Interviews

Just Adventure Speaks With Terry Dowling
Conducted by Randy Sluganski and Robert Washburne

· What do you feel is something intrinsic from your stories that you have not been able to transfer to a game due to the limitations of the medium?

I’m sure all writers who have translated their ideas to other media have wish lists of one sort or another. Even understanding budget and deadline limitations, how many hours goes into, say, a mere ten seconds of on-screen animation, I guess it still has to be having programs that allow the density and richness of the worlds where people are actually living their lives. It’s what I said just now about having ‘givens’ that make a gameworld feel real. Imagine having something like the Massive program used in the Lord of the Rings films to produce crowds of NPCs for the Transai and Ansala villages in Chameleon, for instance, even if off in the distance as with the Moiety Age in Riven. It’s also easy to wish for additional budgetary freedom so you can prolong some of the transitions between locations in both Schizm and Schizm II if only to establish the sheer size of these worlds. I envisaged seeing the wastelands outside that single surviving valley in Chameleon filled with Companions coming alive at the end of the game, and seeing the environment field flickering overhead throughout. These are things that only additional time and money can bring. But, on the other hand, there are wonderful compensations – all the unexpected and wonderful touches the Detalion artists and designers came up with that made those worlds interesting.

Given that I’m known as a writer of dark fantasy and horror as well as science fiction, I guess the single greatest element from my own writing that hasn’t been carried over into the games I’ve worked on so far is the disquiet and fear element, the sort of unease the French call inquiètude. Even my science fiction and fantasy tends to have an element of this for mood and dramatic effect. Detalion’s games have avoided violence for sound marketing, sales and philosophical reasons, so terror and a real sense of danger are generally out of place. Without danger and fear and the game penalties that go with such things (usually ‘dying’ and a game re-start) you can’t really maintain a sense of horror or disquiet too well. The Blackstone Chronicles and the Silent Hill games all involve ‘death’ and have a real sense of dread and anxiety; others, like Amber and Dark Fall, have the sense that it can happen.

· We understand you are currently working on a new game. Can you provide some details?

TD - There are no contracts as yet, so it’s probably best to say I’m developing story ideas that would transfer to game design well. It’s a very competitive scene at present, far more than even fifteen months ago, so it all depends on publishers accepting a project proposal. We did have an adaptation of my book Wormwood in the early planning stages, set in a far-future, very alien Earth after an interstellar invasion, but that would be a huge project and would require a considerable budget. We may get back to it one day. I’d also very much like to do an adaptation of my story “The Man Who Lost Red”, but a lot will depend on how well Sentinel does and what publishers are interested in follow-up projects. Going back to what I said earlier, I also accept that others on the Detalion team have story projects they’d like to see developed. I’d be pleased to assist wherever my services are needed.

· Cyan Worlds licensed three novels to explore the background of the D'ni civilization which resulted in Myst. Are you planning any specific novels to explore the background of the Tastan Civilization from Sentinel?

TD - Not at this point, though I did begin a novelisation of the first Schizm game, just the original opening, to see how it tracked as text narrative reading it on the page. It’s actually more exciting to come up with new stories, new ideas, new projects. That’s the main reward for me as a writer, surprising myself with marvelous things that didn’t exist before. But if a publisher wanted to do game tie-in novels, I’d be pleased to do them.

· What, in your opinion, can be done to make the adventure game a more marketable genre?

TD - The short answer: integrating tasking within story and setting more carefully. There’s a major difference of perception here. Some developers design computer games as games, with definite gaming objectives in mind. Others allow that these ‘games’ are (and will be) much more than that, and accept that the gaming aspect is just a means to an end in the much larger phenomenon of traditional storytelling. We’re talking about the holistic immersive presentation of story that will one day be available given present technological trends. They know that any puzzle solving and action/combat activities should be natural and organic, fully integrated in the game design, and that this is the hardest thing to achieve. Making exploration and ‘tasking’ – to call it that – feel realistic, credible and appropriate, regardless of how amazing the setting might be, becomes just too difficult, especially when some gamers just want the puzzles to be puzzles. But that’s where the tail starts wagging the dog way too often. Adventure games at their best aren’t really about puzzle-solving, they’re about life-living and self-extension in a world that’s new, different and engaging. However absurd and amazing that new world might be, the tasks faced there should feel appropriate to that setting, despite its strangeness, or, as in Obsidian, be explained in an ultimately satisfactory way.

When puzzle-solving and action tasks feel unrealistic and tacked on – so much busywork to stretch the gameplay and pad out the level design – it’s so easy to dismiss the whole thing as: ‘Oh well, it’s just a game! And it’s just an adventure game! What do you expect!’ But that’s because we’re still in a blinkered, short-view, ‘silent movie’ era of immersive entertainment. We forget that action carried out by a human, whether for entertainment or otherwise, whatever the media used and however abstract and unintended, becomes a form of storytelling and always has. Whether it’s a soccer game, a car race or a game of chess, you have story occurring. It can’t be avoided. In staging them as computer games, the same logic-testing we apply to novels, short stories, movies, television programs, comic books, graphic novels, musicals etc applies. When a game grinds to a stop so the gamer can complete a slider puzzle, navigate a maze, construct a device for making a cup of tea or even track through all the options in a dialogue tree, there has to be a good contextual reason for it within the gameworld and the game design. Otherwise it’s just padding, busywork and false interactivity. The gameplay also has to be as invisible as the game designer can make it. If I’m in a strange and unfamiliar location in the real world trying to find my way into a building or how to operate a piece of machinery, I don’t think of it as a puzzle in conventional terms. If anything, it’s a problem I’m facing, part of what I naturally have to do to get by in the life I’m leading. That’s the difference between puzzle-solving and what I call tasking. Tasking tends to be invisible; you don’t notice it.

Logic testing for a storyteller is important too. I consider Cyan’s Riven to be an early high-point in holistic game design, a genuine classic, but still wonder why there was no spy-hole in that prison cell on the Jungle Island. Ingenious of the Moiety to put a secret door there, but you’d never dare open it without first be able to see who was near the cell. Too risky. Logic testing and brainstorming should have found and dealt with that early on. So, too, in Rhem there wasn’t a kitchen or other living facilities for that poor selfish sod who runs off with our rail-car. Someone built all that wonderful architecture, so where did they go the bathroom? Where did they eat and sleep? Those omissions violated the logic of the gameworld in an instant. If you’re just seeing it as a game then, okay, forget about it. Get a life, for heaven’s sake! But if it’s quality storytelling in a new vital form, and logical unto itself, then intelligent and gifted game designers need to get their act together and logic-test their game design, especially if they’re in it for the puzzles, because that’s going to be their blind spot! The first principles at work here aren’t merely gaming per se, as some seem determined to have it, but immersion in a story experience that becomes life-experience when done well.

I’ve tried to walk the walk as well as talk the talk here, at least as much as I could using email and dealing with talented colleagues whose first language isn’t English. It was important that the ‘tasking’ in Sentinel be grounded in such logic. The Dormeuse was deliberately giving Beni tasks so she could observe him, slow him down, make him use up his supplies, mess with his mind. She even comes out and says so. The ending shows why. There’s a valid context, however tenuous some may feel it is, for what Beni – and so the gamer – has to do. Soap Bubble’s Morpheus did very well here too. The puzzle elements there were mostly either security and operations tasks needed aboard that rather special ship or aspects of the dreamworlds of those poor trapped souls inside the neurographicon that need to be resolved. Clever and appropriate. If it’s a cartoon reality like The Neverhood or a dreamworld like the first Myst game, full of absurd and surreal elements, then you can forget too much logic testing. You just go with what’s given and take it on its own terms.

Here’s where I add my bit and say adventure games aren’t dead and probably will never die. They’re too engaging, too effective, too useful. If they seem to have done so, it’s only in comparative, commercial terms, not artistic ones. Artistically, they’re as strong and as important as ever. Remember, Van Gogh sold only The Red Vineyard in his lifetime. It’s going to be interesting to see what plays out ten or twenty years from now.

· Do you think it would help sales of games like Sentinel if more consumers were aware of established authors, like yourself, involvement with the game?

TD - You’d think so, if only for the usual ‘brand name’ reasons. But that can skew things a bit as well, give more credit than is often due. I’ve learned that there are always unsung heroes in game storytelling and game design. I’d love to ask Bob Bates, for instance, about the extent of his contribution to The Blackstone Chronicles or Jon Bock about his work on Lighthouse. What about Frank and Susan Wimmer with Amber: Journeys Beyond, and Glenn Dean on Morpheus. These were and are great story ideas, perfect for adventure gaming. The future looks rosy from here.

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