Not enjoying making games

Authoring
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That is true and you need to make choices that make sense for you. Do realize, this needn’t be a permanent choice. You can take a sabbatical of any length and just cuz you drop out doesn’t mean you can’t still play and enjoy IF or still interact with the community and even get back into it when things are different.

I banged out IFComp entries for like six years in a row. When real-life took more precedence, I stopped writing IF. I still plan to take it back up eventually when I can focus my attention and develop a concept that I want to work on, but until that feels right there’s no pressure. I’ve also been woefully bad at even playing IF personally, but I am still a Mod here and love assisting the community on this forum.

That is another factor. Where with novel/story/prose writing you kind of have to wing it and go through multiple drafts with basic writing and revising, IF has the dual layer of prose writing AND mechanical coding to make the prose work and behave the way you want it to. I have been through the gamut - starting writing my “magnum opus” several times with no clear idea where I’m going. It’s a lot of fun to code on the fly but like trying to drive across country without a map.

I eventually learned that scoping a project completely before you work on it in earnest highly increases the chances of finishing it - you have an actual map that directs you where to go next instead of blindly figuring out what your game is about and doing a lot of work that may be moot when you do figure things out eventually.

That’s not to say you can’t experiment. I prototyped the baking mini game in Baker of Shireton months before I started writing the game proper - but that wasn’t writing the game, that was me experimenting to see what worked best without the pressure of writing the game. Once I got that completed that was a huge big chunk that I could insert wholesale into the game and not worry about when doing the fun parts, like writing descriptions and snarky responses.

Scoping your game - or “mapping it out” with a clear outline and short-term goals proves invaluable. You don’t have to have every detail set in stone and there can be some discovery in the process, but like taking a road trip, it feels much more accomplishable to break it in sections - I’m leaving St. Louis and the first goal is to make it to Chattanooga, then. Atlanta, then Miami as milestones instead of just thinking of it as a single 30-hour drive with no way-points. You want to plan yourself several interim “Yay, I completed this part” opportunities in between.

You can also prototype without any specific game in mind. Built that machine or hunger system you like and experiment with it. At some point when you have several big pieces and systems sitting around your mental workshop, your brain will go “hey, what if this machine interacts with this hunger system and I can write a game that’s all about figuring out how to make a machine work so you can feed yourself…and vampires are cool, maybe the machine lets me be a good vampire and not drink blood from humans…” So many of my big ideas evolved and amalgamated from random chunks of smaller ideas grafted together.

This is also the advantage of speed-IF like Ectocomp Petit-Mort or just giving yourself leeway to write a short compact quick game - the planning is less extensive! You can have an idea and pretty much “wing it” and due to the shorter scope it’s accomplishable. Many people kind of shun short works or speed IF and want to write the epic magnum opus, but being able to actually finish several small projects provides insight into the beginning-to-end process you can apply to the epic magnum opus, and is really good for the ego: "If I can do a ten minute game, I can do a 30 minute game and I know how long that will take. Then when I can accomplish 30 minute games, I can make it last an hour. Then you’ve got a handle of IFComp length projects and insight about how you have to gear up to get them done.

There’s also a lot of creators who enjoy coding the games but don’t like writing them - they’ll make a parser device that works like clockwork for fun, but don’t know where to begin writing a story around it. Some authors feel themselves deficient at coding but are great at writing prose and descriptions and scenarios for game implementation. Those people make great collaborators.

I also think that some of the major appeal of AI story-generation to coders-who-don’t-like-to-write - they feel like they can generate their prose and do the fun part without involving a human writer collaborator who needs a lot more attention and might be less patient with the stops and starts many solo projects encounter.

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“Let’s write >SMELL text for everything!”

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Every new verb and object you introduce creates potential combinations to account for. Every room description implies additional scenery objects which then need writing. Every time a tester tries something sensible you want to put in a response. And that’s all without getting into scope issue if you have any kind of branching plot or choices.

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OMG scope creep is the devil.

If you have a well-structured outline and scope of your game and you know all the elements you need, it’s easier to keep your writing reined inside your structure than suddenly deciding “Hey, this character needs their own sub plot and quest here” which then via combinatorial explosion adds four months to your development and three more weeks of beta testing you didn’t plan for.

If you’re coding and writing on the fly, you’re involving the ADHD “brainstorm” portion of your brain with the “buckle down and make this work without being distracted by shiny ideas” time of the writing. Those are both necessary phases but are best not combined. If you’ve ever witnessed an office project crash and burn because everyone knows what they’re doing and the roadmap is clear, then you have a manager suddenly decide “Hey, what if we also make this a MOBILE APP? That’d be great! Get that done too!” [everybody tears up the plan and starts over] that’s the impulse you need to avoid.

Seriously, I’ve nearly cratered an almost-finished project with an impulse that amounted to “Wouldn’t it be cool if this game also involved TIME TRAVEL?” when it was 3 days from the IFComp deadline.

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I’m trying to decide if this true for me or not. I work best on the fly in just about everything I do, and I’m terrible at making plans. On the other hand I feel like I avoided scope creep entirely in Crash and Galaxy Jones by setting one hard and fast scope boundary – I made the maps at the start and didn’t change them. My current IFComp entry, Bureau of Strange Happenings, which evolved more naturally over two years, I guess may be slightly scope-creepy, but a lot of that is in depth rather than breadth. Without going into spoilers, there are thousands of lines of detail in the game, and so far transcripts show no one exploring it (gah!), which may indicate some type of creep.

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Ok, I can see how that would be a big problem in parser-based fiction. For choice-based you “only” have the 2^n branches for all the choices (If all are independent).

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And 2^n grows so slowly… :wink:

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scope is the project-killer

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That right there, man. You’re bored, and you’re spinning your wheels. Plain and simple.

It’s important to be economical with your time and energy… especially when you’re trying to get out of a funk.

Identify which aspects of making a game excite you. Focus on making a game that takes advantage of and expresses those aspects. Make it short. Work within your skill set, but really showcase that creative spark you had.

They call it a spark for a reason. It’s so hard to get it to ignite. And even when it does, you do have to work to keep it burning. That’s why a short game is optimal… and more achievable. Plus, I feel, short games are more likely to be played so there’s that too.

Chin up, buckaroo! :wink:

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This discussion is fascinating, and your contributions are incredibly interesting, particularly when it comes to finding the right balance between the complexity of a project and the ability to bring it to completion. A poor balance can indeed kill all motivation for large projects, and internal consistency of the game universe might come into question. I can’t resist sharing my experience as a compulsive creator of wacky (non-commercial) scenarios for generic (and therefore highly customizable) role-playing systems.

With Inform 7, I can clearly see the trap of embarking on the creation of exponentially complex stories, even if one doesn’t have Emily Short’s talent. However, if you approach the problem from the angle of worldbuilding rather than the story that will unfold in the fictional world, a path immediately emerges for deciding right from the start on the level of complexity, granularity, and simulation we want to give the game. If we think of the created universe first and foremost in terms of the laws (physical, social, economic, etc.) that govern it and the narrative function (physical, social, economic, etc.) of the player within this universe, we can (and should) choose from the outset which themes to focus on and leave the others in a more standard mode. From there, we can, for example, select the possible actions that add value to the player’s experience, and set aside what isn’t essential or find generic ways to sidestep the issue with humor or by terrifying the player, depending on the story’s mood. Alternatively, we can adjust the depth and key parameters of the conversation system. In a game set in a restaurant kitchen, smell might be essential, but not when the player character is in their car. In a medieval investigation game where the player needs to understand the social conflicts governing the region, there’s no need to overly develop the combat system, even if swords exist. However, the player will expect quality interactions with the blind minstrel. They want to be able to wonder if he’s lying, by omission or deliberately, and if he can be bribed. But they won’t care about exploring the full range of injuries that can be inflicted on a goblin.

From this perspective (limits + depths = narrative theme), the gameplay naturally follows, as does the narrative mode. These elements are entirely intertwined. For those familiar with the Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG, think of the sanity mechanics. Rarely has a simple dice roll (gameplay) carried so much implied narrative significance or emotional impact (narration). Much like geological layers or computer models, these elements rest on a solide foundation. Here, of a coherent and highly selective worldbuilding tailored to the type of experience being offered.

So far, everything I’ve said seems applicable to any narrative-driven game creation. At least, that’s how I see it, and it’s also my own experience (so it’s not an absolute truth).

I therefore propose the following hypothesis, which I will soon test with Inform 7: once all this is in place and tested in a test zone (which will become a tutorial), setting up the story becomes incredibly fun, and we can focus on designing objects, places, and characters governed by tested code (meaning rules that are already written and proven) and on creating rulebooks (in the Inform 7 sense) dedicated to the structure, rhythm, and content of the narrative arc. Of course, I’m not naive enough to think there won’t be any debugging sessions at this stage, but in my opinion, the impacts should generally be manageable.

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You forgot about LISTEN, TOUCH, TASTE,…

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Regarding scope creep…

Writing a linear story:

Okay, I think this short scene will take 1,000 words to write… a few hours of flow writing later, the scene is complete, with a word count of 5,000.

I think this plot bunny will make a good short story… next thing I know, I’ve written the opening section and it’s long enough to be a stand alone chapter/prologue, so now I have a novella on my hands.

This started as a novella, but along the way of writing it, a larger plot line came to mind, now it’s the opening act of a novel.

I’ve never actually written a proper novel(I have some multi-chapter works with a semblance of an overall plot that would be novel length if I ever brought them to something resembling a proper conclusion, but those are incomplete, and anything I’ve written that is novel length and in a state to be called complete is closer to a short story collection with a weak framing device than a proper novel), but I’ve experienced it took more words than I expected to actually write this and ideas for short stories turning into novellas.

And again, that’s with linear story telling. Even with choice-style IF that’s all prose and no game, not only can each snippet be longer when finished than you expected before writing, it can be tempting to write a snippet for every reasonable choice that could be made at every decision point. And because of the power of exponentials, even if you force a delemma at every decision point, it only takes 9 decision points in a decision tree that never recombines to pass a thousand snippets, and if you offer 3 choices at each branch point, you hit over a thousand after just 6, offer 4 choices and you pass 1 thousand at 5 levels, 5 choices also requires 5 levels to pass a thousand, but in all of these cases, that threshold layer accounts for the majority of snippets(2^9 is 512, 3^6 is 729, 4^5 is 1024, 5^5 is 3125, 6^4 is 1296)… Of course, most choice IF probably aren’t doing complete trees, but the numbers get super unmanageable really quick. And like others have said, once you leave the realm of choice where you can force the player to pick an option you planned for and enter parser lands, you have to make multitude decisions about whether to implement a proper response for everything the player might try to do or serving up generic responses that break immersion, and getting a “there is no such object”, “You can’t do that action”, “I don’t know what that means”, etc. messages are annoying, so there’s a pretty strong temptation to try and come up with appropriate flavor text for every property of every object the player mightthink to ask about and to code up as many different valid wordings for any given action as one can think of… and the more synonyms you code in, the more you have to consider if it applies universally(e.g. dribble the basketball makes sense as a synonym for bounce the basketball, but dribble a soccer ball has a very different meaning from bouncing a soccer ball, and shoot has similar, but distinct meanings in shoot the gun and shoot the bulls-eye).

Though, regarding Hanon’s suggestion of prototyping individual bits and later pulling them into a larger game, not strictly IF, but I’ve written things like a virtual slot machine, simple card games, simple dice games, etc. which I’ve given thought to combining into a casino simulator to use as a means of earning money for in game purchases in a game where the casion games wouldn’t be the main point.

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BNL produced a great song which (I think) speaks to that idea “Never is Enough”

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Myself as well. But I’ve actually found I really enjoy illustrated/animated/YouTube summaries of Ulysses. It gave me a few “I got it!” moments.

I like enough other books a lot. I appreciate Dubliners, too. Good enough.

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For what it’s worth, I’ve read and really love Ulysses, but have these exact same dynamics with Finnegans Wake. So yeah it’s turtles all the way down :person_shrugging:

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@Scrooge200

I wonder if you’ve ever thought about choice-based IF. As @Doug_Egan suggested, it’s way less taxing to program. The whole “freedom to explore” (like traditional parser games) is out the window though. However, with limitations comes a narrower focus. And, I’d argue that creativity is born from working within (or overcoming) limitations.

Maybe limitations is what you need to be creative and nurture that “spark”. Sometimes, even self-imposed limitations can make something mundane into something challenging and interesting (not boring). That’s the heart and soul of themed game jams.

Food for thought.

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I haven’t done much choice IF because the eventual explosion of branching paths and alternate endings I have to write detracts from the main point of the story I want to tell. I write with a single goal and ending in mind, so anything splitting from that will feel abrupt and unsatisfying. Someone could easily make the choices that led to an ending that wasn’t the one I had in mind, be disappointed, and quit. But if I don’t make use of the choices and branching, the format doesn’t necessarily add anything to the experience. This is why I try to go for more linear, adventure-type games, because the ending the player experiences will always be the one I was building towards.

Additionally, I don’t think my stories lend themselves much to a game format. There’s not a lot of action and most of it is character dialogue, so that can get kind of boring. I write in the style of a TV script, and putting it into a game where you take charge of one of the characters re-evaluates the tone in a distracting way – it feels like it’s judging you for your actions, not focusing what the character is doing. I don’t have much experience coming up with, or programming, fun puzzles that would make the gameplay worthwhile, either.

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So the interesting thing about choice fiction is that you don’t necessarily have to do this – you want the audience to feel like this is the case, or at least that they’ve got some control over the story, but quite honestly? You can fake it. Or at least, there’s ways to make choices feel more important while still keeping the story more or less on rails.

You’ve written some nice reviews of the Lady Thalia games on IFDB, and I can share that the branching implications of any given choice in them are really, really small. Consequences are usually in the moment and don’t usually affect the overall plot by themselves. Instead they contribute points to various meters that, if they get too high, will affect how skillfully Thalia pulls off her shenanigans but doesn’t actually affect your chance of success, only your chance of getting the best ending (which is generally a self-indulgent scene with the love interest and separate from the heist itself). This means that although we have to write a lot of text for in-the-moment choices the actual number of plot branches is minimal. And you can probably back off significantly on the amount of divergent text and still grab the reader! Lady Thalia 1 has about 1/3 of the total text visible on any given playthrough, and for the subsequent games it’s closer to 1/2 because we cut down significantly on conversation branching options. The fact that nobody complained about this, or even seemed to notice, says a lot IMHO.

That said, you’re the best judge of what you want to make and if you don’t think IF is a good fit, that’s fine! There are plenty of people around here who are just players and not authors. You can still participate in the community that way if you’re interested, especially if you like beta testing or writing reviews. But I wanted to push back a bit on the idea that there’s a particular way that choice games have to be, because there’s a lot more to interactivity than just puzzles and super-gamey gameplay.

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Not to toot my own horn (too much), but for Loose Ends, there’s only one real ending. The way it’s structured is:

  • The game starts early on the first night. You build your character (choose what vampire powers you have and what kind of person you were before you got turned), and are given your job. It’s an offer you can’t refuse.
  • After this, there are five “chapters” you can do in almost any order you want. You have to start by going to the crime scene and looking for clues, so that one’s always first. Then you can go to a witness’s apartment, the morgue where the body was taken, the shop where the witness got certain equipment, and the club where the chief suspect is hiding. Each of these takes up a few hours of time, so by the time you’ve finished the last one, you’re right at your employer’s deadline. But also, not all of them are available right away; you can’t go to the morgue until you find the police files on the case, for example.
  • In between any of those, you can go speak to various other vampires, ask them for favors, or offer them any of the evidence you’ve found. The core of the gameplay isn’t solving the mystery—it’s making as many allies as you can, and as few enemies as you can, before the confrontation happens. But there’s no way to get allies on your side without other people being out for your blood.
  • When the deadline hits, you have a choice of three different “tension-building” scenes to participate in, which make further allies and enemies: if you bring the suspect in to your employer, the employer becomes an ally, the suspect becomes an enemy. And so on.
  • Finally, the big confrontation. A huge fight breaks out, with your allies and your enemies joining in, and a bunch of flavorful choices boil down to “if you have more allies than enemies, you win, otherwise, you lose”.
  • You get an epilogue describing your fate (whether you won or lost, whether you got your hands dirty in the fight or stayed back to direct, and who your closest allies were) and the fates of the major NPCs.

There are a lot of choices to make, but none of them actually fundamentally branch the story. No matter what you do, it will always end in a fight, after doing the five chapters and the tension-building scene. On the other hand, though, the choices you make do matter—do you expose the corrupt enforcer, or help her cover up the evidence? Do you turn in the suspect or let him escape? Do you throw your lot in with one faction or another? The core “puzzle” of the game is how to end up with as many allies and as few enemies as possible.

The original choose-your-own-adventure structure, where every single choice branches the story and the branches never recombine, has kind of fallen out of style nowadays, because it means if you write N passages, your average player only sees log(N) of those. That’s really bad return on investment for most authors! So most choice-based works recombine the branches in various ways.

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I’ve heard that Disco Elysium, in a way, substitutes combat for dialog. Never played it though… because it sounds boring as fuck.

That was a joke! I swear. :wink:

Game Idea (mostly dialog based - click to expand)

You just gave me an idea for a game where you’re an actor. In the evenings, you choose how to you want to spend your free time, but during the day, your attributes affect your performance of scenes (and possible choices of how to perform them). Working out gives you those killer abs for that shirtless scene, practicing your lines gets the director on your side and more screen time, hanging out gives you some life experience so you can adlib well, etc. Anyway, sounds interesting to me and definitely requires strong dialog writing to do it justice. You’d have the TV script to write a linear story with flourishes of your actor’s ability, and you’d have the real world events where you write little moments (to boost/lower stats) that don’t have to connect to anything in particular. You could have a lot of fun with the TV script: a sci-fi series, a magical fantasy show, a superhero drama, a soap opera, etc. You are more than welcome to use this idea if it strikes a chord with you. :slight_smile:

(If this game already exists, I’d love to know the title of it.)

This! :slight_smile:

Daniel @Draconis created a great formula for their story. Following a template allows you to focus on content, more so than gameplay… which might let you stay focused as you write. I’m always fighting distraction while tinkering with game authoring. Sometimes I feel like I just want to “fill in the blanks” while making a game. Templates are a great way to get into that content/writing flow.

Anyway, I hope you find some answers buried in the comments here. I’ll get off your case now, Lance. :wink:

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