Mildly Worried

I'm mildly worried about my learning goals. At the beginning with our nomination forms I wrote down MANY things. This is because I didn't know what role I would be playing yet at the time.

Here's what I wrote:

"I'm aware of my flaws and what I can't do. As you can see I tend to move into a catatonic state when doing presentations where I have to talk and find it hard to talk in front of a lot of people. If this group remains the same, I believe a bit of their public speaking skills may rub off on me and I can learn through observation.

I'm a horrible programmer, to be honest. If I can get in on this project I think I can gain a better understanding on how to program and how it works. At some point I think I may have to program as well since a lot of roles will cross over and roles will change accordingly. So it would push me to learn and make me more confident in this area.

I have no idea what I want to do after graduating. That's why I'm going after things that I'm interested in. Other skills I'd like to have are 3D modelling and animation. I can very well pursue these interests within the group. I can learn and make things for the group as I go along.

One thing I'm good at is writing stories. I want to further develop this skill and really put it to use because I haven't had much of an opportunity to do that. This also applies with my art."

I've definitely improved my public speaking skills. So yes, I have achieved that particular learning goal. I've achieved my writing goal and art goal. Although the bit of art that I did for the project isn't likely to be used anywhere.

The goals that I'm really worried about are the programming, 3D modelling and animation ones. The main reason I didn't get to do any of those is because they're linked to specific roles. These roles were taken up by other members of the group and I took the role of writer. They have nothing to do with the role of the writer. Also, each individual role didn't overlap at all like I thought it would. So it was unnecessary for me to program, model, or animate. It makes more sense for the 3D modeller to animate the moving models since they can do it straight away in Maya. It doesn't make much sense to pass it on to another separate animator.

You could argue that I HAVE learned things about programming, 3D modelling and animation through observation. Is it learning if I haven't touched it directly though? For example, I've learned what each brush does in zBrush and how to pull at that sphere to make something else. For example, a head. I only know that from watching Tim though. I've learned that in Maya it's easier to make a model with orthographic references. I've also learned that you don't want triangles in your mesh, because you could get slicing happening in your model. This I learned by listening to Nick. I've learned that in Unity3D you want to export your models as .obj or .fbx in Maya for it to work properly. I've learned a whole bunch of little things from listening and watching my team members. However, I haven't applied what I learned. I haven't made anything to do with those skills yet. So I'm not sure if it counts as learning or having achieved a learning goal.

Finished - Game writing vs. Written story

Did a little bit of research on writing specifically for games today. I was wondering if writing for a game is really different from writing a regular written story on paper. I was also wondering if it was as troublesome as it was for me.
From my current experience there are many differences. It's a little more like writing a script for a movie mashed into a regular written story. You've got mostly dialogue and depending on the style you're telling the story in, you'll have little descriptive snippets. I also found it hard to write the story to fit in with what everyone else wanted.

There's actually not many articles on game writing or game writers. This is because, according to Angel McCoy (2011), the role of game writer in the industry is very recent. Previously, the dialogue and story is a role that's incorporated into the role of the game designer. The game designer is like the director of a film. The game designer designs what the artwork is going to look like, the game levels, maps-- everything. Only designing though, the role of actually making it all is a job for the game developers, artists, and others. This recently includes the game writer. McCoy (2011), who is a game writer for Guild Wars 2 states that "industry leaders begin to realize what trained writers can do for a game."

This is interesting because McCoy does make a really interesting point. She says that, yes, everyone can write. However, not everyone can write WELL. Now that is the point of difference and the reason for the emergence of the game writer.

A game writer develops the narrative and writes any text that appears in the game. This includes dialogue, descriptions, control interface, and so on (Johansen, 2000). The game writer's influence on the narrative depends on how early the writer is taken on board. If they're taken early on they'll have a lot of influence to craft the story. Later in production though, they'll need to write something that fits with everything else. So the game writer would have to familiarise themselves with all other elements (Anonymous, 2012). Working closely specifically with the game designer is an absolute must in both cases.

Right now, my current experience in writing this way is pretty similar. It does get frustrating when half the things you write doesn't actually get used. Even more so when you're told that what you're writing is a mere frame rather than the actual thing. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest. I'm cool with edits, because that's what happens in the industry. What you write goes through several edits and it might not be the same as the stuff you wrote. Improvisation though? I don't agree with that. Why bother writing at all if it's going to be improvised in the first place? I've written everything so my part is done. I'm happy about that and I'm pleased with my final edit. But to be told that it's only going to be used as a frame for improvised dialogue? I don't know whether I've just wasted my time. I'm not sure whether my role here is even necessary if that is the case. If it's going to end up completely different to what I actually wrote, then I would say that my role is obsolete. My role shouldn't exist if the majority of it is going to be improvised anyway. This I'm not happy about. I've voiced my opinion on this. My part is done. I'll just need to wait and see how it turns out.



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References:

Anonymous. (2012). What Does a Game Writer Do? Retrieved September 20, 2012, fromhttp://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-a-game-writer-do.htm

Johansen, T. (2000). What Kind of Writer Do You Want to Be? Retrieved September 20, 2012, from http://www.writing-world.com/basics/types.shtml

McCoy, A.L. (2011). What's Game Writing Like? Retrieved September 20, 2012, from http://www.angelmccoy.com/blog/?p=1789

Written

Managed to do all the writing for the first half of the game. So this is script for the narrator during the intro and in the area where narration is the main medium of telling a story in-game.  

It was much easier writing it today because everything else got sorted yesterday and I'm now clear with what I'm actually writing about. Of course, this is a draft, and it needs to be edited several times over to get the best version. At the moment I think the writing is hollow, in that it doesn't have a distinct personality to it. The descriptions aren't very fresh and they sound and feel too awkward. I want to change it to sound more natural. Something that rolls off your tongue. I think maybe it has something to do with the rhythm of the words while you read it. For example, some of my sentences are way too long, "On a cold, cold night, tucked away in his cozy bed, his parents gently kissed him on the cheek." It doesn't feel very natural either. I think in the intro it might be better to include a snippet to show you what the relationship between the parents and the child is like. At the moment the parents seem too impersonal and separate from the boy.

I've re-read it again just now, the imagery is a bit choppy at times. The sentence, "His mother sang him a little song, and the moon shone ever so brightly." is an example of this. You've got this image of his mother singing and then the image chops to the moon. I think I need to re-write this so that there's a smoother transition.

Some imagery also doesn't fit the mood. In one part where the boy has fallen into the winter world he's seeing some mildly creepy things. If you were the boy you wouldn't stop to admire the beauty of the falling snow. You wouldn't perceive the snow as dancing "through the crisp, cold night."

When you write, you never get the whole thing right the first time. I've talked to many writers and a creative writing teacher I've met says that the secret to writing a good story is to just write it all out. It wouldn't be amazing on the first go but to turn it into a story you're proud of, that comes in the process of re-writing what you've got over and over again. You work out a lot of the things you don't want, add a bit of detail, build up some atmosphere and personality, and so on. I'm in this process at the moment. Some choices of words I need to change, a bit of rewording, changing the feeling of the words to match the scene.

Back from Holidays

Had a group discussion about how we're going to pull this game through. We've all gone off and done our own part, but nothing we're doing feels like it's fitting together as a whole. So we've got all these separate parts that don't quite fit together cohesively.

I feel like that especially with writing. I feel apprehensive about writing anything for this game because I know that whatever I write won't be used. AT ALL. Because every time I do write something there's always this massive debate about this bit and that bit. Oh what's happening over here? Take this out, take that out. This should be like this, this should be happening over here. If it's going to be like that why write anything at all? Wouldn't it be wasting my time if everything I do is for nothing? It doesn't make sense to write anything if it's not going to be used in the first place.

I've told my group this, so today we planned out what's happening at each point so there's no stupid debate about what's happening where.

So now we've got that out of the way we're now far clearer with what we're doing and how everything fits than ever before.

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