The Develop Conference gave Lionhead Studio’s audio producer Georg Backer an opportunity to discuss the necessary parts for a development team to succeed, and he noted that coherence and cohesion are essential for developing a dramatic, emotive and immersive game. The importance of tying in the various game elements will come together when a team is able to work as a unit, not as a divided entity, he said.
"Games are trying to be more like films, and films are trying to be more like games. But there are huge differences between the two categories of drama," said Backer. "We're still trying to adopt a lot from the other industries," he continued. While Backer sees game makers still learning from other entertainment forms, he's also aware that games absolutely must be treated differently.
Ultimately, a team will be able to work away from the normal section-by-section model of storytelling towards a model that ensures harmony at all times, he states.
With today’s games showing more and more initiative on storytelling and plot, Backer believes that the industry is rapidly moving towards his idealized development style. During the presentation, he offered up several examples that show an industry in motion: BioShock, and Portal.
"BioShock is completely coherent, in the art style, in the audio, the setting - it's so coherent that the game mechanics are part of the core story. It's not just plugged in as a Meta thing: it's part of the core experience, which I thought was just brilliant," said Backer.
As for Portal, “It worked so much better,” he states in regard to the integration of a deep story telling perspective with the game itself. The Companion Cube, for instance, “It's basically just a box with a heart on it," he told conference delegates, "but it created such an emotional response in players, with only four or five lines. And they're not even spoken by it: they're spoken by GLaDOS.
"It doesn't do anything. And there are other cubes in Portal. But they don't have the heart, and they don't have the introduction from GLaDOS."
Planning of course is a major part of what Lionhead does. Without looking ahead, all of the creative processes, the storytelling and the development will inherently mean little. To succeed, one must “Imagine ahead and don’t iterate to the left or to the right: iterate forward,” said Backer. “You have to be able to see [the final product] all the time, without having to change things around it.”
[Thanks Gamasutra]
