Creative Philosophy at TR

Post by **Haplo** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 1:41 am

Hey all, so this is something I've wanted to share with you all for a while now; it's interesting on its own and also relevant to us as creative artists producing content. It goes hand-in-hand, I think, with Adanorcil's recent exposÃƒÂ© about literature in the project and the purpose behind it. I hope the articles below will lead to an invigorated discussion about what it means to be a part of TR and to follow our mantra of doing things the way Bethesda would have, if they had no time or money constraints. So, without further ado:

[url=http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/185353/focusing_creativity_rpg_genres.php]Focusing Creativity: RPG Genres[/url]

[url=http://db.tt/9kMZNHbH]How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity[/url]

[url=http://aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/07/pixars-22-rules-of-storytelling/]Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling[/url]

Thoughts?

Why · Post by **Why** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 7:24 pm

The Gamasutra story is an interesting insight in why Diablo 2 is better than Diablo 3 and the Pixar stories will teach us how to make an excellent Pixar movie.

In all seriousness, the Gamasutra story is actually quite interesting and I'd recommend y'all to read it if you have the time if only to get a bit more insight in RPG development as a whole. It doesn't hold *that* much value to us, but what they call the "breadcrumbs" technique (wow, there's a terrible name if I've ever seen one) is indeed important and we should take more care in guiding the player and giving them incentives to both explore and follow the story, yet make sure they don't lose track of the big things while they do.

The "How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity" document actually contains one of the reasons I decided to push the Indoril quest line thread out of the Halfway House in the first place. Not that it's had much success so far, but I'm hoping to get more people involved in the creative process there.

I honestly don't understand why the 22 Rules thing excites people. I've seen it before and it all seems like really basic stuff mixed with terribly Pixar-focused, or movie-focused, specifics, at best.

Post by **Haplo** » Fri Mar 08, 2013 9:20 pm

The 22 things was actually an addendum I didn't read fully, but saw that it was by Pixar so it might've been relevant.

Why · Post by **Why** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 1:16 am

Well it is nice in the way that it tells you a lot about how Pixar operates, they clearly have their creative process quite streamlined which by itself is interesting.

gro-Dhal · Post by **gro-Dhal** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 4:16 am

We're fortunate in that we're working from a template- Morrowind, which is arguably the greatest open-world RPG of all time. The first article makes good points but it's almost all stuff we already do.

Post by **Haplo** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 8:22 am

gro-Dhal wrote:We're fortunate in that we're working from a template- Morrowind, which is arguably the greatest open-world RPG of all time. The first article makes good points but it's almost all stuff we already do.

I think it happens often and certain modders do it well, but I'm not convinced we do enough to make a concerted effort where everyone is conscious of these decisions while modding. Often times it seems the creative forces at work here are (usually) conscious of this need and generally hope that the most basic aspects of the mod are coalesce-able with the Grand Scheme(TM). There have been numerous occasions where this didn't happen, though, and we've had to redo entire cities or swathes of claims.

gro-Dhal · Post by **gro-Dhal** » Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:50 am

I enjoyed this video (I may even have seen it on here or in IRC). It's a reasoned criticism of certain gameplay elements in TES, usually drawing attention to the particular strengths of Morrowind. Things that hadn't occurred to me in some cases, but that perhaps we should bear in mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweTAhyR4o0

The meat of it starts around 7:00.

Bloodthirsty Crustacean · Sat Mar 09, 2013 4:53 pm

The hell is up with that guy's accent? I genuinely cannot tell if he is Northern, Geordie, Welsh, or German.

Post by **arvisrend** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:14 am

Yay for spoiling one of the two only MW puzzles. :P

I can't agree with him on MW having good puzzles. Most of the puzzling in Morrowind was due to wrong directions and unexplained gameplay. I don't recall finding any of it fun. Skyrim had more puzzles, although yes, they tended to be on the easier side.

And he doesn't seem to ever have tried his hands at quest development, or he would have known why NPCs tend to be immortal.

He noticed that Bethesda would consider questmarkers as part of the gameplay, and not even take into account that some players would choose not to use them. Well, that's true for quite a lot of the gameplay, including Save & Load.

Doublecrossing questgivers in Morrowind more often led to bugs than to alternate solutions. Sorry.

Casuals != kiddies. Can't we finally get this right?

He does make several good points, nevertheless. Though, no, he was definitely not "as concise as possible".

Post by **Haplo** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 5:24 am

Are you sure you watched the whole video, arvisrend? He definitely mentioned how some players might try to turn off quest markers but then be left stranded because the journal "entries" were so unhelpful ("Find the Shrine of Azura." for the Shrine of Azura quest was the only thing in the entire entry).

And I'm pretty inclined to think that casual more often than not means younger players.

gro-Dhal · Post by **gro-Dhal** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 7:37 am

Obviously we don't have questmarkers so that's not a problem. The thing I find most interesting was the impossibility of failing quests- something worth thinking about, especially for misc quests.

Post by **arvisrend** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 4:26 pm

Haplo: here is what I meant:

arvisrend wrote:He noticed that {Bethesda would consider questmarkers as part of the gameplay, and not even take into account that some players would choose not to use them}.

Any other reading wouldn't make sense grammatically. :P

He made a good point on quest failure, gro-Dhal, but I'm not worried that our questers would do that wrong -- people modding for Morrowind seem to err on the hardcore/sadistic side (or have you seen an easy quest mod for MW beyond LGNPC?).

Post by **Haplo** » Mon May 27, 2013 9:58 am

This is an interesting related article re-posted from a Skyrim blog:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoelBurgess/20130501/191514/Skyrims_Modular_Approach_to_Level_Design.php

immortal_pigs · Post by **immortal_pigs** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 7:25 pm

This is a really good one that offers one very useful rule for creating stories: start with the ending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxDwieKpawg