1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,019 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,019 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,330 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,330 --> 00:00:17,217 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,217 --> 00:00:17,842 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,700 --> 00:00:22,616 PROFESSOR: All right. 9 00:00:22,616 --> 00:00:24,240 So I'm going to hand it over to Andrew. 10 00:00:24,240 --> 00:00:25,906 And this is basically-- we're continuing 11 00:00:25,906 --> 00:00:30,000 our track on narrative and writing for games. 12 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,740 On Wednesday we're switching back over to production 13 00:00:32,740 --> 00:00:34,720 and we'll be talking with-- we'll have folks 14 00:00:34,720 --> 00:00:36,280 from Blizzard to talk with us. 15 00:00:36,280 --> 00:00:38,410 But for today, more narrative. 16 00:00:38,410 --> 00:00:39,410 ANDREW GRANT: All right. 17 00:00:39,410 --> 00:00:41,326 We're going to talk about writing for computer 18 00:00:41,326 --> 00:00:42,850 games, or games in general. 19 00:00:42,850 --> 00:00:45,660 I'm here with Heather Albano and Laura 20 00:00:45,660 --> 00:00:48,954 Baldwin, who have very different experiences with writing. 21 00:00:48,954 --> 00:00:51,120 And so I'm just going to go ahead and dive right in, 22 00:00:51,120 --> 00:00:53,830 and we'll just sort of see what happens in this conversation. 23 00:00:53,830 --> 00:00:55,663 And in a bit we're going to start opening up 24 00:00:55,663 --> 00:00:58,510 to questions from you folks, then 25 00:00:58,510 --> 00:01:01,032 we'll sort of play it by ear, and go on. 26 00:01:01,032 --> 00:01:03,490 So I want to start with-- I want you to go ahead and answer 27 00:01:03,490 --> 00:01:05,190 first, Heather. 28 00:01:05,190 --> 00:01:07,440 What was your path towards getting into writing 29 00:01:07,440 --> 00:01:09,070 for computer-- for games? 30 00:01:09,070 --> 00:01:11,740 Not for computer, just games? 31 00:01:11,740 --> 00:01:15,120 HEATHER ALBANO: I usually tell people I got into it sideways. 32 00:01:15,120 --> 00:01:18,800 So my freshman year in college-- my first week of my freshman 33 00:01:18,800 --> 00:01:21,570 year in college I looked out the dorm window 34 00:01:21,570 --> 00:01:25,060 and there were people with boffer swords out in the quad. 35 00:01:25,060 --> 00:01:27,740 And my new best friend and I looked at each other 36 00:01:27,740 --> 00:01:30,850 and said, I'll go check it out, if you come with me. 37 00:01:30,850 --> 00:01:33,430 And so I got involved playing with a LARP, 38 00:01:33,430 --> 00:01:35,530 and-- Live Action Role Playing a game. 39 00:01:35,530 --> 00:01:37,900 And then I got involved writing for it. 40 00:01:37,900 --> 00:01:42,840 And I did that as a hobby for a number of years, 41 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:44,760 through college and into the real world. 42 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:49,434 And in 2009 I lost my job in marketing. 43 00:01:49,434 --> 00:01:51,350 It was the year that everybody lost their job. 44 00:01:51,350 --> 00:01:55,260 And Adam Morse, whom I knew from the LARP, 45 00:01:55,260 --> 00:01:58,320 called me and said he was founding a games company. 46 00:01:58,320 --> 00:02:00,869 This is Choice of Games, which possibly you've heard of. 47 00:02:00,869 --> 00:02:02,910 They've been pretty well in the four years since. 48 00:02:02,910 --> 00:02:04,370 At the time it was a lark. 49 00:02:04,370 --> 00:02:06,300 And he said, do you want to write for us? 50 00:02:06,300 --> 00:02:07,740 They never turn into anything. 51 00:02:07,740 --> 00:02:08,669 And I said, yeah. 52 00:02:08,669 --> 00:02:09,270 Why not? 53 00:02:09,270 --> 00:02:12,775 So it started me on a really amazing adventure 54 00:02:12,775 --> 00:02:15,720 of-- started writing for them, and now I do freelance 55 00:02:15,720 --> 00:02:16,900 for other people as well. 56 00:02:16,900 --> 00:02:18,634 And here I am. 57 00:02:18,634 --> 00:02:19,634 ANDREW GRANT: All right. 58 00:02:19,634 --> 00:02:20,630 Cool. 59 00:02:20,630 --> 00:02:23,800 LAURA BALDWIN: Mine, actually, is not so dissimilar. 60 00:02:23,800 --> 00:02:26,750 I went to college and got involved in the MIT Assassins 61 00:02:26,750 --> 00:02:28,830 Guild, which hopefully some of you have heard of, 62 00:02:28,830 --> 00:02:32,570 which is another LARP, and started writing for them. 63 00:02:32,570 --> 00:02:35,040 I did sit-down games. 64 00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:38,590 Then I went to grad school, got a degree in immunology, 65 00:02:38,590 --> 00:02:40,890 and decided I didn't want to be a biologist. 66 00:02:40,890 --> 00:02:43,950 Which is much like you, losing your job. 67 00:02:43,950 --> 00:02:45,570 HEATHER ALBANO: Yep, [INAUDIBLE]. 68 00:02:45,570 --> 00:02:49,259 LAURA BALDWIN: And I got a half-time job working with MIT, 69 00:02:49,259 --> 00:02:51,550 because they only had half of a head count in the thing 70 00:02:51,550 --> 00:02:54,680 that I was doing, and my other half-time 71 00:02:54,680 --> 00:02:57,120 job was a friend of mine who I had written some Assassin 72 00:02:57,120 --> 00:03:00,320 games with and had done some sit-downing with. 73 00:03:00,320 --> 00:03:04,060 Had, at a point in the past, founded a computer game 74 00:03:04,060 --> 00:03:07,140 company, or been part of creating a computer game 75 00:03:07,140 --> 00:03:10,960 company-- Looking Glass, I think it was Studios firsts-- 76 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:12,730 And said, well, I know that you know 77 00:03:12,730 --> 00:03:15,900 how to write things, and know things about games 78 00:03:15,900 --> 00:03:17,480 and can work with well with others. 79 00:03:17,480 --> 00:03:19,200 So do you want to come and work for us? 80 00:03:19,200 --> 00:03:22,730 And since I wanted to keep my job with the health care 81 00:03:22,730 --> 00:03:27,160 I worked half-time for them and half-time for MIT, 82 00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:30,220 and did that for a number of years 83 00:03:30,220 --> 00:03:32,500 until Looking Glass ended up going bankrupt, 84 00:03:32,500 --> 00:03:34,800 and now I just work for MIT. 85 00:03:34,800 --> 00:03:38,400 And still do sit-downs and stuff. 86 00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:41,606 But yeah, it does seem to be about-- you 87 00:03:41,606 --> 00:03:42,980 get into games first and then you 88 00:03:42,980 --> 00:03:44,396 have connections with other people 89 00:03:44,396 --> 00:03:47,085 and they get you into game companies. 90 00:03:47,085 --> 00:03:48,460 HEATHER ALBANO: Networking works, 91 00:03:48,460 --> 00:03:49,840 is the moral of the story. 92 00:03:49,840 --> 00:03:51,048 ANDREW GRANT: It really does. 93 00:03:51,048 --> 00:03:52,930 LAURA BALDWIN: Meet each other. 94 00:03:52,930 --> 00:03:55,210 ANDREW GRANT: You never know later. 95 00:03:55,210 --> 00:03:57,100 Everyone you meet today might be helpful. 96 00:03:57,100 --> 00:03:57,600 Yeah. 97 00:03:57,600 --> 00:04:01,240 So you've both done a fair bit of writing for games. 98 00:04:01,240 --> 00:04:04,449 Have you been writing outside of games at all? 99 00:04:04,449 --> 00:04:06,740 HEATHER ALBANO: Do you want to take it first this time? 100 00:04:06,740 --> 00:04:08,781 LAURA BALDWIN: So I work in customer support now, 101 00:04:08,781 --> 00:04:11,450 and that involves a lot of writing email back to people. 102 00:04:11,450 --> 00:04:15,460 That has trained me to be concise and clear and friendly 103 00:04:15,460 --> 00:04:15,980 in writing. 104 00:04:15,980 --> 00:04:19,449 It's a little bit related, but that's about it. 105 00:04:19,449 --> 00:04:20,240 HEATHER ALBANO: OK. 106 00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:24,270 In contrast, I do a lot of non-game fiction writing. 107 00:04:24,270 --> 00:04:28,690 My dream job for years was to be able to write novels, 108 00:04:28,690 --> 00:04:32,500 and it's actually less so as I've had success 109 00:04:32,500 --> 00:04:35,780 in writing for games, which is fulfilling in its own way 110 00:04:35,780 --> 00:04:38,750 and pays a lot better. 111 00:04:38,750 --> 00:04:42,030 But I've sold some short fiction and some poetry to magazines. 112 00:04:42,030 --> 00:04:44,450 I've self-published two novels. 113 00:04:44,450 --> 00:04:47,885 And that's sort of on the hobby side of my life these days. 114 00:04:47,885 --> 00:04:48,760 ANDREW GRANT: Got it. 115 00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:51,570 We'll come back to that in a little bit, I think. 116 00:04:51,570 --> 00:04:53,710 So I want to talk about what kinds of games 117 00:04:53,710 --> 00:04:55,700 you've worked on, and so what kind of writing 118 00:04:55,700 --> 00:04:57,574 that you've done has appeared in those games? 119 00:04:57,574 --> 00:05:02,540 And feel free to name names and whatnot of what you worked on. 120 00:05:02,540 --> 00:05:04,474 Why don't head, Heather? 121 00:05:04,474 --> 00:05:09,250 HEATHER ALBANO: So my professional game writing 122 00:05:09,250 --> 00:05:11,990 divides into three categories pretty neatly. 123 00:05:11,990 --> 00:05:14,040 I've done most of it for Choice of Games, 124 00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:19,310 which does multiple choice text-based games of the Choose 125 00:05:19,310 --> 00:05:20,540 Your Path variety. 126 00:05:20,540 --> 00:05:24,260 So, kind of like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books, 127 00:05:24,260 --> 00:05:28,300 if you're familiar with those, although better-written, 128 00:05:28,300 --> 00:05:31,510 if I say it myself. 129 00:05:31,510 --> 00:05:33,670 So that's all text, right? 130 00:05:33,670 --> 00:05:35,700 All text all the time. 131 00:05:35,700 --> 00:05:38,860 I was lead writer on Codename Cygnus two years 132 00:05:38,860 --> 00:05:41,330 ago now, which is an interactive radio drama, which 133 00:05:41,330 --> 00:05:43,950 is sort of the same idea in that it is all word-based, 134 00:05:43,950 --> 00:05:46,330 but obviously the interface is very different. 135 00:05:46,330 --> 00:05:54,070 And I have done some work for paper-and-pencil RPGs. 136 00:05:54,070 --> 00:05:56,809 TimeWatch by Kevin Kulp is coming out next year 137 00:05:56,809 --> 00:05:58,100 and I've got some work in that. 138 00:05:58,100 --> 00:05:59,200 ANDREW GRANT: There's a small world again. 139 00:05:59,200 --> 00:05:59,250 OK. 140 00:05:59,250 --> 00:06:00,054 I know Kevin Kulp. 141 00:06:00,054 --> 00:06:01,470 HEATHER ALBANO: I figured you did. 142 00:06:01,470 --> 00:06:02,344 Looking Glass, right? 143 00:06:02,344 --> 00:06:03,840 Wasn't he-- no? 144 00:06:03,840 --> 00:06:05,620 OK. 145 00:06:05,620 --> 00:06:07,669 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE]. 146 00:06:07,669 --> 00:06:08,460 ANDREW GRANT: Yeah. 147 00:06:08,460 --> 00:06:12,440 His wife worked for Looking Glass, and et cetera. 148 00:06:12,440 --> 00:06:15,180 So talk about interactive radio show. 149 00:06:15,180 --> 00:06:16,760 How does that work? 150 00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:19,270 HEATHER ALBANO: So you play it off your iPod, 151 00:06:19,270 --> 00:06:21,880 and I think now your Android. 152 00:06:21,880 --> 00:06:28,140 It talks to you and at the-- it narrates what's going on. 153 00:06:28,140 --> 00:06:31,670 You play a spy in a James Bond kind of world. 154 00:06:31,670 --> 00:06:33,920 And so it tells you the circumstance you're in 155 00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:37,940 and then asks you if you want to do this or that in response, 156 00:06:37,940 --> 00:06:41,000 and you say the word. 157 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:43,670 The voice recognition is pretty good, 158 00:06:43,670 --> 00:06:45,310 but it's not super-sophisticated. 159 00:06:45,310 --> 00:06:46,440 It wasn't designed to be. 160 00:06:46,440 --> 00:06:49,600 So you don't get to talk back to it in a natural way, 161 00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:52,680 you have to save the-- it's a little bit better than, 162 00:06:52,680 --> 00:06:54,750 pick a or pick b, but you have to say the words 163 00:06:54,750 --> 00:06:55,555 that it gives you. 164 00:06:55,555 --> 00:06:56,430 ANDREW GRANT: Got it. 165 00:06:56,430 --> 00:06:59,260 So you can say, shoot gun, not for a villain or whatever. 166 00:06:59,260 --> 00:07:00,260 HEATHER ALBANO: Exactly. 167 00:07:00,260 --> 00:07:02,820 Not, I draw the gun and duck behind the-- no. 168 00:07:02,820 --> 00:07:05,420 I shoot the gun. 169 00:07:05,420 --> 00:07:06,060 But yeah. 170 00:07:06,060 --> 00:07:08,060 So other than that, it's mostly multiple choice. 171 00:07:08,060 --> 00:07:09,059 ANDREW GRANT: All right. 172 00:07:09,059 --> 00:07:10,530 So the behind-the-scene mechanics 173 00:07:10,530 --> 00:07:14,250 are very similar to the multiple choice text adventure, 174 00:07:14,250 --> 00:07:17,711 but it's text that's going to be heard instead of read. 175 00:07:17,711 --> 00:07:18,710 HEATHER ALBANO: Exactly. 176 00:07:18,710 --> 00:07:20,520 ANDREW GRANT: Oh, all right. 177 00:07:20,520 --> 00:07:21,180 Neat. 178 00:07:21,180 --> 00:07:22,544 And you, Laura? 179 00:07:22,544 --> 00:07:24,460 LAURA BALDWIN: What was the original question? 180 00:07:24,460 --> 00:07:28,270 ANDREW GRANT: The original was what sorts of stuff 181 00:07:28,270 --> 00:07:30,700 has-- what kinds of games have you worked on 182 00:07:30,700 --> 00:07:33,400 and how did your stuff appear in there. 183 00:07:33,400 --> 00:07:36,880 LAURA BALDWIN: So I was kind of a-- since I was part-time 184 00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:39,570 they didn't want to put me in charge of any specific levels 185 00:07:39,570 --> 00:07:43,420 or anything, so I was sort of-- I did a lot of odd jobs. 186 00:07:43,420 --> 00:07:48,330 I ended up writing the manual for System Shock 2, which 187 00:07:48,330 --> 00:07:51,140 was really exciting because a lot of the time you have 188 00:07:51,140 --> 00:07:54,700 to write the manual before the game mechanics are sorted out. 189 00:07:54,700 --> 00:07:57,780 So you would say things like, this psi 190 00:07:57,780 --> 00:08:00,530 power provides defense. 191 00:08:00,530 --> 00:08:04,300 You really have no idea, sorry. 192 00:08:04,300 --> 00:08:07,170 And then in Thief and Thief II I did 193 00:08:07,170 --> 00:08:09,680 a lot of sort of like random books 194 00:08:09,680 --> 00:08:12,910 that are scattered around, or dialogue that characters 195 00:08:12,910 --> 00:08:13,910 would say to each other. 196 00:08:13,910 --> 00:08:16,118 There wasn't much that characters said to each other. 197 00:08:16,118 --> 00:08:18,710 And then the guards and so on you're trying to sneak around, 198 00:08:18,710 --> 00:08:20,790 and the guards are basically walking 199 00:08:20,790 --> 00:08:23,247 around being emitters of what they think 200 00:08:23,247 --> 00:08:24,830 is going on right now which, you know, 201 00:08:24,830 --> 00:08:26,650 if you're really sneaky they're like, 202 00:08:26,650 --> 00:08:28,410 I have no idea anything is going on. 203 00:08:28,410 --> 00:08:29,090 I am bored. 204 00:08:29,090 --> 00:08:30,280 I see nothing. 205 00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:31,320 I hear nothing. 206 00:08:31,320 --> 00:08:34,607 But you know, if you let them-- if they see you briefly 207 00:08:34,607 --> 00:08:36,190 or hear you briefly, then they sort of 208 00:08:36,190 --> 00:08:37,940 have to admit their state which is, 209 00:08:37,940 --> 00:08:40,012 I am mildly suspicious because I heard something 210 00:08:40,012 --> 00:08:41,220 but I don't know what it was. 211 00:08:41,220 --> 00:08:43,330 Or, I'm really suspicious because I just 212 00:08:43,330 --> 00:08:46,540 saw Thief going that way. 213 00:08:46,540 --> 00:08:49,030 But you know, they're not very bright AIs, 214 00:08:49,030 --> 00:08:51,290 so they don't have a lot of different states 215 00:08:51,290 --> 00:08:52,180 that they can say. 216 00:08:52,180 --> 00:08:54,300 They have a level of suspicion and then a level 217 00:08:54,300 --> 00:08:56,190 of what caused the suspicion. 218 00:08:56,190 --> 00:08:58,990 And there's a big matrix of that. 219 00:08:58,990 --> 00:09:01,680 And then you don't want your guards 220 00:09:01,680 --> 00:09:03,820 to say the same thing every single time, 221 00:09:03,820 --> 00:09:06,210 so you have to have, like, 20 different things for each 222 00:09:06,210 --> 00:09:07,550 of those categories. 223 00:09:07,550 --> 00:09:10,630 And it gets kind of tedious and difficult 224 00:09:10,630 --> 00:09:14,560 to come up with 20 different ways to say, 225 00:09:14,560 --> 00:09:17,070 I am mildly suspicious because of a noise, 226 00:09:17,070 --> 00:09:20,370 without sounding like you've been coached to say that. 227 00:09:20,370 --> 00:09:22,860 You know, how many natural ways can you say that? 228 00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:30,065 And then yeah-- I think that's most of it. 229 00:09:30,065 --> 00:09:31,065 ANDREW GRANT: All right. 230 00:09:31,065 --> 00:09:32,520 Yeah, that's good. 231 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:34,944 And so let's jump right into a little bit 232 00:09:34,944 --> 00:09:37,360 here, the difference between writing for stuff that people 233 00:09:37,360 --> 00:09:40,540 are going to read versus stuff that people are going to hear. 234 00:09:40,540 --> 00:09:42,520 It sounds like you've got a lot of experience 235 00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:46,050 with that, with long-form read words, 236 00:09:46,050 --> 00:09:47,990 and you're talking about guards that 237 00:09:47,990 --> 00:09:51,220 are saying things out loud, or also written books. 238 00:09:51,220 --> 00:09:52,900 And those are very different things, 239 00:09:52,900 --> 00:09:54,830 I assume, in terms of how the player's 240 00:09:54,830 --> 00:09:56,517 going to appreciate them. 241 00:09:56,517 --> 00:09:57,350 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 242 00:09:57,350 --> 00:10:00,520 So the thing that I learned pretty quickly 243 00:10:00,520 --> 00:10:04,860 about stuff that is said out loud is that the players want 244 00:10:04,860 --> 00:10:07,230 it to be really, really short, which 245 00:10:07,230 --> 00:10:11,200 makes it in particular extra-hard because, you know, 246 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:13,770 "huh," or "what was that?" 247 00:10:13,770 --> 00:10:16,870 You know, they want to have about that much of interaction 248 00:10:16,870 --> 00:10:18,820 with the guard that they're hiding from, 249 00:10:18,820 --> 00:10:23,230 and you have to convey all this little settings because you 250 00:10:23,230 --> 00:10:24,960 want to have people know the difference 251 00:10:24,960 --> 00:10:27,555 between a "huh" that's like, "hm," or a "huh" that's like, 252 00:10:27,555 --> 00:10:28,300 "huh! 253 00:10:28,300 --> 00:10:29,800 I'm going to get you." 254 00:10:29,800 --> 00:10:34,340 So there's also a lot of little stage notes, you know? "Huh. 255 00:10:34,340 --> 00:10:35,970 Angry." 256 00:10:35,970 --> 00:10:42,210 But I ended up writing a lot of little, short dialogues 257 00:10:42,210 --> 00:10:43,930 for guards to be talking to each other, 258 00:10:43,930 --> 00:10:47,690 or other-- it was mostly guards-- that you could 259 00:10:47,690 --> 00:10:49,450 sneak by and hear, and sometimes it 260 00:10:49,450 --> 00:10:51,920 was to convey information about where something was. 261 00:10:51,920 --> 00:10:55,610 And sadly kind of the first thing that we got 262 00:10:55,610 --> 00:10:58,590 told after the playtesting was that those are just too long. 263 00:10:58,590 --> 00:11:01,137 Nobody wants to sit there for three minutes and, you know, 264 00:11:01,137 --> 00:11:02,970 hide in the shadows listening to guards talk 265 00:11:02,970 --> 00:11:04,220 to each other about something. 266 00:11:04,220 --> 00:11:07,110 Especially not more than once. 267 00:11:07,110 --> 00:11:09,830 And so really only one of the conversations 268 00:11:09,830 --> 00:11:12,400 that was more than four lines survived 269 00:11:12,400 --> 00:11:15,050 into the shipping game, which is at the very beginning 270 00:11:15,050 --> 00:11:16,860 of the first level. 271 00:11:16,860 --> 00:11:17,870 And you can skip it. 272 00:11:17,870 --> 00:11:20,710 It's the guards talking to each other in the courtyard 273 00:11:20,710 --> 00:11:22,565 about going to bear bits, and you can go 274 00:11:22,565 --> 00:11:23,690 and you can listen to them. 275 00:11:23,690 --> 00:11:25,830 And it tells you a little bit about the world. 276 00:11:25,830 --> 00:11:27,955 Or you can just, you know, sneak around and go back 277 00:11:27,955 --> 00:11:29,000 to the secret entrance. 278 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:31,420 And so if you're playing the game for the second time 279 00:11:31,420 --> 00:11:33,882 you do not have to listen to all of it. 280 00:11:33,882 --> 00:11:35,840 ANDREW GRANT: So is there a lot of conversation 281 00:11:35,840 --> 00:11:38,870 left on the cutting room floor, as it were then? 282 00:11:38,870 --> 00:11:39,830 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 283 00:11:39,830 --> 00:11:40,330 Yeah. 284 00:11:40,330 --> 00:11:41,180 ANDREW GRANT: Because it wasn't until playtest that you 285 00:11:41,180 --> 00:11:43,310 realized that it was too long. 286 00:11:43,310 --> 00:11:47,760 LAURA BALDWIN: I think-- I guess it must have been recorded 287 00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:53,480 because most of our guards were being voiced by programmers, 288 00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:54,930 at least early on. 289 00:11:54,930 --> 00:11:59,536 I think we definitely kept Dan Thron as the stupid guard. 290 00:11:59,536 --> 00:12:02,190 He became very popular. 291 00:12:02,190 --> 00:12:04,780 ANDREW GRANT: He's got a very expressive voice. 292 00:12:04,780 --> 00:12:06,600 So I imagine your form of fiction, Heather, 293 00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:09,260 is a little bit different because it's a longer form 294 00:12:09,260 --> 00:12:10,990 to begin with, so you expect a little bit more patience 295 00:12:10,990 --> 00:12:11,960 on the part of your players. 296 00:12:11,960 --> 00:12:12,610 HEATHER ALBANO: Yep. 297 00:12:12,610 --> 00:12:14,320 And also all they've got is the words. 298 00:12:14,320 --> 00:12:17,290 The words are-- the dialogue in the radio drama, 299 00:12:17,290 --> 00:12:19,810 for instance-- the dialogue isn't a distraction 300 00:12:19,810 --> 00:12:20,590 from the mechanic. 301 00:12:20,590 --> 00:12:22,360 The dialogue is the mechanic. 302 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:23,610 It's all they got to react to. 303 00:12:23,610 --> 00:12:23,860 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 304 00:12:23,860 --> 00:12:25,530 You don't want to have-- they're not going to be saying, 305 00:12:25,530 --> 00:12:27,430 oh, I want to fast forward through all this, 306 00:12:27,430 --> 00:12:28,450 because why would they be playing? 307 00:12:28,450 --> 00:12:28,780 HEATHER ALBANO: Right. 308 00:12:28,780 --> 00:12:29,280 Exactly. 309 00:12:29,280 --> 00:12:32,390 All they're doing is listening to other voice actors, 310 00:12:32,390 --> 00:12:34,240 you know, putting together a drama 311 00:12:34,240 --> 00:12:38,676 and then they're responding to it, interacting with it. 312 00:12:38,676 --> 00:12:41,660 The difference between-- there is a difference 313 00:12:41,660 --> 00:12:44,050 between writing dialogue that will be read 314 00:12:44,050 --> 00:12:48,320 and writing dialogue that will be spoken. 315 00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:55,080 In the Choice of Games we have a lot more freedom. 316 00:12:55,080 --> 00:12:57,030 We have a lot more-- we have a lot 317 00:12:57,030 --> 00:12:58,540 of things that aren't the dialogue. 318 00:12:58,540 --> 00:13:03,520 You can put in a tag that says, "hey, he said angrily." 319 00:13:03,520 --> 00:13:05,030 Right? 320 00:13:05,030 --> 00:13:07,400 Or you can say that he said it while folding his arms 321 00:13:07,400 --> 00:13:11,230 or whatever, that gives the reader a clue as to what 322 00:13:11,230 --> 00:13:12,410 they're dealing with. 323 00:13:12,410 --> 00:13:16,040 When you're writing a radio drama all you've got 324 00:13:16,040 --> 00:13:19,730 is the dialogue and the stage queues for the actors. 325 00:13:19,730 --> 00:13:22,430 I got a lot better at writing dialogue very, 326 00:13:22,430 --> 00:13:24,219 very, very fast out of necessity, 327 00:13:24,219 --> 00:13:25,260 working for that project. 328 00:13:27,920 --> 00:13:30,400 People who write traditional fiction 329 00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:34,500 will tell you that there shouldn't be a difference. 330 00:13:34,500 --> 00:13:36,980 You should always be writing dialogue that doesn't 331 00:13:36,980 --> 00:13:38,990 need the prose around it. 332 00:13:38,990 --> 00:13:45,220 You should always be able to get the character's personality 333 00:13:45,220 --> 00:13:48,320 and how they're reacting to the particular situation 334 00:13:48,320 --> 00:13:53,160 just from their word choice, which is a great gold standard. 335 00:13:53,160 --> 00:13:56,312 There are some writers who do that very well. 336 00:13:56,312 --> 00:13:58,270 Dorothy Sayers, who wrote a series of mysteries 337 00:13:58,270 --> 00:14:00,852 back in the earlier part of the century-- 338 00:14:00,852 --> 00:14:05,280 in the early part of the 1900s-- does this very, very, very 339 00:14:05,280 --> 00:14:05,780 well. 340 00:14:05,780 --> 00:14:08,680 You can read-- she's got-- there's pages and pages where 341 00:14:08,680 --> 00:14:12,060 it's just open quotes, close quotes 342 00:14:12,060 --> 00:14:14,439 dialogue between two characters and you never 343 00:14:14,439 --> 00:14:16,980 lose track of who's saying what because the personalities are 344 00:14:16,980 --> 00:14:17,744 so very different. 345 00:14:17,744 --> 00:14:18,910 ANDREW GRANT: So very clear. 346 00:14:18,910 --> 00:14:21,100 HEATHER ALBANO: Very, very clear. 347 00:14:21,100 --> 00:14:23,780 Most of the rest of us aren't that good. 348 00:14:23,780 --> 00:14:27,090 That's really the gold standard. 349 00:14:27,090 --> 00:14:30,040 But when you've only got dialogue to work with, 350 00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:32,970 you have to get that good. 351 00:14:32,970 --> 00:14:35,210 It forces you to think very hard about what 352 00:14:35,210 --> 00:14:37,629 the different characters are like. 353 00:14:37,629 --> 00:14:38,670 ANDREW GRANT: Sure, sure. 354 00:14:38,670 --> 00:14:42,130 I imagine the stage direction helps a little bit. 355 00:14:42,130 --> 00:14:43,970 So you want to get across he said angrily, 356 00:14:43,970 --> 00:14:45,400 but we can tell the actor to do that. 357 00:14:45,400 --> 00:14:45,873 HEATHER ALBANO: Exactly. 358 00:14:45,873 --> 00:14:46,820 Yeah. 359 00:14:46,820 --> 00:14:48,320 ANDREW GRANT: And then, of course, you probably 360 00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:49,990 want to pick actors with different sounding voices 361 00:14:49,990 --> 00:14:52,010 to help it along a little bit, and that sort of thing. 362 00:14:52,010 --> 00:14:52,370 HEATHER ALBANO: Yep. 363 00:14:52,370 --> 00:14:53,110 ANDREW GRANT: OK. 364 00:14:53,110 --> 00:14:54,760 HEATHER ALBANO: That's more on the production end, but yeah. 365 00:14:54,760 --> 00:14:55,500 ANDREW GRANT: Sure. 366 00:14:55,500 --> 00:14:55,999 Sure. 367 00:15:00,670 --> 00:15:03,820 So one of things that a friend of mine was talking about 368 00:15:03,820 --> 00:15:05,860 was, he was adapting a Shakespearean play 369 00:15:05,860 --> 00:15:08,002 for a comic book form, which is very cool. 370 00:15:08,002 --> 00:15:09,960 But when he did that he said he had to take out 371 00:15:09,960 --> 00:15:12,860 about half the text of the play because in the play 372 00:15:12,860 --> 00:15:15,840 most of the information appeared twice, because the listener was 373 00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:19,470 hearing the play and you don't, in real time, understand it. 374 00:15:19,470 --> 00:15:22,870 For a radio play do you give people redundant information 375 00:15:22,870 --> 00:15:25,600 or do you just rely on them paying really intense attention 376 00:15:25,600 --> 00:15:27,892 to it? 377 00:15:27,892 --> 00:15:31,460 HEATHER ALBANO: That's an interesting question. 378 00:15:31,460 --> 00:15:34,390 I think I would probably have to go back over the script 379 00:15:34,390 --> 00:15:35,625 to answer that for real. 380 00:15:38,520 --> 00:15:42,380 My recollection is that we did a little bit of repetition 381 00:15:42,380 --> 00:15:44,330 to make sure that any time the player 382 00:15:44,330 --> 00:15:47,670 was making a choice they knew the context they 383 00:15:47,670 --> 00:15:49,360 were making the choice in. 384 00:15:49,360 --> 00:15:51,990 So if there had been some dialogue they couldn't respond 385 00:15:51,990 --> 00:15:58,930 to they might get like a summary from character number three. 386 00:15:58,930 --> 00:16:00,820 "It looks like John wants to do this, 387 00:16:00,820 --> 00:16:02,350 but Mary wants to do this. 388 00:16:02,350 --> 00:16:03,610 What do you think, agent? 389 00:16:03,610 --> 00:16:04,977 What should we do?" 390 00:16:04,977 --> 00:16:06,768 LAURA BALDWIN: Do you have a Go Back button 391 00:16:06,768 --> 00:16:08,460 so you can hear stuff again? 392 00:16:08,460 --> 00:16:10,543 HEATHER ALBANO: Not in the current implementation, 393 00:16:10,543 --> 00:16:12,579 as far as I know. 394 00:16:12,579 --> 00:16:14,620 ANDREW GRANT: But it sounds like you could almost 395 00:16:14,620 --> 00:16:17,057 play this game without touching anything, is the idea. 396 00:16:17,057 --> 00:16:18,640 HEATHER ALBANO: That's the idea, yeah. 397 00:16:18,640 --> 00:16:21,700 You can-- it does come with a button 398 00:16:21,700 --> 00:16:23,940 that you can choose visually if you like, 399 00:16:23,940 --> 00:16:26,690 but the idea was that you should be able to play it in your car. 400 00:16:26,690 --> 00:16:27,950 ANDREW GRANT: Got it. 401 00:16:27,950 --> 00:16:28,370 HEATHER ALBANO: So yeah. 402 00:16:28,370 --> 00:16:30,270 But of course we weren't dealing with Shakespeare, either. 403 00:16:30,270 --> 00:16:32,115 So it wasn't that level of complexity. 404 00:16:32,115 --> 00:16:34,410 ANDREW GRANT: Well, and the poetry must complement it. 405 00:16:34,410 --> 00:16:36,160 LAURA BALDWIN: Like, in role playing games 406 00:16:36,160 --> 00:16:38,260 where they have a lot of voice-overs 407 00:16:38,260 --> 00:16:41,032 and they have subtitles, I usually turn the subtitles 408 00:16:41,032 --> 00:16:41,740 on, just in case. 409 00:16:41,740 --> 00:16:43,860 Like, sometimes I miss a word or two 410 00:16:43,860 --> 00:16:45,680 and I'm like, I can't go back. 411 00:16:45,680 --> 00:16:48,007 It's a conversation tree, you know? 412 00:16:48,007 --> 00:16:48,840 ANDREW GRANT: Right. 413 00:16:48,840 --> 00:16:49,756 HEATHER ALBANO: Right. 414 00:16:49,756 --> 00:16:50,940 Yes. 415 00:16:50,940 --> 00:16:51,900 ANDREW GRANT: That's kind of interesting too, 416 00:16:51,900 --> 00:16:54,040 because a lot of the sit-down role playing games 417 00:16:54,040 --> 00:16:56,690 that I've been in, a lot of times the gamemaster's very 418 00:16:56,690 --> 00:16:59,290 patient with saying, wait, what did that person say? 419 00:16:59,290 --> 00:17:01,620 And if you missed it, will help you figure it out. 420 00:17:01,620 --> 00:17:03,971 But in this meeting you're talking about, no, there's 421 00:17:03,971 --> 00:17:04,720 not a lot of help. 422 00:17:04,720 --> 00:17:06,369 If you missed it, you missed it. 423 00:17:06,369 --> 00:17:08,068 And part of the game is, in fact, 424 00:17:08,068 --> 00:17:09,609 comprehension the first time through. 425 00:17:09,609 --> 00:17:12,736 That's kind of neat. 426 00:17:12,736 --> 00:17:13,319 So, all right. 427 00:17:13,319 --> 00:17:17,130 So you've talked a little bit about this already, 428 00:17:17,130 --> 00:17:18,937 but all these things are placing, 429 00:17:18,937 --> 00:17:21,020 pretty much, a lot of constraints on your writing. 430 00:17:21,020 --> 00:17:22,520 You know, you're talking about-- you 431 00:17:22,520 --> 00:17:25,569 have to get across ideas for dialogue alone. 432 00:17:25,569 --> 00:17:28,259 And I think it's kind of-- there's 433 00:17:28,259 --> 00:17:30,675 a difference between-- there's conversation that gives you 434 00:17:30,675 --> 00:17:31,740 an idea of who the characters are, 435 00:17:31,740 --> 00:17:33,406 or just sort of some filler, and there's 436 00:17:33,406 --> 00:17:35,990 conversation which has got vital information in it. 437 00:17:35,990 --> 00:17:38,240 You might know before you write that conversation what 438 00:17:38,240 --> 00:17:39,680 that information is. 439 00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:42,560 Does that change how you approach 440 00:17:42,560 --> 00:17:44,215 that writing, knowing that you have 441 00:17:44,215 --> 00:17:46,090 to stick some important information in there? 442 00:17:48,965 --> 00:17:50,840 Or do you now think about it that way at all, 443 00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:51,920 and I'm just off in the field? 444 00:17:51,920 --> 00:17:53,961 HEATHER ALBANO: No, I've got to think about that. 445 00:17:53,961 --> 00:18:03,240 So I think every scene has a particular point 446 00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:05,200 you're driving towards. 447 00:18:05,200 --> 00:18:07,080 If there are multiple choices in a scene-- 448 00:18:07,080 --> 00:18:09,010 I'm thinking now Choice Of as well as 449 00:18:09,010 --> 00:18:15,026 Cygnus-- then every choice has a particular piece of information 450 00:18:15,026 --> 00:18:17,150 that you're needing to get across so the player can 451 00:18:17,150 --> 00:18:18,910 make the choice. 452 00:18:18,910 --> 00:18:21,160 It's not quite a constraint in bad way, though. 453 00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:22,950 It's more of-- I don't know. 454 00:18:22,950 --> 00:18:25,360 It's a more positive word than that. 455 00:18:25,360 --> 00:18:27,860 I feel like I've actually had the good fortune 456 00:18:27,860 --> 00:18:31,666 to be remarkably unconstrained in the writing I've 457 00:18:31,666 --> 00:18:33,520 done for games, because so much of it 458 00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:35,380 has been text-based and dialogue-driven. 459 00:18:35,380 --> 00:18:37,630 I think if you want to talk about constraints, writing 460 00:18:37,630 --> 00:18:41,557 for actual video games is the-- 461 00:18:41,557 --> 00:18:42,890 LAURA BALDWIN: So, I mean, Yeah. 462 00:18:42,890 --> 00:18:45,930 The little grid of "I'm suspicious" 463 00:18:45,930 --> 00:18:47,120 is very constraining. 464 00:18:47,120 --> 00:18:50,070 But I mean, to some extent the constraints are 465 00:18:50,070 --> 00:18:52,750 what tell you what you have to write about. 466 00:18:52,750 --> 00:18:55,940 I mean, I pretty much never wake up in the morning and say, 467 00:18:55,940 --> 00:18:58,959 "I am going to write a thing." 468 00:18:58,959 --> 00:19:01,500 It's always, you know, what are the things you have to write? 469 00:19:04,190 --> 00:19:06,230 I think I read somewhere that poets 470 00:19:06,230 --> 00:19:11,290 said that the very strict poem forms-- 471 00:19:11,290 --> 00:19:13,640 it's the pushing against the boundaries that 472 00:19:13,640 --> 00:19:17,060 are what make them interesting, as opposed to prose 473 00:19:17,060 --> 00:19:20,050 where you sort of write whatever. 474 00:19:20,050 --> 00:19:24,700 But it's more that sometimes the constraints are kind of funny. 475 00:19:24,700 --> 00:19:30,130 Like, for the cutscenes the rule was you did them 476 00:19:30,130 --> 00:19:32,960 in screenplay format. 477 00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:37,250 And, you know, it's particular margins, particular fonts 478 00:19:37,250 --> 00:19:39,660 and capitalization and everything. 479 00:19:39,660 --> 00:19:43,760 And the rule of thumb was one page per minute, 480 00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:45,780 or one page per 30 seconds, or-- I 481 00:19:45,780 --> 00:19:47,840 don't remember what it was, but it was-- 482 00:19:47,840 --> 00:19:50,860 and so it was, OK, well, we've got two minutes and 30 483 00:19:50,860 --> 00:19:52,450 seconds budgeted for the cutscene 484 00:19:52,450 --> 00:19:54,810 so it can't be more than five pages. 485 00:19:54,810 --> 00:19:58,100 And you can't do the trick of making the font smaller. 486 00:19:58,100 --> 00:20:00,980 So there was a lot of very strange text editing 487 00:20:00,980 --> 00:20:02,950 where, you know, someone would say things 488 00:20:02,950 --> 00:20:07,420 and it was, like, a line plus a word, and you can't have that. 489 00:20:07,420 --> 00:20:11,709 That's taking up 10 seconds or something with the one word 490 00:20:11,709 --> 00:20:13,250 at the end-- which it isn't, really-- 491 00:20:13,250 --> 00:20:16,010 but by the measurement, you know, no. 492 00:20:16,010 --> 00:20:19,320 It has to be-- so, you know, I would-- 493 00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:21,910 sometimes you put in a semicolon instead of a dash 494 00:20:21,910 --> 00:20:23,090 because it's shorter. 495 00:20:27,470 --> 00:20:30,022 And then, you know, you would put 496 00:20:30,022 --> 00:20:31,980 in the descriptions of the scenes or the action 497 00:20:31,980 --> 00:20:36,380 or whatever, which is like, you know, "view of a study, 498 00:20:36,380 --> 00:20:39,820 zoom in on the desk which has an ink well," or whatever. 499 00:20:39,820 --> 00:20:43,170 And you had to make those also very short but descriptive 500 00:20:43,170 --> 00:20:45,180 because you can't just say, "study" and leave it 501 00:20:45,180 --> 00:20:48,160 to the artist to imagine what you mean. 502 00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:51,440 And the reason that the rules are like that 503 00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:53,560 is because the more description you 504 00:20:53,560 --> 00:21:00,720 have in the set scene, in the scene description, 505 00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:03,290 the more time it's going to take to show all of the things. 506 00:21:03,290 --> 00:21:05,240 You know, if you have 15 different things on the desk 507 00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:06,906 and you want to be able to see them all, 508 00:21:06,906 --> 00:21:08,560 you'll want to focus on it for longer. 509 00:21:08,560 --> 00:21:12,599 So it's kind of true that the more lines you have describing 510 00:21:12,599 --> 00:21:13,890 the scene, the longer it takes. 511 00:21:13,890 --> 00:21:17,280 But it was a very strange constraint 512 00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:19,810 to write to, just because it seemed so surreal. 513 00:21:19,810 --> 00:21:22,351 ANDREW GRANT: So you're kind of gaming-- you had a constraint 514 00:21:22,351 --> 00:21:25,900 and you're kind of gamed the constraint to fit on one line. 515 00:21:25,900 --> 00:21:28,460 And that's actually not at all surprising. 516 00:21:28,460 --> 00:21:31,150 I mean, that happens with all rule sets everywhere, right? 517 00:21:31,150 --> 00:21:32,140 People game the system. 518 00:21:32,140 --> 00:21:33,790 LAURA BALDWIN: And I'm sure screenwriters have to do that, 519 00:21:33,790 --> 00:21:34,120 too. 520 00:21:34,120 --> 00:21:35,685 And they're probably-- like, if there 521 00:21:35,685 --> 00:21:37,768 are screeners out there they're probably like, oh, 522 00:21:37,768 --> 00:21:39,092 yeah, use the short words. 523 00:21:39,092 --> 00:21:40,550 HEATHER ALBANO: And, interestingly, 524 00:21:40,550 --> 00:21:43,630 there is an almost identical constraint in Choice of Games, 525 00:21:43,630 --> 00:21:46,490 where we only want so many words on any given screen. 526 00:21:46,490 --> 00:21:49,310 People are playing these on a phone a lot of time, right? 527 00:21:49,310 --> 00:21:52,590 So there's a rule of thumb that I can no longer remember, 528 00:21:52,590 --> 00:21:54,860 about how many words you can have 529 00:21:54,860 --> 00:22:01,270 before you should have a choice, and how many words per screen. 530 00:22:01,270 --> 00:22:03,460 Perhaps you might have two screens before a choice, 531 00:22:03,460 --> 00:22:05,293 but probably you shouldn't do a lot of that. 532 00:22:05,293 --> 00:22:06,700 You get the idea. 533 00:22:06,700 --> 00:22:11,660 But so that leads to some gaming, like with finding 534 00:22:11,660 --> 00:22:14,220 a shorter word to say a thing, but it also 535 00:22:14,220 --> 00:22:16,970 forces you to think about what you actually 536 00:22:16,970 --> 00:22:20,730 need to say right now as opposed to later, or never, 537 00:22:20,730 --> 00:22:21,345 or, you know. 538 00:22:21,345 --> 00:22:24,700 And what you said about, if you need more words 539 00:22:24,700 --> 00:22:27,090 to paint the scene it's going to take longer, 540 00:22:27,090 --> 00:22:29,230 that's definitely true when it's prose, right? 541 00:22:29,230 --> 00:22:31,800 If the player needs to know about-- he's sitting at a desk 542 00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:36,700 where there's an ink well and a book of poetry and a something 543 00:22:36,700 --> 00:22:38,520 else that's going to be relevant later, 544 00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:43,660 you have to describe them all without knocking the player 545 00:22:43,660 --> 00:22:45,370 over the head, necessarily. 546 00:22:45,370 --> 00:22:45,630 LAURA BALDWIN: By the way, there's three things. 547 00:22:45,630 --> 00:22:46,750 HEATHER ALBANO: By the way, there's an ink well. 548 00:22:46,750 --> 00:22:47,360 Yeah. 549 00:22:47,360 --> 00:22:48,250 Yeah, exactly. 550 00:22:48,250 --> 00:22:50,040 You just slip it in. 551 00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:52,540 ANDREW GRANT: So you talk about these constraints coming in. 552 00:22:52,540 --> 00:22:54,123 Are these constraints that were handed 553 00:22:54,123 --> 00:22:55,440 to you by the rest of team? 554 00:22:55,440 --> 00:22:58,300 And if so, is there cases where-- 555 00:22:58,300 --> 00:23:01,030 how much creative controlled do you have to sort of fight back 556 00:23:01,030 --> 00:23:02,030 against that sometimes? 557 00:23:02,030 --> 00:23:04,290 Or is it pretty much written in stone? 558 00:23:04,290 --> 00:23:07,169 Or how do you interact with the team that way? 559 00:23:07,169 --> 00:23:08,960 HEATHER ALBANO: Well, when I was at Looking 560 00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:11,190 Glass I was kind of the odd jobs person, as I said. 561 00:23:11,190 --> 00:23:13,950 So I would had really no creative control, 562 00:23:13,950 --> 00:23:15,190 but I wasn't looking for it. 563 00:23:15,190 --> 00:23:19,410 I was happily doing tasks that I was given. 564 00:23:19,410 --> 00:23:24,240 Sometimes, I guess, I would say-- you know, sometimes 565 00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:26,010 you would get feedback saying, so 566 00:23:26,010 --> 00:23:28,310 you need to make these things more this way, 567 00:23:28,310 --> 00:23:31,340 and I would be like, well, it isn't 568 00:23:31,340 --> 00:23:34,110 possible to make them more-suspicious-sounding 569 00:23:34,110 --> 00:23:38,050 and still have them in the not-suspicious category, 570 00:23:38,050 --> 00:23:38,789 or, you know. 571 00:23:38,789 --> 00:23:40,080 But it would be a conversation. 572 00:23:40,080 --> 00:23:42,410 It was like, OK, the thing that you're telling me to do 573 00:23:42,410 --> 00:23:45,110 doesn't make sense, please clarify, as opposed to, 574 00:23:45,110 --> 00:23:47,476 I think the thing you're telling me to do is wrong 575 00:23:47,476 --> 00:23:48,475 and I want it different. 576 00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:53,026 And-- 577 00:23:53,026 --> 00:23:54,990 ANDREW GRANT: So there would be back and forth, 578 00:23:54,990 --> 00:23:56,667 communication being the key thing there. 579 00:23:56,667 --> 00:23:57,500 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 580 00:23:57,500 --> 00:24:01,380 And, you know, often there would be a level designer 581 00:24:01,380 --> 00:24:03,790 who would say things like, OK, I need 582 00:24:03,790 --> 00:24:05,870 books for this, this, and this. 583 00:24:05,870 --> 00:24:12,246 Or can you translate the books that I've-- I have these pieces 584 00:24:12,246 --> 00:24:12,870 of information. 585 00:24:12,870 --> 00:24:14,830 Can you translate them into Hammerspeak for me? 586 00:24:14,830 --> 00:24:17,409 And so it was-- 587 00:24:17,409 --> 00:24:18,784 ANDREW GRANT: What's Hammerspeak? 588 00:24:18,784 --> 00:24:19,830 LAURA BALDWIN: Ah. 589 00:24:19,830 --> 00:24:25,460 So the factions in Thief-- there were the Hammerites 590 00:24:25,460 --> 00:24:30,240 who kind of spoke like King James bibles, 591 00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:34,400 and there were the trickster minions, the Woodsies, 592 00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:37,478 who spoke weirdly. 593 00:24:37,478 --> 00:24:42,650 And that's kind of the-- you know, they-- I 594 00:24:42,650 --> 00:24:48,460 think Terri Brosius came up with their dialect originally, 595 00:24:48,460 --> 00:24:52,960 and it was, you know, "the Woodsies sing in the treesies." 596 00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:55,537 And, you know, it was just a little weird. 597 00:24:55,537 --> 00:24:57,120 ANDREW GRANT: A little crazy, kind of. 598 00:24:57,120 --> 00:24:57,953 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 599 00:24:57,953 --> 00:25:01,740 And it tended to be not very grammatical 600 00:25:01,740 --> 00:25:04,070 and there were a lot of diminutives on it. 601 00:25:07,030 --> 00:25:09,660 But it made them all sound like they 602 00:25:09,660 --> 00:25:11,930 were from the same subculture, and I 603 00:25:11,930 --> 00:25:14,690 think that that was useful. 604 00:25:14,690 --> 00:25:15,947 Where did I start with this? 605 00:25:15,947 --> 00:25:17,530 ANDREW GRANT: You started with working 606 00:25:17,530 --> 00:25:18,779 with a team, creative control. 607 00:25:18,779 --> 00:25:21,610 If there's any-- how do you manage that, 608 00:25:21,610 --> 00:25:26,470 or was it frustrating or any of that? 609 00:25:26,470 --> 00:25:28,550 LAURA BALDWIN: I can't do artists stuff, 610 00:25:28,550 --> 00:25:30,950 and I wasn't very good at the level des-- 611 00:25:30,950 --> 00:25:32,520 So I don't want the creative control. 612 00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:35,086 I want to do the stuff I'm good at 613 00:25:35,086 --> 00:25:37,710 and let the other people who are going at stuff do their stuff. 614 00:25:37,710 --> 00:25:39,434 That's-- 615 00:25:39,434 --> 00:25:41,100 HEATHER ALBANO: I think that's certainly 616 00:25:41,100 --> 00:25:42,580 the attitude I would take if I were 617 00:25:42,580 --> 00:25:44,710 working on a video game, which I haven't done yet. 618 00:25:44,710 --> 00:25:47,300 Maybe someday. 619 00:25:47,300 --> 00:25:49,500 Because I have great respect for people 620 00:25:49,500 --> 00:25:51,560 who can do visual storytelling. 621 00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:53,270 I have no artistic ability myself. 622 00:25:53,270 --> 00:25:57,730 So I would definitely be pushing that off. 623 00:25:57,730 --> 00:26:05,507 The Choice of Games-- I'm doing a solo project the first time, 624 00:26:05,507 --> 00:26:07,340 galloping towards the end of a solo project. 625 00:26:07,340 --> 00:26:10,310 The other ones I have done have been co-authored, 626 00:26:10,310 --> 00:26:14,970 and so there was-- the first one certainly I 627 00:26:14,970 --> 00:26:17,090 was kind of a junior partner, learning. 628 00:26:17,090 --> 00:26:20,470 And so the Choice of Broadsides was the first game I worked on, 629 00:26:20,470 --> 00:26:23,180 and when I joined the team it was all storyboarded. 630 00:26:23,180 --> 00:26:24,640 And so it was a matter of, right, 631 00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:26,306 well, I'm going to learn how to do this, 632 00:26:26,306 --> 00:26:31,590 so I'll take that scene to start with, you know? 633 00:26:31,590 --> 00:26:35,130 The second game, Choice of Romance, Adam Strong-Morse 634 00:26:35,130 --> 00:26:37,890 and I were definitely colleagues. 635 00:26:37,890 --> 00:26:41,320 And so there's a give and take in a-- well, 636 00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:42,589 any kind of partnership. 637 00:26:42,589 --> 00:26:44,380 Any kind of creative partnership, for sure, 638 00:26:44,380 --> 00:26:46,890 where you have two people with different opinions 639 00:26:46,890 --> 00:26:49,220 on how to do x and y and z. 640 00:26:49,220 --> 00:26:53,960 And, you know, we have a pretty solid working relationship. 641 00:26:53,960 --> 00:27:01,090 The one I'm doing solo has been both freeing and terrifying 642 00:27:01,090 --> 00:27:05,825 in that I have creative control-- yay. 643 00:27:05,825 --> 00:27:06,450 It's wonderful. 644 00:27:06,450 --> 00:27:10,510 It's totally my story, and that's phenomenal, 645 00:27:10,510 --> 00:27:12,350 and it does mean, however, that when 646 00:27:12,350 --> 00:27:16,130 I don't know how to do something there are times when I do kind 647 00:27:16,130 --> 00:27:17,764 of wish I had a co-author to say, 648 00:27:17,764 --> 00:27:19,680 I actually don't have any good ideas for this. 649 00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:20,670 Can you--? 650 00:27:20,670 --> 00:27:22,770 What I do have is a very, very good editor. 651 00:27:22,770 --> 00:27:25,950 And so we work in pretty close partnership 652 00:27:25,950 --> 00:27:28,530 where I can-- for instance, last week-- 653 00:27:28,530 --> 00:27:31,560 write her an email after a playtesting session saying, 654 00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,630 I think we might have to eliminate 655 00:27:34,630 --> 00:27:36,170 this section completely. 656 00:27:36,170 --> 00:27:38,390 If we do it we'll cause these other problems, 657 00:27:38,390 --> 00:27:41,430 but if we don't, I don't know how to solve these problems. 658 00:27:41,430 --> 00:27:43,770 Which do you think? 659 00:27:43,770 --> 00:27:45,650 Leading to a two hour conference call 660 00:27:45,650 --> 00:27:49,090 where we came up with a third option, which I would never 661 00:27:49,090 --> 00:27:50,545 have come up with by myself, which 662 00:27:50,545 --> 00:27:52,086 meant we didn't have to cut the scene 663 00:27:52,086 --> 00:27:54,180 and we solved the problems a different way. 664 00:27:54,180 --> 00:27:55,180 ANDREW GRANT: That's really cool. 665 00:27:55,180 --> 00:27:56,090 HEATHER ALBANO: So hooray for editors. 666 00:27:56,090 --> 00:27:58,548 ANDREW GRANT: I really like the fact that you mention that, 667 00:27:58,548 --> 00:28:00,660 as you're playtesting your work and it's not done. 668 00:28:00,660 --> 00:28:04,124 You're playtesting your writing, which I think is awesome. 669 00:28:04,124 --> 00:28:06,540 And so that's a great example of what we're talking about, 670 00:28:06,540 --> 00:28:08,425 where playtesting totally just told you 671 00:28:08,425 --> 00:28:10,120 that something wasn't working. 672 00:28:10,120 --> 00:28:11,775 Does that happen a lot? 673 00:28:11,775 --> 00:28:13,025 HEATHER ALBANO: Unfortunately. 674 00:28:13,025 --> 00:28:14,470 Well, I mean, fortunately, right? 675 00:28:14,470 --> 00:28:16,230 Because you'd much rather have it 676 00:28:16,230 --> 00:28:18,800 when it's still under your control than when 677 00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:20,530 it's out in the wild, right? 678 00:28:20,530 --> 00:28:30,950 So the Codename Cygnus thing I was the lead writer, 679 00:28:30,950 --> 00:28:34,180 so I have a lot of influence, a lot of control of the script, 680 00:28:34,180 --> 00:28:34,680 right? 681 00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,810 It was me and the Creative Director, John Myers, 682 00:28:37,810 --> 00:28:39,360 working together on it. 683 00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:42,310 But John was in charge of production, 684 00:28:42,310 --> 00:28:45,430 so I actually wasn't involved in the playtesting for that. 685 00:28:45,430 --> 00:28:47,700 I would get notes that were along the lines of, 686 00:28:47,700 --> 00:28:50,300 this dialogue sequence is running way long, 687 00:28:50,300 --> 00:28:51,780 we need to cut it. 688 00:28:51,780 --> 00:28:53,260 You get the idea. 689 00:28:53,260 --> 00:28:57,620 The Choice of Game stuff I have been much more in the trenches, 690 00:28:57,620 --> 00:29:02,760 like with this game I'm working on now, my solo project. 691 00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:06,760 I'm buying dinner for friends and sitting behind them 692 00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:09,440 and watching them play it because it's the only way I 693 00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:13,217 can tell when they're confused. 694 00:29:13,217 --> 00:29:14,800 You can ask people to write you notes, 695 00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:17,350 and they will, and they mean well, 696 00:29:17,350 --> 00:29:18,930 but they never remember everything. 697 00:29:18,930 --> 00:29:21,180 And so when you're sitting there and somebody's taking 698 00:29:21,180 --> 00:29:24,170 10 minutes to make a choice you can ask, 699 00:29:24,170 --> 00:29:26,605 so what are you thinking right now? 700 00:29:26,605 --> 00:29:28,230 And you can get an idea of whether they 701 00:29:28,230 --> 00:29:32,410 have no idea what's going on, which was actually 702 00:29:32,410 --> 00:29:37,136 where the problem in this most recent-- that the player was 703 00:29:37,136 --> 00:29:39,260 utterly confused and that wasn't the first time I'd 704 00:29:39,260 --> 00:29:40,435 gotten that feedback. 705 00:29:40,435 --> 00:29:41,810 Although it was the first time it 706 00:29:41,810 --> 00:29:45,240 was utter confusion, rather than mild confusion. 707 00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:47,351 Or whether the player is so engrossed 708 00:29:47,351 --> 00:29:49,850 that they want to make sure they do exactly the right thing, 709 00:29:49,850 --> 00:29:51,220 which is a fine response. 710 00:29:51,220 --> 00:29:55,082 And they can take 10 minutes if that's what I need to do. 711 00:29:55,082 --> 00:29:56,730 So yes, I've sort of wandered away 712 00:29:56,730 --> 00:29:58,572 from-- what was the original question? 713 00:29:58,572 --> 00:29:59,530 ANDREW GRANT: Playtest. 714 00:29:59,530 --> 00:30:00,080 You found it. 715 00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:01,010 You do it all the time. 716 00:30:01,010 --> 00:30:02,551 In fact, you're going out of your way 717 00:30:02,551 --> 00:30:07,032 to do it on the solo project which is mostly writing, 718 00:30:07,032 --> 00:30:08,740 and you're still playtesting a lot, which 719 00:30:08,740 --> 00:30:09,580 I think is really fascinating. 720 00:30:09,580 --> 00:30:10,516 You mentioned an editor, you have 721 00:30:10,516 --> 00:30:12,430 to imagine-- so you've written books as well. 722 00:30:12,430 --> 00:30:13,263 HEATHER ALBANO: Yes. 723 00:30:13,263 --> 00:30:15,759 ANDREW GRANT: Do you playtest books? 724 00:30:15,759 --> 00:30:16,800 HEATHER ALBANO: Um, yeah. 725 00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:17,674 I do, actually. 726 00:30:17,674 --> 00:30:19,590 You don't call it that in traditional fiction, 727 00:30:19,590 --> 00:30:20,220 but absolutely. 728 00:30:20,220 --> 00:30:22,927 You have drafts, and I belong to the Cambridge fiction workshop. 729 00:30:22,927 --> 00:30:24,760 LAURA BALDWIN: My husband gets really grumpy 730 00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:27,502 when I call him a playtester instead of QA. 731 00:30:27,502 --> 00:30:28,460 ANDREW GRANT: Who this? 732 00:30:28,460 --> 00:30:29,640 Say that again? 733 00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:31,990 LAURA BALDWIN: So Jerry works in QA 734 00:30:31,990 --> 00:30:34,080 and I often refer to him as a playtester 735 00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,412 and he's like, it's not actually playtesting. 736 00:30:36,412 --> 00:30:38,120 HEATHER ALBANO: Is he QA-- not for games? 737 00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:39,060 LAURA BALDWIN: Not for games, yeah. 738 00:30:39,060 --> 00:30:39,851 HEATHER ALBANO: OK. 739 00:30:39,851 --> 00:30:40,500 All right. 740 00:30:40,500 --> 00:30:41,460 That's hilarious then. 741 00:30:44,890 --> 00:30:47,670 ANDREW GRANT: So Laura, have you had experiences 742 00:30:47,670 --> 00:30:51,090 with playtesting being essential or showing 743 00:30:51,090 --> 00:30:52,690 you stuff you didn't expect? 744 00:30:52,690 --> 00:30:53,900 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 745 00:30:53,900 --> 00:30:56,600 I mean, in general for computer games 746 00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,940 you have to have playtesting. 747 00:30:59,940 --> 00:31:02,800 And I feel like there's actually a new, modern version where 748 00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:04,800 you don't playtest and you ship broken games 749 00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:08,024 and you just patch as you go, but I don't approve of that. 750 00:31:08,024 --> 00:31:09,940 ANDREW GRANT: That is the new, modern version. 751 00:31:09,940 --> 00:31:10,660 Yeah. 752 00:31:10,660 --> 00:31:11,990 LAURA BALDWIN: Looking Glass had in-house playtesting, 753 00:31:11,990 --> 00:31:14,690 so you not only had sort of the naive people saying, 754 00:31:14,690 --> 00:31:16,960 oh, this is confusing, you had people who were like, 755 00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:18,585 OK, I know how is this, this, and this, 756 00:31:18,585 --> 00:31:20,880 and they would try to do all of the things 757 00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:22,581 and tell you which ones were broken. 758 00:31:22,581 --> 00:31:24,580 And that's a little bit more for the programming 759 00:31:24,580 --> 00:31:25,880 side and the level design side. 760 00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:30,320 But I guess there was one thing that came up pretty early, 761 00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:33,350 was the head designer thought that it would be really cool 762 00:31:33,350 --> 00:31:35,110 if there was sort of a thieves can't. 763 00:31:35,110 --> 00:31:42,060 And so all of the internal stuff that the Garret character would 764 00:31:42,060 --> 00:31:44,370 be saying to himself-- and sometimes the guards might 765 00:31:44,370 --> 00:31:48,370 be saying-- they would use dialects. 766 00:31:48,370 --> 00:31:51,540 They would say things like, "eagled" instead of "saw" 767 00:31:51,540 --> 00:31:57,980 or-- I forget what we came up with for "heard." 768 00:31:57,980 --> 00:32:00,970 And he had this idea of it being very Clockwork Orange 769 00:32:00,970 --> 00:32:04,300 where it has its own, you know, internal language that you 770 00:32:04,300 --> 00:32:06,710 can mostly figure out if you're paying attention. 771 00:32:06,710 --> 00:32:11,945 And so my first set of dialogue stuff was full of this stuff, 772 00:32:11,945 --> 00:32:13,320 and the playtesters were like, we 773 00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:14,760 have no idea what they're saying. 774 00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:15,680 This makes no sense. 775 00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:19,270 They're saying random words and it tells us nothing. 776 00:32:19,270 --> 00:32:21,310 And so that all got cut out, and pretty much 777 00:32:21,310 --> 00:32:24,820 the only thing that got kept was the word "taffer," which was 778 00:32:24,820 --> 00:32:26,585 sort of the generic swear word. 779 00:32:26,585 --> 00:32:28,440 You know, you would say, "you taffer, 780 00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:30,500 I saw you back there," because, you know, 781 00:32:30,500 --> 00:32:33,080 we were trying for a no-swearing game. 782 00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:35,720 But sometimes you want to have character sounds 783 00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:40,020 like they're swearing so we had that word and it stayed. 784 00:32:40,020 --> 00:32:42,420 HEATHER ALBANO: That's awesome. 785 00:32:42,420 --> 00:32:46,510 I find there's a difference between testing and playtesting 786 00:32:46,510 --> 00:32:47,610 though, too. 787 00:32:47,610 --> 00:32:49,110 ANDREW GRANT: What's the difference? 788 00:32:49,110 --> 00:32:51,540 HEATHER ALBANO: Well, so one is technical. 789 00:32:51,540 --> 00:32:52,930 Does the game work? 790 00:32:52,930 --> 00:32:54,000 Are their crashing bugs? 791 00:32:54,000 --> 00:33:01,560 And we have certainly at Choice Of, it's two different things. 792 00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:04,020 There's the, can you play to the end of it 793 00:33:04,020 --> 00:33:06,060 without it crashing on you? 794 00:33:06,060 --> 00:33:06,825 Good. 795 00:33:06,825 --> 00:33:07,590 All right. 796 00:33:07,590 --> 00:33:08,200 First level. 797 00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:09,130 That's great. 798 00:33:09,130 --> 00:33:11,780 Can you play through it with it doing the variable hands off 799 00:33:11,780 --> 00:33:14,250 between the scenes correctly, or do you suddenly 800 00:33:14,250 --> 00:33:17,656 find that you're married to this person instead of that person? 801 00:33:17,656 --> 00:33:19,780 I mean, problems like this happen all the time. 802 00:33:19,780 --> 00:33:25,420 So although my undergrad degree is in English, 803 00:33:25,420 --> 00:33:28,010 I did work in consumer electronics, such 804 00:33:28,010 --> 00:33:29,510 that I was working with programmers. 805 00:33:29,510 --> 00:33:31,990 I was in QA, in fact, a long time ago 806 00:33:31,990 --> 00:33:34,780 before I was in marketing. 807 00:33:34,780 --> 00:33:38,380 And so thinking about it in terms of the black box 808 00:33:38,380 --> 00:33:40,540 testing of, are the variables being passed, 809 00:33:40,540 --> 00:33:47,460 are the flags being set, are the typos in the English 810 00:33:47,460 --> 00:33:49,940 on the screen, everything capitalize? 811 00:33:49,940 --> 00:33:52,116 And then there's the playtesting which is, 812 00:33:52,116 --> 00:33:53,490 are you delivering the experience 813 00:33:53,490 --> 00:33:54,600 you're trying to deliver? 814 00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:58,445 Which you can only tell by watching a human being play it. 815 00:33:58,445 --> 00:33:59,870 ANDREW GRANT: Got it. 816 00:33:59,870 --> 00:34:01,487 I like that you split those two apart 817 00:34:01,487 --> 00:34:03,070 because when we talk about it in class 818 00:34:03,070 --> 00:34:04,200 we often don't make that distinction, 819 00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,658 but I think it's an important distinction that there's the, 820 00:34:06,658 --> 00:34:09,330 does it do what we think it does technically, 821 00:34:09,330 --> 00:34:12,880 and does it do what we want it to do emotionally or enjoyably 822 00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:13,389 or whatever? 823 00:34:13,389 --> 00:34:15,090 That's has a good distinction. 824 00:34:15,090 --> 00:34:16,790 HEATHER ALBANO: In consumer electronics 825 00:34:16,790 --> 00:34:18,860 I worked for Bose Corporation. 826 00:34:18,860 --> 00:34:24,360 They separated it into verification and validation, 827 00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:27,199 were the sub-parts of the test department. 828 00:34:27,199 --> 00:34:29,880 It was, did we build the thing right, 829 00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,570 and did we build the right thing? 830 00:34:32,570 --> 00:34:34,106 We thought that was pretty clever. 831 00:34:34,106 --> 00:34:34,542 ANDREW GRANT: Awesome. 832 00:34:34,542 --> 00:34:34,980 I like that. 833 00:34:34,980 --> 00:34:36,938 LAURA BALDWIN: I feel like, from my experience, 834 00:34:36,938 --> 00:34:39,219 it would be kind of more programmer bugs versus design 835 00:34:39,219 --> 00:34:41,283 bugs, do the variables do the right thing? 836 00:34:41,283 --> 00:34:41,949 Programmer bugs. 837 00:34:41,949 --> 00:34:42,659 Does it crash? 838 00:34:42,659 --> 00:34:43,670 Programmer bugs. 839 00:34:43,670 --> 00:34:44,510 Is it fun? 840 00:34:44,510 --> 00:34:45,010 Design bugs. 841 00:34:45,010 --> 00:34:45,885 HEATHER ALBANO: Yeah. 842 00:34:45,885 --> 00:34:47,552 That's a great way to think of it, yeah. 843 00:34:47,552 --> 00:34:48,343 ANDREW GRANT: Sure. 844 00:34:48,343 --> 00:34:50,199 So I've just got one more question for you 845 00:34:50,199 --> 00:34:52,429 and then we'll turn it over if anyone out there has questions. 846 00:34:52,429 --> 00:34:54,095 But before I do that I want to point out 847 00:34:54,095 --> 00:34:55,570 that, while I did sort of warn you 848 00:34:55,570 --> 00:34:57,153 that I'd be asking a little bit about, 849 00:34:57,153 --> 00:34:59,000 have playtests been useful for you, 850 00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,070 I did not ask them to go on as long and as enthusiastically 851 00:35:02,070 --> 00:35:05,505 as they did about how awesome playtesting has been. 852 00:35:05,505 --> 00:35:06,880 HEATHER ALBANO: Is this something 853 00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:08,135 that you're trying to-- OK. 854 00:35:08,135 --> 00:35:08,480 OK. 855 00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:08,870 ANDREW GRANT: We say this a lot. 856 00:35:08,870 --> 00:35:10,570 Playtest, playtest, playtest, playtest. 857 00:35:10,570 --> 00:35:12,153 No matter how much you're playtesting, 858 00:35:12,153 --> 00:35:14,119 you probably aren't doing it enough. 859 00:35:14,119 --> 00:35:15,910 Anyway, so the last question I have kind of 860 00:35:15,910 --> 00:35:17,826 comes back to something you were talking about 861 00:35:17,826 --> 00:35:21,580 how, when you did your first project you had the storyboards 862 00:35:21,580 --> 00:35:24,280 and you're like, oh, I'll take on this part and another writer 863 00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:25,690 might take on a different part. 864 00:35:25,690 --> 00:35:28,404 Did you have any problems getting the voices to match? 865 00:35:28,404 --> 00:35:30,820 Presumably you've got different authors, different writers 866 00:35:30,820 --> 00:35:32,319 for different sections, but you want 867 00:35:32,319 --> 00:35:35,600 it to feel like it's a coherent piece. 868 00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:37,710 You obviously want to write in a similar style 869 00:35:37,710 --> 00:35:38,990 to the other writers. 870 00:35:38,990 --> 00:35:40,573 HEATHER ALBANO: Did we have a problem? 871 00:35:40,573 --> 00:35:45,280 The answer is yes, but not like in a funny-horrible way, in a, 872 00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:48,650 this is one of the challenges with-- Broadsides 873 00:35:48,650 --> 00:35:49,470 was three people. 874 00:35:49,470 --> 00:35:52,170 It was me, and Dan Fabulich, and Adam Strong-Morse. 875 00:35:52,170 --> 00:35:55,930 And so it was sort of part of the cost of doing 876 00:35:55,930 --> 00:35:58,220 business, of dividing the work among three people, 877 00:35:58,220 --> 00:36:04,410 was the, hey, this guy has a different-- 878 00:36:04,410 --> 00:36:08,170 has speech patterns that imply a different educational level 879 00:36:08,170 --> 00:36:11,570 when one person a is writing than when person B is writing. 880 00:36:11,570 --> 00:36:14,970 Either is fine for a sailor in the Napoleonic era, 881 00:36:14,970 --> 00:36:16,310 but we should pick one. 882 00:36:16,310 --> 00:36:19,920 Like, these were bugs in the spreadsheet when 883 00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:23,220 we were-- We were like, we gotta fix that because so-and-so 884 00:36:23,220 --> 00:36:26,460 sounds like he has a split personality. 885 00:36:26,460 --> 00:36:33,680 And there were sometimes issues between-- like, that's a design 886 00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:34,930 thing, as you were saying. 887 00:36:34,930 --> 00:36:37,570 That's a flavor thing, right? 888 00:36:37,570 --> 00:36:40,990 There were sometimes issues with handoffs 889 00:36:40,990 --> 00:36:46,547 on the technical sense, but that's also-- 890 00:36:46,547 --> 00:36:48,880 somebody wasn't setting a flag that someone else needed, 891 00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:49,463 type of thing. 892 00:36:49,463 --> 00:36:50,880 And that was in the spreadsheet. 893 00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:53,932 I think that's just a collaborative thing, you know? 894 00:36:53,932 --> 00:36:54,836 ANDREW GRANT: Sure. 895 00:36:54,836 --> 00:36:57,040 HEATHER ALBANO: What it means, interestingly, 896 00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:02,200 is that having three writers doesn't save you as much time 897 00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:03,080 as you might think. 898 00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:05,180 It is probably quicker than having one, 899 00:37:05,180 --> 00:37:07,710 but not three times quicker because you 900 00:37:07,710 --> 00:37:11,049 have the integration phase that you don't otherwise have. 901 00:37:11,049 --> 00:37:11,840 ANDREW GRANT: Sure. 902 00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:13,506 I like how you put that, because you all 903 00:37:13,506 --> 00:37:16,917 have encountered the same thing through code right now. 904 00:37:16,917 --> 00:37:17,750 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 905 00:37:17,750 --> 00:37:21,530 I found that having, for any given sort of tone thing, 906 00:37:21,530 --> 00:37:25,780 having one person who is the expert, or at least 907 00:37:25,780 --> 00:37:28,630 that was their thing, like Terri would tend 908 00:37:28,630 --> 00:37:30,840 to do the pass on all the Woodsies and, you know, 909 00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:32,637 make sure they seemed Woodsy enough. 910 00:37:32,637 --> 00:37:34,220 And I would do the pass on the Hammers 911 00:37:34,220 --> 00:37:37,200 and make sure that people hadn't confused thee and thou 912 00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:40,626 and translate things, you know, into King James. 913 00:37:40,626 --> 00:37:42,250 I mean, it wasn't even real King James. 914 00:37:42,250 --> 00:37:43,625 It was sort of, like, what people 915 00:37:43,625 --> 00:37:45,692 think King James sounds like. 916 00:37:45,692 --> 00:37:47,440 ANDREW GRANT: Right. 917 00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:49,770 HEATHER ALBANO: For Broadsides we actually had-- Adam 918 00:37:49,770 --> 00:37:52,140 was serving as Lead Writer. 919 00:37:52,140 --> 00:37:56,780 It was-- so this is a secondary world Horacio Hornblower, so 920 00:37:56,780 --> 00:38:01,720 not the real Napoleonic war, but the Napoleonic war, you know? 921 00:38:01,720 --> 00:38:07,370 But so it was his idea and he was the Hornblower fan, right? 922 00:38:07,370 --> 00:38:09,660 So if there was a disagreement about the right way 923 00:38:09,660 --> 00:38:12,840 to name something or present something or whatever, 924 00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:16,270 Adam had final say because-- I read three of the books 925 00:38:16,270 --> 00:38:18,786 really fast as I was getting up to speed for the project, 926 00:38:18,786 --> 00:38:20,660 and so did Dan, but that's not the same thing 927 00:38:20,660 --> 00:38:22,097 as being immersed in it, right? 928 00:38:22,097 --> 00:38:22,930 ANDREW GRANT: Right. 929 00:38:22,930 --> 00:38:26,930 HEATHER ALBANO: It was actually harder when Adam and I were 930 00:38:26,930 --> 00:38:30,250 working as complete partners and we 931 00:38:30,250 --> 00:38:33,840 were building our own secondary world medieval 932 00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:35,790 fantasy from the ground up, because there 933 00:38:35,790 --> 00:38:41,010 was no-- sometimes it's nice to have a final arbiter as opposed 934 00:38:41,010 --> 00:38:45,835 to having to come to a resolution-- 935 00:38:45,835 --> 00:38:48,200 not necessarily fight it out, but come 936 00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:51,320 to an agreement with everything under discussion. 937 00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,020 ANDREW GRANT: It's just faster when 938 00:38:54,020 --> 00:38:56,495 you start to get to an impasse if someone can say, nope. 939 00:38:56,495 --> 00:38:58,095 We're going to go with A. 940 00:38:58,095 --> 00:38:59,610 HEATHER ALBANO: OK. 941 00:38:59,610 --> 00:39:00,990 ANDREW GRANT: All right. 942 00:39:00,990 --> 00:39:06,330 Any questions from out there, while we're here at the moment? 943 00:39:06,330 --> 00:39:07,718 Please. 944 00:39:07,718 --> 00:39:09,394 STUDENT: So, something I think is 945 00:39:09,394 --> 00:39:12,830 true about the Choice of Games is 946 00:39:12,830 --> 00:39:16,628 that, if you make choices at the beginning of the story that, 947 00:39:16,628 --> 00:39:21,263 like, carry over and possibly have grand repercussions 948 00:39:21,263 --> 00:39:24,101 on the three-hour mark, or something 949 00:39:24,101 --> 00:39:27,420 like that, how would you actually playtest them? 950 00:39:27,420 --> 00:39:29,896 So it seems like playtests having 951 00:39:29,896 --> 00:39:32,476 to deal with something that happened 952 00:39:32,476 --> 00:39:36,958 three hours ago without having the playtest go on 953 00:39:36,958 --> 00:39:38,210 for three hours-- 954 00:39:38,210 --> 00:39:39,210 HEATHER ALBANO: Ah, so-- 955 00:39:39,210 --> 00:39:41,834 ANDREW GRANT: Let me paraphrase that, just for the microphones. 956 00:39:41,834 --> 00:39:44,070 You're asking about, you run a playtest that 957 00:39:44,070 --> 00:39:47,110 would take a long, long time to see the results, 958 00:39:47,110 --> 00:39:49,250 but your playtester isn't that patient. 959 00:39:49,250 --> 00:39:51,495 So how do you work with that? 960 00:39:51,495 --> 00:39:52,370 HEATHER ALBANO: Yeah. 961 00:39:52,370 --> 00:39:54,460 Well, I actually don't know how you 962 00:39:54,460 --> 00:39:59,190 work with it in that constraint, because the-- 963 00:39:59,190 --> 00:40:00,790 if you are the author and you know 964 00:40:00,790 --> 00:40:03,580 the game you can self-playtest it such 965 00:40:03,580 --> 00:40:07,370 that you skip ahead to see how scene five feels 966 00:40:07,370 --> 00:40:14,200 when you're married to, Grace instead of to Diana, right? 967 00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:18,686 But if you're playtesting-- playtesting for real-- Choice 968 00:40:18,686 --> 00:40:20,060 by Gaslight, the game that I hope 969 00:40:20,060 --> 00:40:24,120 will ship early in the winter, has about four hours 970 00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:25,010 of gameplay. 971 00:40:25,010 --> 00:40:27,770 And the only way I have found to test 972 00:40:27,770 --> 00:40:30,360 what it feels like for the players to make the choices 973 00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:33,010 and be in it is to sit behind them for four hours, which 974 00:40:33,010 --> 00:40:36,070 is why I buy them dinner, because it's the very least I 975 00:40:36,070 --> 00:40:36,570 can do. 976 00:40:36,570 --> 00:40:37,450 And these are all informal. 977 00:40:37,450 --> 00:40:38,730 These are all friends of mine. 978 00:40:38,730 --> 00:40:39,840 ANDREW GRANT: Of course. 979 00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:41,340 HEATHER ALBANO: So I think there are 980 00:40:41,340 --> 00:40:43,127 things that you can't shortcut. 981 00:40:43,127 --> 00:40:44,960 You've just got to do it if you want to know 982 00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:46,740 what it's like for the player. 983 00:40:46,740 --> 00:40:48,000 On the other hand, there may be a better solution 984 00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:49,730 to that that I just haven't found yet, I don't know. 985 00:40:49,730 --> 00:40:51,740 LAURA BALDWIN: I mean, so for a larger company, 986 00:40:51,740 --> 00:40:55,720 the answer is you pay them a wage to do it for three hours. 987 00:40:55,720 --> 00:40:59,700 I mean, it's their job. 988 00:40:59,700 --> 00:41:04,322 And they do become faster at it, like, if they were playtesting 989 00:41:04,322 --> 00:41:05,780 Choice of Games they would probably 990 00:41:05,780 --> 00:41:07,360 be able to read pretty quickly the things 991 00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:08,401 that they've read before. 992 00:41:08,401 --> 00:41:09,590 But-- 993 00:41:09,590 --> 00:41:10,970 HEATHER ALBANO: Absolutely. 994 00:41:10,970 --> 00:41:12,386 When I say four hours of gameplay, 995 00:41:12,386 --> 00:41:13,600 that's the first time. 996 00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:19,882 The first three or four scenes are not substantively 997 00:41:19,882 --> 00:41:21,340 different, no matter what you pick. 998 00:41:21,340 --> 00:41:23,120 I mean, there are flavor text differences 999 00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:25,280 but they're not meaningfully so. 1000 00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:28,070 So once you realize that, then the second play through 1001 00:41:28,070 --> 00:41:31,079 is just, yeah, right, right, right, right, right, OK. 1002 00:41:31,079 --> 00:41:32,870 Here's where it starts getting interesting. 1003 00:41:32,870 --> 00:41:35,670 Now I'm going to slow down and read again. 1004 00:41:35,670 --> 00:41:37,796 ANDREW GRANT: Sure. 1005 00:41:37,796 --> 00:41:39,750 And I think that's, in large part, 1006 00:41:39,750 --> 00:41:43,230 actually why we encourage shorter games in the class, 1007 00:41:43,230 --> 00:41:45,524 actually. 1008 00:41:45,524 --> 00:41:47,690 Partially because of scope for your own development, 1009 00:41:47,690 --> 00:41:50,430 but also partially because of that playtest problem. 1010 00:41:50,430 --> 00:41:52,940 HEATHER ALBANO: Speaking as the author of some 1011 00:41:52,940 --> 00:41:57,100 of the longer and more convoluted Choice of Games, 1012 00:41:57,100 --> 00:41:59,450 speaking also because the company encourages people 1013 00:41:59,450 --> 00:42:01,850 to download the code and make their own, 1014 00:42:01,850 --> 00:42:03,725 they have a Host of Games program. 1015 00:42:03,725 --> 00:42:05,850 You shouldn't start with long, convoluted anything. 1016 00:42:05,850 --> 00:42:07,940 You should start with-- seriously, seriously, 1017 00:42:07,940 --> 00:42:11,000 seriously, seriously start with something short and simple 1018 00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:13,330 and prove that you've got the language and you've got, 1019 00:42:13,330 --> 00:42:15,900 you know-- and then branch out into things 1020 00:42:15,900 --> 00:42:19,340 that will take you forever and lots of dinners 1021 00:42:19,340 --> 00:42:20,640 to properly test. 1022 00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,140 ANDREW GRANT: So what might be a good sort of first project? 1023 00:42:23,140 --> 00:42:26,670 Like a conversation or a one-page short story 1024 00:42:26,670 --> 00:42:30,880 that ends up being branching, a lot more writing than that? 1025 00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:37,280 HEATHER ALBANO: So a typical Choice of Game 1026 00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:40,470 is divided into 10-ish chapters which, 1027 00:42:40,470 --> 00:42:45,070 at least within the senior staff we refer to as vignettes. 1028 00:42:45,070 --> 00:42:48,170 I don't know if that terminology got to the website or not, 1029 00:42:48,170 --> 00:42:49,370 but we call them vignettes. 1030 00:42:49,370 --> 00:42:52,022 So writing a vignette, which has-- I 1031 00:42:52,022 --> 00:42:53,980 forgot how many words they're supposed to have. 1032 00:42:53,980 --> 00:42:56,690 And, you know, let's say four or five choices 1033 00:42:56,690 --> 00:43:04,170 is a good way to get a handle on how it all works on the rhythm, 1034 00:43:04,170 --> 00:43:05,160 on the technicalities. 1035 00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:06,900 And would go back to what I said earlier, 1036 00:43:06,900 --> 00:43:09,830 which is when I joined the company I picked 1037 00:43:09,830 --> 00:43:15,200 a vignette from the 10 that the partners had already laid out. 1038 00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,120 They asked me which one I wanted, 1039 00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:21,510 and I picked the courtship scene in no small part 1040 00:43:21,510 --> 00:43:24,140 because there was a similar one in the game that had shipped, 1041 00:43:24,140 --> 00:43:26,320 and I had something I could work from. 1042 00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:27,920 So what are working towards? 1043 00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:29,350 It should be about this long. 1044 00:43:29,350 --> 00:43:29,600 ANDREW GRANT: Got it. 1045 00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,150 HEATHER ALBANO: It should have about this many choices. 1046 00:43:32,150 --> 00:43:34,200 It should have about this pacing. 1047 00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:35,240 OK. 1048 00:43:35,240 --> 00:43:35,740 All right. 1049 00:43:35,740 --> 00:43:36,760 So I can copy that. 1050 00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:37,600 Got it, got It. 1051 00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:38,100 All right. 1052 00:43:38,100 --> 00:43:39,910 Now I'll do something totally different. 1053 00:43:39,910 --> 00:43:41,022 Now I can do a whole game. 1054 00:43:41,022 --> 00:43:41,980 You know, you get the-- 1055 00:43:41,980 --> 00:43:42,835 ANDREW GRANT: So you started kind 1056 00:43:42,835 --> 00:43:43,755 of-- that's actually really interesting 1057 00:43:43,755 --> 00:43:46,046 because a lot of people doing computer game development 1058 00:43:46,046 --> 00:43:48,200 start as mod-ers, you know modify an existing 1059 00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:50,300 game or an existing level, and you almost 1060 00:43:50,300 --> 00:43:53,091 start with, you know, you mod the existing writing, 1061 00:43:53,091 --> 00:43:54,590 but of course replace all the words. 1062 00:43:57,250 --> 00:44:00,214 HEATHER ALBANO: Hey, you know, a lot of traditional fiction 1063 00:44:00,214 --> 00:44:01,880 writers start writing fan-fic, you know? 1064 00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:03,570 I mean, it's a thing, right? 1065 00:44:03,570 --> 00:44:07,652 It means that you have a-- I'm sorry, we're off in the weeds 1066 00:44:07,652 --> 00:44:09,150 now-- but fan-fic in particularly 1067 00:44:09,150 --> 00:44:11,610 means that the world-building is done, 1068 00:44:11,610 --> 00:44:13,550 the character voices are set. 1069 00:44:13,550 --> 00:44:14,300 What you need to-- 1070 00:44:14,300 --> 00:44:15,010 LAURA BALDWIN: You aim for a voice, 1071 00:44:15,010 --> 00:44:15,930 as opposed to make one up. 1072 00:44:15,930 --> 00:44:16,930 HEATHER ALBANO: Exactly. 1073 00:44:16,930 --> 00:44:19,550 And similarly, the constraint of the world 1074 00:44:19,550 --> 00:44:22,100 are known, rather than things you have to impose, right? 1075 00:44:22,100 --> 00:44:23,480 So what you have to figure out is 1076 00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:25,771 a plot that works with this world and these characters, 1077 00:44:25,771 --> 00:44:28,940 and I'd say it's just a plot. 1078 00:44:28,940 --> 00:44:30,735 And then once you've got that down you 1079 00:44:30,735 --> 00:44:33,325 can grow into sort of the other things. 1080 00:44:33,325 --> 00:44:35,700 ANDREW GRANT: That's a good little way to do it, I think. 1081 00:44:35,700 --> 00:44:37,830 STUDENT: So, something that Laura mentioned earlier 1082 00:44:37,830 --> 00:44:40,718 was the whole standing around and listening to MPCs 1083 00:44:40,718 --> 00:44:42,690 talk for, you know, minutes. 1084 00:44:42,690 --> 00:44:46,480 And it seems to me that in the Shock Games in particular, 1085 00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:48,495 the answer to that would be audio logs. 1086 00:44:48,495 --> 00:44:49,740 LAURA BALDWIN: Yes. 1087 00:44:49,740 --> 00:44:52,710 STUDENT: A lot more pervasive than just a shock series. 1088 00:44:52,710 --> 00:44:56,990 And I'm wondering has that started 1089 00:44:56,990 --> 00:44:59,550 to become too much of a crutch to sort of get around 1090 00:44:59,550 --> 00:45:02,480 this whole, we want to do all this exposition 1091 00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:05,110 but we don't want to tie people down to a location, 1092 00:45:05,110 --> 00:45:10,995 or do you find that there is a very specific use 1093 00:45:10,995 --> 00:45:14,320 for that kind of [INAUDIBLE]? 1094 00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:18,570 LAURA BALDWIN: So I think that Shock, in particular, it's 1095 00:45:18,570 --> 00:45:22,190 trying to be sort of a role playing game 1096 00:45:22,190 --> 00:45:24,579 which at its hallmark has dialogue trees and stuff, 1097 00:45:24,579 --> 00:45:25,870 except there's no people there. 1098 00:45:25,870 --> 00:45:28,020 And so it's replacing dialogue trees 1099 00:45:28,020 --> 00:45:29,650 with little monologue trees. 1100 00:45:32,260 --> 00:45:36,860 And so it's both exposition and also atmosphere setting. 1101 00:45:36,860 --> 00:45:42,300 So I think that actually-- I thought that worked very well. 1102 00:45:42,300 --> 00:45:46,740 Shock 2 had a lot of sort of cutscene-- 1103 00:45:46,740 --> 00:45:50,471 in engine cutscenes where you would be going down a corner 1104 00:45:50,471 --> 00:45:51,970 and there would be a window and then 1105 00:45:51,970 --> 00:45:52,990 there would be something that happens 1106 00:45:52,990 --> 00:45:54,323 on the other side of the window. 1107 00:45:54,323 --> 00:45:58,110 And that felt a little bit more like the Thief listening 1108 00:45:58,110 --> 00:46:00,890 to people talk, because it would be this scripted thing 1109 00:46:00,890 --> 00:46:04,010 to happen that you would have to watch, or not watch, 1110 00:46:04,010 --> 00:46:07,590 and it would take place whether or not 1111 00:46:07,590 --> 00:46:10,320 you were paying attention to it. 1112 00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:13,070 And then it always had to be built so that you couldn't 1113 00:46:13,070 --> 00:46:15,012 interact with it because you didn't want 1114 00:46:15,012 --> 00:46:16,970 it to be the case that you saved the person who 1115 00:46:16,970 --> 00:46:19,360 was being killed, or whatever. 1116 00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,220 But yeah, the audio logs felt like, I thought, 1117 00:46:22,220 --> 00:46:27,320 were a nicely atmospheric way to do text stumps. 1118 00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:30,570 ANDREW GRANT: Yeah, the question was, is it overused now? 1119 00:46:30,570 --> 00:46:33,970 And I don't know-- I imagine, just like any trick 1120 00:46:33,970 --> 00:46:36,300 you use in a game, if everyone does it, 1121 00:46:36,300 --> 00:46:38,240 yeah, it'll be overused. 1122 00:46:38,240 --> 00:46:41,530 But in some games it's the right tool. 1123 00:46:41,530 --> 00:46:44,812 In some games it's not. 1124 00:46:44,812 --> 00:46:46,270 STUDENT: Just following up on that, 1125 00:46:46,270 --> 00:46:51,640 it seems to be a very similar function to, say, written 1126 00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:55,280 books that you find around in a game like Skyrim or something. 1127 00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:59,860 It's such a global thing [INAUDIBLE] building it. 1128 00:46:59,860 --> 00:47:04,050 But because you hear it as opposed to read it, 1129 00:47:04,050 --> 00:47:07,314 it's something that you can do while doing other things, 1130 00:47:07,314 --> 00:47:08,736 you know? 1131 00:47:08,736 --> 00:47:12,054 You can go ahead and move the garbage cans while you're 1132 00:47:12,054 --> 00:47:13,476 receiving all this information. 1133 00:47:13,476 --> 00:47:20,215 And I'm wondering, if that diminishes its value, 1134 00:47:20,215 --> 00:47:22,640 because you don't really have to pay attention to it 1135 00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:24,888 and you can just kind of like be the pack rat 1136 00:47:24,888 --> 00:47:26,762 and collect all the audio logs without really 1137 00:47:26,762 --> 00:47:27,975 caring about any of that. 1138 00:47:27,975 --> 00:47:32,320 Or is it more prevalent because there's 1139 00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:33,570 no reason to avoid them? 1140 00:47:33,570 --> 00:47:36,847 It doesn't stop you from getting around. 1141 00:47:36,847 --> 00:47:37,680 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 1142 00:47:37,680 --> 00:47:42,200 I mean, I think that I would listen to all the audio logs, 1143 00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:48,360 but-- what is the-- there are some games that 1144 00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:50,240 have had too many books. 1145 00:47:50,240 --> 00:47:54,220 I could not possibly read all the books, and so I didn't. 1146 00:47:54,220 --> 00:47:56,840 So I think it's almost more setting 1147 00:47:56,840 --> 00:48:01,820 the right number for any particular player's enjoyment. 1148 00:48:01,820 --> 00:48:05,610 And I have no idea how to pick what the right number is. 1149 00:48:05,610 --> 00:48:09,360 I mean, probably somebody read all the books in Morrowind. 1150 00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:10,010 I did not. 1151 00:48:12,159 --> 00:48:14,200 ANDREW GRANT: It's player-specifc too, I imagine. 1152 00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:15,180 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 1153 00:48:15,180 --> 00:48:16,294 ANDREW GRANT: Some players will read none of them, 1154 00:48:16,294 --> 00:48:16,970 some players will read all of them. 1155 00:48:16,970 --> 00:48:17,803 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 1156 00:48:17,803 --> 00:48:20,590 But the question of-- I don't know 1157 00:48:20,590 --> 00:48:23,220 if you even need, want to try to say, 1158 00:48:23,220 --> 00:48:25,030 well, we don't want to let the player not 1159 00:48:25,030 --> 00:48:26,302 care about the things. 1160 00:48:26,302 --> 00:48:28,010 I mean, if the players don't want to care 1161 00:48:28,010 --> 00:48:30,700 that's their choice, I guess. 1162 00:48:34,366 --> 00:48:36,490 I mean, that's a totally different thing, you know? 1163 00:48:36,490 --> 00:48:38,281 What if people are playing your game wrong? 1164 00:48:41,820 --> 00:48:42,390 You know? 1165 00:48:42,390 --> 00:48:43,912 HEATHER ALBANO: Nothing you can do about that once 1166 00:48:43,912 --> 00:48:44,430 it's out there, right? 1167 00:48:44,430 --> 00:48:45,070 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 1168 00:48:45,070 --> 00:48:46,611 You know, so there's the question of, 1169 00:48:46,611 --> 00:48:49,220 should you be able to use the mods to let you just 1170 00:48:49,220 --> 00:48:50,280 kill anything? 1171 00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:52,640 Is that playing it wrong? 1172 00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:56,220 Or does everyone get to pick how they want to play it? 1173 00:48:56,220 --> 00:48:59,384 Is using cheat codes evil or, you know, letting-- 1174 00:48:59,384 --> 00:49:01,050 ANDREW GRANT: Helping you enjoy it more? 1175 00:49:01,050 --> 00:49:03,930 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 1176 00:49:03,930 --> 00:49:06,650 STUDENT: Is there an analog of concept art in writing? 1177 00:49:06,650 --> 00:49:10,430 Like, for example you have a paragraph 1178 00:49:10,430 --> 00:49:13,458 that explains what a character is that's not in the game? 1179 00:49:13,458 --> 00:49:14,291 HEATHER ALBANO: Yes. 1180 00:49:14,291 --> 00:49:15,704 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 1181 00:49:15,704 --> 00:49:19,010 STUDENT: How often are you responsible for that as well? 1182 00:49:19,010 --> 00:49:21,490 LAURA BALDWIN: So I guess that's why we design documents. 1183 00:49:21,490 --> 00:49:24,090 And those are traditionally not as well kept 1184 00:49:24,090 --> 00:49:25,137 up as they should be. 1185 00:49:25,137 --> 00:49:26,970 So they often describe the state of the game 1186 00:49:26,970 --> 00:49:28,094 as it was three months ago. 1187 00:49:30,947 --> 00:49:32,030 ANDREW GRANT: [INAUDIBLE]. 1188 00:49:35,987 --> 00:49:37,820 LAURA BALDWIN: Those tend to be written more 1189 00:49:37,820 --> 00:49:41,070 by the higher-level people than I ever was. 1190 00:49:41,070 --> 00:49:43,450 So there would be the overall design document. 1191 00:49:43,450 --> 00:49:46,450 Here is what we want the game to be like. 1192 00:49:46,450 --> 00:49:49,840 Here's what we want this level to be like. 1193 00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:56,220 But that is a good way of being sort of a tone reference 1194 00:49:56,220 --> 00:49:59,070 or a gameplay-- here are the things we were aiming for, 1195 00:49:59,070 --> 00:50:01,840 and you can always go back and look at that. 1196 00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:04,220 HEATHER ALBANO: Specifically character. 1197 00:50:04,220 --> 00:50:06,912 You said concept art, so were you thinking characters 1198 00:50:06,912 --> 00:50:08,120 or were you thinking overall? 1199 00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:09,995 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] talked about concept art 1200 00:50:09,995 --> 00:50:13,530 being partly to explain to the artists what they're 1201 00:50:13,530 --> 00:50:15,764 going to do, partly just to inspire the team, 1202 00:50:15,764 --> 00:50:17,430 which I thought was an interesting idea. 1203 00:50:17,430 --> 00:50:18,346 HEATHER ALBANO: Right. 1204 00:50:18,346 --> 00:50:19,030 OK. 1205 00:50:19,030 --> 00:50:20,740 I see that. 1206 00:50:20,740 --> 00:50:24,090 So the games I've worked on-- all the games I've worked on 1207 00:50:24,090 --> 00:50:26,140 actually-- except for the RPG where 1208 00:50:26,140 --> 00:50:28,640 I was in the world-building part of it-- 1209 00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:32,220 have had character bibles separate from other design 1210 00:50:32,220 --> 00:50:32,740 documents. 1211 00:50:32,740 --> 00:50:36,470 So there's the design documents that say Choice of Broadsides 1212 00:50:36,470 --> 00:50:39,820 will have 10 vignettes and this is the one where you capture 1213 00:50:39,820 --> 00:50:42,826 a prize ship, and here are the five main choices, 1214 00:50:42,826 --> 00:50:44,200 and here's the one where you have 1215 00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:48,010 the evil lieutenant over you and here are the five main choices. 1216 00:50:48,010 --> 00:50:52,070 And so there was that, and those do fall out of date 1217 00:50:52,070 --> 00:50:54,140 very quickly because once you're in the code, 1218 00:50:54,140 --> 00:50:56,510 you realize you want to do different things. 1219 00:50:56,510 --> 00:50:59,555 LAURA BALDWIN: And nobody likes documentation. 1220 00:50:59,555 --> 00:51:00,680 HEATHER ALBANO: Absolutely. 1221 00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:01,300 Absolutely. 1222 00:51:01,300 --> 00:51:02,550 LAURA BALDWIN: I'm in IT now. 1223 00:51:02,550 --> 00:51:05,390 It's still true. 1224 00:51:05,390 --> 00:51:06,890 HEATHER ALBANO: The character bibles 1225 00:51:06,890 --> 00:51:11,410 though I have found to be more inspiring, right? 1226 00:51:11,410 --> 00:51:14,640 And so you sit down and you say that the-- you can do it 1227 00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:15,680 in a few lines, right? 1228 00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:17,640 That the backstory of this character 1229 00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:19,720 is this and the things they care about are this. 1230 00:51:19,720 --> 00:51:25,140 And I recently learned a technique-- 1231 00:51:25,140 --> 00:51:30,050 Richard Dansky from UberSoft is a friend of a friend, 1232 00:51:30,050 --> 00:51:32,820 and boy, is he a very, very, very skilled game writer. 1233 00:51:32,820 --> 00:51:39,780 And a technique he referred to was-- oh dear, what was it? 1234 00:51:39,780 --> 00:51:42,390 It was interview questions, right? 1235 00:51:42,390 --> 00:51:45,740 But the point is, you answer them 1236 00:51:45,740 --> 00:51:47,470 in the voice of the character, not 1237 00:51:47,470 --> 00:51:50,415 just what the character would answer-- their favorite-- 1238 00:51:50,415 --> 00:51:53,220 their best friend is Susan. 1239 00:51:53,220 --> 00:51:59,468 But there's a difference between a character who says, "oh, you 1240 00:51:59,468 --> 00:52:02,140 know, Bob, he's always got my back," 1241 00:52:02,140 --> 00:52:05,510 and, "I first met Susan when we were in kindergarten 1242 00:52:05,510 --> 00:52:07,990 and we were friends all through elementary school, 1243 00:52:07,990 --> 00:52:10,450 except for that time when we had a fight in sixth grade 1244 00:52:10,450 --> 00:52:12,360 over the"-- and, like, you know something 1245 00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:17,240 about both of the speakers just from the way they answer. 1246 00:52:17,240 --> 00:52:19,371 LAURA BALDWIN: Most design documents 1247 00:52:19,371 --> 00:52:20,620 are not necessarily inspiring. 1248 00:52:20,620 --> 00:52:23,950 But something that is possibly more so 1249 00:52:23,950 --> 00:52:25,840 is the One Minute of Gameplay. 1250 00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:27,610 And it's sort of like the little narration 1251 00:52:27,610 --> 00:52:30,660 of what you're doing as some random moment in the game, 1252 00:52:30,660 --> 00:52:32,660 and why is it fun? 1253 00:52:32,660 --> 00:52:34,910 Because why is it fun is kind of the thing 1254 00:52:34,910 --> 00:52:36,820 that you need to keep focusing everyone on. 1255 00:52:36,820 --> 00:52:38,890 You know, the point of the game is not 1256 00:52:38,890 --> 00:52:42,180 to show you the cool art, or to make you listen 1257 00:52:42,180 --> 00:52:44,550 to my really cool dialogue. 1258 00:52:44,550 --> 00:52:46,090 It's to be fun. 1259 00:52:46,090 --> 00:52:50,390 And I think that if you can write a One Minute of Gameplay 1260 00:52:50,390 --> 00:52:53,950 which is somewhat inspiring for your designers and programmers, 1261 00:52:53,950 --> 00:52:55,720 then that's really good. 1262 00:52:58,059 --> 00:52:59,059 ANDREW GRANT: Questions? 1263 00:53:01,921 --> 00:53:04,320 Then I think I will follow up with one last thing 1264 00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:07,220 and we may have already used up an answer here, 1265 00:53:07,220 --> 00:53:09,760 but we'll all try it. 1266 00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:11,760 What can you think of that you didn't 1267 00:53:11,760 --> 00:53:14,740 know when you started trying to write for games 1268 00:53:14,740 --> 00:53:17,510 that kind of surprised you, and now you would think 1269 00:53:17,510 --> 00:53:19,510 to yourself, yeah, I didn't know that, I did not 1270 00:53:19,510 --> 00:53:20,841 expect that to be that way? 1271 00:53:24,849 --> 00:53:26,390 LAURA BALDWIN: I think the screenplay 1272 00:53:26,390 --> 00:53:27,990 thing was the weirdest. 1273 00:53:27,990 --> 00:53:34,090 Just-- a screenplay has these fonts and these margins and you 1274 00:53:34,090 --> 00:53:34,927 can't go over the-- 1275 00:53:34,927 --> 00:53:36,010 ANDREW GRANT: [INAUDIBLE]. 1276 00:53:36,010 --> 00:53:37,240 LAURA BALDWIN: Yeah. 1277 00:53:37,240 --> 00:53:41,117 I gather that you can submit academic abstracts 1278 00:53:41,117 --> 00:53:42,950 and it has the same sort of thing, you know, 1279 00:53:42,950 --> 00:53:45,240 no more than 800 characters or whatever. 1280 00:53:45,240 --> 00:53:47,380 But I think that was the strangest. 1281 00:53:47,380 --> 00:53:51,220 Like, I just had-- that was a very big surprise. 1282 00:53:51,220 --> 00:53:54,429 Most writing, I think, feels more natural. 1283 00:53:54,429 --> 00:53:55,220 ANDREW GRANT: Sure. 1284 00:53:55,220 --> 00:53:57,570 HEATHER ALBANO: Screenplays are pretty specific, yeah. 1285 00:54:03,240 --> 00:54:05,010 Personally speaking, my biggest surprises 1286 00:54:05,010 --> 00:54:07,680 have all been the positive ones. 1287 00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:08,930 ANDREW GRANT: All right. 1288 00:54:08,930 --> 00:54:10,380 HEATHER ALBANO: I thought I wanted to write novels-- 1289 00:54:10,380 --> 00:54:12,550 and I still think I probably want to write novels-- 1290 00:54:12,550 --> 00:54:17,590 but I didn't expect this to be as artistically satisfying 1291 00:54:17,590 --> 00:54:19,360 as it has turned out to be. 1292 00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:22,620 Now, granted, I'm in a pretty narrow writing field. 1293 00:54:22,620 --> 00:54:24,430 What I do is not typical. 1294 00:54:24,430 --> 00:54:26,930 What Laura's done is more typical of writing 1295 00:54:26,930 --> 00:54:30,110 for the games industry. 1296 00:54:30,110 --> 00:54:33,320 Something that I think surprises a lot 1297 00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:37,160 of people who have a background in traditional fiction and then 1298 00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:43,050 transition into writing games-- because I've seen this a lot-- 1299 00:54:43,050 --> 00:54:45,176 back in the LARP days we used to call it the oops 1300 00:54:45,176 --> 00:54:49,050 I forgot to add the interactive part where you have people 1301 00:54:49,050 --> 00:54:53,680 who are very, very, very skilled at plots and at character arcs 1302 00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:58,950 and at story arcs and are not accustomed to having 1303 00:54:58,950 --> 00:55:02,620 to leave room for the player to interact with the world. 1304 00:55:02,620 --> 00:55:05,070 And this is, I think, a problem you get specifically 1305 00:55:05,070 --> 00:55:06,780 when you have somebody transitioning 1306 00:55:06,780 --> 00:55:10,070 from non-interactive fiction to interactive fiction. 1307 00:55:10,070 --> 00:55:14,490 I think I was fortunate that I made those mistakes very 1308 00:55:14,490 --> 00:55:18,660 early, when I was running LARPs when I was in college, 1309 00:55:18,660 --> 00:55:21,930 and learned those lessons fast. 1310 00:55:21,930 --> 00:55:23,510 ANDREW GRANT: Right. 1311 00:55:23,510 --> 00:55:27,280 HEATHER ALBANO: It's sort of-- at least at that time 1312 00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:30,840 doing Quest at Wesleyan and it was 1313 00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:33,700 one of the typical first-time Jam mistakes, 1314 00:55:33,700 --> 00:55:36,860 was putting too much on their staff members, 1315 00:55:36,860 --> 00:55:38,390 their non-player characters and not 1316 00:55:38,390 --> 00:55:40,510 giving enough room for the players to, you know, 1317 00:55:40,510 --> 00:55:45,224 play the game and affect the world and impact what happens. 1318 00:55:45,224 --> 00:55:46,890 You can't impact what happens because we 1319 00:55:46,890 --> 00:55:48,140 have this scene for the end. 1320 00:55:48,140 --> 00:55:49,570 No. 1321 00:55:49,570 --> 00:55:51,556 It's not a play. 1322 00:55:51,556 --> 00:55:52,680 ANDREW GRANT: Right, right. 1323 00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:53,760 LAURA BALDWIN: I have another answer. 1324 00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:54,926 ANDREW GRANT: OK, excellent. 1325 00:55:54,926 --> 00:55:57,430 It is awesome how cool your writing sounds 1326 00:55:57,430 --> 00:56:00,930 when it is spoken by an actual professional voice actor, 1327 00:56:00,930 --> 00:56:02,934 and I did not expect that. 1328 00:56:02,934 --> 00:56:04,970 ANDREW GRANT: As opposed to programmers? 1329 00:56:04,970 --> 00:56:08,530 LAURA BALDWIN: Or by me, like when I say it in my head. 1330 00:56:08,530 --> 00:56:11,030 And then, you know, there was a little ritual 1331 00:56:11,030 --> 00:56:14,720 at the end of Thief where the Dark God is doing this ritual 1332 00:56:14,720 --> 00:56:16,660 and I was like, well, he's doing this thing, 1333 00:56:16,660 --> 00:56:17,860 he has to say something. 1334 00:56:17,860 --> 00:56:20,010 You always have to have a poem for rituals. 1335 00:56:20,010 --> 00:56:21,820 So I wrote him a poem to be saying. 1336 00:56:21,820 --> 00:56:23,800 And then the actor for Constantine 1337 00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:31,050 came in and spoke it in his Dark God voice, and it was awesome. 1338 00:56:31,050 --> 00:56:35,300 And then even better was when it was translated into French 1339 00:56:35,300 --> 00:56:39,030 and spoken by the French Dark God, and it still rhymed 1340 00:56:39,030 --> 00:56:42,990 and I was like, they translated my doggerel into the doggerel 1341 00:56:42,990 --> 00:56:43,610 in French! 1342 00:56:43,610 --> 00:56:46,660 Oh my god! 1343 00:56:46,660 --> 00:56:48,200 That was neat. 1344 00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:49,200 ANDREW GRANT: All right. 1345 00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:52,079 Well, thank you both very much for coming to share 1346 00:56:52,079 --> 00:56:53,120 your experiences with us. 1347 00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:54,035 HEATHER ALBANO: You're very welcome. 1348 00:56:54,035 --> 00:56:55,446 Thank you for having me. 1349 00:56:55,446 --> 00:56:56,404 LAURA BALDWIN: Welcome. 1350 00:56:56,404 --> 00:56:58,967 [APPLAUSE] 1351 00:56:58,967 --> 00:57:01,050 ANDREW GRANT: I'll stand here for your microphone. 1352 00:57:01,050 --> 00:57:02,133 PROFESSOR: Yep, thank you. 1353 00:57:02,133 --> 00:57:03,300 So, it's 2:08. 1354 00:57:03,300 --> 00:57:05,989 We're going to give you a few more minutes to take a break. 1355 00:57:05,989 --> 00:57:07,030 They're going to be here. 1356 00:57:07,030 --> 00:57:10,030 How much time do y'all have? 1357 00:57:10,030 --> 00:57:11,485 Do you have any time after? 1358 00:57:11,485 --> 00:57:11,970 LAURA BALDWIN: Sure. 1359 00:57:11,970 --> 00:57:12,220 HEATHER ALBANO: Yeah. 1360 00:57:12,220 --> 00:57:14,180 PROFESSOR: So, if you'd like them to playtest your game, 1361 00:57:14,180 --> 00:57:16,700 just come on down, grab them, bring them to your game. 1362 00:57:16,700 --> 00:57:18,575 If you'd like to ask me questions personally, 1363 00:57:18,575 --> 00:57:19,890 please do just come on down. 1364 00:57:19,890 --> 00:57:23,590 The rest of the time is for you. 1365 00:57:23,590 --> 00:57:27,840 [STUDENTS CHATTERING]