Rob Morgan & Emily Short
Explicit content warning
04/18/16 • 106 min
NPCs! VR! AR! Rob (game writer, narrative designer, voice director, and writer on Wonderbook, Fallen London, Sunless Sea, and The Assembly) and Emily (game designer specializing in interactive narrative, dialogue, and social interaction modeling, and writer of Galatea, First Draft of the Revolution, Alabaster, Counterfeit Monkey, and more) are here to talk about the importance of streamlining the implementation of your script, looting silos of information and the problem of them not being widely accessible, the value of knowing programming, the storytelling possibilities of VR and who you “are,” disempowered experiences in VR, interactive theater’s influence on games, different solutions for offering branching narratives to players, writing for augmented reality, and the lack of games about maintaining relationships.
Our Guests on the Internet
Stuff We Talked About
Beyond Branching: Quality-Based, Salience-Based, and Waypoint Narrative Structures by Emily Short
Love Stories for High-XP Characters by Emily Short
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
NPCs! VR! AR! Rob (game writer, narrative designer, voice director, and writer on Wonderbook, Fallen London, Sunless Sea, and The Assembly) and Emily (game designer specializing in interactive narrative, dialogue, and social interaction modeling, and writer of Galatea, First Draft of the Revolution, Alabaster, Counterfeit Monkey, and more) are here to talk about the importance of streamlining the implementation of your script, looting silos of information and the problem of them not being widely accessible, the value of knowing programming, the storytelling possibilities of VR and who you “are,” disempowered experiences in VR, interactive theater’s influence on games, different solutions for offering branching narratives to players, writing for augmented reality, and the lack of games about maintaining relationships.
Our Guests on the Internet
Stuff We Talked About
Beyond Branching: Quality-Based, Salience-Based, and Waypoint Narrative Structures by Emily Short
Love Stories for High-XP Characters by Emily Short
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Previous Episode
Ian Gil & Anna Kipnis
Ian (Design Director at E-Line Media and has worked on Gamestar Mechanic, Gamestar Mechanic Jr, and Never Alone) and Anna (Senior Gameplay Programmer at Double Fine and has worked on such games as Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, Broken Age, and Headlander, and was the lead on Dear Leader during Amnesia Fortnight 2014) join us to discuss falling into the industry, the benefits of an education that doesn't just focus on programming/computer science, the work involved with implementing dialogue, planning for localization, Never Alone's development, cultural expression in games, dialogue systems, why text to speech isn't the future (for now), the costs of voiced dynamic dialogue, authored vs simulationist vs player-centric approaches to story in games, and a couple of other rad topics!
Our Guests on the Internet
Ian's Twitter.
Anna's Twitter.
Stuff We Talked About
Dialogue Systems in Double Fine Games
Molyjam: How Twitter Jokes Can Save Video Games
Dwarf Fortress' Creator on How He's 42% Towards Simulating Existence
Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Viriconium by M. John Harrison
The Yawhg by Emily Carroll & Damian Sommer
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Next Episode
Drew McGee & Greg Kasavin
Drew (Design Analyst on Star Wars: The Old Republic, Writer and Designer on The Banner Saga, and Lead Writer on The Banner Saga 2) and Greg (Creative Director of Supergiant Games and Writer of Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre) call in to talk with us about the importance of being involved with the development process when you're a writer, worldbuilding, the writing process on Banner Saga 1 & 2, subtlety in games, how Supergiant decides on which game they're gonna make, writing as the most disposable of the creative disciplines, the divide between thinking something is good and what ends up shipping, storytelling structures, revising and never being comfortable in knowing how close you are from the finish line, the phrase 'We made the game we wanna play,' dealing with branching narratives, and the storytelling potential in fighting games.
Our Guests on the Internet
Drew's Twitter and Stoic's Twitter.
Greg's Twitter and Supergiant's Twitter.
Stuff We Talked About
Raid on Rise: Narrative Creation on 'Rise of The Tomb Raider'
Greg Kasavin Reads the Introduction of Samurai Showdown 2
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
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