SEATTLE --One of the other great opportunities of Penny Arcade Expo is meeting some of gaming's most famous names all in one convenient place.
For the "Medium is the Massage [sic]" panel on Saturday afternoon, a power-packed panel of game creators addressed the current thinking on the use of story in videogames. From left, Double Fine's Tim Schafer, G4's Adam Sessler, Bioware's Greg Zeschuk, Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack and Bungie's Joseph Staten spoke to a packed house about their games.
Schafer gave the crowd some insight into how the stories for his games Psychonauts and Brutal Legend came about. Reading about dreams, about how people unconsciously create metaphoric images for the conflicts in their real lives, got him thinking about a game in which a player explored his brain. But someone mistakenly thought that his idea was about exploring other peoples' brains, which he immediately decided was the better idea.
As for his recent game Brutal Legend, he said the story -- about a roadie that raises an army of head-banging minions -- came in part from his ideas about the gameplay: He'd wanted to do a game about leading an army in combat, and thus the story flowed from the gameplay to some extent.
"The story is never locked in stone when you start," said Schafer. Changes to the gameplay during the design process can mean changes to the story.
This was a theme that was repeated throughout the discussion: That story in a game should serve, perhaps even come from, the gameplay. Both Schafer and Dyack made the point that a story can be a great way to immerse the player, but that cut scenes and other story devices must not break the sense of flow.
"Immersion is something that can be broken by most anything," Bungie's Staten observed -- from a bad framerate to subpar voice acting.
"We need to make games that hold together," said Bioware's Zeschuk.
Photo: Chris Kohler/Wired.com
