Questions to ask when agreeing to write for a game developer Thread

While having totally free reign over a story is always the writer's ideal, such is very seldom possible when writing for a client rather than one's self. While these questions may occasionally get a variation on "I don't know, you decide" for an answer, you should ask them anyway, for if you don't you may deviate quite sharply from what the client wants.

When you agree to write for another developer, what are some of the questions that you need to ask them to ensure that you are correctly following their vision?

Often the client has a clear idea for the BASIS and certain plot points planned out for the story and game play, but the actual details that connect these get them totally lost. In these cases the writer needs to know the basic plan for the story or what they come up with may not go with the gameplay at all.

As I have found out over the course of starting work on a game storyline for someone else as well as writing a few regular stories for people, they often leave out several details that are needed in order to keep to their plan.

List of questions I have so far:
• “How many storyline characters are there?”

• “What characters have already been developed?” (Names, personal bios, personality quirks, and special skills)

• "Which character do you want the story to start with?" (The most frequent one to come up)

• “At what character age should the story begin?”

• "How do you wish the story to progress? Standard past to future? Or present to flashback to future? Or some other pattern?"

• "How linear do you want the story to be?" Meaning, do you want the main storyline to remain the same no matter the player's choices, or do you want variations depending on what the player does?

• "if the storyline is NOT linear, where in it should variations begin arising?" (or to rephrase that, "how far should the linear intro or tutorial extend before the player can begin making choices that actually affect the story progression?")

• “How "Story-heavy" do you want gameplay to be?” Meaning, do you want them running into story elements frequently or should the story elements be more spread out? (That will affect whether the story features more details of their daily life and interactions or is more... umm... well... spread out.)

• "What type of setting does the game take place in?" (Historical fiction, historical fantasy, true fantasy(totally made-up world bearing little or no resemblance to our world at any point in its history), steampunk, modern fiction, modern fantasy, futuristic fantasy, futuristic scifi, alien worlds, etc... or some combination thereof) This affects not only the technology and society, but also whether or not there even is any magic.

• "What type of environment(s) does it take place in?" (Small town, large city, temperate forest, rainy jungle,desert, etc...) This affects how characters react to events, for instance knocking a cup of water over in a temperate town might annoy someone but unless it soaks them is unlikely to cause a fight, but in a desert where water is more precious than gold it could result in an all-out slaughter over resources.

• "How large an area does it cover?" (Single town, country, continent, world, galaxy, etc...) This affects physical scenery, societies interacted with, and sometimes even whether or not you encounter other species.

• "How many intelligent species do you want included?" which, depending on the answer might lead to:

• "What species have you already planned out?"

• "What kind of role in society do they have?" (Slave, servant, equal, superior, master, etc...)

I'm looking to clarify and expand upon a list of questions that might arise, or have arisen, in such situations. The ones listed above are merely what I have come across so far.

Any other questions that should be added to the list?

Edited by: Cadh20000

The biggest limitation in video game story writing is the game's resources: How many cutscenes, characters, props and environments the team can actually make. You just can't have 5000 unique, city-sized dragons, or 100 different biomes or have every line of dialogue be a world altering choice. The more questions you can ask about that, the better.

Edited by: ANumberSquared

Thanks for the feedback! Now to just think of appropriate phrasing for some sample questions in that category to add to the list...

Since you mentioned there's a general idea, you should try and get the artists to time how long it takes for them to create something (ie: a main character), and then budget your resources accordingly. There's a reason that a lot of stuff is reskinned, retextured, and recycled - making a scene with 100 copy-pasted minions will be created MUCH quicker than one with a dozen unique heroes (generally). Likewise, keeping the game in 1 location (a space station) will drastically reduce development time compared to moving between a space station, a bunker, a colony, and a city.

Also:

Someone wrote: "Which character do you want the story to start with?" (The most frequent one to come up)

Am I the only one who prefers it when there's only 1 protagonist?

Edited by: ANumberSquared

Someone wrote:

Someone wrote: "Which character do you want the story to start with?" (The most frequent one to come up)

Am I the only one who prefers it when there's only 1 protagonist?

My personal main project features two playable characters, you pick which one to play, the other stays at home. Basically you only have 1 true protagonist per play through, it just varies by the choice you made at the game's start. It also features an (optional) ally character who plays like a "pet" from an MMO where you set the aggression levels and let him follow you around.

But back to the question itself, you can't forget that, though only rarely, the client may even want it to start with the a cinematic from the villain's POV rather than the protagonist's POV.

6 additional questions are being added to the list, based upon the point Squared55 brought up.

• "What type of setting does the game take place in?" (Historical fiction, historical fantasy, true fantasy(totally made-up world bearing little or no resemblance to our world at any point in its history), steampunk, modern fiction, modern fantasy, futuristic fantasy, futuristic scifi, alien worlds, etc... or some combination thereof) This affects not only the technology and society, but also whether or not there even is any magic.

• "What type of environment(s) does it take place in?" (Small town, large city, temperate forest, rainy jungle,desert, etc...) This affects how characters react to events, for instance knocking a cup of water over in a temperate town might annoy someone but unless it soaks them is unlikely to cause a fight, but in a desert where water is more precious than gold it could result in an all-out slaughter over resources.

• "How large an area does it cover?" (Single town, country, continent, world, galaxy, etc...) This affects physical scenery, societies interacted with, and sometimes even whether or not you encounter other species.

• "How many intelligent species do you want included?" which, depending on the answer might lead to:

• "What species have you already planned out?"

• "What kind of role in society do they have?" (Slave, servant, equal, superior, master, etc...)

Edited by: Cadh20000

You also need to keep in mind that the questions are going to be very different based on the game: a story for a survival horror is going to be vastly different to that of a MMORPG.

To be honest, there isn't really a template for questions to ask. A lot of the stuff you have listed is very superficial, and not really necessary. (“At what character age should the story begin?”). Just start bouncing ideas off the other members, and go from there. Worry how many aliens there are going to be after you have the main characters and plot worked out. A well-told story with only a few humans is vastly superior to a mediocre one with 100 different species shoehorned in.

Edited by: ANumberSquared

I wasn't thinking of them as "Must be asked as they are" but rather "Keep them in mind and add or subtract questions as needed"