From The Creative Penn:
Edwin McRae: Narrative design is effectively the design of story elements that then go into video games. I steer away from the general term of writing for video games, because often within the industry, the games industry, writing gets siloed into things like dialogue and flavor text. And the player-facing material that you would see in a video game.
Whereas narrative design, there’s a lot more behind the scenes than that, creating the story experience for a video game, which I’m happy to elaborate on more what a story experience for a video game is.
I started out writing a novel, pitched that around, almost got picked up by HarperCollins at one point, but to no avail. And then shifted to doing theater for a while, and then studied screenwriting for film. And then on that course, which is at Victoria University in Wellington, I managed to get a work placement on New Zealand’s soap opera, ‘Shortland Street.’
I ended up as a storyliner and script writer there for four years, which taught me a lot about churning out a lot of story and the best practices for that kind of fast-paced storytelling. And then I got to the end of my tenure with writing for soap opera, I wanted to do other things.
I started to hang out with some game developers in Auckland at the time, at a game developers meetup, met the guys at Grinding Gear Games who make the game ‘Path of Exile.’
They Facebook messaged me one day and said, ‘Hey, do you want to try writing some dialogue for us?’ And then that kind of, the rest is history.
Joanna Penn: It’s so interesting. You’ve done lots of different types of writing, obviously. But I wonder if you would also maybe start by giving us more of an overview of the gaming industry, because I feel like there’s a lot of misconceptions.
Edwin: It’s certainly become a large industry. It has eclipsed cinema as an industry. I was looking a few things up, I think cinema is around $110 billion, games are around $150 billion as an industry internationally, which you compare that to books.
Publishing still sits around over $200 billion, but of that, books I think are around the $120 billion mark. I would see games as a platform being as large as the books industry pretty much at the moment.
So it’s certainly a significant thing out there. And interestingly, your average gamer, I was looking at, is apparently I think 34 years old, has children, and owns a house. So it’s not the teenage stereotype that often is assumed with video gaming.
Looking at various stats it ranges…for instance in Australia, 80% of gamers are over 18 and the U.S., 70% are over 18. So it’s actually, it’s quite a mature audience, and perhaps more mature than people might assume.
Joanna: And what about the gender split? Because there used to be this sort of thing that it was mostly guys.
Edwin: Oh, absolutely. That’s the curious thing with games. It’s almost like referring to a game is the same as referring to a book, as a book can be anything from a thriller to a dad’s joke book, could be horror to a kid’s picture book.
It’s the same range with games, it can be everything from yes, your ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and your ‘Call of Duty’ shooters back right to…for instance there’s a company here in Dunedin, Runaway Play, that makes effectively nature simulation games and games about cat cafes, and games about dog refuge centers.
There’s a full range within the type of games that are out there, there’s really something for everyone.
Joanna: There are obviously the high-end games where you need whole consoles and things, but then you see people playing games on their mobile phone.
Edwin: Oh, absolutely. That’s the curious thing with games. It’s almost like referring to a game is the same as referring to a book, as a book can be anything from a thriller to a dad’s joke book, could be horror to a kid’s picture book.
It’s the same range with games, it can be everything from yes, your ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and your ‘Call of Duty’ shooters back right to…for instance there’s a company here in Dunedin, Runaway Play, that makes effectively nature simulation games and games about cat cafes, and games about dog refuge centers.
There’s a full range within the type of games that are out there, there’s really something for everyone.
Joanna: There are obviously the high-end games where you need whole consoles and things, but then you see people playing games on their mobile phone.
Edwin: They’re the ones that get the most press is the really big ones like ‘Cyberpunk 2077,’ or ‘Witcher 3,’ or ‘Skyrim,’ big games that you can explore for up to, oh gosh, 100 hours, 200 hours, 300 hours for some. But those are your larger titles that cost between say $50 to $100, $120.
But then especially in the indie game dev scene, you’ll get games that are anywhere from $2 to $20. And even in those, you’ll tend to have a good 10 to 20 hours of gameplay in those. Again, it can be on mobile, it can be on PC, it can be on console.
There’s that epic, massive series that you can explore, there are short stories, and novellas in the game scene as well. So, again, it’s a full range of experience on offer.
Link to the rest at The Creative Penn