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Game story/dialog writing technique: one writer per character
Author
I think it would be neat for games with stories and voice acting to have one person write each character. It may help if the person resembles the character in some way, and is also an interesting person and/or good writer. This may or may not be the same person who does the voice acting, if there is any voice acting. Dialog can be written in a few ways, probably at a meeting where everybody brings their laptop and they write and speak the dialog in real time, possibly with the ability to edit along with discussion that will not be in the script. It might be good to record this and use clips from the recordings as voice clips in the game, although that may weaken the audio quality. Editing could then be done afterwards individually along with more meetings to create a good script, and possibly some sort of leader/oversight person who creates the setting and overview.
Sounds interesting.
Can you tell us more of what you are looking for in this venture of yours please?
This is what I do best. Love writing monologue and dialogue scripts. Pretty much writing short stories. Right now I am working on my third script for a movie DVD series. The script still has ways to go and it won't be done yet till two years at the most with just me and my friend. Its alright for the both of us to work on this alone. Its all about learning the experience in writing a script like we are doing.
From October 7 to October 11 I wrote a comedy play for me and my nephews to work on. We have not done any practice time yet. We will get there after Halloween week is over. It shall be fun to do the play.
So what kind of characters can the writers be in your story?
Can you tell us more of what you are looking for in this venture of yours please?
This is what I do best. Love writing monologue and dialogue scripts. Pretty much writing short stories. Right now I am working on my third script for a movie DVD series. The script still has ways to go and it won't be done yet till two years at the most with just me and my friend. Its alright for the both of us to work on this alone. Its all about learning the experience in writing a script like we are doing.
From October 7 to October 11 I wrote a comedy play for me and my nephews to work on. We have not done any practice time yet. We will get there after Halloween week is over. It shall be fun to do the play.
So what kind of characters can the writers be in your story?
Quote: Original post by aersixb9
I think it would be neat for games with stories and voice acting to have one person write each character.
Have you calculated the cost difference doing it this way versus hiring one writer?
A significant chunk of voice actors will ad-lib their characters when allowed, and I know of several games that encouraged this during development. Basically the writers came up with how the conversation would flow, but the voice actors, after getting a feel for their characters, had some freedom in how they matched this flow. This lets the characters "unique personality" get through without stepping too much on the plots toes, or intervening with the writers characterisation too much.
It works in movies, like Iron Man which was largely improvised, and a lot of the side dialogue (comments in conbat etc.) for characters in video games tends to be or towards this.
It works in movies, like Iron Man which was largely improvised, and a lot of the side dialogue (comments in conbat etc.) for characters in video games tends to be or towards this.
I think that's a great idea to have different people read the script.
Regarding the comment earlier, depending on the budget of course, I imagine it doesn't have to be too costly.
If kept to the minimum it would take just one day per person (and can stay limited to just the main characters). And you don't have to be hiring professionals (writers) to do it so that the wage per person doesn't have to be high.
Just someone fitting the character enough.
So once the script is complete, at that time use this technique to formulate the dialogue style would be neat
Regarding the comment earlier, depending on the budget of course, I imagine it doesn't have to be too costly.
If kept to the minimum it would take just one day per person (and can stay limited to just the main characters). And you don't have to be hiring professionals (writers) to do it so that the wage per person doesn't have to be high.
Just someone fitting the character enough.
So once the script is complete, at that time use this technique to formulate the dialogue style would be neat
Re: Model
I think this idea works in some models, especially the ones toward user-created contents, contests, and micro transactions. Think of it this way, the "Writer" may be a player of the game, or that the writers "hired themselves" by putting their content in the game, and they get paid per visit to their content.
People RP on forums all the time, if you are up front that you are not charging for your game and they agree to let you use their contents, then basically you have the situation where one person is writing for each character.
Say you go to a forum where you have already read the RP, you decided that you wanted to use that RP and those characters for your game. You ask each poster for permission or buy their content. The product you get is a script produced by the said method.
I think this idea works in some models, especially the ones toward user-created contents, contests, and micro transactions. Think of it this way, the "Writer" may be a player of the game, or that the writers "hired themselves" by putting their content in the game, and they get paid per visit to their content.
People RP on forums all the time, if you are up front that you are not charging for your game and they agree to let you use their contents, then basically you have the situation where one person is writing for each character.
Say you go to a forum where you have already read the RP, you decided that you wanted to use that RP and those characters for your game. You ask each poster for permission or buy their content. The product you get is a script produced by the said method.
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