TWWDS

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<<timedreplace 500ms>>“What happened to that? We have six minutes of cinematics right up top. Why’d we frontload all this other crap into our game?”\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>> - [[You tell the truth, and remind Josh that the big gabby opening cinematic was something he and Drew asked you to write.|S C 1]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>> - [[You tell the truth, and admit that the opening cinematic is not your best stuff.|S C 2]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>> - [[You tell the truth, and bring up the fact that the cold open was tried, implemented, and ultimately rejected as too abrupt after several playtests.|S C 3]]\n<<endtimedreplace>>

<center><<timedreplace 500ms>><<gains>><<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>Three Years Later<<playsound "sounds/datecard.mp3">>\n<<gains>>\n<<endtimedreplace>>\n</center>\n<<timedgoto "S I 1" 8s>>

<<replace>>You’re the lead creative on your firm’s RC Cola account, which is undergoing a major rebrand in order to connect with the soda drinkers of a new generation. <<becomes>>The campaign is supposed to start online at the end of the month. <<becomes>>Late last week, you received your first bits of feedback from randomly selected consumers in the target market, which were unambiguously catastrophic. <<becomes>>You’re in a meeting room with your boss and your manager. <<becomes>>It is Monday, 9:30 a.m. <<gains>>You feel tired but okay. <<becomes>>[[You were up late the night before playing video games.|Pause Before End]]<<endreplace>>\n

<<replace>>You’re the lead writer on Like a Thief in the Night, a combat-free exploration-based indie game. <<gains>>LATITN is supposed to be one month away from shipping.<<becomes>>Late last week, the team received its first reactions from your “friends and family” beta test, which were unambiguously catastrophic.<<becomes>>You’re in a coffee shop with your four other team members -- everyone who works at the company, in other words.<<becomes>>It is Monday, 9:30 a.m. <<gains>>A heavy, damp-towel smell lingers. You and everyone else here worked through the weekend.\n<<becomes>>Maybe it’s the five Red Bulls you’ve consumed in the last eight hours, but you feel compelled to start the discussion.\n<<becomes>>[[“Let me guess,” you say. “They didn’t like the writing.”|Pause Before End]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>You’re the lead writer on ShatterGate: Online, the franchise’s first attempt to reconcile its story with a massively multiplayer game world. <<gains>>SG:O, as it’s been christened, is twelve months from shipping.<<becomes>>Late last week, the team received its first reactions from paid outside consultants, which were unambiguously catastrophic.<<becomes>>You’re in a meeting room with several others, most of them leads. <<becomes>>It is Monday, 9:30 a.m. <<gains>>A heavy, damp-towel smell lingers. You and everyone else here worked through the weekend.\n<<becomes>>[[Shawn rubs the grit from his eyes. “Everyone knows why we’re here,” he begins.|Pause Before End]]<<endreplace>>

<<timedreplace 1s>>There are a few ways you could answer Josh:\n<<gains>>\n - [[Play it safe. Start with the playtest report the consultants delivered, stick to the facts, and try not to place blame.|S B 1]]\n<<gains>>\n - [[Go for a conciliatory approach, noting that as the writer you share some responsibility for the game’s poor showing.|S B 2]]\n<<gains>>\n - [[Be brave and say what’s really on your mind: This project has lacked clear direction for years, which is why it’s a mess now.|S B 3]]\n<<endtimedreplace>>

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[[Six years ago Josh made Dying Gasp (Metacritic: 91), an innovative and highly influential first-person adventure game with minimal combat and poor sales. He cheerfully admits he dreamed up ShatterGate to make money. Of course, it’s not his IP -- it’s the company’s. Nevertheless, he drives a Lexus IS250. He tried to leave the ShatterGate franchise after the ShatterGate Strike: Scoured Lands debacle (Metacritic: 65), later admitting that he’d failed to push back against the absurd time and production constraints he and the team had clapped upon them. But some lingering attachment to the world he’d helped create proved impossible to resist. Josh likes to remind team members how much ShatterGate: Future Perfect is costing the company -- the first time he mentioned the number to you, you had to go lie down -- but whenever he does mention this astronomical sum, it feels to you vaguely like a self-appraisal.|S A Choice]]

<<replace>>Just as the words leave your mouth, the door to the conference room drifts open. Mallory, the audio AP, is standing in the doorjamb, her face all pinched and traumatized. She’s breathing hard; her face is red. <<gains>>She must have run here from Greenland, which is what everyone calls the audio department. Why? Because it’s a distant, harsh land that nobody ever thinks about unless prompted. She’s balancing an open laptop upon her left hand.\n<<becomes>><<timedreplace 3s>>“I heard you guys are talking about changing lines again? Again? What the fuck? Dude, I told you” -- she’s looking at Troy now -- “to keep the audio team in the loop on this shit! We’re overscoped as it is without another recording session!”\n\n<<gains>>Josh stands to make peace. “Mallory, we’re just --”\n<<endtimedreplace>>\n<<becomes>>Mallory, still looking at Troy, talks right over her ostensible boss Josh. “Well guess what? It’s too late. Grant’s in Germany shooting with Wes Anderson; we’re not getting him back for at least three months. Remember when I told you all that? Remember when I told you what we needed to have locked and why? But none of you assholes listen to me.”\n\n<<gains>>“He’s shooting a Wes Anderson movie?” Shawn says. “Ugh.”\n<<becomes>>“Why don’t we just recast him?” Troy asks the room, his Producer Tone so reasonable, so seductive. “Honestly, a lot of his takes are pretty rough.”\n\n“Hiring movie stars for games is a waste of money, anyway,” Mike says.\n\n<<becomes>>“Not if you do it right,” Erika, who had a lot to do with Grant’s casting, says. “How it’s supposed to work is you get what you need and you cut it. You don’t call one of the world’s busiest movie stars back into the booth every three weeks for pick ups because you don’t know what you want.”\n\n<<becomes>>Mallory hasn’t actually stopped talking. “And anyway, recasting? Fucking recasting discussions at this stage? Look, audio kinda has to be invited to meetings about things that affect audio!”\n\n<<gains>><<timedreplace 1s>>Josh is looking at the ceiling. “I didn’t invite you because I was trying to let you guys work.” His eyes lower to meet hers. “You know, because you’re so behind.”\n\n<<gains>>“Fuck you, Josh.”\n<<endtimedreplace>>\n<<becomes>>“Okay,” Troy says. “Please, can we calm down? We’re making mass entertainment here, people.”\n\n<<becomes>>Mallory is walking deeper into the room, toward Troy. “Know why we’re behind? Because you keep making more work for us! It’s like our whole team is just fucking invisible to you!”\n<<becomes>>Everyone starts shouting at once. Except for Shawn, who’s laughing. Your colleagues’ voices are big and dense and forceful, like waves. <<gains>>They’re around you, beneath you, on top of you, hitting you, pushing you. You let the waves drive you away. Your eyes are closed. <<becomes>>[[Soon you’re no longer there but in some happier place, on some other, better project, in some other, better future...|S H 3 Pause]]<<endreplace>>

<<timedreplace 500ms>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<endtimedreplace>><<timedgoto "S I 3 Title" 2s>>

Setting up...\n\n<<timedgoto "Warnings" 700ms >>

<<timedreplace 500ms>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<gains>>.<<endtimedreplace>><<timedgoto "S I 2 Title" 2s>>

<<timedreplace 500ms>>Josh is still talking, but you decide, probably unwisely, to interrupt:\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[“Josh, hold up. Our primary weapon is called a Gunsword. We have an execution animation that allows you to decapitate an enemy and skeet-shoot his head out of the air for bonus XP.”|S E 1]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[“Josh, excuse me. You said Rix was supposed to be this interplanetary Casanova, with an alien girlfriend in every location.”|S E 2]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[“Josh, hang on here. We’re still fighting Drew’s ‘input’ that the enemy aliens use an ‘Arabic-sounding’ language.”|S E 3]]<<endtimedreplace>>

<<timedreplace 400ms>>The meeting’s attendees are:\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[Josh, Creative Director|Josh]]\n<<gains>>- [[Mike, Lead Designer|Mike]]\n<<gains>>- [[Troy, Lead Producer|Troy]]\n<<gains>>- [[Shawn, Level Designer|Shawn]]\n<<gains>>- [[Erika, Art Director|Erika]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>[[You’re done looking.|S B]]\n<<endtimedreplace>>

<<playsound "sounds/theend.mp3">><center>\n\nThe End\n\n</center>\n<<timedgoto "Credits" 4s>>

<<replace>>Mike is a systems guy. You know this because that’s how he described himself to you the first time you met him: “Hey, I’m Mike. I’m a systems guy.” You wondered if that was his way of being brusque or passively combative with you -- the unspoken implication being that, as a representative of the Holy Order of Narrative, you and he were destined to gallop toward each other in battle. But over the last several months your interactions with Mike have been much less frequent than you once supposed they would be. You chalk this up to the fact that, of all the duties one might expect a video game’s Lead Designer to perform, Mike seems chiefly invested in defeating his co-workers in multiplayer matches and Tweeting gnomic in-jokes about the game at his 1,400 followers. (“Today we talked weapons balance like it’s the most important thing ever. It is.”) Every afternoon at four o’clock sharp his fist-pounding, controller-throwing antics peal across the studio from the playtest room. <<becomes>>[[A couple days ago he told you that he’d never watched an in-game cinematic from start to finish willingly.|S A Choice]]<<endreplace>>

<<timedgoto "S E" 15s>>[[<<timedreplace 150ms>> - You could say, “Let’s go for the cold open,”<<gains>> if only because the cold open has several advantages. <<gains>>It's easier to make, for one thing <<gains>>-- just come in from black and drop the player straight into combat. <<gains>>But it’s also confusing,<<gains>> and the cinematics team never quite figured out how to not make it look cheap. <<gains>>The cold open was additionally too vulnerable to critics who’d claim <<gains>>(with exquisitely false authority) <<gains>>that it was done that way only because the team couldn’t think of anything better. \n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- Or you could say, “Let’s do the cinematic open.”<<gains>> You accept that the cinematic open,<<gains>> as it exists right now,<<gains>> is ponderous, stilted,<<gains>> and top-heavy with lore. <<gains>>But at least this version of the open sets up the central conflict of the game,<<gains>> lets players know what they’re trying to accomplish,<<gains>> and introduces the main characters. <<gains>>Rix, in particular. <<gains>>You feel strongly that Rix needs to be a character the player portrays rather than inhabits,<<gains>> because it’s interesting to you,<<gains>> as a writer,<<gains>> to script a character that does and says things the player doesn’t necessarily want him to do or say,<<gains>> even though he or she is also controlling the character. <<gains>>That’s all where all the meat on the video-game-writing bone comes from, after all<<gains>> -- the narrative weirdness that is this medium’s centrally unprecedented quirk. <<gains>>But you’d want to go this route only if you were guaranteed lots of pickup recording time<<gains>> -- were the actors even available anymore?<<gains>> -- and a prominent seat at the recording sessions. <<gains>>It was the only way for you to see what worked,<<gains>> and it would go a long way toward ensuring the dialogue<<gains>> didn’t wind up in a similarly goofy place.\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- Or, you could say “I don’t know,”<<gains>> because that’s actually the truest answer you can give.<<gains>> You really don’t know. <<gains>>Once you had very firm opinions on what good and bad video-game storytelling was. <<gains>>Once you thought you understood how to write a video game. <<gains>>You’ve been at this for eight years.<<gains>> Video games are the only thing you’ve ever written<<gains>> or wanted to write. <<gains>>You’ve shipped four titles now, yet the more you do this,<<gains>> the less you feel you know. <<gains>>Nothing ever works the way you think it’s going to,<<gains>> everything always sounds weird,<<gains>> actors always disappoint you,<<gains>> and you’ve realized you feel utterly defeated by the changefulness of game development<<gains>> -- the way one simple layout alteration confounds whatever it is you’re trying to do. <<gains>>You feel increasingly like a fraud. <<gains>>And maybe you are. <<gains>>Maybe everyone here is. <<gains>>No one else sitting at this table seems notably good at his or her job. <<gains>>Sometimes you look around the studio and imagine everyone as imbeciles fumbling around in the dark,<<gains>> all of them chasing the same squealing,<<gains>> uncatchable animal. <<gains>>You’re all striving to communicate and express yourselves<<gains>> through the dark veil of the most complicatedly collaborative art form<<gains>> the world has ever known. <<gains>>Why did you ever want to make video games anyway? <<gains>>What adult would ever choose this life for herself?<<endtimedreplace>>|S E]]\n

\n\n\n[[> Start|Title Page]]

<<replace>>Shawn is the level designer in charge of several important chunks of the game, including the opening sequence, which the outside consultants had crapped upon with vein-popping vigor. Truth be told, it was Shawn’s idea that the open feature minimal tutorialization: “ShatterGate players are gonna have basic literacy with fundamental ludic concepts.” He graduated from the NYU Game Center four years ago, after which he and three friends successfully Kickstarted $75,000 in order to commercialize his thesis, Golem Girl, a retro platformer about a Jewish girl made of reanimated skin and her adventures through various levels inspired by Eastern European fairytales. In interviews leading up to Golem Girl’s release, Shawn scoffed at what he called “didactic interactivity,” which he regarded as a betrayal of the “language games are intended to speak.” (It took you a while to realize he meant any video game that told you how to play it, or essentially every commercial video game ever made.) Shawn also once told an interviewer that his personal idea of hell would be working for a big AAA developer. After a tortuous, extended development process, Golem Girl finally went out to its backers. <<becomes>>[[Josh told you once that it sold under a thousand copies.|S A Choice]]<<endreplace>>

<center><<timedreplace 500ms>><<gains>><<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>Six Months Later<<playsound "sounds/datecard.mp3">>\n<<gains>>\n<<endtimedreplace>>\n</center>\n<<timedgoto "S I 3" 8s>>

<<timedreplace 500ms>>Suddenly, Josh looks over at you. “You know the part I’m talking about, right?”\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[You should probably try to keep your job, which really is fun, despite it all. You say, “Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was really good stuff.”|S H 1]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[You’ve decided you don’t care anymore about this game, about any of these people. You say, “Wanna hear something funny? I never played Scoured Lands. Not even a little.”|S H 2]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[You realize, with painful clarity, that writing for games is a terrible idea and that nobody should ever do it, ever, for any reason. You say, “I think I quit.”|S H 3]]\n<<endtimedreplace>>

<<playsound "sounds/twwds.mp3">><<playsound "sounds/typing.mp3">><<timedreplace 170ms>>\n<<gains>>The <<gains>>Writer <<gains>>Will <<gains>>Do <<gains>>Some<<gains>>thing\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>by\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>Tom <<gains>>Biss<<gains>>ell<<gains>>\n<<gains>>Matt<<gains>>hew <<gains>>S. <<gains>>Burns\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>Created <<gains>>with\n<<gains>>Twine <<gains>>1.4.2\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>© 2015<<gains>>.\n<<endtimedreplace>>|

<center><<timedreplace 500ms>><<gains>><<gains>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>One Year Later<<playsound "sounds/datecard.mp3">>\n<<gains>>\n<<endtimedreplace>>\n</center>\n<<timedgoto "S I 2" 8s>>

The Writer Will Do Something

<<replace>>You say, “The opening cinematic isn’t great. But it kinda got dropped on me at the last minute and I didn’t have a lot of time to write it. I barely even knew what I was writing. On top of that, I was getting notes from every department about stuff to include. Maybe I should have pushed back, but the situation didn’t exactly feel push-back-able.” <<gains>>Translation: You’re a contractor here. Everyone else is a full employee. <<becomes>>“It’s just this... avalanche of lore,” Mike says. “Literally within the first minute we’re hearing about the Galactic Commons, Rix’s backstory, the cause of the Schism, the ShatterGates themselves. I mean, Jesus Christ -- pick one thing to talk about, and do it right.”<<becomes>>“I had to incorporate a lot of asks,” you say. “You have no idea how many people had buy-in on that sequence.”<<becomes>>Troy puts up his hand. “I can probably make some room in the budget if we want to shitcan the open and start again.”<<becomes>>“Oh sweet Christ,” Erika says. “Do you have any idea how much work that creates for me? Tell me we’re not doing that.”<<becomes>>“It’s on the table,” Troy says, shrugging in a vaguely sinister way. “This is the most important thing to fix, right? In order to do that, everything needs to be open for discussion.”<<becomes>>[[Erika tosses her notebook on the table. “For fuck’s sake.”|S D]]<<endreplace>>

\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Writer Will Do Something\n

<<replace>>You say, “The playtesters had a lot of problems with the controls and the lack of tutorials. There was lot of confusion around the Gunsword, especially.”<<becomes>>“No, no,” Shawn says, looking up from his smartphone, obviously irritated. <<gains>>“Slash is the square button. Nanopower is circle. Shoot is right trigger. You learn that right away. <<gains>>Jesus Christ, press a couple buttons! I intentionally put some non-directed space right after the opening in-game cutscene. <<gains>>It’s there for players to discover the affordances we’re giving them. Did any of those consultant turdfucks even try that?”<<becomes>>“I’ll check,” Troy says instantly, and makes a note.<<becomes>>Josh, after staring at Shawn for a moment, rubs his eyes. “Okay. ‘Affordances’ and ‘non-directed space,’ while interesting to talk about” -- Shawn’s head pumps affirmatively -- “aren’t really at issue here. Let’s get beyond that.”<<becomes>>Josh is still rubbing his eyes -- it looks as though he’s afraid they might fall out of his head otherwise. <<gains>>“The playtesters, I think, felt confused and aimless because they didn’t get any sense of purpose. There’s no urgency. At all. <<gains>>So, that’s -- that’s -- that’s what we need to create.” He looks around the room, his eyes redder and more shrimp-boiled than before. “We need to give our players a non-bullshit, non-gamey problem to solve. Right off the bat. We do this, they’ll try to find the tools to do it.”<<becomes>>For some reason Shawn is smiling. “Dude, we do give them a problem to solve -- the pirate counterattack.”<<becomes>>“That’s not enough. That’s just us throwing enemies at the player. There’s nothing at stake. Pirates? The player doesn’t even know why he should give a shit yet about pirates.”<<becomes>>[[Mike ponders this, head down. He looks up. “Stronger pirates. We should put the player under the gun right away.”\n\n“No,” Josh says. “No!”|S C]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>You say, “The narrative isn’t working. Some of it’s my fault. Maybe a lot of it is. We’re trying to explain too many things at once. Right away we’re ladling on this narrative goop that takes way too long to add up to anything.”<<becomes>>“Actually I agree with that,” Mike says. “I always thought going down this route was a bad idea. ShatterGate is fundamentally about the player’s experience in combat. It’s not about a bunch of backstory. <<gains>>It’s not about the gameworld, even. I don’t know how we got to a point where every time you turn a corner in our game an encyclopedia hits you on the head. When we were doing the O.G. ShatterGate, we made stuff up. <<gains>>We didn’t worry about it. Need some big space monster? Boom, here’s a Hydra.”\n<<becomes>>“That stuff’s there,” Josh says, “because the fans dig it.”\n\n<<gains>>Mike makes a low, displeased, lawnmowerish sound.\n<<becomes>>[[Josh zeroes in on him. “Mike, listen to me -- the fans like it. Okay? They demonstrably like it. Plus it has all these transmedia applications we might need later down the line. All that bullshit makes our world a richer place.”|S C]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>You say, “The consultants, I think, can’t figure out what kind of game we’re making because we don’t know what kind of game we’re making. <<gains>>I’ve been here for fourteen months and I still don’t know whether we’re making a cinematic game or an emergent combat-driven game. Which impacts me in a million ways. <<gains>>Is our player character someone the player’s supposed to inhabit or someone he’s supposed to portray? There’s a huge difference story-wise.” \n<<becomes>>Josh puts his hands on the surface of the conference table, as though to steady himself. “It’s both.” <<gains>>He’s angry now, you can tell, but doing his best not to give away just how angry. <<gains>>“You know what? Every goddamn month you and I have the same conversation. And I always tell you the same thing. <<gains>>We’re giving players the freedom to choose how they approach our world. And it’s kinda your job -- our job -- to build characters and situations around that experience that they’ll never forget.”\n<<becomes>>Troy, possibly coming to your aid, says, “When I think of the canonical ShatterGate experience, I always come back to the Hydra fight in S1. It’s big but controlled. It’s got choices, but it doesn’t feel aimless.”\n<<becomes>>Josh nods. “I loved that fight.” For a brief, terrifying moment, it looks like he might actually cry. <<becomes>>[[“But look -- this all goes to my point. We do know what kind of game we’re making. By and large, we’ve made the game we intended to make. But somehow this isn’t getting across to players. How to communicate our intentions better -- that’s why we’re here.”|S C]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>You’re the lead writer on ShatterGate: Future Perfect, the third entry in a once-beloved franchise. <<becomes>>You never finished the original ShatterGate and somehow didn’t play ShatterGate Strike: Scoured Lands, even though both games, still glisteningly shrink-wrapped, occupy the same space on your coffee table that they have for the last fourteen months.<<becomes>>It’s not really important how you wound up as the lead writer on ShatterGate. <<gains>>You did. <<becomes>>The game is six months from shipping.<<becomes>>Late last week, the team received its first reactions from paid outside consultants, which were unambiguously catastrophic.<<becomes>>You’re in a meeting room with several others, most of them leads. You’re fairly certain none of them knows you never finished ShatterGate, never played Scoured Lands. <<becomes>>It is Monday, 9:30 a.m. <<gains>>A heavy, damp-towel smell lingers; you and everyone else here worked through the weekend. \n<<becomes>>[[You look around.|S A Choice]]\n<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>“Everyone knows why we’re here.” This is Josh. <<becomes>>His eyes are red and his shirt hasn’t been ironed in probably weeks.<<becomes>>You’ve heard rumors that his wife has been upset about the amount of time Josh has been away from home. <<gains>>His son, you know, turned two last week -- and Josh missed his party.<<becomes>>“The consultants didn’t like our game. Not only that, they had no idea what kind of game we’re making. We’re here to fix this. We need to fix this. So let’s go around the room. I want you all to tell me what you think is the main problem.”<<becomes>>[[Unfortunately, you’re sitting next to Josh, so you have to answer first. With unnervingly android simultaneity, all five heads around the table turn and lock onto you.|S B Choice]]\n<<endreplace>>

<<replace>><<timedreplace 1s>>“Actually,” Shawn says, “they do something really clever with that in Dark Souls --”\n\n<<gains>>“Goddammit!” Josh says, his head lolling back. “I’ve told you. Again and again. That particular game’s example is just not fucking relevant here.”<<endtimedreplace>>\n<<becomes>>Troy is staring out the window, his face fixed in a smile. He’s a fan of Dark Souls. <<gains>>So is Shawn. So are you. <<gains>>Even Josh has played a fair amount of Dark Souls. You know this from the amount of trophies he’s racked up. (You’re nothing if not a careful spy of your colleagues’ online profiles.)<<becomes>>But you know Josh has also been forced to clamp down on any aspirational attempts to mimic it, because Josh’s boss -- everyone’s boss -- Drew, the GM of the studio, despises Dark Souls.<<becomes>>According to the stacks of market research studies that apparently spontaneously generate on Drew’s desk, Dark Souls doesn’t represent what typical consumers want from their games. <<gains>>It does well with the “core,” he concedes, but when you’re spending ShatterGate money, Dark Souls becomes “commercially unviable.” <<gains>>Rumor has it that anyone who even mentions the game in an aspirational context within earshot of Drew is at instant risk of being terminated.\n<<becomes>>The room is quiet for several seconds. Josh leans back in his chair. You’re pretty sure everyone’s thinking about Dark Souls. <<becomes>>Finally Josh says, “It sounds like, more than anything, we’ve got a writing problem on our hands.” Without looking at you he gets to his feet and heads for the dry-erase board. There he grabs his beloved blue marker; glyphs and boxes begin to form under his swiping, circling hand. <<gains>>“Let’s walk through the intro level -- all of it. Step by step. I wanna put all the dialogue under the microscope, all the objective strings. We’ll adjust timings, maybe retool some environments to improve the flow.”\n<<becomes>><<timedreplace 500ms>>“Environment is content complete,” Erika says.\n\n<<gains>>His back to the room, Josh breathes in, breathes out. “Yes. I know.”\n\n<<gains>>“Just making sure you know.”\n<<endtimedreplace>>\n<<becomes>>“I know.” Josh’s white-board scribbling turns squeakily ferocious. “This is important. We don’t have a choice. We need to get this right. If the first ninety seconds of our game don’t melt people’s faces or make them Tweet ‘ShatterGate is back, motherfuckers!’ -- then guess what? We’ve lost them. We’ve lost them to Gears, to CoD, to Minecraft.”\n\n<<gains>>“Minecraft’s awesome,” Mike says, as though he were just arriving.\n<<becomes>>Josh turns back to the room. Behind him is what you vaguely recognize as Shawn’s opening-level layout. <<gains>>“Guys, anyone here remember our design document? Remember how we were gonna set the table story-wise? A super that says, ‘G.C.A. 1009. Five years before the Schism,’ then bam, we drop you right into the action.” <<becomes>>[[He puts his hands out, suddenly looking like a frat-boy beggar in a rumpled button-down shirt.|S C Choice]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>“We’re not gonna get anywhere if all we do is point fingers,” Troy says, using his Producer Tone, a higher-pitched, suspiciously reasonable-sounding voice nevertheless devoid of all collegiality and emotion. <<becomes>>“Now, based on what I’m hearing, we have two options. <<gains>>First option is we stick to our guns and go with the cinematic open that explains our lore, maybe with some new V.O. -- if we think that’ll smooth things over. <<gains>>Option two: we go back to the cold open. <<gains>>I really don’t care what you guys choose. What I care about is that we make this decision right now, right here in this room, and stick to that decision. Really stick to it. <<gains>>I don’t want to hear ‘Yes, I agree’ now and then learn you’re all talking shit about our decision later to your departments. Because guess what? After today, this ship has sailed.” <<becomes>>Throughout this entire speech Troy has been mashing the surface of the conference table with his index finger, as though killing ants. <<becomes>>He turns to you, another ant. <<gains>>“Since you’re the one that’s gonna have to write it, what do you think?”<<becomes>>Your mind is a bright, glittery cascade of thoughts. Unfortunately, you’re not able to isolate or hold any single one of them. Everything in your head is water. <<gains>>Making a decision right now, in this room, has too many implications. <<becomes>>[[It will determine the tone of the rest of the game. It will determine the rest of your day, your week, your month. Part of you wants to ask the room if there’s an example of another game out there that has done a cold open particularly well, but you’re worried Shawn will start talking about Dark Souls again.|S D Choice]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>><<timedreplace 1s>>“I vote cold open,” says Shawn, before you can speak.\n\n<<gains>>Mike nods. “Yep. Agreed. Cold open.”\n\n<<gains>>Troy says, “Okay, done. Cold open. Next issue?”\n\n<<gains>>Josh looks around in a panic. “Uh. Can we hang on here a sec?”\n<<endtimedreplace>><<becomes>>Troy smiles at him in a sad, condescending way. “We have to get through the rest of the level. We’re already twenty minutes into this meeting.”<<becomes>>“Yeah, sorry” -- obviously Josh isn’t sorry -- “but I don’t think the cold open will work. We have a lot of really important context to establish. Critics eat that shit up. So, what I think -- I think we keep the opening cinematic but rewrite the dialogue.”<<becomes>>“It’s way too expositional,” Shawn says. “So maybe we should go with a more in medias res-type thing. I kinda like the part where Rix talks about the planets dying.” <<becomes>>Here Mike breaks in: “No no no. I hate that part. It’s just random bullshit about some planet the player’s never heard of. Why should he care?”<<becomes>>“Because,” Shawn says, “the planet’s dying. It’s all very sad, Mike.”<<becomes>>Mike goes dead-eyed. “The player needs to feel that loss in gameplay.”<<becomes>>Shawn nods at him indulgently. “Sure. Yeah. I look forward to the system you devise to communicate the entirety of planetary loss.”<<becomes>>“Wait,” Troy says, “isn’t that why we put all the effort into ‘building emotional connections’” -- he’s quoting one of Josh’s development mantras here with riskily obvious dubiousness -- “through Rix’s companions?” <<gains>>But nobody seems to have heard him. That, or nobody chose to have heard him.<<becomes>>“Rix is a been-there, done-that kind of guy,” Shawn goes on. “Right? What if he’s just like” -- Shawn does his best, which is to say wildly unsuccessful, posh British accent -- “‘Our galaxy’s never been a pleasant place to be, but now entire planets are dying.’”<<becomes>>Josh finds this all very amusing. “Ship that shit.”\n\n<<gains>>Troy agrees. “Ship it!”\n\n<<gains>>You note that this is the first time anyone has smiled since the meeting began.\n<<becomes>>But Shawn is undaunted. “Hell -- it’s no worse than some of the lines that are in the game right now. Look, all I’m trying to do is --”\n<<becomes>>Josh jumps up out of his chair again. “Wait, wait. Just shut up. How about this -- what if we cut the in-game chatter and went with straight-up voiceover? You know, ‘The world has changed’ Galadriel-type shit.”\n<<becomes>>Erika’s mouth drops open. “You want to cut all the in-game dialogue? That’s supposed to fix the problem?”\n<<becomes>>“No, no. I’m thinking like... images. Something simple.” He looks at Erika so intently you are half-fearing a marriage proposal. “We use our kick-ass visual art team, led by you, to make like a really beautiful visual quilt.”\n<<becomes>>Josh’s flattery does not make its intended inroad with Erika. “A visual quilt.” Erika says this phrase as though turning it over in her mouth, outlining it with her tongue. “And what exactly will this ‘visual quilt’ of yours look like?”\n\n<<gains>>“Spaceships. Planets.”\n<<becomes>>You’ve noticed that when confronted with something she doesn’t want to do, Erika often says, “Okay. Thinking about it,” before quickly dismissing the idea.\n\n<<becomes>>“Okay,” she says. “Thinking about it.” <<becomes>>Then she makes a face. “And no, underlined in fire. For the open of our entire game you want to pan-and-scan over a planet floating through space and stick some voiceover under it? Did it become 1958 in here or something?”<<becomes>>“Yeah,” Mike says. “Sorry, dude, but I’m with Erika here. That scrolling text shit reminds me of low-budget JRPGs. Not the biggest game of the year.”\n<<becomes>>Josh’s hurt face -- which cruelly makes him look a decade younger -- metronomes from Erika to Mike. When he begins to speak, you sense him minding his words. <<gains>>“Okay. I’m sorry. Maybe I missed something here. But doesn’t every Star Wars movie start with scrolling text?” <<gains>>With that, though, he is no longer minding his words; his eyes fill with the madness of an unheeded prophet. <<gains>>“Doesn’t what is literally the most popular movie franchise of all time introduce itself by taking a giant lore shit on your entire face?”\n<<becomes>>The room is silent for several seconds. <<gains>>Then, Erika: “Yeah, but it’s really the exception to the rule.”<<becomes>>Josh throws his blue marker onto the floor, where it bounces at a severe angle and smacks into the glass separating the room from the rest of the studio with a sharp crack. <<becomes>>Out on the floor several heads turn toward the meeting room. Josh is already pulling down the room’s blinds. <<becomes>>“We have a writer,” he says quietly, as the white slats of the blinds clackily unfurl. <<gains>>He gestures toward you. <<becomes>>“Our writer will do something.”<<becomes>>Troy takes a deep breath. “So another pass at dialogue for the open.”<<becomes>>“Yeah. And if that doesn’t work, we go with the cold open.”<<becomes>>Erika and Mike look at each other, the table, each other. Josh, still staring at Troy, pretends not to have noticed their subtly mutinous consultation.\n\n<<gains>>Troy starts taking a note, but then, with a small, infuriated slash, crosses it out. “You know what? Fine. That’s not what we -- but fine. Moving on. What’s next?”\n<<becomes>>Shawn begins to stretch in his chair like a giant cat making itself at home. He’s complained before about Troy’s unreasonable habit of scheduling meetings before 11 a.m. <<gains>>The first twenty-five percent of what Shawn proceeds to say is mostly yawn: “Hey can we next maybe talk about the pirate attack or the space battle -- or whatever the fuck we’re calling it now?”\n<<becomes>>“We’re skipping the pirate space battle,” Josh says. “It’s big, it’s noisy, it’s fine. People will love it. Let’s go right into Afghanistan.”\n<<becomes>>Erika sighs audibly. Josh has insisted on referring to the game’s early, self-consciously studied war-is-bad desert battle -- the second major combat encounter -- as “Afghanistan” so indefatigably that a panicked PR flack made him undergo emergency deprogramming right before E3 last year, lest he slip and actually say such a thing out loud to the press. <<becomes>>(At his press conference, he wound up saying the battle only reminded him of Afghanistan, which thankfully only had higher-minded critics on Twitter tsk-tsking for about an hour afterwards.)\n<<becomes>>“Remember,” Troy says. “We’re not supposed to call it Afghanistan anymore.”\n\n<<gains>>“Sorry. Let’s go right into Tora Bora.”\n\n<<gains>>Troy makes another note.\n\n<<becomes>>Josh is walking around the table now, his hands moving in emphatic little circles. “This is our showstopper, the first moment in the game where we announce our true intentions. The new ShatterGate. Grittier, tougher, meaner. And yet the enemy barks throughout that level sound cartoonish. They’re not convincing. Everything is just ‘Argle bargle, kill the human!’ It’s murdering the feels here.”\n<<becomes>>Okay, so -- is he taking another shot at you? If so, it’s a stab at the centrally absurd heart of everything you’ve been trying to overcome in the past year. You would very much like to know how anyone -- how Melville, Shakespeare, or even Marc Laidlaw -- could write “convincing” combat dialogue for a game in which you punch the heads off of enemies frozen in place by your ice grenades.<<becomes>>[[“Grittier, tougher, meaner”: Nothing else in the game actually supported these aspirations, even though Drew and Josh talked about them all the time. A single glance at the weapons, art, story, and milieu of this game leads any rational person to an inescapable conclusion: This is a willfully, obviously ridiculous world.|S E Choice]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>All at once you go boneless in your chair. What was billed as an emergency fix-the-game meeting has turned unambiguously into something else. <<becomes>>You feel like you’ve gained fifteen pounds of paranoia in the last hour. You look around the table. Do all of them have it in for you? How long have they been whispering about your work? <<becomes>>Has this whole charade been concocted as an elaborate show trial to convict you for the imminent failure of ShatterGate: Future Perfect -- the game that absolutely cannot fail? <<becomes>>What about the jokes you’ve shared, the beers you’ve drunk, the snarky memes you’ve forwarded to one another in response to some innocent team member’s “I brought banana bread!” email announcement? All that camaraderie seems like a distant shimmering mirage right now.\n<<becomes>>[[“So I gather it’s all a writing problem,” you say, weakly defiant. “Our whole game.”|S F Choice]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>You’re not sure when you stood up, but now, slowly, you sit back down.\n<<becomes>>“We’re a team,” Josh says, finally. He doesn’t seem to have been offended by what you said. Worse, he doesn’t seem to have even listened to what you said. <<gains>>“This is a team effort. We’re going to solve this as a team. I know this is hard on everyone. And E3 is just around the corner again. Any day now they’re going to be hounding us for demos and fucking interviews and God knows what else. <<gains>>But listen. If there’s one thing I know about this team, it’s that we can slam it home when it counts. We've done it before; we’ll do it again. And this -- this is where it counts.”\n<<becomes>>You think about this man missing his son’s second birthday party due to an emergency meeting about execution animations.\n<<becomes>>“Man,” Mike says. “It almost feels like we’re in that mission at the end of Scoured Lands. The fracture thing with the linear motion gun?”\n<<becomes>>Shawn actually puts a hand over his heart. “You mean where the floor gets dynamically blown apart while you’re running around on it? I remember playing that. God, it must have been so hard to script.”\n\n<<gains>>“It was so worth it, though. ‘Fraaaaacture!’”\n<<becomes>>Now even Josh is sinking into a marsh of warm, happy memories. “Yeah. That was a really good bit.” <<gains>>Then he looks around -- bird-like, eureka’d. “Wait a sec. Maybe we should base our opening on something like that.”\n<<becomes>>Troy’s Lobot eyes grow suddenly wide and alert. “Uh -- we’re not back on the open again, are we?”\n<<becomes>>[[Josh leans over, his chest pressed right up against the table’s edge, while he hand-puppets his new idea. “Just think about it. You open up on the player, lasers are coming down, the floor is getting totally destroyed.”|S G Choice]]<<endreplace>>

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<<replace>>You say, “Josh, eight months ago you and Drew told me to write up that opening cinematic. You both said it was going to be a ‘test.’ I had like one night to write it. Next thing I knew, it was being storyboarded and animated.”<<becomes>>Josh stares at you, but it’s Mike that speaks: “If it was such a bad idea, why didn’t you push back? Or make it better later? We hired you to know what good writing is. Why aren’t you raising red flags if you see issues like this?”<<becomes>>“I didn’t think it was a bad idea on its own.” This isn’t a satisfactory answer; you can feel a chilly orb form around and separate you from your colleagues. <<becomes>>Josh, still looking at you, crosses his arms. You know you have to say something. You say, “Maybe I’m imagining this, but it seems like a lot of the game’s problems are all of a sudden being placed at my feet.”<<becomes>>“No one’s saying that,” Troy says.\n\n<<gains>>“I don’t know,” Erika says. “I haven’t been that crazy about the quality of the scripts. Just to be frank.”<<becomes>>[[“Me neither.” This is Shawn. You stare at him in hot-eyed surprise.|S D]]<<endreplace>>

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<<replace>>You say, “We tried that open -- the ‘cold open.’ Everyone hated it. Remember?”<<becomes>>“I realize that,” Josh says. “The problem is everyone hates what replaced it even more. So let me ask you: Do you think what we have is a strong open?”<<becomes>>You open your mouth, but Erika speaks first: “It’s garbage. I haven’t been crazy about any of the scripts. I’m sorry -- I’m just being honest. <<gains>>In Hollywood you have a whole group of story specialists who hammer on the beats, together in a room, and subject them to constant stress tests. I feel like we never did that. <<gains>>The ‘story’ was just what you and Josh cooked up behind our backs.”\n\n<<gains>>“That’s not fair,” Josh says.\n\n<<becomes>>[[“I don’t care if it’s fair. It’s true.”|S D]]<<endreplace>>

<center><<timedreplace 500ms>>\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>April 26, 2012<<playsound "sounds/datecard.mp3">>\n<<gains>><<endtimedreplace>>\n</center>\n<<timedgoto "Pause After Date Card" 7s>>

[[You go on: “Over the past year, I’ve been trying -- really, really trying -- to go along with every idea, every stupid idea that gets tossed into the stew pot around here. I’ve written cold opens, hot opens, expositional opens, mission instructions, button tutorials. I’ve written a 700-hundred-page game script in the style of a comic-book-movie romp. I then rewrote it, at request, in the style of a Serious War Movie. Then I Frankensteined the two together -- again, at request. I wrote everything you wanted me to write, the way you wanted me to write it. And any time I said I thought this or that might work better you all just plowed right over me. So what I said -- what I’ve always said -- is fine. What I’ll do is try please you -- all of you -- even when you’re contradicting each other, which you all are, by the way, all the time, constantly.”|S G]]

<<replace>>You go on: “It all goes back to the real problem here. I can’t make something serious when the gameplay is not serious. But you’re telling me to do this; you’re telling me it’s going to work. And it hasn’t worked. Now, right now, I’m telling you now it’s not going to work. Ever. <<gains>>You want a serious, sober, gray-skied story, but you don’t want to give up your gameplay. And I understand not wanting to give that up -- it’s what everyone likes about ShatterGate. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re asking for something impossible. Don’t you get that? <<gains>>You want to have your cake and eat it too.”\n\n<<gains>>Mike sighs. “The cake is a lie.”<<becomes>>[[Erika’s softly disdainful eyes close. “Mike, shut the fuck up.”|S G]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>[[You go on: “That’s what you all wanted from the start, isn’t it? To pin this on me. To have someone to point to when this game comes out and it’s publicly stoned to death. That way, you can fire me, and the rest of you can keep your jobs. You’ll hire a new writer to come in and fix everything, just like I came in and cleaned up after Ken on Scoured Lands, just like Ken came in and cleaned up after Bryan on ShatterGate 1. Easy, right? And you all can keep on being ‘creative.’ Well, keep on doing such a tremendously excellent job with this franchise.”|S G]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>><<timedreplace 1s>>“Yeah, so what?”\n\n<<gains>>“You think we should take that direction seriously? To have our second group of enemies be ‘Arabic-sounding’ in an environment you’ve publicly acknowledged is reminiscent of Afghanistan?”\n\n<<gains>>“They don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan,” Shawn says, studying his hand, to nobody.<<endtimedreplace>>\n\n<<becomes>>Josh, looking like an impotent wizard, tries to wave away what you’re saying. “You’re putting words in Drew’s mouth. Nobody wants them literally speaking Arabic.”\n<<becomes>>“Okay, but going in that direction even a little, even a tiny bit, opens us up to some potentially pretty devastating criticism.”\n<<becomes>>“Hey,” Mike says. “Drew isn’t the one who put ‘Durka durka!’ into the script when our enemies charge you. That was you. And believe me, I like Team America as much as the next guy.”\n\n<<gains>>“It was an Easter egg!” you say. “A joke!”\n<<becomes>>[[“But not your joke,” Shawn says, devastatingly. “Was it? Maybe that’s the problem here. All your best stuff is someone else’s.”|S F]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>><<timedreplace 1s>>“Yeah, so what?”\n\n<<gains>>“So what is our main character. He’s ridiculous. He’s like James Bond in space.”\n\n<<gains>>“Who says James Bond is ridiculous? Look at Skyfall. That’s exactly the type of reimagining we’re trying to do here. I thought you understood that.”<<endtimedreplace>>\n\n<<becomes>>“Okay, but in Skyfall James Bond doesn’t have the option to stay in a safe house with a selection of alien girlfriends for a temporary combat boost.”\n<<becomes>>Mike: “Hey, that’s one of the systemic pillars of our game!”\n<<becomes>>You turn to him. “I know. And I know it’s too late to change it. <<gains>>I know we’ve recorded all the dialogue. I know we’ve made all the animations. I know it’s tied in to all these other systems. <<gains>>All I’m saying is, this is the kind of stuff that negates the whole ‘gritty experience’ aspiration. <<gains>>How am I supposed to ‘grit up’ your interactions with alien girlfriends? Do I make them all green three-titted hookers or what?”\n<<becomes>>[[Josh’s eyes cloud over with something dark. “That’s actually pretty sexist, what you just said.”|S F]]<<endreplace>>

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<<timedreplace 500ms>>The others glance around the table at one another. They seem to be waiting for you to continue.\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[“Look, I’m trying my best, but none of you have given me any support the entire time I’ve been here.”|S F 1]]\n<<gains>>\n- [[“I hate to break it to you, but there are fundamental problems here we can’t fix with script changes.”|S F 2]]\n<<gains>>\n<<gains>>- [[“Yeah. Okay, then. Guess I fucked up. Guess I’m not good at this. Guess it’s my fault. Have fun fixing your shitty game without me.”|S F 3]]\n<<endtimedreplace>>

<<replace>>Troy is apparently the youngest Lead Producer in the company’s history, and he certainly looks the part: thin, fair-faced, with an altar boy side-part and an array of ironic T-shirts. (Your favorite: “World’s Greatest Grandma.”) He came to ShatterGate: Future Perfect only a few months ago, fresh from rescuing another famous game development disaster, Cruel Fates (Metacritic: 82). Although he’s new here, his lurid tales of impossible odds, recalcitrant developers, and the physical toll he took jetting back and forth to Japan every other week to pummel that game into its final, publishable form have gained him a succession of rapt audiences here. And really, it’s not that difficult to see why. Everyone’s hoping that Troy can work whatever dark production magicks he possesses to repeat the trick and cement his reputation as an industry turnaround artist, a game-dev messiah. <<becomes>>[[He likes to say, somewhat cockishly, “All I really do is make people do their jobs.”|S A Choice]]<<endreplace>>

<<replace>>Erika came to game development from Hollywood, and you have noticed that she likes to talk about Hollywood as though it were one monolithic set of beliefs, practices, and aspirations. She claims to regard video games as “the next big step,” but has never, as far as you know, described what this big step putatively leads toward. Of everyone on the team, she is simultaneously the most passionately devoted to getting “to quality” and the least concerned with defining what “quality” actually means. She’s been known to spend forty minutes explaining why a window shouldn’t go there, 1.5 hours on correct doorknob height. Behind her back, she’s called the Professor. The level designers just want to slap down geometry and go, but Erika wants everything on screen to be perfectly positioned, perfectly lit, and perfectly designed. The end result is testers bathing in the sensuous visual caramel of her environments and quickly realizing they have absolutely no idea where they should go next or what they should even be looking at. She and Josh usually have a weekly meeting in which he begs her to dial back on the excessive detail. <<becomes>>[[Yet if ShatterGate: Future Perfect ends up with anything going for it at all, it will be its art. You can see the critical consensus on it already, six months before it ships: This beautiful but emotionally empty screenshot generator is yet another example -- as if one more were needed! -- of AAA development’s creative bankruptcy.|S A Choice]]<<endreplace>>

Matthew S. Burns

<<replace>><<timedreplace 500ms>>“Okay. So what?”\n\n<<gains>>“It’s not very gritty, is my point.”\n\n<<gains>>“Well, that’s all in how it’s presented.”\n\n<<gains>>“It’s a gun with a sword on it. That is how it’s presented.”<<endtimedreplace>>\n\n<<becomes>>Mike says, with a sigh, “It’s the game’s signature weapon.”\n<<becomes>>“And that’s fine,” you say, because you actually like the Gunsword in gameplay a lot. <<gains>>“But we’re shooting ourselves in the foot if we don’t honor what our experience actually wants to be. <<gains>>We go on about how our core fan base wants a ‘grittier, heavier experience,’ but nothing else in the game is doing anything to support that experience. <<gains>>You think that can all be done with writing? With words?”\n<<becomes>>“Nobody’s suggesting this rests entirely on words,” Erika says. “I’ve been here without a day off for thirty-eight days in a row. You know why? Because I’m dirtying up our environments to make them grittier.”\n<<becomes>>[[“Words, words,” Shawn mutters, to nobody.|S F]]<<endreplace>>