Category: Storytelling

Another article for Gamasutra about videogame storytelling, more or less.

I wrote an article about horror movies, videogames, and how to get players to give a damn about your story.

Fable 3 is an often-charming game with entirely too much hand-holding. Plus: A Call to Action.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is an outstanding game; my biggest problem with it is the same thing I’ve spent hours on here trying to defend.

I jump into the games vs. movies argument again, but this time Hitchock’s got my back.

A recap of all my posts so far on the subject of storytelling in videogames.

Why “videogame writing should be short” is bad advice.

Previously on Spectre Collie, I snapped my tether and responded to a critique of games I worked on. The claim was that adventure games are bad at giving feedback to the player, partly because it’s impossible for the game to know what the player’s thinking. I agreed that adventure games are usually lousy at giving…

Previously on Spectre Collie, I made the claim that the “state of the art” in story-driven games still treat storytelling and gameplay as two completely separate things. In even the best games, the player’s role is that of the guy who pushes buttons and/or shoots guys in the way; the key story moments happen in…

Over the past few nights I’ve been playing Dead Space, the new sci-fi horror shooter from EA. It’s an extremely well-made and entertaining game, and I’m enjoying it a lot. I want to make that clear up front, because I spend the rest of this post complaining about it. And I’m even going to go…

More proof that ignorance is bliss: I’d been happily reading the internet for at least a year before I knew what “tl;dr” meant. Apparently, it means “too long, didn’t read,” and now it’s got my vote for the absolute worst internet acronym. Ruder than STFU, more arrogant than RTFM, stupider than ROFL, more vapid than…

Previously on Spectre Collie, I made the claim that action-oriented games like shooters and platformers and “action/adventures” haven’t yet lived up to their promise of rendering traditional adventure games obsolete. Conventional wisdom says that adventure games are great stories on top of lousy, illogical, frustrating, and boring gameplay, and therefore Myth 8: If you could…