3 Writing Tips I Thought I Learned From Video Games, and 3 I Should Have Learned Instead
Gamification is a big idea these days. People in a variety of fields realize that games — often video games in particular — have a lot to teach us, whether it’s how to deal with a deranged computer forcing us through ever-more-dangerous tests or that bards can be spoony.
When it comes to writing and story construction, games can tell a lot about how people interact with their entertainment. Unfortunately, just as with any other instructive medium, it’s easy to misinterpret the message.
Here are three ways I did so, and three things I should have learned instead.
1. Game: Pokémon Blue (and sequels/other versions)
What I Thought I Learned:
Audiences can learn a lot of information.
Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, I wrote a manuscript that had literally thirty main characters. Not like, say, Game of Thrones, which I understand has an epic scope that allows the author to follow new groups of characters around the vast world he’s created, but, like, in one novel where they were all in the same place all the time. They were thirty kids who lived in a house by themselves (because at the time I would have loved to live in a house by myself with all my friends and cousins), and they were fighting the good but comedic fight against the serious and evil Lord of All Evil.
I told myself that because each of the kids was one-dimensional and because I’d given them nicknames based on this one-dimensional characteristic (e.g. Yikes for the scaredy-cat I AM A VERY FUNNY WOMAN), that readers would have no trouble following and/or caring about the characters. After all, didn’t kids my age know all 150-and-rapidly-growing-now-700+ Pokémon? Which were basically the same one-dimensional + obvious-nickname things?
My one concession was to cut down the number of kids to 26 and give each one a nickname starting with a different letter of the alphabet, because otherwise, y’know, the story might have got confusing.
What I Should Have Learned Instead:
Audiences can learn a lot of information if it matters to them.
For some reason, that query never got any hits. Gee, I wonder why?
Players learn all the different kinds of Pokémon because they’re already engaged in the story: either about themselves via their avatar in the game or about Ash Ketchum, the main character of the Pokémon anime. They come into the picture already wanting to know about all the different Pokémon, whether to further their own battle strategy or to understand Ash’s journey. A well developed character has made them care.
I can still trust my audiences with a lot of information, but I should also trust my readers when they say they feel overwhelmed. “Overwhelmed” doesn’t necessarily mean “too much information” — “overwhelmed” means “too much information that I don’t care about enough to go through this fast.”
2. Game: Super Meat Boy
What I Thought I Learned:
Audience like to be challenged.
I like to write challenging exposition. I don’t mean that I set out on purpose to make things difficult the reader; I just write the kind of exposition that I like best, and it seems to be the kind that many readers find challenging.
So what? I’d ask myself. I like books I have to struggle to piece together. And I like trying levels on Super Meat Boy a million trillion times until I finally manage to navigate the single screen full of spikes, rotating jagged wheels, and precision jumps.
(Note to those who haven’t played: that link shows one of the easier levels. By far.)
Obviously, audiences like to work for their entertainment. So there shouldn’t be a problem when I zip through the exposition without time to take a break.
What I Should Have Learned Instead:
Audiences like to be challenged when the framework of the challenge rewards their effort.
Super Meat Boy isn’t frustrating because the game developers based their design on the premise that you will fail many, many times. Levels are bite-sized: one or two or three screens, and you re-spawn instantly. If your heart desires, you can throw yourself on spikes over and over and over again in the blink of an eye. You don’t lose much progress when you die, and you aren’t punished by having to endure the loading screen.
Likewise, there’s clear moment of triumph when you achieve your goal. You know when Meat Boy has passed the level, because you reach the end and get a BOOM! LEVEL COMPLETED screen and sound effect.
And, most importantly, the controls are very precise and clearly defined. You always know how Meat Boy is going to move when you press those buttons; you never get thrown off a cliff by a glitch.
Working for a goal is fun when you know what that goal is and trust that whoever’s designed the entertainment you’re enjoying has included a way for you to get to that goal. Trust has to be earned through experience.
Difficult exposition isn’t a problem by itself, but there are lots of different ways for something to be difficult. If my stories are tough, I want them to be tough like Super Meat Boy, with every other part of the MS working at the top of its game to support that difficulty level, not tough like Super Ghouls and Ghosts with its cheap shots, limited controls, and sparse checkpoints.
3. Game: Super Mario World
What I Thought I Learned:
Audiences value secret details.
My sister and I used to play Super Mario World only when we got sick enough for my parents to rent a SNES from the local Videoflicks, back in the days of yore when one could do such a thing. Our older cousins, however, owned their own system and cartridge. And while our lack of skill pretty much limited us to the first world — if we were lucky — they could whiz through world after world so expertly they could even grab keys and unlock brand-new levels we’d never dreamed of.
These days, it’s difficult to remember which secrets I figured out myself and which I learned from them. A little voice in the back of my head goes, “Hey, you should jump up there!” and then I do and voilà! A whole new world, like some video-game Aladdin/Jasmine romance.
Some of these secrets are pretty complicated. It makes me wonder how anyone ever figured them out. Naturally, I reasoned: when audiences like something, they’re happy to scour it for hidden Easter-eggs. Why should I bother to make it clear that my magic-school story is a sneaky re-working of Macbeth with my protagonist as Macduff? Or that I’ve hinted at two supporting characters’ romance? Audiences love digging deep into close readings and finding that stuff for themselves.
What I Should Have Learned Instead:
Audiences value discovering secret details organically.
Let’s be honest: I didn’t even know that Polkaroo was the missing dude until I was like, fourteen. Secret details like the ones I’d include in my novels would fly right by me.
But Mario secrets wouldn’t. When I play Mario games today — Super Mario Galaxy 2, the New Super Mario Bros. series, and even Super Mario Bros. 3 — I still find surprisingly complicated secrets. A hidden area here, a secret exit there. You know how it goes.
That’s because the Mario games do a great job of setting up their audiences to find those secrets. Granted, there are a few super hardcore 0_O ones, but most of them invite the player to explore. They taunt Mario with a single coin out in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. They tempt the player with a strange platform that seems just out of reach. They tease the ear with a seemingly out-of-place sound effect every time you go near a certain part of the level.
Mario secrets are, for the most part, meant to be found in a fun way, not to demonstrate how clever the game developers are.
Sometimes, when I write “secrets” into my work, I forget that. The point is never to feel clever about my under-the-text machinations. The point is to make the reader feel clever about them. And if that means writing and re-writing explanations until I’ve hit that exact right balance between too clear and too esoteric, then that’s what I have to do.