Kōtiro

How to Write a Compelling Main Character

Pete — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 20:42:11 +0000

When I was reviewing my script to gut the weak subplot out of it, I made a bigger realization. Kōtiro, the protagonist and main character, is weak. She’s a “strong woman” but she’s weak in the sense that she isn’t memorable.

What makes a memorable character?

Part of making a memorable character is giving them a critical flaw. Some demon that haunts them and threatens to derail the story goal completely.

When a character is always good and brave and smart and kind, he’s boring, and the situations he’s in are also boring. That bland nobility is what Kōtiro was suffering from.

Upping the Ante

There is a little known trick that may be the key to turning an alright character into one that is classic.

The trick is to make a character’s critical flaw also their greatest strength—to make the characteristic that almost dooms them the very same one that makes them the only person that could achieve the story goal.

Examples of Classic Characters

Frodo

I’ll pull a character straight from geek cannon: Frodo Baggins. He’s actually a little bland for my taste, but he illustrates this principle perfectly. Frodo is the main character in Lord of the Rings, and he is tasked with bringing the “one ring” to Mt. Doom to destroy it.

The reason he’s classic is that his primary characteristic is that he’s innocent. He’s small, and fat, and sweet, and kind, and good-hearted, and innocent. All the things you definitely don’t want to be if you’re fighting Sauron and his vast armies of orcs and trolls. Frodo’s ignorance of battle very nearly dooms his quest to failure.

However! No one else is capable of delivering the ring to Mt. Doom, precisely because Frodo is innocent enough to carry the evil ring without becoming immediately corrupted by it.

This tension between how necessary Frodo’s innocence is and how damning it is, is a perfect example of a classic character flaw.

Kratos

Another, more recent, example of a character with a classic critical flaw is Kratos, protagonist of the God of War series. I knew there was something special about this series when I first played it, but to be frank, the storyline is pretty much paper thin. Still, Kratos is such a compelling character, he’s became an instant classic.

Kratos is essentially a sociopathic Spartan warrior who kills everything in his path. His skill in battle is only matched by his brutality and callous disregard for life.

Without a single-minded focus on bloodshed, Kratos could not possibly succeed at the story goal of exacting revenge first on Ares, the titular god of war, then on the entire pantheon of supernatural beings from gods to titans.

The irony is that Ares had used Kratos’ brutality and disregard for life to trick him into killing his own wife and daughter, which launched him into his revenge quest to begin with.

So Kratos’ critical flaw of being almost inhumanly cruel is both his downfall and the characteristic that makes his story possible. Classic character.

Kōtiro’s Critical Flaw

My original concept was that Kōtiro’s power comes from her love for Aroha, but that she believes in love too much to actually go through with the story goal of preventing Rangi and Papa from being together.

It’s not believable enough. No matter how much you love someone, you’re going to favor saving the universe over spending time with your loved one. If the universe is destroyed that’s going to cramp your quality time anyway.

Even if you incorporate my thought from the previous post about Aroha persuading Kōtiro to stay in the underworld while the universe burned, Kōtiro is just too damn heroic to sit idly by while Tāwhiri kills her family and the world she came from.

The other issue is that love doesn’t really uniquely qualify Kōtiro to achieve the story goal. Lots of entities more powerful than Kōtiro have a stake in the universe not ending. Why Kōtiro?

I just wasn’t buying that Kōtiro being a little sappy would put a serious road block in her way to saving the world. She was a weak character because she had a weak critical flaw.

My new idea

Love is still an important theme in the game. Love is how Kōtiro ends up with the moko that grant her the magic that she uses to eventually win. But the twist is that the magic is a drug.

When she first is filled with that essence of magic, she feels incredible, powerful, and euphoric. It gives her the confidence and power to fight back against the enemies that threaten her family and world.

As time plods forward, the magic erodes her ability to function normally. She must get her magic “fix” just to operate at the level she once did naturally. She becomes distant and irritable, even toward Aroha. Still, she must continue absorbing magic in order to fight.

The more powerful her magic use becomes, the harder the come down is when she runs out, and the more desperate she is to get more.

As she struggles to stay sane despite failing health, she will eventually alienate her family, friends, and even Aroha.

At the end of the long journey to victory, she will happily return to Aroha by throwing herself onto the jagged rocks at the bottom of a sea cliff.

I that’s a pretty delicious and believable flaw. Kōtiro is noble at heart, but a girl scout she is not.

More Storyline Updates

Pete — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:23:25 +0000

I’ve made pretty massive progress. The story is all but complete, but I’m having trouble connecting some parts in the middle, which is a traditionally difficult area of scripts.

I realized that the problem I’m having is mainly with the subplot, and that the reason there’s a problem is that my subplot really sucks.

Weak Subplot

(Spoilers Follow.)

Since the game is about love, the subplot explores love. In its current form the subplot is this: Kōtiro is betrothed to a man she doesn’t like. She has a lover that she wants to be with. The tension is between Kōtiro’s duty to her people to honor the betrothal versus her commitment to love and her lover. The idea is that her struggle with this personal problem will inform her quest to achieve the story goal.

This is an acceptable subplot for a lot of stories, but it makes no sense in the context of the world ending. The overall story goal is to stop the universe from being crushed, so a question about betrothal is utterly moot. Questions about the way things are done, which is kind of what the subplot is for, have one answer: stop the world from ending at all costs.

So the subplot is unacceptably weak.

A better Subplot

The changes I’m considering now bring in a plausible alternative point of view.

Ingo, the man Kōtiro is betrothed to, functioned as the the skeptic and contagonist, which means it was his job to deflect Kōtiro from the story goal. In this iteration, Ingo deflects Kōtiro by being a whiny pain in the ass. He just flapped his jaws a bit, and Kōtiro ignored him every time. It’s weak because he never takes any action and his point of view isn’t believable. There is no plausible alternative to saving the world, jaw flapping or not.

Meanwhile, Aroha is Kōtiro’s lover, and she functioned as the reason and love interest, but she was too weak also. She could never really be plausibly present with Kōtiro to influence her, and it didn’t make sense for her to be the “reason” archetype.

The answer is to flip things around.

Ingo is still the skeptic, but he’s also reason now, and he’s no longer betrothed to Kōtiro. He might be her brother or other relative. He will support Kōtiro but express disbelief at her plans (think of Han Solo in Star Wars).
The contagonist is Aroha, who now represents the emotion archetype, and remains the love interest. Remember, the contagonist isn’t opposed to the story goal per se, like the antagonist is. The contagonist is a source of temptation, luring the protagonist away from the story goal for their own reasons. In this case, Aroha has an opportunity to present the only plausible alternative viewpoint.

I’ll emphasize a thread that I’ve had all along, which is that Kōtiro is an outcast among her people. Tolerated, but not liked by most.
I will make Aroha an extremely likable and well-drawn character, the type you root for in the movie.
I will then kill her brutally and senselessly, and with Kōtiro present for all its wretched pathos.
Some time later Kōtiro will find herself in the underworld, and she will find Aroha there. The world ending will kill all life, but will leave the underworld basically untouched.
There Aroha will beg for Kōtiro to stay with her. Why does she fight for all these people who don’t even like her? Why doesn’t she just stay with Aroha, for ever and ever, in the underworld, and let come what may in the upper world? Why make it her problem, when she can just ignore what’s going on above and live in peace and happiness down below?

That is a plausible temptation for Kōtiro. She really could make that choice, even with the world ending. So that’s what I’ll weave.

Site Improvements

I needed a couple new tools for writing that I built into the site.

Intensity Meter

If you look on the main storyline page, you’ll notice red bars under each scene. That bar represents the intensity of the scene (in my case, the intensity of the gameplay action, not necessarily the emotional intensity). When the scenes are complete and fleshed out, and each has an intensity assigned, I’ll make the data into a pretty graph. This way I’ll be able to tell if it follows an appropriate pattern of cycling through intense/less intense scenes and escalating until the end.

All in One Story Page

It’s extremely useful to have each scene on its own page so that I can focus on it and rearrange it when I need to, and keep track of meta data about it. However, when you’re trying to read the story all the way through, and really understand the context of the scene, it would be nice to have a view of the script that’s complete from top to bottom.

That’s why I built this page: All in One Story Page. That page has the latest script from top to bottom, so you can read it all the way through.

Moving Forward

Here’s the plan moving forward:

Complete the first draft. I don’t know how long it’ll take. It depends on how well the new subplot meshes, but I suspect it’ll go well.
Duplicate the draft pages. I want to leave the first draft as it is. In fact, I already don’t like how much history has been erased in terms of the evolution of the characters and script. I think it’s hugely valuable not only for the creative process but also for students who come later and want to see how something like this is created. So I’ll duplicate the pages in the first draft, to create a second draft that I can work on without disturbing what used to be there.
Write second draft. Everything in a first draft is a structural element. It’s like building the frame of a house. The put the beams and brick in place, but don’t worry about finishing the floors or anything, because that’s what the second draft is for. You get to hang the drywall, and put in light fixtures. You make the house livable. I’ll be adorning the script with the appropriate depth and detail that’ll be hung on the structure of the first draft.
Tweak the scene graph. After the second draft, all the scenes of the game will be pretty much fleshed out, and that’s when I’ll look at the intensity graph to make sure the pacing is going to be about right. I’ll make whatever tweaks are necessary to fit the plot into a nice rhythm. It’s worth mentioning that most of this careful planning will go right out the window when I’m faced with the reality of the working game. It’s worth at least understanding what I’m shooting for, even if it’s not where I end up.
Storyboard. Each scene will be completely fleshed out by this point, so I can begin the process of storyboarding all the shots and interesting gameplay moments. This will help me later when I need to build the art assets and animations. It’ll also help bring the script to life in a serious way, and maybe earn some attention, which is one of my goals for this project.

At that point I’ll have a complete storyline to build from. I don’t expect to do all of that before moving on to other elements of the game though. The story doesn’t have to be completely done to build many of the assets I know I need, including character art and environmental pieces. Still, it helps to have a direction and know how all the moving parts work together, which is why all this work and planning are worth it!

Storyline Progress

Pete — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:07:57 +0000

I’ve posted the first quarter of the plot in the Writing section. It’s definitely a rough draft screen play, some of it is more filled in than other parts. You should not read it if you want to play the game without spoilers—it isn’t a teaser, it’s the draft I’ll be using to produce the game.

A few notes:

I am going to storyboard pretty much everything. Right now there are descriptions that are fairly specific, but I have pictures in my mind of exactly how everything will look. I’ll be coming back through and creating something like a comic book of each scene.

Some parts are not fleshed out. There are vague portions in which I say what should be there, but don’t actually have the detail, especially bits of dialog. The dialog currently there is all placeholder. Dialog is tricky to get right, especially in epic fantasy.

I am going to color code sections. Right now it’s all black, but I’ll be color coding the text to mark cut scenes, playable areas, scripted sequences, and script direction.

There are time continuity problems in this draft. You’ll notice from one scene to the next, the sun and moon are in nonsensical positions. One reason is that the story has moved around a lot. Another is that I tend to write visually: I imagine the action taking place as though I’m watching it, and in doing so I tend to capture the mood by the lighting I see, which depends on the time of day. So if I think something is ominous, I’ll make it dark. If I need a triumph then someone gets back lit by the sun. When you put it together, it doesn’t make sense. I’ll work that out in the next draft.

Here’s the link to the first scene, and you can follow the links at the bottom to see all the scenes that are posted:

Kōtiro Script: The Normal

Tellmesomethingnice about Kōtiro’s Music

Pete — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:32:12 +0000

Kōtiro is really a labor of love for me. When I’m not working on it, I want to be. I’m always synthesizing the world around me through the lens of: how can I apply this knowledge, this beauty, this wonder, to my game, Kōtiro?

So I really didn’t expect any help with the project because it’s not just a one off–it’s the project that I want to be tyrannical about. I want it to be pure, authentic, and inspirational… and how could I possibly find someone who feels that way about my pet project, other than myself?

Well, when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, the universe has a way of saying “Yes” to you.

Enter Ryan Cole

In this case the “yes” came in the form of one Ryan Cole, of tellmesomethingnice.com. Given all the artistic purity stuff I spouted above, I was concerned about an area of weakness I feared I could not overcome: Music.

Too ignorant about it to make it, barely competent to listen. Where would I ever find someone who could live up to my impossible expectations of not only talent but passion?

After I had the Kōtiro game title logo made (forthcoming), Ryan saw it and became interested in the project–he is a musician (among other things) who had been looking for a game project to get involved with.

I tried to scare him off. I said I was a beast and tyrant… that I was obsessively pouring over myth and history to create a magnum opus game that really captured the essence of the Māori culture. That I was feverishly ensuring all the visuals and story were true to the culture, and I saw it as something of a moral responsibility to present the material authentically. This is not a cute little project for the faint of heart.

Instead of shying away, Ryan said he thought that the project sounded amazing, and he seemed inspired by my dedication. After that he jumped into the material in a way that I thought no one but me would. He’s been researching Māori and Polynesian music ever since, building tracks, and even recruiting voice talent and scrounging studio time .

I’m lucky to have him.

He has a blog dedicated to the music of Kōtiro, which you can find here. There is also a feed in the sidebar to the right, which has all his posts. You should go there and read some of his ideas, and listen to the tracks he’s been building.

Thanks Ryan, you rock.

Updates Forthcoming

Pete — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:41:18 +0000

I’ve been hard at work for a while on a couple really cool things. I like to post things once they are complete, and since I’m at a “sort of but not quite” complete stage on several things, there hasn’t been much activity here. Here are some of the updates coming up:

Writing – I’ve made huge progress on the storyline, and characters. I updated the character information a little today, but I want to flesh out the story a little more, then I’ll do a full update, including an awesome free tool I developed to help me keep track of everything.
Kō’s design – Kō is almost complete visually. I have some portraits that’ll make you swoon, she’s looking like a real person now. I’m having some trouble with her top though. Once I figure that out, I’ll post all the visual progress.
Other character designs – I’ve spent a lot of time fleshing out the other characters too, and I’ll be posting some visuals in a little bit. They should be interesting!

The Courage to be Immoral

Pete — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:58:53 +0000

(Warning, there is tasteful nudity in this post).

After waxing poetic about sexualized heroines in games, and extolling the virtues of courage in storytelling, I find myself backed into a corner.

Whatever I do, I will be an asshole. Here’s the story:

I wanted to create a good female character. Someone who was respectable, strong, competent, yet feminine. I endowed my creation with a strong trunk, breasts of normal size and shape, strong legs, feminine hips.

Well, first it turns out that athletic women are pretty skinny, especially from the side, which happens to the primary angle of this game:

(See the rest of the latest renders here)

So she may be skinny, but the activity of the game requires that she be really athletic, so I give myself a pass. She may be young, but the storyline requires that she be on the cusp of marriage so it’s out of my hands.

Still, I’m feeling a little uncomfortable about having a young, attractive female lead.

The Straw

Now here’s the “courage” part–the last straw that really makes me look like an asshole.

The pre-European Māori had very different nudity taboos than we do. They had essentially two articles of clothing: a pui pui skirt, which is sort of like one of those Hawaiian grass skirts, and a rectangular shawl that they would drape over their shoulders. They had other things like feather cloaks for special occasions and high ranking people, but those weren’t common.

Generally speaking, they didn’t wear clothes if it was at all inconvenient, and in fact had a cultural belief that clothing spread disease (which was often true in those days). Often warriors would go to war in the nude. Swimming was done in the nude. Lots of athletic activities which a skirt would interfere with would require nudity. Raining? Go naked!

Also, the concept of female breasts being covered differently than males’ is purely European. Often the small shoulder wrap would cover only one breast because of the way it was worn, over one shoulder.

The reality is that if she were on a quest requiring running, climbing, jumping, etc., Kōtiro would most probably go naked or nearly naked.

The courageous thing to do would be to own that, and to show a nude female main character. Because of my audience, however, that would also be sexualizing her in a way I specifically wanted to avoid. Not to mention the practical implications of getting people to distribute and play a game with nudity that is not also about nudity.

So, I’m either a coward or a pervert, and either way I’m a hypocrite.

I think what I’m going to do for the sake of my audience is cover her with a skirt and shawl and just ignore the fact that they aren’t terribly realistic in context. On the other hand, that clothing is still skimpy at best, so maybe by trying to compromise I’m being a cowardly hypocrite perv.

What would you do?

Ethics of Beauty and Body Image in Video Games

Pete — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:43:56 +0000

I’m in the concept phase of designing my game’s female main character, Kō. Of course, when designing characters the goal is to make them distinctive and memorable, which means a distinctive silhouette among other things.

Let’s be perfectly clear here: most games solve this problem for women by giving them inflated boobs and tiny waists. It may have worked for Lara Croft, but in a field rife with bodacious tahtahs, exaggerated sexual anatomy doesn’t make a distinctive character anymore.

Aside from that good aesthetic reason for avoiding the cliche, there is also the ethical dimension. When we endow our female characters with anatomically impossible cleavage or hips you could serve a three course dinner on, you instantly discredit them; it’s as though they don’t have the personality or importance to make them genuinely interesting, so they rely on sex appeal to create interest. In fact, that’s often exactly the case. You knock the narrative wind out of them, as it were. They are now visual objects.

In a way, defaulting to exaggerated figures discredits all women; instead of thinking about what hair color they might have, the first question as a game artist becomes: how generous are her mammaries?

That leaves us with cardboard barbie dolls in place of real characters, and creates unrealistic expectations in people whose little ape brains, evolved out on the plains and canopies of Africa, are not equipped to filter this constant, life-long barrage of visual fiction.

Is this right of us? I don’t know.

What I do know is that it’s boring. We need new visual memes, and different methods of story telling that lift our female characters to a higher level of believability and emotional connection.

So here’s my question for you: what is attractive in a girl that’s not sexualized? What features can be accentuated that would tend to give credibility to our characters instead of take it away? How do we create characters who are not dolls, who are not physically perfect, perhaps not even attractive, yet are compelling and believable and magnetic?

The Story Conversation

Pete — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:26:03 +0000

(You should read my primer on character archetypes if you haven’t already)

Many flat stories, especially in games, are about a bad guy who wants control and a good guy who doesn’t want to be controlled. The reason it’s flat is not only that it has been done to death, but that there is no real conversation going on. Rarely does the “bad” guy have a chance to explain what’s so great about control and how it could help. Rarely does the hero have any qualms about stopping him.

Interesting conversations have meaningful arguments in them that take time to explore and explain. Both sides have compelling points and often there is only a tentative resolution. Maybe we ultimately decide that freedom is better than control, but we also realize what benefits we’ve left behind that control could have offered, so we have mixed feelings about our “victory.”

Imagine having a conversation to the effect of:

Friend: Control is bad, freedom is good.
You: Yeah, totally.

Then imagine stretching that conversation over the course of 5, or even 50 hours. That’s the recipe for pretty much every game with a lame storyline.

The Story as a Conversation

I’ll quote from the character primer:

…characters enable the story to unfold both physically and philosophically. You might think of the story as a debate between two opposing points of view about your central theme.

Those points of view are debated point-by-point, on different levels. Pros and cons are explored by the actions of the characters and the consequences of those actions. There is a logical thread that makes arguments about fact, and there is an emotional thread that makes arguments about feelings. There’s a supportive thread that articulates one position, and an opposing thread that articulates the other.

The idea is that each of these character pairs argues about the same topic, but in different ways, such that at the end of the story, we feel that the argument has been resolved.

So stories are a sort of debate, in which characters act out the arguments for and against both sides.

Create the Conversation

Here are some steps to creating a meaningful conversation:

Choose a central theme, or topic of conversation.
Write the two basic viewpoints about the topic. Personify the two points by writing about how a person might come to their position on the subject. These will be your protagonist and antagonist, but it’s not important to decide which is which right now.
Write some supporting points for both sides of the debate. It’s okay to make bad arguments as long as you also refute them with another point. Flesh out archetype characters to support the points.

Choose a Central Theme

Here are three great ways to choose a crappy topic:

Don’t pick a topic. It’s like prolonged small talk in which a conversation is happening but you’re not really talking about anything. The audience won’t care what happens one way or the other. How’s the weather? Oh, you don’t say. Snore.
Pick a topic that is one-sided. Killing babies, anyone? If there aren’t two meaningful sides to take, you’ll end up with a moralistic snore-fest. Your good guys will be good, your bad guys will be bad, and your story will be boring.
Pick a topic that’s trite. A conversation that you’ve had 100 times before is boring. Evil aliens are played out. We’ve talked about whether the human race deserves to live or die. We’ve talked about racism. Unless you have a new perspective or argument to make, shut up.

We can pick something trite like Destiny vs. Free Will, or Individuality vs. Conformity which adolescent audiences love. If we feel ambitious we can choose a more open-ended topic like “What is reality?”

For our example, let’s do “Optimism vs. Pessimism.” It probably wouldn’t make a great story, but it’s accessible as an example.

Two Basic Points of View

Optimism leads to a better life than Pessimism
Pessimism leads to a better life than Optimism

Bob is an optimist. He had nice parents, and a happy childhood. He feels like everything always turns out alright in the end.
Jim is a pessimist. His father was an abusive alcoholic, and he grew up poor, on a rough side of town. He believes that if anything can go wrong, then it certainly will.

Supporting Points

Optimism allows us to grasp opportunities without fear of failure, and keeps us hopeful when we do fail. It also blinds us to the folly of our plans, and prevents us from planning as carefully as we should.

Pessimism protects us from danger (emotional and physical) by allowing us to stay out of risky situations. It also keeps us satisfied because we expect the worst, so when something good happens, it’s a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, it holds us back from opportunities through fear of failure, and leads to a gloomier mental state.

Unlike what I’ve done here, you should really get into this, as though it’s a lively debate with points, counter-points, agreement to disagree. Be logical, be ruthless, use guilt, trickery, and deception. Be passive aggressive, be even-handed in defending both positions– you can use all that material!

This isn’t enough for a real story, but more points will present themselves as we write the story. This list is just the seed of the dialogue.

In terms of character archetypes, a reason character might try to figure out whether the reward outweighs the risk of optimism. Maybe he’ll try to figure out if there’s just one answer, or if it might change depending on hold old a person is, or how wealthy he is. The emotion character might not care either way because he’s too busy living the good life, or he might be paralyzed in a bad situation by fear of things getting even worse.

The protagonist probably begins in a somewhat naive state based on assumptions. A guardian will offer supportive advice and insight that will give the protagonist (and audience) a sense of the finer points or deeper moral dimensions of the debate. The contagonist will serve the same purpose, but on the opposing side.

The sidekick will always support the protagonist in the narrative, but in terms of the debate, it’s a great opportunity to create a parallel story thread that argues for the protagonist’s position, but in a different way. You can even have the sidekick support the character narratively, but make the opposite argument.

Larry is Bob’s best pal, and he too is eternally optimistic. He’d do anything for Bob. He’s started a business that he projects will make him rich within the year. The question for you, author, is does his optimism pay off, or not? The skeptic is another opportunity for a parallel thread that makes the opposing case.

Sketch the story

At this point–with an overview of each of the objective characters, you will undoubtedly have some ideas about how all these people relate to each other, and how they might interact. Make some decisions about the beginning and end of the story, maybe some major plot points.

You also have some ideas about the setting (by the way, you should read this note on settings: History vs. Mythology), which affects the narrative in some ways, but rarely affects the actual conversation. Are Bob and Jim high school foot ball players? Proud king and timid prince? Are they mutant space aliens, or futuristic androids?

Place your characters in the world then begin getting to know them: their motivations, way of thinking, strengths and weaknesses.

Be Courageous

When you approach a story this way — in terms of an argument, and with characters who are beginning to have personalities, you will soon experience a bizarre sensation.

Stories and characters take on a mind of their own. One day, you’ll be writing, and decide that for the story to progress a character will have to do something. You’ll try to write that action down, and it just won’t work. The character will look up from the page and say: “You aren’t serious. Both you and I know I’m not going to do that. Try again, author.”

When your characters begin arguing with you, be proud. You’ve achieved some level of competence now — your story and the people in it are powerful and real enough to fight back against you. This is part of what it means to say a story “has legs.”

On the other hand, you know have a responsibility to these people. They each have a story to tell, and it’s your duty now to tell it with the dignity that they each deserve.

What that means is that the story is now free: you are now just a witness to the unfolding story, and your job is to report it faithfully, even if you don’t like where it’s going.

That takes courage as an author.

Kōtiro is a story about isolation and love. Being a sappy romantic, my personal position on the matter is that love conquers all. It’s the most important thing, and it trumps all other considerations. But that’s not what my story says. I realized some way into the narrative that Kō, who starts out agreeing with me, must change. She loses her naive optimism about the power of love, which I hate — I wanted to write a story about how being starry-eyed and infatuated will solve all your problems. The story proved to me that that’s just not how it is.

On the other hand, you’ve seen plenty of movies in which you slapped your forehead (sometimes often) and exclaimed: “What? She wouldn’t do that!” Just like authors get to know their characters well, audiences get to know them also, and form expectations about their personality. When the author violates the dignity of the character, they create a forehead slapping moment.

That happens because an author isn’t courageous enough to let the characters tell their story. He had a preconceived notion about the direction of the story, and ignored the protests of the characters who knew better. He was weak, and as a result he wrote a crappy story that makes a weak argument that no one believes or cares about.

Don’t be weak. Trust your characters to have the conversation you created them to have.

Note on Settings: History vs. Mythology

Pete — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:04:39 +0000

Game settings and back stories often read like mythology. This is a problem.

What is Mythology?

Mythology is a narrative explaining how the world came to be in its present form. This is also the frame most authors are writing from when they develop their back story: how did the setting get the way it is?

The difference is that the events in a myth are metaphors, whereas a back story is supposed to be a self-consistent historical account.

For example, there is a Māori story about Tāne, god of the forest, who ascends to the highest heaven to receive 3 baskets of knowledge from Io, the prime mover, or “self created.” Tāne, who himself is one of the most revered gods, has to undergo extensive purification on the way up and down. The story is instructive of the procedure to receive sacred knowledge from the iwi priests: one must have the birthright, receive permission, undergo the appropriate purification, go through the correct rites of initiation, and respect the tapu of both the institutions and knowledge itself.

The specific facts of Tāne’s ascent aren’t relevant to the message. In fact, the story changes each time an elder tells it, because in large part, the details of the account don’t matter.

What is History?

History, on the other hand, is an attempt to relate the facts of the past world in such a way as to explain the present state of affairs. Ideally, it’s not moralistic or metaphorical, it’s just an explanation of cause and effect.

It’s complex because there is never just one history — there are just people looking back, with their foibles and biases, and deciding what is relevant and what isn’t. It’s Americans believing they won World World II because they were morally superior to the Nazis, and it might well have been the Nazis looking back and saying the same if they had won. It’s people trying to make sense of chaos, and finding one or two main causes for events that probably had thousands or millions of tiny causes.

It’s never easy to figure out exactly what happened, and it’s impossible to figure out exactly why. Remember that.

The confusion

It’s common in mythology to tell “just so” stories. A good example is the hero Māui, who decided that the days were too short. How to solve that problem? He kicked the sun’s ass and told him to slow down.

It’s a common pattern for a hero to take some supernatural action that is very direct, works immediately, and has no unintended side effects. That’s okay, because the action isn’t a fact, it’s a metaphor. That’s not how history is though, and it’s not how your setting should be.

Don’t be confused: mythology is a metaphor for the status quo. History is an explanation for the status quo. If you use one when you should use the other, both your mythology and history will suck.

Some Considerations

History is biased. History is written by the victors, as they say. You as an author have to know what “really” happened, and you have to decide what people think happened. There’s a difference, and the gap between belief and reality is often ripe for stories.
Causes are complex. There is never a single cause for a major event in history. If you can explain a major world event in one sentence, you are writing a myth, not an account of history. Explain the many reasons and forces that allowed or forced an event to occur.
Groups do not make decisions. In bad back stories, groups will often decide something and take decisive action. The only group that behaves that way is an army, and the reason is that it’s actually a person or small group deciding and the army following orders. In reality, public sentiment is divided and takes time to evolve, and even when there’s wide agreement on a subject, many possible actions can be taken. Cliches like neighboring kingdoms that all have very specific cultural traits, all diametrically opposed, smack of myth, not history.
People are in power for a reason. Lots of reasons. No one just declares themselves dictator; it’s a process of building small pockets of support and infrastructure that eventually leave no one to fight back when power is finally taken. Think about why leaders, especially “evil” leaders, are in power.

Contours of Knowledge

Pete — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:10:14 +0000

Are you ignorant? Would you know if you were?

One reason I have a continuing passion for games is that they combine many of my interests. Digital and oil painting. Graphic design, information theory and architecture. Software development. Human-Computer interaction. Fiction and non-fiction writing. Math. Ancient cultures and philosophy. Music.

What does a person with such wide varied interests do? Why, make games of course!

But the same diversity that pulls me in, can also be overwhelming. Studies say that 10,000 hours of concentrated practice in a field is required before a person can become an expert. This rings true to my experience. There are certain fields in which I am an expert, and others that I only dabble in.

Levels of Knowledge

Total Ignorance. You might not even be aware of this body of knowledge, or if you are, only in a vague sense. My article on Text Fonts was an attempt to lift people from this state about typography.
Ignorant Incompetence. You know enough about the field to believe you are competent, but not enough about it to realize how far you have to go. It’s a wise policy to always assume you’re in this state, and always try to be getting out of this state.
Knowledgeable Incompetence. You know enough now to know what you don’t know. You know the right questions to ask experts, and you know when you should let someone else do the work. You can now recognize an expert when you see one.
Competence. You are good enough to tackle most tasks in the field. You often need guidance, but you understand the guideance in context once it’s provided. Your work is generally of acceptable quality.
Expertise. You know the field intuitively, can provide thoughtful advice to others about it. Your work in the field stands as an example to others.

Achieve Incompetence

When you tackle a field like games, which is actually a combination of many fields of knowledge, it becomes imperative that you at least be aware of your level of knowledge on a given subject. You don’t need to be an expert at everything. You do need to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses so you can form a realistic sense of the quality of your game’s various aspects.

The really dangerous area of knowledge is total ignorance. If you don’t realize there is even knowledge to be had, then you will undoubtedly muck up whatever you’re working on. If you are responsible for the user interface of your game, but you don’t know what a grid system is, you are somewhere between Totally Ignorant and Ignorantly Incompetent. The goal is to reach the level of knowledge in which you realize how bad you are, and can recognize good work.

Some areas are trickier than others. People are readily aware of sucking at art, but how many people are sure they can recognize good art when they see it? Aware that they suck, they may ask for help and get help… that also sucks. Knowledgeably Incompetent people have it better, able to ask for the right help from the right people.

If a particular field doesn’t grab you, you’re unlikely to breach this level. To become competent requires around 5,000 hours of practice. That’s 3 to 5 years of continual effort. Only passion can drag you through this territory because this phase in particular is quite painful: you are aware of how much you suck and how sub par your work is, and yet you keep trying for years until finally you hit something you like more often than not. It’s quite the challenge.

To be a great game director, you must be at least Knowledgeably Incompetent in every discipline required to produce your game. When you achieve that you will not have the requisite knowledge to actually produce a top-notch game, but you will know the contour of the relevant knowledge, so you can ask the right questions of the right people to make your game sparkle.

Self Assessment

So ask yourself, as you work on your game, how much you really know. If you find yourself tackling projects thinking, “Bah, how hard could it be?” then you probably have a lot to learn to achieve Knowledgeable Ignorance, and that’s your cue to stop what you’re doing and start asking questions.

The most difficult areas are those that you never think of, so be on the look out for critiques you don’t understand. If it never occurred to you to pay attention to the type face you use, start asking questions about type. If you never read about what makes an interface successful, start asking questions about information architecture and human-computer interaction. If you don’t know squat about music except what you like, don’t just cruise the web for free midis! Ask someone who knows what they are doing to help you!

Never get too comfortable because when you scale one mountain of knowledge, you often just find the next range that you couldn’t even see before. Good luck!

Edit: A reader reminded me of a great paper by Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University called “Unskilled and Unaware of It.” It’s closely related to this article, and quite eye opening. I recommend it!

Read “Unskilled and Unaware of It.”