Writing Excuses 20.26: Gaming as a Writing Metaphor
Key points: What's the difference between experiencing a narrative as a game or prose? Choice, direct agency? Narrative games? Energy and complexity? Games are simulations. What are the actions, what are the verbs? Buy-in! Between games and writing, there's a middle ground of control in games. Competence. Not all books or games are for everybody. What makes a narrative game? Obvious narrative? Present me with a story, don't make me randomly discover it. Make room for the audience. Let them make their own interpretations, draw their own conclusions. How much do I love the characters? How much do I care what happens to them? What are the levers in your game or narrative? Invite the reader in...
[Season 20, Episode 26]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
[Season 20, Episode 26]
[Howard] This is Writing Excuses.
[Erin] Gaming as a writing metaphor.
[Howard] I'm Howard.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Dan] And I'm Dan.
[Erin] And we get to talk about gaming...
[DongWon] Yay! Prepare for a six hour long episode.
[Erin] Yeah. Yeah, I know. I was like, this is actually sort of hard because there's so much that...
[Dan] Yeah.
[Erin] You can talk about when it comes...
[Howard] This play-through of Writing Excuses...
[Erin] Exactly.
[Dan] Kind of a speed run.
[Erin] Oh, my gosh. Yes. But I've been thinking about sort of what is it that separates the way that we game from the way that we write, the way that we experience prose narration from the way we experience being in a game. And the thing that I... the reason I really love games is I actually think that sometimes giving the person experiencing the narrative more choice and more direct agency over what happens, whether that's true or you just make them feel that it's true, changes the way that we experience story. And, for me, that's the big difference between them. But I'm curious, for you all, like, what makes you pick up a game instead of a book for that day? Like, what is the difference between having the same story as a television show versus a game that that show was based on?
[DongWon] Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I love narrative, but I don't love narrative games a lot of the time, like, if a game is very story heavy, I'll often be like… Like I tried to play Last of Us a little while ago, and I just was like, I'm putting this down, I'm going to watch the TV show. Because it… The way it was giving me the story felt so slow compared to what I wanted in terms of my ability to consume a narrative, and then all the opportunities for player choice were so constrained to things that felt like they didn't matter, a.k.a., how I searched the drawers in this room versus the big narrative stuff I was interested in, which is, what do we do about this outbreak plague situation? Right? And so, I think, for me, when it comes to what am I looking for from game experience, I want something that's more energetic and more complex than you can get from somebody telling me a story. Right? So this is why I love FromSoft games so much, where I build the narrative by interacting with the world rather than them telling me what the story is.
[Howard] I think it was… It must've been 15 years ago now. I was at a convention and had the opportunity to go out to lunch with Steve Jackson. And he dropped a bit of wisdom that I have never been able to shake. He said, "All games are physics simulations." And I thought, now, that's not true. That's… Wait. Crap. Every game… Chess! Is a physics simulation, at some level, all games are simulations. And so, when I sit down, when I think of gaming or playing a game as a metaphor for writing, I often think, why would I want to play a game like Burger Time instead of working fast food? Why would I want to play a simulation of fast food restaurants instead of working fast food? Well, because I don't want to smell like hamburgers at the end of the day. But these simulations that we play can teach us things. And in many cases, they can teach us the same things that the job would teach us, only without the risk of smelling like [frieda?].
[Erin] And, I think that also they create a game play loop. So if you're writing a game, the main thing you have to figure out is what are the actions of the game? What are the things that the game lets you do?
[DongWon] What are the verbs?
[Erin] What are the verbs of the game? And so, like, in a… And it limits them. There are always less than the verbs that you can experience in life. Because a game is not going to be able to, like, do, like, and then I scratched my nose for three seconds for no reason. I mean, who knows… Maybe in the future. But it's hard to get to that level of granularity. And so, they then have to make those verbs things that you are going to want to choose. And, it's funny, I'm thinking back to, like, weeks and weeks and weeks ago, when we talked about second person and how second person requires buy-in. And games are often a second person medium, and, similarly, you have to get the player to buy-in to this is the situation I want to be in. These are the verbs that I want to be able to use to navigate that situation. Like, you may not like the… I love a narrative game. But where it feels like I don't have enough verbs to, like…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] Move this narrative forward. Whereas I'm like, oh, actually, for me, the listen, the experience, the watch it unravel is a verb that is one that works well for me. Which is why different people have different desires and loves of games. Like, some people like a puzzle game, like I do. Some people like a narrative, some people like I want to shoot the thing from a weird angle.
[DongWon] I mean, this is why tabletop can be so interesting too, because even in this case, buy-in is so important and difficult to get. So when you're trying to get someone to play a new game system they've never played before, just the lift of getting them to understand what the core metaphors and verbs of the game are can be three hours of sitting there and walking someone through the session or whatever it is. And so how you get that buy-in in terms of, like, what are the world building hooks, what are the character hooks, what's the setting hooks, to get them on board with the idea of these are interesting verbs I want to interact with. I think that can be such a challenge with really effective game writing.
[Dan] Yeah. Erin, I'm glad that you enjoy narrative games…
[Laughter]
[Erin] I'm buying them all.
[Dan] Because I'm with DongWon on this one. And I find that I don't like the way games tell stories often. Which is strange to me, and I'm trying to figure out why, and I don't know if I can articulate it. But, relating this back to writing, I… There's an interesting middle ground of control. And we talked about this a little bit. Whereas I'm going to just go and work in a burger restaurant, then I have control over what I'm doing. Maybe not as much, because I am an employee. Right? Where is if I'm going to read a book about that, I have no control whatsoever. And games exist in that very intriguing middle ground, where there's a lot of interaction, there's a lot of input from both sides. And that's… Writing for that is very different.
[Erin] Yeah. I was just thinking about, like, the competence thing as well. Like, we people love a competent character. If you want people to love your characters, one way to do it is to show them being really good at something. Because for some reason, we like it. We like feeling competent. And in a game, like in a burger… There's a game that I play on VR called Star Tenders, where you are tending bar for aliens. And the entire game is just like increasingly complex drink orders, that you have to try to make before your customers get mad…
[Chuckles]
[Erin] And wander off in an alien type way. And so what I like about it is, like, you're not expected to master it the first time.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] It's like learn… You get to learn a skill and then they add a little bit more. They had a slightly more complex thing, and all of a sudden, like, the verb that was hard for you in the beginning is one of a much larger sentence that you're able to manage. And that gives us a feeling of competence that really makes us feel like we are able to advance. But I think it's hard to do in prose. Like, you can show a character going through that journey, and have you really relate to that character, and therefore you go through that. But in games, because you're the one who has to make the physical motion, it often feels like in that physics simulation, like, you got a chance to level up.
[Howard] I had a friend tell me years ago. It was the very first of the Batman Arkham games. And he said, "Oh, my gosh, this game was so good." And he described this one scene that plays out. And he says, "And I was Batman. I got to be every bit… I got to do all of the Batman. I did all of the moves, I used all the tools, I used all the whatever." And I played that game and realized, I do not get to be Batman. I was not good enough. I did not learn fast enough. And I got tired and I moved away from it. And that's fine. You play a game for a little while, you decide it's not for you, you play something else. But the idea that the simulation of whatever can map out players differently, where a player gets to have an experience that they've been dreaming about their whole life and maybe didn't know it. My friend Joey, a Batman book would not have made him feel the same way that game made him feel.
[DongWon] Well, and I think that kind of ties into what makes Hades such a big success, is the way they tied narrative to failure. Right? When you fail, you get a little more piece of story, you get a little more piece of interaction. And then you repeat the loop. Right? Like, they were able to build the storytelling into the road like nature of the game. As you go back through it, you learn more about the world, you learn more about the characters, deepening your investment in the character and in their relationships when you do fail. So where something like the Rock City game kind of falls down is, if you fail at being Batman, now you just don't get to progress. You don't get more Batman because you were a bad Batman. If you fail at being [Zacharias], then you're… He's a failure. That's the whole point of the story. That is, you engaging with it and getting more of it as you build those skills and learn. Right? So, like, whether it's your aliens walking away from you in an alienating way because they're upset, or it's being spotted by the criminals because you're a bad Batman, like, the way in which we participate in the stories has to be fluid in that way, or has to be a rewarding experience in that way, or our buy-in starts to break down.
[Erin] I was laughing when you said that because I remembered the time I tried to play Grand Theft Auto, and there's a tutorial quest where you just get on a skateboard, and I don't drive…
[Chuckles]
[Erin] And I'm not good at driving related tasks. I could not finish. Like, it's a thing that they mean for it to take three seconds…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] And, like an hour and a half later, I was like, obviously, this game was not meant for me because I can't even get a car…
[Howard] I have decided that my… I should not be stealing automobiles.
[DongWon] I think that comes back to books in that way though, because not… Books unfold… Not all books are for everybody. Right? Like, what makes sense to you and what you have buy-in for and what is an engaging world building character narrative to you will be really different than the next reader. Right? In the same way, that a game about stealing cars is probably not for someone who has never driven a car before. Right? And I think that can be true in fiction as well. And understanding who your reader is is also really important there.
[Erin] All right. I'm going to interrogate you about narrative games and yellow boxes, but first, we're going to press pause.
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[Erin] And now we're back. And so… Un-pause.
[DongWon] How was that load screen for you?
[Erin] Hope you enjoyed it. So [garbled] interested in is I'm like people who don't like narrative games? I must find out why? As somebody who enjoys writing the narratives of games. And I think it's interesting, like, the wanting to tell a story versus how much gamers experience it is fascinating. If you write for games, you know that you're writing the item description that, like, 89 percent of people will just be like, nope. X out. It's like you're writing the dialogue that people are trying to skip in order to get to their next action. But I'm wondering, like, when you say I don't like narrative games, I'm wondering what makes something a narrative game? Is it just how obvious it is in its narrative? Is it an outside category? Like, what does that mean for you?
[Dan] Well, I don't think it comes down to the obvious nature of it, because I, for example, really don't like Hades because it is not presenting me with a story. I mean, that's not the only reason. But it's a story you have to discover. And that's a place where DongWon and I diverge, because I don't like that in games, I enjoy being told this is the story that we have to fulfill, go do it. Here's what this is about, go do it. And the idea that I have to just randomly discover what the story is by talking to people or by reading books that I find laying around the environment always just rubs me the wrong way.
[Howard] Sorry. I'm giggling over here. Railroad Tycoon, The Linear Narrative.
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I… No, I totally feel you here. One of the things that I love about games where a lot of the story is in front of you, but there's a lot of open space is that… And no, fair listeners, I'm not going to become a streamer of games… But I will often talk back to the characters on screen and say stuff that is just funny to me and is sort of in universe or not in universe, and I get joy out of that. Even though the story is maybe a little flat, I enjoy fluffing it up a little on my own.
[Erin] And thinking about this as a metaphor for writing, it's interesting, because it's, like, how strong… How, like, is the power of the narrative? Like, how much is the narrative saying, like, a story is happening here?
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] How much is it making you discover it? Because there are prose pieces where the story is not, like, a very clear, like, plot point to plot point type of thing.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] But it feels a little more like you're kind of wandering through and story is occurring. And it's interesting thinking about, like, how much are we guiding, how much are we controlling our readers? I mean, we're always controlling everything, but how much is that control felt by them versus is it just feels like they're having to put it together for themselves?
[DongWon] Well, I'm getting on my soapbox for a second here of my obsession with FromSoft games. Right? And so, these are the Dark Souls games, Blood-Borne, Elven Ring, and the reason I love these games so much is they're deeply authored experiences. Like, there's no question that there isn't a very specific point of view behind those blows and that they are creating an experience for the player that has thematics and characters and all the things we expect from story. But you're just getting that story in big cut scenes, where people are talking to each other and there's story being told to you. You're having to discover that story by doing things like reading the item descriptions, by piecing together, like, oh, I thought this boss. This boss was like… Said this one thing that's related to this other boss. Like, you're trying to, like, weave string theory together, the world building and the plot. And I recognize that it's not for everybody, and completely understand why. But what I love about it is I think it gets something… Or gets at something that's really true about all storytelling that we do, which is you have to make room for the audience. Right? And this is a thing I talk about a lot as I'm putting together an actual play show and things like that. One thing I talk about with my players and with the rest of my cast is we need to make room at the table for the audience. There is a fifth seat at the table here, and it's the audience who is here participating in this with us. And it's why I love actual play shows like Dimension 20 or [What's My Number?] or Friends at the Table, because they understand that I am also a participant in this story in an active way. Right? And I think that's true of a book, too. When you write a book, you're writing a book for someone. You have to understand that the reader is there picking it up and interacting with it. Now, their verb is limited to turn the page and continue reading. They have one verb, which is keep reading, don't keep reading. Right? How they feel about that, how they engage with it on a moment to moment basis can change and evolve. But the more you make space for them to make their own interpretations, to engage in a certain way, and to draw their own conclusions from stuff, I think that's where interaction with fiction can be so exciting and so deep and rich.
[Erin] It's funny, thinking about, like, the verbs of games, I'm reminded of… So I used to do writing for Zombies Run, which is a game with only the verb run.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] And so, years and years and years of narrative, of, like, small scene of, like, people talking and then something has to happen at the end of the scene to force you to run. And to go to the next thing. Which is like… Was really interesting in figuring out what are the ways to continue to get audience buy-in. Because, if you think of tabletop games, some have extraordinarily complex mechanics that will take you…
[DongWon] Exactly.
[Erin] 10 years to figure out. Or, like that boardgame, where you're like, our first eight hour session…
[Chuckles]
[Erin] Is going to be figuring out…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] How this boardgame works. And then, eventually, we'll become experts. But thinking about, do you need that level… Like, how much complexity is too much? Like… And that can be true in a game, but also in a narrative. How much just becomes distracting where it becomes about the experience of the narrative as opposed to the narrative itself.
[Howard] When we look at audience buy-in, it's useful to look at improvisational theater, where the audience is literally shouting suggestions at the stage. And if the audience is not engaged, the show falls flat pretty quickly. By the same token, comedy acts on stage in comedy clubs, the audience is buying in by laughing. They make noise. If the audience does not make noise, we say that the comedian is dying. Because that's what that experience is like. And if the audience is making noise, if there laughing all the way through, the comedian is killing. Why is it so violent? Probably because public speaking is the thing we're all scared of the most. And so we tie it to death this way. But the sense of audience buy-in is very, very visible in improvisational theater and in comedy clubs. And if you think about how important the audience participation is to the performers, and then look at what an audience means to you as a writer, that contrast might change the way you think about what you're writing.
[Dan] I've been sitting here trying to think about what narrative is in games I enjoy. And it comes back to a lesson that I have learned for my own writing, which is, how much do I love the characters? How much do I care about what happens to these characters? Because there are plenty of games, and I apologize for continuing to rip on Hades…
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Because it's a beloved game that everyone other than me adores.
[DongWon] You're alienating our whole audience.
[Dan] I know. I could not possibly have cared less about any of the characters in that, and so…
[DongWon] [gasp] Dash…
[Dan] I know. And so, playing the game didn't really hold a lot of appeal for me, after the basic gameplay loop, I figured out the narrative side of it didn't work for me. Whereas something like Cyberpunk 2077 and this… So much of this comes down to personal preference… Those characters I fell in love with. And I wanted to spend time with them. And so when I am doing my own writing, I… That's what I keep coming back to is the lesson I learned, which is, I'm asking my readers to spend however many hours it takes to read this book, to invite this character into their brain and spend time with them. It has to be somebody that they love and care about.
[DongWon] Well, it's so interesting, because I played Hades because I love the characters and I played a billion hours of Cyberpunk 2077… I really love that game, I play that game not for the characters but for the world. I find the characters… They're fine, I enjoy engaging with them a lot of time, but mostly, what I want to do is run around that city stealing and driving cars…
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] And…
[Erin] No!
[DongWon] Getting…
[Dan] Yeah.
[DongWon] In fights with weird criminals. Like, that's the thing that I really… Like, mechanically and vibes-wise, being in that world… To me, Cyberpunk is a game that's all about vibes. Like, the aesthetics of it, the culture of it, all of that are things that I really, really enjoy, and so… I think it's, like, also [garbled] the lesson when I say make room for your audience in terms of crafting your narrative experience, whether that's a game or novel or short story or a film, it's… You also can't predict what part of your story that people are going to attach to. Right? I know people who play Hades and have never read a single piece of the text… They just like the combat. They enjoy the mechanical aspect of the combat. And I know people who have never played an action game in their life that somehow saw credits on Hades, the thing that I, who play a lot of action games, have never been able to do, because they just love the characters so much that they just kept playing this thing and learned a whole set of skills that they never had before in their entire life. And so, watching what your audience will connect to is something you can't necessarily predict. Right? And you can't control for that. You can have guesses, you can have focuses, but that's why you kind of gotta chase your own interests as much as anything else.
[Howard] I… Dan, I remember a comment you made on the Borderlands games years ago, which was, yeah, this is cute games, and one of them is really fun, the one where you run around shooting things and exploring the world. And then there's the game of comparing red arrows and green arrows on your gear, and I don't like that game at all.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Howard] And…
[DongWon] 100 percent.
[Howard] And I love that principle, that there can be a thing that we just love that is inextricably fused to a thing we despise, and are we going to play anyway? Are we going to continue to consume or are we going to look for something that doesn't have the up down arrows game in it?
[DongWon] This is me and Destiny's death grip on my brain, but… Yeah.
[Chuckles]
[Erin] I think one of the reasons I really love games and game writing is because there are all these different levers you can be pushing in any narrative.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] You can be pushing the character lever, you can be pushing the world lever, you can be pushing the what are the actions lever, which is often a plot lever. But it's like in games, they're all sort of… They are more discrete. They feel more discrete from each other. Like, in a prose narrative, you can really weave in… Like, the world is happening, what the characters, with the action is all at once. But the way that games are designed, like, someone makes the world and then they sort of put characters in it who have their own set of actions. And they can't 100 percent control how you use those actions and that character to experience the world. And because of that, there are intersections that will happen that they will never be able to anticipate as public… Emergent gameplay is here. Somebody is having a gameplay experience you did not intend.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] But they were able to find those connections in interesting different ways. And I think it's nice when we think about our stories to think about how are all the levers that we're pulling different? And, like, how… If we separate out the way that were talking about lenses, it's sort of a version of doing that, of thinking about what are all the different lenses, what are all the different levers, and how are we combining them in really interesting ways to make stories?
[DongWon] And also just letting… Learning to realize that you don't have full control over the audience experience. Right? And that they are going to bring their own lenses, they're going to bring their own verbs, the going to bring their own ways of interacting with the story to that experience. And once it's out of your hands, you don't get to tell people you're reading this wrong. Right? Or you can try. Sure. But, like, you're going to get…
[Howard] Feel free to say that. It's probably not going to work out the way…
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] And so I think one of the things that I found really exciting about this topic of gaming, not just because I clearly love games, as do we all, but because it is this thing that I think is really, really hard for people who create prose to wrap their heads around, is learning to… Not just, like, ease off of the control, but actively invite in the reader into making this experience with us. And I think learning how to do that is a thing that can really take your fiction from being exciting to truly connecting with a huge fan base.
[Erin] And with that, we're at the end of this game session. And we are going to move to the homework.
[Erin] And for the homework, I'm going to challenge you a little. There are probably folks who are listening to this who are like, I only… Last game I played was tag. But I would like you to think about… Take a project that you're working on and imagine that someone is making a game of it. And figure out what would that game be. What would be the actions that the characters would be doing? What would be the parts of the world that the game would be focused on? And just write out sort of, like, a here's the game of my amazing work of art. If you need help with this, you can look at things that are games that were made from things like Lord of the Rings game. Just read a description of it, see if anything comes to you. And then as you're writing that out, is there anything you've discovered about your story that was unexpected?
[Howard] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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