Welcome to Digital Play Zone!

I'm Winn Liu. We can all probably think of many games with terrible stories, but whenever I flip the question and ask “What makes a good story in games?” no one can give me an answer.

A good story is vital to immersing your players into the world of your game. It allows people to relate and remember the game much more. However, I tend to notice that the storylines in games are normally an afterthought and written with the mindset of writing a book or movie, causing them to be lacklustre and boring.

This is why in today’s blog post, we will be breaking down the complicated art of writing a story for games, into digestible points for you to understand. We will be covering stuff including how to write your world and how to implement them in your games.

The first step of writing a compelling story is always to figure out the main message of the story. You don’t want to start writing your story without this as the final product will come out directionless and confusing.

A central lesson or message can be anything. It is something that you as the writer or developer want the player to learn and understand. When you are writing your central message, remember to follow the theme of your story as you don't want your central message to be “moralities of killing” while your theme is a pink-tinted princess fairytale… although that does sound pretty cool.

Once you have figured out your central message, everything else in your story should reflect this message. It will further enhance the central message.

If you are interested in learning more, here's a blog on how to implement central messages into games.

The next step in our storywriting process is where you can be the most creative. Most people tend to fail here because they think the idea for your story has to be good if not near perfect. When in reality the best stories come from the most ridiculous ideas.

Think of Star Wars, It is a grand space adventure where two sides are fighting for control. If you boil it down to its core. The story is just two sides of people fighting with magic hand-waving powers and glorified sticks.

With that being said there are still some things you have to keep in mind when thinking of your idea.

Now that you have figured out the idea of your story. It is time to start thinking of the world. In my opinion, world building is one of the most important steps in creating an engaging story. Having a thought-out world can help to increase the depth of your story.

Here’s a list of things you want to define before writing your storyline.

These are just some of the many questions you should think about when you’re thinking of your world. If you’re interested in learning more about world building, here's a blog for you to read.

One last thing to remember, writing is not a hard rule. Take inspiration from others and innovate. Who knows you may end up writing a whole new trope or style.

Before we start writing the plot, we need to develop our characters. Since writing characters can be another post in itself, I will only be covering the basics.

What makes a good Character? For me, it is a character whose thoughts and beliefs are shaped by the world. It could be that the religion of your world is repressive and it makes your character think of others in a very repressive light, the arc of that character would be to learn that other people's views are equally as important.

Heroes and villains tend to be mirror images of each other. This happens because it allows for contrast and conflict. Just like yin yang, making a hero all good or a villain all evil makes for a very boring narrative. Having a little bit of evil in the hero allows for character development and makes for a more interesting arc.

Backstories and interactions can also help to further develop your characters. Check out Life is Strange and Red Dead Redemption 2 if you want to see some examples.

We can finally start writing the plot of your story. The plot of your story is for you to decide, do you plan on having a character or a system to be the villain? In what way does the villain affect your main character to make him want to defeat the villain?

When you’re writing the plot make sure that pacing and flow are at a digestible rate, as you don't want to overwhelm your players with information.

One last thing, if you plan on including plot twists or surprise villains. In my opinion, you should give them time to be villains and affect your world. This will let your twist or surprise villain have more impact.

This is one rule that you should always follow. Remember you are making a story for a game, not a book or a movie. Players in games don't enjoy reading paragraphs of text.

Whenever you are able to tell the plot through gameplay. The way you can achieve this would be to use visual cues like the scratches on rocks or mould on buildings to describe an abandoned building, or you can use character emotions to tell the story. You can also use environmental cues to let players figure out the plot when they explore the world.

When you are not able to use gameplay to convey the plot, shorten the amount of text and cutscenes as much as possible. And in those texts make sure to use as much subtext as possible.

Now that we have finally written the plot. It is time to implement the story into your game.

The way you implement the story through mechanics is very interesting. Here’s an example, you can let players get familiar with a sword attack and during a dramatic moment the sword breaks, so for the next fight until they get a new weapon the player will have to use only kicks. Not only does this allow for interesting gameplay, but It also gives a change of pace when things start to get stale.

This is probably one of the most recognizable ways to implement story. Quests can be anything, but they should reflect the plot. You don't want to have a quest that has nothing to do with the plot, this will make your players feel like they did the quest for no reason.

As for cutscenes, most people probably have bad experiences with cutscenes. That's because most companies like to use cutscenes as free marketing. But cutscenes do have a purpose, They can help to immerse the player in the world when the gameplay and graphics are not enough.

The final way to implement the plot would be through the world itself. Having Non-Player Characters (NPC) scattered around your world can be one way to do it. When you include your NPCs make sure that whatever is happening in your plot affects them in one way or another. This can allow your player to feel the impact of the plot.

Another way is through the terrain, cities, and buildings. You could use them to show how your villain affected the landscape or how his ruthlessness caused the city to run out of food, causing the city to become famished.

This is the final step. Playtest and make changes. You may be wondering why you need to playtest a story. Well, playtesting the story can give you information which you may never know otherwise. Like whether the central message was conveyed well. Or stuff like whether any parts of the story felt boring.

Once you have this data, don't just toss it out and do nothing with it. Make changes and iterations according to your data. Don’t feel sad or disappointed that you’re removing hours of work, instead think of it as improving on the plot so that the final product can be perfect.

Writing stories for games is not an easy task, but if there is one thing that I have learned about writing storylines is to not forget that games are an interactive medium. It sounds obvious now, but it tends to get forgotten while writing.

Thank you for reading today’s post, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.