Writing for Games

People play games. They interactive with them in a variety of ways including pressing buttons, clicking options, speaking commands, or simply doing nothing.

Interactivity means players have some degree of influence on gameplay. This might be as simple as a high or low score for winning or losing or as complex as many different possible endings based on a large number of different statistical calculations.

Video games are designed for an audience. Considering what the audience will be doing, what degree of interactivity might be asked of them, becomes an important part of any writing.

Part 1: Quests: What is a quest?

Quests impost structure.

They define what a player could be doing next, and can help them manage complex processes as smaller tasks often related to numerical goals such as retrieving a certain number of objects or defeating enemies in order to progress the game.

Quests have four general parts:

  • Character: Who does this affect?
  • Tasks: What needs doing?
  • Obstacles: What prevents it?
  • Rewards: What happens as a result?

Quests provide variety.

Quests have four general categories of tasks:

  • Get: Collect object or characters.
  • Destroy: Eliminate objects or characters.
  • Persuade: Convince character to either take or not take a future action.
  • Protect: Escort an object or character across a dangerous space or within a limited time.

Quests suggest meaningful actions.

  • Numerical: Changing item, power, moral balance, or relationship values. (Something a character has, is, or can do.)
  • Informational: Deeper investment in world, backstory, or setting. (Details for the player to learn more.)

Quests impost structure, provide variety, and suggest meaningful actions to players.

Part 2: Quests: Smaller spaces and shorter term

Thinking in parts

Quests can be organized as “chains” or “groups” where a player might be working on many at the same time. This allows a designer to focus a player on an area or incentivize the completion of all the quests in the sequence or collection.

  • Clusters: quests overlap in the same region. Multiple quests can be completed at the same time.
  • Ongoing: quests exist across multiple regions or require getting, destroying, or persuading many times for different, smaller rewards and often a larger reward at the end.

Part 3: Quests: Main Quests and Scenarios

The main quest propels the central plot.

Quest Parts

  • Character: Who does this affect?
  • Tasks: What needs doing?
  • Obstacles: What prevents it?
  • Reward: What happens as a result?

The main quest establishes story-driven checkpoints.

Once parts have been completed, a player-character cannot repat the same sections again as part of the main quest. As tasks are completed, the urgency also often changes. During different moments, a player-character might be driven forward and cannot complete side objectives or quests.

Story Urgency

Can the player-character take on side quests during sections of the main quest? What affects this decision?

  • Time limits.
  • Resource limits or requirements.
  • Power requirements.

Many games disclose the level requirements of areas and side quests. This allows a player to make informed decisions about how to proceed next and plan the completion of different tasks.

Part 4: Quests: Quest planning

When planning quests, consider the following three concerns:

  • Time
  • Space
  • Friction

Time Planning

  • How long does the main quest take to complete?
  • How long do side quests take to complete?

For most games, side quests represent an additional 40-50% of total gameplay time. If a game takes around 50 hours to complete everything, roughly half, around 25 hours, will be taken up as side quests. Generally, for shorter games of between 2 – 10 hours, only a handful of side quests are needed.

Space Planning

  • Where do the quests take place?
  • How (or where) do quests overlap thematically or spatially?

The most common organization pattern in human transportation is the spoke-hub model. This often appears in video games as a central “hub” location such as a city or town from which a character adventures out following a “spoke” and then returns again. This also solves an important spatial issue of where to place merchants and quest starting points (notice boards, inn, etc.) by collecting them all together.

Friction Planning

“Fun” and “enjoyment” are not always useful design terms. What is enjoyable to some others hate.

Friction can be a useful term to describe how intentional design slows down or tries to prevent errors by introducing obstacles. Many user interfaces, for example, ask for confirmation before the final deletion of data. This prevents accidents by imposing greater friction for the action.

Many games have “level areas” where the enemies, activities, and quests match a certain range. Being under the level range makes combat take longer than usual. The friction of increased time prevents greater frustration for many players but also allows those who want more risk to proceed in the game.

Many games contain “gates,” both metaphorical and literal, to limit exploration until goals like defeating certain bosses or collecting items are accomplished. While it is sometimes possible to “skip” these gates, such actions generally require glitches, complex movement combinations, or other tricks.

Part 5: Dialogue: What is dialogue?

The English word dialogue has its roots in Ancient Greek meaning “through speech.” When people have a conversation, they are communicating via dialogue. During performances, dialogue takes on an additional layer: a listening audience. Not only are actors communicating on a stage, for example, they are also explaining past events or possible future actions to the audience watching or listening to them. This is the same with games.

There are always two audiences: the characters performing the dialogue and the player watching or listening to them.

As a medium presented on a screen, games have a technical limitation. Dialogue between characters is often represented in “boxes” on the screen. This imposes a restriction on the number of words on the screen at a time.

Generally, the dialogue box limit is around 25 words, but can vary widely depending on the genre. For games designed around a player considering between multiple long-term actions or taking on a role within a story, multiple sentences might be shown. Often, for more action-oriented games, dialogue might only consist of a few words at most at a time.

Part 6: Dialogue: Narration

Narration is delivered from a perspective. Who is speaking? From when?

Narration often describes previous events. This allows for a disconnection between present player actions and past descriptions.

Narration allows us to describe a past a player does not know. Many games begin with narration to help explain its lore.

Additional Readings

Berger, R. (2019). Narrative design and transmedia: A writer’s guide to storytelling in today’s video games (1st edition). CRC Press.

Breault, M. (2020). The art and craft of narrative design: Writing for games. CRC Press.

Bryant, R. D., & Giglio, K. (2015). Slay the dragon: Writing great video games. Michael Wiese Productions.

Howard, J. (2022). Quests: Design, theory, and history in games and narratives (Second edition). Taylor and Francis.

Megill, A. (2023). The game writing guide: Get your dream job and keep it (First edition). CRC Press.

Nicklin, H. (2022). Writing for games: Theory and practice (First edition). CRC Press.

Skolnick, E. (2014). Video game storytelling: What every developer needs to know about narrative techniques. Watson-Guptill.