup for the genre, but series fatigue crept up on it, on top of everyone copying FNAF's formula at the time.
nowadays most "horror" games are just kids crap seeking to appeal the algorithm.
It's freaking sick seeing you pop off like this! Congrats man, keep 'em coming!
Thanks! :D
You forgot to give to the player some choices at one moment in the story, but only one option is clearly the correct one, and if the player select any other option he either get a gameover or after few lines of dialogues he has to choose again until he take the obvious pure hearted choice.
Thank you for making one on making a story. This will help me become a failure in game development
Happy I could help..... probably? I'm confused now. ;)
Thank you maybe, probably. I’m a game developer in unreal engine and the 2 things I can’t do are stories and 3d modeling/animation. Thank you for teaching me how to fail!@@Artindi
Bonus tip for extra credit: No one likes to sit through long, unskippable cutscenes. They want to interact with the game, right? So, they’ll probably just walk away if they’re bored of the cutscene, and that’s not good. You want them to stay in their seat to pay attention, but you can’t just tell the story through gameplay, because you’re bad at game storytelling, and you desperately need the player to take in whatever drivel you want to force feed them.
Thankfully, a recent invention called “forced walking sections” had been created to have your cake and eat it too! During a bit of gameplay, simply and jarringly throttle their character’s speed to a walk, making them walk to a designated point. Because they’re forced to go so slow, you can make story graphics and dialogue pop up as the player goes past them, ensuring they can’t miss or skip any exposition, no matter how innane it is. The best part is, pushing the left stick foward is the closest thing to sitting there that you can get, but the interaction required is still not zero. This means forced walking sections are everything you- I mean the player loves about unskippable cutscenes, but now with that secret ingredient of having juuuuust enough interactivity to stop them from just walking away to get something real quick, because their finite time is not important.
As someone currently attempting to make a non-linear story for a game, I can absolutely understand why so many games give only the illusion of choice... it's hard to craft this stuff! But, of course, that's why it's good to keep things simple when you're first starting out and just in general to focus on making the choices matter that players would feel like should matter, rather than fussing over every little thing...in my opinion, anyways. I'm still learning of course. But seriously, I have so much respect for people who do non-linear games well!
o7 I solute you. And a good point. We only need to worry about the most important choices. :)
Hey, here's a trick you might find useful to fail at making your game, you create the illusion of choice as mentioned in the video, BUT also make a super duper secret ending which in the end only depends on one dialogue choice in the mid point of the game, where you aren't even notified that something interesting happened or just make it impossible to access without external help from wiki or game code observation because if not the players might discover it by accident!
The best game story is to lock it behind a paywall where players must pay per paragraph, but it's random loot, so you won't know which paragraph fits in the story where.
you are not only helpful, you even give us links to other channels, thank you so much Artindi
Yeah. I forgot it for the first hour or so. Glad I remembered before too long. :)
i plan to show your channel to teachers, i study digital game design
@@ozan____ that sounds awesome! I study game design too... just not formally. :)
Worst way to make a story is to watch game theory
2:52 the "else" statement may lead to partial success 'cause two's better than one, therefore, use the "if" alone.
I love these videos. Upping my potential for failure with each new release!
I'll have to give that channel you mentioned a look, and take their advice as gospel instead of sarcasm. That way I can fail well at the story too!
He has some very helpful stuff. I've learned a lot by watchin his channel. :)
one of the best games that incorparates the story and gameplay together is Lobotomy corparation, with the story explaining the difficulty, the visual artstyle, the enviroment and even players restarting. it's one of the best games to play interms of writing
2:13 *cough* Life is Strange *cough*
this was a very helpful episode to me, the game i'm brainstorming rn has a story that i really love, and gameplay that i really love... but i wasn't exactly sure how to put them together in a way that feels fluid and pleasant. i would like to be less reliant on dialogue and cutscenes and lean more toward interactivity. in turn, though, i might need to slim down the story when it comes to details.
Glad I could help! :)
Honestly this is way more helpful than serious tutorials, thanks
I don't think having "the illusion" of your desicions mattering is always 100% a bad thing. You can have it be a thematic thing in the story and narrative, so sadly, telling people to do that isn't ALWAYS gonna make them write a bad videogame story.
You are correct. Anything that can be done in a video game can be done really well if done right. Even if it's a cliché or something that most would consider a bad choice. :)
It can also spice up linear gameplay: some real old games got extra replayability by letting you choose path, something as simple as going into forest or through the bridge in that Capcom m D&D beatemup. With games that have more involved story, you can have option to, say, follow a caravan or climb the ramparts to infiltrate the same castle AND write it as a story choice, both paths to same end but adds to the replay value.
2:22 when you accidentally give a fire game idea:
Love these, please do more if you have any ideas
Oh. I got more. :)
You love to hear it
you've done it again david cage!
Who dat?
Oh wait. I figured it out. Lol
Great episode as usual. Really excited to find out how to fail at level design!
I'm excited to find out too! ;)
It's out
awesome always look out for these videos
I'm a simple man. I see a "how to fail at game dev" video, I upvote.
found these videos on accident and binged most of them to see this video came out 4 hours ago, real
"A really long movie occasionally interrupted by a walking simulator" Man really gotta call out YIIK like that huh?
I like how someone can always think of a game that represents something said in the video. Ha ha. I've never even heard of YIIK, but I'll claim the call out. :)
Instructions unclear, proceeds to create lore rich game
i wanted to compare this to terrible writing advice, but i now see that it has already been done.
Just found your channel and I really like this series. I’m really wanting to work on a heavily story based game and I was wondering if an entirely linear game would be a bad design, but I guess you just have to pull it off properly.
Glad you like it, and yeah, I think most stories should ether be completely linear, or completely dynamic. So no, I think an entirely linear game is great design. assuming all other game design aspects are done right. :)
This reminds me of issues with VR titles like Bonelab and Blade & Sorcery, they are utilizing the revolutionary medium of Virtual Reality, yet can seem to find a way to put their story in other then clipboard, notes, and slates of walls of text.
Just found this channel like 10 minutes ago and i already know i'll be binge watching all of these 🔥🔥🔥🔥
These videos really have sapped my will to create video games. Thanks!
Since my current game (FFF Voltitan Vol.3 )is a visual novel/ 3d mecha game hybrid I integrate the gameplay to the story by having the player's performance in the game have narrative consequences for example the enemy of the next level adapts to how the player defeats the previous enemy and how they defeat the enemy can fulfil a flag for a ending's condition. The narrative and gameplay also have a feel of a retro super robot anime.
2:07
Minecraft Story Mode
0:18 I love this like... I wouldn't call it a crossover, what would it be called though?
617 episodes?! so cool, and I think this was a good way to do it. thank you for the vids :D
To be clear I was joking about 617 episode. But I can't tell if you are playing along. :)
i wasn't entirely sure how serious you were since i don't personally know the limits of such a series but it definitely reads as hyperbole as well lol, so i'm not really surprised. d(^v^d)@@Artindi
This man makes me feel called out for things I never thought of
shoutout to Hardspace Shipbreaker, which had a good story, delivered as unskippable cutscenes where your colleagues _phone you at home after work_ and monologue at you for minutes at a time. truly a horror game
2:12 shout out to onions worldwide!
They have layers.
Disco Elysium on its way to just straight up be a book where you also read books (it is one of the most engaging and incredible experiences in video games ever made and is great because of its format and it couldn't actually just be a book, because it was a book, and it was good, and no one cared, until it was a game)
Disco Elysium has over a million words. That's harry-potter-sized, all 7 books
@@zaidlacksalastname4905 It, in no way, shape, or form, has over a million words.
It wouldn't even scratch a tenth of that.
well, i got called out in like 20 seconds, fair play
thanks again for the vidya
Walking dead telltale is a good example of a movie with a walking sim, but it has more interactive mechanics, like choosing what to say based on the situation
Best way for the multiple endings to happen is make it so there is either a single choice made at the start of the game, ie you chose to steal some bread on your journey from the windowsill of a house vs asking nicely from the obviously mean neighbor who won't give it, that makes every single other options during gameplay flavor text, or you make *every* choice alter your "karma" that is unseen and unknown by the player, ie you have 51% bad and 49% good therefore you get bad ending, but 50/50 is a neutral ending, but every event has different weights that you can only figure out via data miners dumping all that online so people have to make guides based off it and now the player is doing a pre-determined set of choices that they don't always wanna do but have to for sake of a third ending that isn't satisfying in either direction, because it's neutral
2:19
Fire Emblem three houses in a nutshell
How?
Most of the post time skip sections are incredibly different from each other
Can you please make "How to fail making a fighting game"? I'm curious about what you come up with.
I guess that depends on what kind of fighting game? Your probably talking about a Mortal Combat style game?
@@Artindi Yeah!
@@Artindi Yeah, or Street Fighter
You should totally make one of these "fail" videos on metroidvanias
Holy cow a bejeweled reference
I wonder if J.P. from Terrible Writing Advice has actually seen this series yet. Someone should send it to him now that this shoutout's been made.
You are on fire lol.
Can't wait for the roast of live service
2:26 literally every roblox camping game ever
0:54 to 1:18 is just explaining the current state of Five Nights at Freddys.
The true story at the end made me go "What!" I mean... for real bro?
Wait you're telling me GameMill Entertainment invented time travel and took notes from this video while they were developing The Walking Dead Destinies??? HOLY SHIT
Literally Starfield and Skyrim.
Damn, it's like Emil Pagliarulo saw this video, and didn't realize it was sarcasm!
Instead of walls of text there can be endless dialogues too!
Remember, your story and gameplay should be entirely disconnected. Just because your game lacks any fall damage doesn't mean your protag cant break his leg in a fall. You've heard the term "ludonarritive dissonance" before, so gamers are probably used to a little bit of extra suspension of disbelief.
But also doing things in gameplay rather then cutscenes is also really cool. You played a game that did that once and, like, it was badass! You gotta put as many story moments into your gameplay as possible, people love that stuff, and for some reason most games don't do it much.
So when you need a character to die, don't do it in a cutscene and leave the player to escape whatever danger kills them after. Instead, you should have the player carry this character on their back, slowing them down to really emphasize how they're trying to save this person at their own expense, before they're forced to leave them behind in order to not die themselves. Yeah, that sounds super cool!
Oh, how do we force them to leave the character behind? Yeah, we'll just take one of those door puzzles where you need to push a crate onto a button, and remove the crate. Now they *have* to leave them behind no matter what. Of course the door can be opened by another button on the other side, ya know, makes sense, but we removed all the crates, so there's mo way to keep it open while rescuing the character!
...wait, we added a gun that swaps the player and another character? And the character is a straight shot from the player, so they could just swap places with the character, both keeping the door open and allowing the player to rescue the character? And we've had them do this multiple times before in previous puzzles?
Better disable the gun's function for literally just this and only this one segment with no explanation. We can't let player agency get in the way of the story, the character needs to die so the story can play out exactly as we originally wrote it, they need to be sad he died! And the player needs to do it in gameplay to make it extra sad! Even if we have to literally disable basic game functions and turn the "gameplay" into basically just a worse cutscene, the story will clearly be good enough that players won't mind.
I mean, it worked for CoD, right? Everyone knows about "Press F to pay respects"!
Man, we are smart.
(Yes this is about one specific game how could you tell)
- 20 mins for each cutscenes
- 15 pages novel in between each missions
- Gameplay have nothing to do with story
- Fake choices
Got it!
Even better when the player's dialogue explains everything that happened in the past at perfectly convenient intervals.
Player (just woken from a 1000-year cryostasis): "Huh, that's a plant I've never seen before. It must be a highly evolved Zega-Flytrap clone that was created by High Magistrate Bruno when the War of the Corps raged on planet Oswan VI in the year 3329 A.D., 952 years ago. How interesting."
the YIIK dev took this to heart
This reminds me so much of the Kings Question remake. At one point, you're given a choice to save either: a) A pregnant woman and one of your most loyal subjects or b) a blind old goat.
And yes. This choice is 100% serious and the game will guilt you for not saving the goat.
No way, Terrible Writing Advice but games?!!!
I hope someone makes a game using this full tutorial.
I've been thinking about doing that. The only thing holding me back is how awful the game would be. :)
@@Artindi Just put an actual book someone else wrote in there to take care of the story. Minimal effort is a good way to fail.
@@Artindiif you’re still thinking of doing this, I think instead of just following all the advice you give and making a game out of it, just crank all of your tips to 11 in a funny way so it’s actually enjoyable (like for example maybe have storytelling “choice” sections where after you pick what you’re going to do and you see what’s going to happen next, the game “glitches” and puts you back in the same spot, so when you pick the other option, the same thing happens)
Genshin Impact. You're welcome.
@@HighronGee Doesn't seem that bad...
I've played quite a few Pokemon ROM Hacks and fan games, but in the most part, when they made a new story or simply modified an exisiting story, I had found that story to actually be worse than the original games, which really isn't a high standard. I've seen stuff that contradicts confirmed canon facts, I've seen a lot of "important" events and characters that serve no purposes, and lot of other horrible stuff story-wise.
Strangely enough, the best story I've seen from a Pokemon fan game actually comes from a game whose main selling point wasn't even the story. It's a simple idea: Pokemon Fire Red, but you play as a Rocket Grunt. What they've done with the story was actually very amazing, they made it happen parallel to the original Pokemon Fire Red story, but you get to see everything behind the scenes, everything is explained in a way that not only makes sense (such as why Team Rocket was at Mt. Moon), but also doesn't deny anything from the original game. And at the end, you also get some 4th wall-breaking storytelling, in the same way that Undertale does.
This last point is actually what I absolutely love in video game story-telling. Explaining game mechanics in a way that makes sense within the story setting of the game is super cool, but making use of illogical yet extremely common game mechanics to make the story go meta about you as the player or other out-of-the-box concepts, I crave that kind of plot twists!
I do take issue with the concept of nonlinearity still converging on the same ending vs a binary choice in non-linearity, because it has been done before well albeit in a somewhat niche setting. 999, Virtue's Last Reward, and Zero Time Dilemma (the Zero Escape trilogy) do a fantastic job of letting the player experience many different endings to inform the player (and NPCs kinda) about things that can progress other timelines to a final ultimate ending. I know it is niche, but the compromise can absolutely be done
Lmao the nonlinear story thing just sums up Prey (2017)
Still a stellar game with an incredible story regardless
nice vid! keep it up, baby!
**How to fail at making an RPG memories**
Don't forget to not have the story and gameplay converge to make the mechanics of your game feel like their part of your world, that might make the player feel like their actually experiencing the setting and take advantage of the interactive nature of the medium. In fact, just have characters act completely irrationally for the sake of gameplay even if a entre section or boss fight could be avoided if the cast would just talk to each other!
Sometimes I feel like the story in a linear game assumes that I'm competent and know what I'm doing when I don't.
According to the story of half life 2, I'm a new member of the resistance going off to find the nearest base and escape from the combine forces.
In reality, I'm going in whatever direction the game's level design points me in without a clear idea of what we're doing, where I am, or what's going on.
And I would like to know what's going on. I want to know that I'm not working for the bad guys.
Creators of the switch pokemon games are really coming back to this video often huh
Heres an idea:
- Don't explain the story or give any context to where you are and where your going. Leave it open ended so the playerbase can make up some fanfiction to feel smart.
- Add an open world with no quest tracking or logs; only add NPCs that talk a little and leave it up to the player to figure it out. (NPCs should talk in some old medevil english)
IMPORTANT NPCs should only say their dialogue *ONCE!*
- Don't mark anything of the map. Leave it blank with some structures squiggled on and make it the same style as the terrain of the points if interest is even harder to see
*Bonus points* DO NOT mark where you've been so the player will get stuck going in circles.
- punish the player for minor and easily made mistakes *bonus* force the player to redo a chunk of the level when they die with all of the enemies respawned.
- *DO NOT* give the player a way to beat the boss or allow the player to use strategy to exploit the weaknesses of the boss; that is what the open world is for: increaseing your power level
The TWA reference was so in place
How to fail at making a tower defense game? Wonder how it’s possible to mess that up
Some questions.
- What about Telltale video games?... those are based only on cinematics that activate depending on the options you choose, so it's like a kind of interactive movie or cinematic?
- And what about visual novels?
- And does what was said in this video change anything if the player is previously announced that the video game will be more linear and therefore would not generate so many illusions/expectations that would be betrayed in the end? Of course, then I guess fewer people would probably be attracted.
Great questions. :)
Interactive/visual novels can have many endings or possible outcomes, some can seem more desirable than others on a subjective level, but any ending should be just as valid as any other ending. If a certain ending became the official win condition or lose condition, the intended use of the medium would no longer be a free discovery of story, but rather an official challenge to achieve the target outcome set by the medium.
A game must have a conclusive measurable outcome established by the medium, such as a win, a loss, a state a maintained condition, (such as in king of the hill) or a performance based outcome, without this there would be no defining factors setting "game" apart from any other recreative activity.
Because this distinction between "interactive novel/visual novel" and "game" are definitionally opposed, they are mutually exclusive.
So you could ether have a game, perhaps with a visual novel style story such as in Ace Attorney, or an interactive/visual novel, perhaps with game like elements such as in Detroit: Become Human, but it can only be one or the other with the main distinction based on the presence of an objective goal establish by the medium.
However this doesn't mean that we can't still refer to certain forms of entertainment as a "game" colloquially to avoid confusion as I would do with Detroit: Become Human.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. :)
@@Artindi “Turns out, it’s easy to fail at making a game when what you make is not a game.”
Text walls in 2D and indie games drive me up the walls
Remember, right out of the gate you have to overwhelm and bore the player with your plots at the expense of the exciting game they bought. Never let the opening be comprised of quick, effective teaching through level design, or poignant and lush storytelling through environmental details and visual cues. You HAVE to frontload the game with text so that, at best, your fans will say “It gets really good hours into the experience.”
i'm watching this whole series so i can maximize the amount of failure i do as i start developing my first few games