ExecOpsFiction

Formatting changes made by Djordi, the formatting asshole Nazi guy.

Just thinking out loud here, without much to go on, here are my thoughts on ExOps :

1) Touchable Fiction vs. Untouchable Fiction

In video games, there is fiction you can touch, and there is fiction that you can't touch. Touchable fiction consists of things like emergent gameplay narrative, in-game character models emoting, in-game scripted events, any and all real-time actors. Untouchable fiction consists of mission briefings, shell interfaces, the manual, any and all text.

In creating the ExOps fiction, I would like to propose a ban on untouchable storytelling.

Why?

Because I don't give a fuck about what I can't touch, what I can't play with. I'll toss the instructions, I'll key past text boxes, I'll skip most cutscenes.

Half-Life (to beat this example to death) doesn't employ any untouchable fiction AT ALL. Everything you need to know about Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman, and the Resonance Cascade is IN THE REAL-TIME GAMEPLAY.

I don't need that kind of purity for Mercenaries. But I will insist that any untouchable fiction we have in the game MUST be tied to a touchable fiction. That is, it's only okay to make me read text about a character OUTSIDE THE GAMEPLAY if I am introduced to that character IN THE GAMEPLAY, and the bulk of my interactions with that character are IN THE GAMEPLAY.

Basically, if you're giving me new fiction, it has to be touchable. If it's old fiction and I already know it, THEN you can give me untouchable fiction as a supplement, which I will probably ignore anyway. Life is short, you know.

They don't hand you a novel when you leave a movie theater, and say, "Read this book! You'll get the movie if you do!"

2) ExOps Must Be Touchable

So. In creating a fiction for ExOps , I would like to make all the fiction touchable. I would like to create a rule which says, I'm not allowed to TELL you anything about ExOps . I'm only allowed to SHOW you (in the game, not in the manual) what ExOps is.

That means ExOps has to be small. Why? Because the entire operational infrastructure of ExOps has to be touchable. I want to feel like part of the company, I want to know everyone who works there. If there accountants hidden somewhere that you're not introducing me to, I'm annoyed. So I would say all the employees, every single last one, has to be touchable. I would even say playable, but maybe that's going too far. Let's just say that all ExOps employees have to appear in a real-time gameplay context to the player.

(It's the difference between Col. Campbell and Otacon in Metal Gear Solid, both of whom provide mission briefings to Solid Snake. Col. Campbell is your typical Mission Briefing Puppet, a fact which Kojima lampoons brilliantly at the finale of MGS2. Otacon is a guy you rescue and become friends with, even if he can be a little annoying sometimes. Guess which one is more dramatically compelling.)

Since the player has to know and love every single last employee of ExOps , and it's really difficult to create and differentiate memorable characters, I would propose that ExOps have no more than seven employees.

Can you name all the members of the A-Team ? Chances are, you can name at least four out of the six. That's because the A-Team focused on a small band of characters and developed the hell out of them. The A-Team didn't have an army of anonymous accountants hidden away somewhere.

But, you say! There are non-gameplay support functions we need! Who will give the mission briefings? Who will be the tech girl? I would propose that these function be performed by ExOps mercenaries who are sitting on the sidelines for a particular mission. Characters who in one mission may appear in a real-time gameplay context can also perform these non-in-game functions. The supporting fiction being that employees switch roles all the time, ExOps being a small company. Again, the A-Team .

Wouldn't you rather have the briefings delivered by someone you know and care about? Why keep placing anonymous voices and puppets in front of the player (like Mercs 1.0)?

We need to recycle our characters as much as possible, as opposed to inventing new ones for every game function. Why? Because we need every opportunity we can get to reinforce our small band of characters and their personalities in the player's mind.

Did you notice how, in Mercenaries 1.0, there are ostensibly three ExOps employees, and yet each has no knowledge of the others' existence? I hate that.

ExOps has to be fully touchable. Every last square inch.

3) If ExOps is Touchable, What Kind of PMC Is It?

If we live by the maxim "All Fiction Must Be Touchable," what does that mean for ExOps ?

The bottom line: ExOps is quick, cheap, and dirty.

ExOps is a small company with a narrow focus: direct engagement. Unlike other PMCs, which are large corporate affairs that offer consulting and logistical services, ExOps does only one thing: fuck shit up.

The operation, like any small business run by entrepreneurs, is self-managed by the employees. There is a CEO of ExOps , but it is important to note that all employees of ExOps , including the boss, are active operatives. Everyone pulls their own weight. Nobody sits behinds a desk. All employees are necessary.

ExOps has no permanent infrastructure. (Remember, if I can't touch it, I don't want to know about it.) The company infrastructure is small and transient. Headquarters usually consists of a well-disguised front company constructed in the area of the current contract. The front company is usually a heavily fortified bunker disguised as a tv repair shop, or a laundromat.

Professional contact with ExOps is made through an ad-hoc basis: personal introductions, encrypted communications. It's necessary for ExOps employees to keep their true identities secret, as each appears on a number of foreign and domestic shitlists. Given the size of the ExOps firm, it would be all too easy for a government body to stage an "unfortunate accident" involving one or more employees.

Quick, cheap, and dirty. We see this model all the time in various media: the A-Team , Ghostbusters, Robin Hood, The Professionals. That's because it works very well for classical dramatic reasons. Everyone loves an underdog.

4) PS

I cannot stress enough the importance of maintaining a narrow focus on a small group of characters.

If millions of gamers the world over are going to love the Mercenaries IP and spend all their disposable income on Mercs merchandise, it won't be because we've created a wonderful WORLD. It's because we will have created wonderful CHARACTERS (who happen to live in a wonderful world.)

The more labyrintine and complex the supporting fiction for Mercs gets, the more it gets away from the characters, the more the gamer will lose interest.

OUR FICTION BEGINS WITH THE CHARACTERS.

It does NOT begin with a conspiracy theory, a collectible card game, current events, the nation state of Venezuela, oil, or anything else that is not a human being. Mainly because I can't fall in love with those things. I can fall in love with human beings.

That's not to say we won't have a compelling and wonderful world. But we have to begin with the characters.

Nobody remembers what happened at Shadow Moses, but everybody remembers Revolver Ocelot.

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Djordi's Comments

Cam's Comments

1) Touchable Fiction vs. Untouchable Fiction

• In general, I find this compelling.
• You may note some attempts in this direction in 1.0 (e.g., an almost total absense of cinematics, an emphasis on retaining control of the character even in briefings, etc.). But I agree that it can be taken further and handled better.
• I am sympathetic to "short attention span" syndrome. I will win any short attention span contest you can name when it comes to story telling in video-games.

2) ExOps Must Be Touchable

• I also agree with this. It's something I regret in 1.0. We discussed some very cool ideas about having an ExOps presence in the game, and ways of having the characters interact, etc., but we weren't able to pursue it this time around.
• The way we put it was that ExOps needs to be a faction in the game. It may be that we need to go further than that (by "further" I mean have ExOps be more than just a faction, and rather be the "backbone" in the sense that the AN is really the backbone in 1.0).
• I can name only one member of the A-team, and it's the one you expect =]
• I'm not sure I agree that you have to know and love "every single employee".
• I'm thinking of things like "The Sandbaggers", a Granada series MattC lent me recently. This has a nice setup where you get to be intimate with a small subset of a larger organization. So there are some characters that are "untouchable", but that add to the world and give context to the "touchable" characters. We should discuss this further, as it's one of two major differences between my version of ExOps and yours, and it's the one I actually care about =]
• Having said that, I'm willing to explore the idea that ExOps is entirely is a self-contained bunch of "touchable" characters. It's an interesting provocation.
• I would also argue that, while there's certainly room for improvement, the faction bosses in Mercs 1.0 are actually interesting characters (perhaps you haven't read the final script, which is a dramatic improvement over what's in there now). I know you're exaggerating to make a point, but calling them anonymous puppets is a stretch.
• And of course we noticed that there's three ExOps employees that don't know each other, asshole. Remember that the player cannot swap back and forth - fictionally only one of the three is inserted into North Korea in the game "reality". We never say to the player that all three are on the ground simultaneously. Having said that, it would be cool to have them interact.

3) If ExOps is Touchable, What Kind of PMC Is It?

• Interesting.
• Is another way to put what you're saying "Private Special Forces"?
• I do have a concern with this. It's not a showstopper, but I'm interested to hear you address it.
• To me the tension between being a corporation (with all that implies) and being a military force (with all that implies) is interesting and fresh. I haven't seen it before.
• Whereas the "quick, cheap, dirty" squad that only only exists to "fuck shit up" feels little more familiar.
• I'm not saying it can't be made to work.

4) PS

• Point taken, and I agree, I guess.

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Rob Strikes Back

First of all, I am so very happy to be working with a team that takes story seriously.

And I recognize that the quality of storytelling in Mercs 1.0 is significantly stronger than many other video games.

But let’s not be ambiguous here: storytelling in games is an ALL OR NOTHING affair. Either you establish audience identification with your characters, world, and story, or you don’t. Success or failure. There is no in-between state, which is really brutal for writers who are learning the craft.

I don’t want to give you guys a break. I want to keep the pressure up.

I want us to aim for Excellent and degrade to Good, rather than aim for Good and degrade to Mediocre.

1) The Typical Game Developer Approach To Storytelling

I think this would be a good time to talk about what is known as the Typical Game Developer Approach To Storytelling.

Game Developers tend to think of story as being a large pile of Really Cool Things that are clumped together to form a “story”. And the more Really Cool Things we can stuff in the pile, the cooler the “story” is. (c.f. Star Wars: The Clone Wars, co-written by some asshole.)

I think the reason why Game Developers think this way is because they tend to approach story the same way they approach game design: they want things to be modular, so if an element doesn’t work, they can pull it out and replace it with something else.

The problem with this approach is that video game stories usually don’t COHERE. That is, they’re incoherent. They’re a pile of cool but thematically unrelated elements that don’t add up to be greater than the sum of their parts.

You know this. You’ve seen the story run away from you on Mercs 1.0. As you worked through development, details shifted, gameplay changed, the jello melted. The story of Mercs 1.0, and you know this as well, really only makes sense in the minds of the developers.

So the big question is: WHAT ARE WE MISSING? HOW DO WE GET THE STORY TO COHERE?

See, I thought about this “What makes a cool PMC?” question over the weekend, and I realized that I don’t trust the question at all.

I think that Cameron wants to lead us in the process of constructing an Incoherent Pile of Really Cool Things. We’re all going to get together and blow smoke up each other’s asses about what kind of cars these guys drive, what kind of guns they carry. We’re going to create all these details that will either a) get lost or b) contradict each other in the process of development.

I know for a fact this approach will fail. How do I know this?

Because we did the exact SAME GODDAMN THING at the beginning of Mercs 1.0.

So again, the question is: How do we get the story to cohere?

I think the answer is: Character.

2) Character: Who is the Founder of Our PMC?

I think the REAL question is, “Who is the founder of our PMC and why did he found it?”

>To me the tension between being a corporation
> (with all that implies) and being a military force
> (with all that implies) is interesting and fresh.
> I haven't seen it before.

You could be right, Cam. And I’m not opposed to making our PMC a corporation. But without a human being at the center of that corporation, I don’t give a shit.

People don’t watch movies about corporations. They watch movies about people.

Example: If someone told me a story about a game company called Pandemic Studios, located in Westwood, California, I’d check out of that story in ten seconds.

But if you told me a story about a young MBA named Josh Resnick who decided to break off from Activision to found a small studio on the beach, with rickety old office furniture and termites falling from the ceiling, well, then I’m interested.

Who is our Josh Resnick? The leader of our PMC will dictate so many things about the PMC. Is our PMC an honorable one, with ethics? Are there certain jobs that it won’t take? If so, why? What happened in the leader’s past? Why would he found an “ethical” PMC?

You see, if we can get away from the cold mechanism of “the organization” and move towards the warm heart of “the hero”, we’ll have a much easier time of this. Things will fall into place nicely.

OUR LEAD CHARACTER WILL BE THE GLUE THAT COHERES OUR STORY.

3) Thoughts On A Larger “Untouchable” Fiction

> I'm not sure I agree that you have to know and
> love "every single employee".

Given your management style, I’m not surprised.

> I'm thinking of things like "The Sandbaggers",
> a Granada series MattC lent me recently. This
> has a nice setup where you get to be intimate
> with a small subset of a larger organization. So
> there are some characters that are "untouchable",
> but that add to the world and give context to the
> "touchable" characters.

Sure, we’ve seen this model before too, Mr. Seems Familiar. Just about every World War II movie revolves around a small band of soldiers that represent a much larger and more complex entity: the US Army.

But we’re not writing a movie here, where people are forced to stay in their seats for two straight hours. Or a comic book, which allows for unlimited serialization, which is essentially the ultimate narrative cheat. As a video game, we have an extremely limited amount of time (less than a movie) to establish audience identification before people start checking out of Hotel Mercs.

How exactly, Cameron, do you propose to impart our “untouchable” fiction of ExOps to the player through the game?

Remember, we can’t require people to listen to long VO, or read the manual.

And the larger your “untouchable” fiction gets, the harder the job becomes.

Shove a block of text in my face and you’ve lost me.

I’m not saying it’s impossible.

But a large “untouchable” fiction is the first thing that will be jettisoned when it comes time to revise our story.

To me, a large “untouchable” fiction represents bloat and feature creep in narrative terms.

I favor something lean and mean that will withstand multiple revisions without losing coherence.

4) Familiarity and Ambition

> Whereas the "quick, cheap, dirty" squad that
> only only exists to "fuck shit up" feels a little
> more familiar.

I bet you twenty this is the Game Developer Approach To Storytelling talking. You say that if we accumulate a large pile of Really Cool Things, that’s what will differentiate us from all the other me-too military-themed games. All we have to do is come up with some Really Cool Things no one’s come up with before.

But I say that the one thing that none of those me-too games has come up with is A CHARACTER. Someone I can identify with. Say what you want about Metal Gear Solid’s story, but again, everyone knows who Solid Snake is.

But who knows what Foxhound is? Sure, the idea of a squad of genome soldiers is really fucking cool, but seriously dude, who knows what the hell Foxhound is?

Which is why I would rather start with Solid Snake and work our way to Foxhound, rather than the other way around. Snake should dictate Foxhound. Foxhound should not dictate Snake.

As for the familiarity issue, I will say this. Movie audiences tend to respond much more strongly to what is familiar and well-executed, rather than what is unfamiliar and poorly-executed.

Given that Pandemic has yet to even accomplish familiar and well-executed (narratively, I mean), I say we narrow our focus a bit and nail a smaller target through the heart.

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