Creativity.

Another short post today, since I've spent most of the day in a hospital hanging out with my sister (who is doing well, by the way). 

While she distracted or unconscious or something, I pulled out a book I haven't picked up in a while. 

Image shamelessly stolen from Amazon.  Clearly.

Yes.  That's right.  Orbiting the Giant Hairball.  Great title.  Its subtitle, "A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace," really does describe a large part of the content of the book.  It's about how to be creative in an environment that isn't always creative.  It's about not releasing yourself in wild abandon to pursue creative things outside of any system, but using the good things of those systems while transcending them.  It's a really good book.

After reading just the first two chapters, I may have to add another point to my list of ways I'm creative.  Read at least two books about creativity a year.  Maybe more.  I dunno.  We can play with the number later.

The moral of the story is that I need to be inspired.  I need to be reminded that I am, in fact, a creative person.  I need to be challenged in a more broad sense. 

Sometimes, when I get into the mundanity of creative output, I forget about the creative part.  When I write, I think about my story structure analysis.  I think about my characters and their goals.  I think about the point of the whole story and why I'm writing it in the first place.  I start relying (rightfully so) on systems and rules that have helped me make a better product in the past. 

But in all of those details, I forget what it is I'm doing.  I am creating something (hopefully) fresh and new and interesting and unlike anything the world has seen before.  I am using my brain and imagination to echo the creative God who gave me both.  It's a huge privilege and tremendously fun while carrying a gravitas that I almost never realize.

The creative act is, I think, a bigger deal than we typically make it out to be.  It is books like Orbiting the Giant Hairball that help me remember that. 


I leave you with chapter 19 of Orbiting the Giant Hairball, in its entirety: "Orville Wright did not have a pilot's license."  Go ponder that for a while.

The Story of Mirror's Edge.

Finally, here's Part 3 of the little series I did on Mirror's Edge. You can find Part 1 - Flow, Part 2 - Combat, and Part 2 - Addendum... in those links.

Today, we talk about the Story of Mirror's Edge. I finally finished the game a day or two ago and have had a little bit of time to think about its story. This may end up a little stream-of-consciousness, but here goes. Also, SPOILERS MAY LIE IN WAIT LIKE CREEPY LITTLE EELS OF KNOWLEDGE-YOU-DON'T-WANT-TO-HAVE.

I think I heard somewhere (maybe it was at GDC?) that the writer of Mirror's Edge was brought on quite late in the process. This isn't altogether uncommon in the game industry. Quite frequently, writers will be brought onto a project that has six months until launch. They are given a bunch of levels and are asked to come up with a story to suit it. So you can easily see why some games are incredibly lacking in the story department.

Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of renowned author Terry Pratchett, was selected to be the writer for Mirror's Edge and, I think, the one responsible for the world design and overall story of the game. I really hand it to her. If someone handed me a bunch of levels for a first person parkour game, I wouldn't know where to start. But she took that and asked the question, "Why would someone be doing this? In what society would this need to happen?" She created this whole dystopian society out of those questions. Runners are needed to make sure information is not seen by anyone but the intended recipient. It's a simple, elegant solution that did not require the designers to create a whole bunch of new assets to fit the story. In fact, it even helps explain why the landscape is so devoid of color. The story helps put the game mechanics into a semblance of logic (which is what game stories should be doing!).

In fact, it was partly because of Pratchett's solution to the problem of being brought on late that I was excited about the story of Mirror's Edge. I thought, "Surely an author who can come up with such elegant solutions to the gameplay/narrative problem would tell a great story."

Well, I've been wrong before.

Before I go on, I want to say that very little of this is probably Pratchett's fault. I can guarantee that the same forces that thought it wise to bring on a writer six months before release prevented Pratchett from doing anything really revolutionary. However...

The first question on my mind when I heard the concept was, "What are they carrying?" What can't the government see? And, since I believe in surprising storytelling, I thought, "What, besides rebellion, would Runners be carrying?" What if there was a government conspiracy even outside the government conspiracy? Etc., etc., etc... So when they decide to go the "someone framed my sister for murder route," I was unpleasantly surprised.

If it were me, I would have put the focus on the Running. What are they carrying? For whom? What does it mean if cops show up and start shooting? I would have propelled the story on the mystery of the packages, not on the interpersonal relationships of the characters. This would accomplish many, many things at once.

First, it would give the players an entire game to understand the world and understand the stakes of being a Runner. If this was only the first of a trilogy, then it makes sense to spend most of the first game in what will be perceived as Act 1.

Second, it skips the cut and paste characterization. The characters would mostly be defined by actions, not by cutscenes and mission requirements. Faith goes to Kate because she gets in over her head with some private security firm that keeps hiring her to carry something that gets her shot. Now we know their relationship before anything terrible happens to either character. We are not told to go rescue our sister on the basis that she's our sister. (I mean, that satisfies the audience's need to understand why the character does it, but we don't see the connection. It's another case of needing to be shown, not told.)

Third, it opens up new gameplay possibilities. In a world where there are these Runners that take important documents around the eyes of the law, wouldn't there be a whole lot more teamwork? More false bags? I would have built the story around a partnership between Celeste and Faith - swapping bags, acting as decoys, and, ultimately, betrayal by the person you trust most. When the betrayal came in this story (both by Celeste and the other Runner guy...), there was no kick. I couldn't care less about these characters. But if I had spent the game working with Celeste, watching her risk her life for me as I do the same for her, I would have felt much differently when she sold out to Project Icarus.

At its core, Mirror's Edge is a kind of vengeance story in the vein of Taken or Shooter. Both of those stories feature very active protagonists who have a particular assortment of skills that make them good at taking revenge. Faith is a RUNNER! She runs away! The act of running - even running toward something - is not the skillset needed to take vengeance. I keep coming back to the idea of Flow in this game. A vengeance story necessitates combat. This game is not about combat (In fact, it does it terribly!). Therefore, it should not have been a vengeance story. Period.

That being said, in the grand scheme of the trilogy, a second game could be about vengeance. Maybe at the end of the first story, she upsets a corporation by revealing their secrets and they frame Faith's sister to show her who's boss. The second game can be about rescuing her, proving her innocence, and rising above petty, personal vengeance into a more aware, society-wide sense of justice. That's what future dystopias are for, right?


Like I said in the beginning, I don't think Pratchett had direct control over a lot of this. I think her premise is powerful, the dialog carried voice and subtext where necessary, and the voice acting was pretty good. However, the choice to have a character driven vengeance story in a first person game with Flash animation cut scenes? Not that great.

The Lost Pilot.

One of my goals for the summer is to keep a journal of sorts of things I watch and play. There is much to be learned from things that have already been made, right? Naturally, spoilers abound below.

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About six years too late, I finally watched the Pilot episode(s) of Lost. It was pretty fantastic. A couple of things I noticed:

• The characters were introduced gently. Usually in pairs. This allowed the audience to cling to remember Jack and Kate or Annoying Brat Girl and Brother. It was a lot easier to form associations among all these characters when they were interdependent.
• There were very few introductions. All of a sudden, characters were referring to each other by name. The most memorable of these was Hurley. All of a sudden, everyone is referring to the Big Guy as Hurley. No time was wasted with worthless "Hi, my name is...".
• Each character is hiding something. The audience may not know what it is yet, but we get the sense that everyone has a secret. Kate hides that she's a convict. The Black Dad is hiding his unfamiliarity with his son. Charlie is hiding his drug addiction. One of my big questions is about Creepy Bald Guy playing backgammon with the kid. He's certainly hiding something...
• The writers are controlling very tightly the flow of information. One of my favorite scenes was the discovery of the pilot in the cockpit. Finally, after 16 hours, there is a character who may actually know something. As a viewer, I was watching and waiting for him to start spewing secrets - to help me and the characters understand what happened to them. The whole scene, I was thinking, "Please don't kill the pilot," knowing full well that he was doomed.
  

Now, as a writer, I perfectly understand what's going on here. Give the characters hope. They expect to find a transceiver. They get a transceiver and a living pilot. But what do the writers do? They not only take away the pilot, but they put the characters into an even worse position - a giant who-knows-what is upon them. As a viewer, I was fully engaged emotionally into this scene, hoping against my instinct that the pilot would live to be a recurring character. Writers are allowed this god-like power. To give and to take away. This is what gives stories emotional pull.

Let's take this home into game writing/design, though. As game designers, we have the power to give and to take away. As a DM, I have the power to put a huge treasure horde at the end of a dungeon. And, to give them more, maybe this horde contains the Staff of Overpowered Players. But, to keep a good story according to traditional rules, I want to take away what I've just given them. So I send in a Giant Who-Knows-What, it paralyzes the players and takes the Staff.

Is this good storytelling? Is this good game design? From the mechanical brief that I just used as an example, certainly not. It's terrible game design. What if the players resist the paralysis? Story ruined. What if they teleport out of the dungeon just in time? Story ruined. Heck, what if they just use the staff? Story ruined, game design unbalanced.

So how do game designers and writers use this push and pull of desire, expectation, and consequence effectively?

In a pen and paper setting, this is a little easier. Maybe the staff turns out to be a fake. Maybe the Giant Who-Knows-What focuses all its attacks on the staff and shatters it. Pen and paper GMs can react to these situations much more nimbly and creatively than a video game.

Situations like these are why cutscenes happen. We don't want to give the player the chance to screw up the plot point, so we take control away. Or - and I've done this in D&D - we make the obstacles too great for the player to have a chance. The Giant Who-Knows-What is actually the final boss and there's no way the players can resist its paralysis... It monologues for a while about why it wants the staff even though it's not a player... Then it knocks them out and they wake up in the Old Man's Hut...

Anyway. Neither of these are that great of options. As of this moment, I don't have any great ideas on how to fix it, either. Can you think of any games where this was done especially well?