Q: What kind of writing samples do you want for game work?

Gunther Winters is looking for a writing position in the gaming industry. He says:

...all those ads [that interest me] require the submission of "samples" of one's own work, and I suspect that those that don't clearly require it just take it for understood. ...what is adequate for "submitting"? How many "pieces"? How long? Of what  kind? Most ads mention no details whatsoever...

Any other advice for an aspirant "writer" who is trying to approach the gaming industry?

I can't tell you specifically what other people are looking for, but I'll tell you what we look for. Since Torment is looking for a number of words on the order of 2-3 George R. R. Martin novels, I hope my advice will be applicable (if not over-applicable) to other positions as well.

Mostly we want to get the sense that you can do the work we need you for. Length of the samples is not very important, so long as it's a couple of pages' worth. Quantity of samples can be useful to get a sense of a writer's breadth, but again is not critical.

The type of sample matters more. For us, we like to see game and fiction writing (and because Torment is a bit more literary* than most games, we slightly prefer fiction writing to get a sense of a writer's skill). If an applicant sent us links to his Twitter feed or blog posts, it wouldn't tell us much about whether they could write character dialogue.

* Read: more wordy.

In general, it's a good idea to send exactly what is asked for. If they don't ask for samples, or you think you might have too many, then include a link to more samples in case they're interested. If they think you look promising, they can always ask for more.

Lastly, although the requirements of every game writing position is different, being technical enough to structure branching dialogue is usually a good skill to have. Fortunately, there are many game design and modding tools that can help you learn this sort of thing.

As to other advice, I've written on that before. Short version: learn to do something related, and do it very well.

Gunther adds:

Last, if the choice is between getting Torment released and replying to me, by all means please just work on the game and release it already. I'm dying here [insert pun about my "torment" here].

Heh. Fortunately for you, my brain needed a break and your question provided it. But I appreciate your anticipation!


----------------------------------

Got a question? Ask me anything.

Q&A: Can you rest anywhere in Torment?

Alessandro from Torment's Italian fan blog says:

You've talked extensively about Effort in many occasions by now, but there's still a piece of the puzzle missing, at least to me. How do you intend to limit rest in the Torment?

I mean, managing Effort is an interesting gameplay mechanic. but only because Effort is a limited resource. If players are able to rest whenever they want, the whole thing explodes.

Now, I know that during Cryses time is a factor, so resting will be either limited or impossible, but what about the "normal gameplay"? Will Players be able to rest freely in exploration mode?

Not usually.

Background: I explained the Numenera concept of Effort, and how we're adapting it for Torment, in our latest update here. Short version: Effort is a limited resource used to make difficult tasks easier. This resource can be replenished with healing or rest.

Alessandro, you are absolutely right (as are others I've seen around the internets who have expressed a similar concern): if healing is freely and easily attainable -- as it would be with a "rest anywhere" mechanic -- then Effort becomes meaningless. You could just use it all up on a task, rest to replenish, then use it all again on the next task.

So obviously the player will not be able to rest anywhere they want for free. You'll have quick rests you can use anywhere, but those are limited and they won't restore all your Stat Pools. Eventually your party will need to sleep. To do that, you'll have to find a place that will let you sleep for a price you can afford. Every Zone will have such a place, of course, but you won't be able to rest wherever and whenever.

Can you just head back to the rest spot in between tasks? Sometimes, sure. Other times you won't be able to get back so easily. Sometimes you'll need to do a few tasks in a row to accomplish something. And sometimes sleeping (which makes time pass) will have other consequences as well.

So sleeping will usually come with a cost. That cost might be trivial or it might be quite high. It will depend on what you want to do, where you are in the game, and what's more important to you at the time.

Torment Novella Fan Art

In case you missed it, I got my first for-real fan art the other day for the Torment novella. From Michael Malkin, this is "Ama, seeker of the Golden Tide."

I like the golden light shining in from the left. That's a nice touch. Thanks, Michael!

Read the entirety of "The Patch Man"

My Pathfinder story, "The Patch Man," has now been published in its entirety. If you're like me, and you don't like reading something that you can't finish, well you can finish it now: chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, and chapter four.

(And if you're better than me, and read things the moment you can read any part of it, know that today you can be complete.)

And oh my gosh, I just realized I never told you how this came to be!

It probably never occurred to you. I mean, I'm the Design Lead of a computer RPG, a thematic successor to a Dungeons and Dragons game, of which Pathfinder itself is a successor. The creator of Numenera (from which we get Torment: Tides of Numenera) wrote a Pathfinder story of his own. Obviously, then this work for hire came about because of my RPG connections.

Except it didn't. It actually came through my dear friend Authoress, who was chatting with me one day and asked if I had any interest writing a story for a game world (which, um, YEAH). Cuz she was chatting with this editor of an anthology that she was published in alongside Paizo's managing editor. And he had said . . .

Yeah, I can't track it all either. The point is I am apparently only capable of finding the most circuitous routes to publishing available. (Like, you know, quitting Black Isle, moving to Thailand, and then getting a game design job through Facebook).

But what do you care? You get to reap the streamlined benefits in fiction form. For free! Go, reap your benefits, find out what happens to Blit!

Favorite Games of 2014

It's still January. I'm not late.

Well, except for the part where these are games I played in 2014, as opposed to games that may have come out in 2014. Whatever.

BANNER SAGA
I've talked about this one. It looks pretty. It sounds lovely. It asks me to make hard choices and then question them, and for some reason I love it all the more because of this. I'm thinking of playing through it again on Hard.

I will probably fail. I don't actually care.

THE LONGEST JOURNEY
Adventure games are kind of my thing. I was birthed on Colossal Cave and Adventureland, raised on Space Quest IV and Fate of Atlantis, and sent into the world alongside Curse of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango. Adventure games aren't my jam. They are the eternal soundtrack of my existence.

So yeah, I kinda liked the Longest Journey. It's not as funny as Sierra or LucasArts fare, but it's good enough, and it has a story deeper and more moving than all of the above. When I finished, I immediately launched into Dreamfall and Dreamfall Chapters, which are equally beautiful and moving, though the first in the series remains my favorite in terms of gameplay (so far -- there's more in Dreamfall to come, and I can't wait to play it).

BROKEN AGE, ACT 1
If adventure games are my soundtrack, then Tim Schafer is my composer. All my favorite adventure games? Yeah, they're his. I missed the Kickstarter, but honestly I'm happy to give Tim full price for what is essentially my childhood in precious-gem form.

Broken Age doesn't quite trump Curse of Monkey Island as my favorite adventure game of all time, but it stands alongside my favorites. It also currently holds the award for blowing my mind and the minds of my children with its story secrets. I love it when a story does that.

PHOENOTOPIA
It is very strange to me that a free flash game has earned a place among my favorite games of the year. But it has.

Phoenotopia is essentially a platformer RPG, like innumerable classics I played on NES and SNES. It has clever puzzles, superb exploration, and challenging boss battles. It even has a couple of mechanics I don't think I ever saw back in the day, but that I really enjoyed. It surprised me. The fact that it's free makes it that much better.


A quick Google search will find you these games. If your tastes at all align with mine, you should try them.

What have you played lately? What's your favorite?

Copyeditor Bar Jokes

Click to embiggen.

Q: Game quality on a variety of systems?

Taking advantage of asking me anything, Steve says:

If one writes a book, the reader gets exactly what the writer put across. Doesn't matter what format they read it in - it's basically the same experience.

But with video games, everyone’s machines are different, from ancient to cutting edge. With all the variables of OS, RAM, video cards, and everything else thrown in as well. Which have changed since you began the project and will have changed again by the time it comes out.

So my question is, how do you design a product that will have the best quality when played on such a wide spectrum of equipment? Is there some kind of statistical system requirement formula for reaching the greatest number of gamers? Or do you just go for the best game you can design, and hope people’s computers will catch up to it in time?

Note that this is uniquely a PC problem. Console games also benefit in that if a game works on one XBox, it works on all of them the same (basically).

So it's certainly a trick. Although we do try to keep things optimized as we go, we're generally more focused on getting the game working first, and then getting it working fast.

Most of our developer boxes are semi-high end for this reason. If the developer's build of the game starts slowing down on a computer, it's usually easier to upgrade the computer than to slow down development while we figure out how to optimize whatever's slowing things down.

Though some optimizations do occur as development goes along. If we toss ten NPCs into a scene, and everybody's machines slow down, that's something we need to figure out (especially if we know we're going to need more than ten NPCs in our scenes!).

That only talks around your question though. To answer it more directly:

Step #1: Get the game playable. Period.

Step #2: Figure out what configuration of machine, level, and graphics quality things start to slow down.

Step #3: Figure out what's causing the slowdown and fix those spots. For example, if 10 NPCs is slowing down a scene, is it slowing the scene down because there are too many polygons? Too many light sources and lighting calculations? Too many shadows? Transparency? These things can be fixed globally to improve the game on all systems (for example by creating NPC models with fewer polygons).

Step #4: Identify features that can be scaled based on the user's system specs. For example, maybe there are three levels of NPC models: high, medium, and low. And each level has a different polygon count. These features then go into Game Options for the user to adjust the graphics to the quality/speed balance they are willing to put up with.

Then we run the game on various systems to determine our recommend system specs (which can run the game with all options turned up and no slow down) and our minimum system specs. Large developers have QA departments to do this for them. A small-to-midsize developer like inXile can do some QA, but also benefits hugely from public alpha and beta testing. The more folks we have banging at the game, the better the final product will be.

Of course we aim for the lowest system specs we can, so that as many people as possible can play the game. But there's always a certain threshold at which the work required to optimize the game cannot be justified by the number of customers we gain with those optimizations.

On Torment, we benefit from using Obsidian's technology for Pillars of Eternity, which lets us create high quality backgrounds without requiring more power from the system. That doesn't mean everything can be at a higher quality (NPCs and light sources still require a fair amount of processing power), but it gives us a lot more leeway than if we were making the game entirely in 3D.

Sorry for the hugely long answer, but I'm glad you asked the question. Among other things, this is why we can never give a straight answer when people ask us what our target system specs are going to be. The answer is invariably, "As low as we can make them."

--------------------------------------

Got a question? Ask me anything.