The lovely folks at Unwinnable interviewed – us for the second time! – about Backbone as part of their coverage of LudoNarracon. 

Below is the section I answered about the difference between narrative design and game writing, along with some thoughts on the art/story process and relationship, and a few other bits.

A.W.: You mentioned narrative design and writing before. What’s the difference between the two?

Danny Wadeson: This is a great question, and it deserves a whole discussion. I’ll try to summarise. A writer deals with story, characters, and sentences — and often with how a conversation flows, and branches. They should think about [the] character’s tone of voice, conveying information, emotion, and they should do so in as efficient a way as possible.

A narrative designer is ideally a nexus of storytelling within a team. Whatever the exact hierarchy — whether the narrative designer is coming up with the story, or taking direction from a game/creative director — they are responsible for working with the other departments to convey, champion, and implement that vision. However, they should also be listening to each department’s production concerns, in case a simple narrative tweak can solve production roadblocks.

Of course there are often overlaps, but those are the main differences. A writer is a storyteller, first and foremost. A narrative designer is a technically minded vision holder and communicator.

A.W.: How have you approached story and characterization in Backbone?

D.W.: The short answer is that, the story hinges on a subject close to both their hearts — that of entrenched power structures and the oppression that stems from them.

We have a few different narrative design pillars, some of which are spoilery, but the thing that unifies our approach, the lens we look at everything through, is: what is this character’s velocity? How has their struggle with/in society informed who they are, what they want, and where they’re going?

As for the overall story, we take pains to ensure that the motivation of Howard, our protagonist, is highly believable and logical. That is not to say it’s predictable. We try hard to ensure that Howard and the player’s motivations align — and though the story may be surprising, it should feel somewhat inevitable. We want to tell a story that is powerful and unapologetic — the kind of story that only our game and our team can tell. It may not always be pretty, but it will feel authentic.

We also agonised for a long time over the ending. Many games — indeed, media in general — forget that a bad ending can tarnish everything that led up to it. A great ending must not trick the player; it must irrevocably alter their perspective, and show them what effect their actions have — or have not — had on the world around them. And it must offer both closure and a glimpse into the future — what great work is yet to be done?

It’s hard.

A.W.: What about worldbuilding and lore?

D.W.: As above, mostly. Worldbuilding and lore crafting are often asked and debated questions, and rightly so. In some genres of game, such as open world RPGs, or fantasy/sci-fi settings, worldbuilding is more important as you do not have the schemas of ‘the real world’ to fall back on. [But] we’re telling a story that, although is obviously not realistic, still functions on realistic rules. The setting is an authentic (but again, not slavishly realistic) version of Vancouver. Our lore is political, and socio-economical. Our lore is the recent history of character relationships and class struggle.

To put it another way — we want this game to create compelling lore for the franchise. But of course, there are secrets to our universe to be uncovered as you play, some of which may have obliquely set events of the game in motion.

A.W.: Does Backbone’s art ever inspire the writing or narrative design? Or do writing and narrative design normally wrap up before art is made?

D.W.: It’s an iterative process. We find our artists function best when they have some narrative guidance, but we’re lucky enough that they’re so incredible, their designs often then influence how we think about that character’s tone of voice or motivation. So of course there needs to be a critical mass of narrative before art is started, but as much as possible we intertwine the two — this helps create a virtuous cycle and hopefully cements the cohesiveness of our storytelling.

It also leads to some unexpected eureka moments, which is always refreshing!

I was asked by MCV for their Gamescom issue to contribute some thoughts to the ‘Industry Voices’ segment. Read on below. It’s a great issue in general if you see it on news-stands.

My bud Greg asked me to contribute some thoughts on writing the supernatural for his newsletter, which features interviews around a theme with a bunch of different writers/narrative designers each month. Always a good read. Here’s my bit:

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In general, I try and follow a rather classical approach to writing. That is, to be truthful and concise. And the truths I’m usually drawn to are ones about human experience. Don’t we all dream, fantasise or panic about The Other, about escaping the physical confines of our bodies and the rational confines of our minds?

The chance to write about, or around the supernatural then, is a gift. Going beyond what is natural is a chance to contrast human truths with utterly non-human ones, and the starker the contrast the more clearly we see them.

So far, I’ve written for three games that deal in supernatural elements. Duelyst, a tactical, science-fantasy CGC, is rife with arcane rituals, strange specters and otherworldly magic – usually wielded by the monstrous Abyssian faction or the mystical, transhuman Vetruvians. The object with my writing here was to contextualise the unit abilities, while giving identity to the faction itself. So the Abyssian’s sense of supernatural is that it’s something from the void, something menacing, a force of entropy and decay. For the Vetruvians, it’s something more noble, although perhaps equally unknowable and volatile. The way in which each faction sees and manipulates the supernatural informs their abilities and says a huge amount about their philosophies and civilisations.

In Röki, a dark fairytale adventure game, the supernatural is expressed through folkloric characters and superstitions made flesh. It’s all loosely based on Scandinavian myth, so there exist a certain amount of (inspiring!) boundaries. My approach has been to draw out the element of each myth, or character, and make them really grounded. Most of the game takes place in a magical forest, so protagonist Tove quickly becomes accustomed to the supernatural – it’s that or become a gibbering wreck – and must learn to play by their own rules. It’s fantastic fun to write low-key supernatural too, there’s something peculiar and satisfying about mischievous and begrudgingly helpful spirits and ghosts that you don’t tend to be able to draw out from epic gods and world-ending supernatural forces.

In Abandon Ship, the supernatural is somewhat Lovecraftian. There are lots of tentacles. It’s a mode well represented in games, so obviously I wanted to avoid it being too trope-y. In the game, the supernatural (and the cult that worships and engenders it) is very real, but again it’s a very personal thing: The Captain (whom you play as) has a strong link to the game’s dominant supernatural force, and engages in a constant mental tug of war with it. So yes, it’s a threat, an unknowable old and infernally powerful threat, but it’s one you also have a kind of dialogue with. It hopefully takes the old ‘when you gaze into the abyss…’ idea one step further.

The supernatural that I grew up with was Greek and Egyptian mythology, Asian horror and dark fantasy literature. So I’ve always loved the idea that, while powerful, whatever lies beyond the veil can be reckoned with by peeking behind it, parsing the internal logic of it – as long as your own psyche is up to the task. I suppose I approach the supernatural from a direction other than the ‘sheer horror of something like Magic: The Gathering’s eldritch-inspired Eldrazi. Although that unknowable power is alluring – one of the examples I’m drawn most to is the Chandrian from The Kingkiller Chronicles: humanoid but never fully glimpsed, sung about by children but never whispered or written about by adults who value their lives. They are clearly terrifying, but one feels their greatest mystery is anonymity and mystery. The protagonist (and unnecessarily tongue-twistingly named) Kvothe hunts for knowledge about them, he seeks them, and that collision course is an inestimably tense thread running through the series. It’s that kind of feeling I think I’m interested in exploring.

One day I’m sure I’ll want to write about murderous, terrifying ghosts and Stranger Things style gross-out horror, a supernatural that is the complete antithesis to human nature, but for now my approach to writing the supernatural is to ask: how can we reconcile ourselves to it? And what parts of ourselves gave birth to it in the first place?

Creating Pidgin

Introduction & Rationale

“If they open up with Pidgin English instead, I instantly perk up. Speaking Pidgin transforms them from visiting foreigner into one of the hundreds of well-integrated expatriates in Lagos… There’s a certain intimacy that this form of broken English emits; a down-to-earth, survivalist approach to everyday living and hustling in Africa’s most populous nation.” — Source.

Writing dialogue for a game runs a number of risks, but one of the biggest is a lack of differentiation in tone of voice. Flat, identikit sounding NPCs, dialogue (and by extension the in-game nomenclature of items, places etc) is not only a missed opportunity but a sign of laziness, and can be utterly immersion breaking.

It’s hard enough establishing a catchy, unique tone of voice and personality for your main characters. Add any number of secondary NPCs, and you either get the JRPG syndrome (each uttering mundane one liners about their immediate surroundings ad infinum) or bloated exposition.

There’s also a challenge in writing dialogue for characters who live in the future, plus a highly multicultural/cosmopolitan city. The best writing is invisible, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of too many characters reading (‘sounding’) the same, or them feeling inauthentic and disconnected from the setting. Tolkien felt necessary to invent an entire language for his fantasy epic, and it’s no coincidence that many of his lexical inventions have filtered into mainstream genre use.

Similarly, the first chapters of cyberpunk or hard sci-fi books often throw in a lot of proper nouns, strange abbreviations and techno-pidgin to disorient the reader, to immerse them in a strange new world and hint at the mysteries yet to be uncovered. It would certainly be no fun if Neuromancer appended a lengthy explanation to its sudden terms such as ‘deck’ or ‘ICE’.

Nomenclature, new words, evolution of language: by default, most game-characters speak in modern, western English or American-English, but would characters speak like that in an African metropolis of the near future? They don’t speak like that now.

Slang vs. Pidgin

Without audio, slang/inflection/accents etc can read strangely. It wouldn’t be immersive for a player, no matter how literate, to parse the following:

“Ay whagwan fam, allow bare slang man that shit longtingaling. Now let’s chirps gyaldem innit, be well peng.”

(Hey, what’s going on mate? Don’t use too much slang, that stuff is a hassle. Now, let’s go flirt with some local girls yeah? It’ll be great.)

Obviously the former example essentially excludes anyone not familiar with a specific local slang from understanding more than a word or two of what’s going on. However, the latter translation sounds stilted and bland, and coming out of the mouth (as text or otherwise) or a street-smart, young denizen of South London would be equally immersion breaking.

Solutions & Normalising

So what we do we do?

We create a set vocabulary of pidgin that we can thread throughout ‘normal’ text, in barks, etc, to help with immersion, expand our options for unique tones of voice, without (unintentionally) obfuscating meaning.

Pidgin (aka lingua franca) is different from slang or argot in that it evolves from a mix of dialects and slang into something supposed to be ‘universal’, and to allow the most people to be as understood as possible.

We can quickly orient players/readers to pidgin through careful use of framing, and context. Whether you guess the exact meaning of the following unusual words, you can probably sense their meaning, and after seeing it a few times, you will certainly understand what it connotes.

“Let’s grab some chop-chop, I’m starving.”
“You want to do what?! Man, you dey craze.”
“You stubborn bastard, you no dey hear word and it’ll get you killed.”

Some existing pidgin is even more obvious. For example, ‘gist’ (meaning gossip/news) very closely correlates with its widely understood meaning, and even may not be immediately understood as part of the pidgin lexicon. Of course the reverse is true, some examples are harder to parse initially, but as a result stand out, and become a more of a signature/catchy word or phrase.

Balance will be key, as will building up to each instance, so that when the player encounters words on either side of the spectrum, they’ve already understood some constituent parts of the phrase or have the necessary context.

To normalise ‘wetin’ for example, it would not be helpful to confront a player with ‘wetin dey?’ (what’s happening/up?) in isolation. So, after a few instances of breaking it up, e.g:

“Dey you listen?” (Are you listening?)
“You dey craze.” (You are crazy)

And:

“Ah hi Dee, wetin you up to?”
“Wetin dey point?” (what’s your point?/What are you saying?)

Suddenly ‘wetin dey?’ will feel more comfortable and require less effort for the player to parse. And from then on, they have the satisfaction of having figured this out, of feeling immersed in a dense culture, yet like it’s unique and different to the one they’re used to.

Authenticity & Storytelling Possibilities

Moreover, it is of course more authentic to represent the linguistic quirks of a specific setting, whether it’s in or outside your comfort zone as a writer. As with the above examples, I advocate for a player-centric balance of accessibility and authenticity. Chances are your player-base will be very diverse even before localisation, and hence making game text understandable, without becoming bland, is paramount.

Once some pidgin is established, we can play with it to frame characters and their motivations. For example, perhaps a character is friendly and wants to include Dee in a conversation:

“Dey you up to anything gen-gen recently Dee? Exciting I mean, sorry — I forget you’re not from around here.”

Contrast this to an NPC who might want to make Dee feel excluded, an interloper.

“Dey you craze for steppin’ here, wetin dey you fool, vamoose!”

This way we can create characters and dialogue that is not intended to be easily understood, to put Dee/the player on the back foot, and at the same time make a commentary on the NPC themselves. It also allows for the attitudes of some NPCs to be more ambiguous or mysterious without resorting to vague allusions or oblique sarcasm.

Diversity/Cultural Signposting

By the same token, establishing the pidgin means we can efficiently signpost the origin of certain characters without relying on exposition.

Suddenly a character that uses no pidgin at all could be inferred to be either aloof, a foreigner, or disassociating themselves from the milieu for some reason.

Another may use more western or internet pidgin and abbreviations such as ‘bae’ or ‘lit’ to signal they are more heavily invested in life online than in person.

Suddenly, we have another subtle tool in our arsenal beyond word choice and punctuation. The very act of omitting or selecting which pidgin the NPC favours says something about them, and it may be something Dee can use to their advantage.

Closing Remarks

Like everything, we should test the dialogue carefully, including the readability and ‘understand-ability’ of the pidgin words. Ultimately however we need to make a call, one about authenticity, attention to detail and immersion.

A Selected Inspiration Glossary:

Nigerian

• Abi/Ba: Isn’t it?//no? OR na so: is that so/oh really etc
• Bam: Something good
• Chop: to eat/food
• Gen-gen: Exciting/on edge
• Wetin dey? What’s happening // (aggressive) what’s your problem?
• You dey craze — you crazy
• Catching fun — out for the night/ looking for a good time
• How far na: how’re things?
• You no dey hear word: You’re not listening// you’re stupid
• Gist: gossip/news
• Sabi: Understand/get
• Oya!: expostulation of impatience// hurry up// are you ready yet?/come on!
• Vamoose: get lost/going
• Wahala: trouble/stress
• Butta my bread: My prayers/hopes have been answered
• No dullin’: Don’t prolong things/get to the point

Kenyan

• Sasa — how’s it going?
• Haiya! — Exclamation of surprise

Western/Internet:

• Bae
• No Chill
• Lit
• Dig
• Om/Nom/Nom: Food/to eat/tasty as in good
• Dame
• Shorty

South London

• Longting: Long time/taking ages/hard, annoying
• Innit: Isn’t it/you understand? (rhetorical)
• Fam/Bruv/Bredrin: friend/family/crew
• Ya get me?: Know what I mean (usually rhetorical)
• Peng: Great/sexy
• Whagwarn: What’s going on?/how’re you doing?

French/colonial

• Boloss: Fool/buffoon
• Toubib: doctor

French / Afrikaans

• to jave, to ambiance: to party
• Dolo: beer of millet
• A stick: a cigaret
• A go: a girlfriend

Jamaican/West Indies

• More fire: cheers/another drink/to your health
• I and I: we
• Dead pres: white person

Supplement this article with my thoughts on internet speak and faux-irony inA Night In The Woods.

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