03.13.07
Spector coins “shared authorship”?
It’s not a term I’ve ever heard of before - in relation to games at least - but it has a nice ring to it, and it seems quite adequate:
Gamespy: Warren Spector Grades the Industry (March 8, 2007)
Warren Spector uses “shared authorship” to describe games like Grand Theft Auto1, Knights of the Old Republic, or his own Deus Ex, where “when a player goes away from the [storyline] ’string’ you’ve created, the game should procedurally change. Like a good table top role-playing game, he explains, the game should be able to flex and bend to keep the player involved.” Well yeah, that’s pretty much the way to do it.
We largely adopted the Deus Ex storytelling technique when we started TNM, because everybody loves DX for its flexible narrative, and we wanted to give people more of that, among other things. But I (yeah I have no qualms with claiming credit for that one) have tried to take it one step further by letting the player join the bad guys. Staying with UNATCO is probably the main option fans have been asking for ever since DX came out - which is why this mod exists - so it was a logical decision to make. In Oblivion, of course, they raised the stakes even further by implementing (let me just take a moment to count…) five storylines2 that are furthermore not mutually exclusive(!), but well… the point is that each of our two storylines are even more flexible than Deus Ex’ single storyline and definitely more flexible than any of Oblivion’s storylines.
But enough about my own damn mod.
Spector is right of course; he generally is. In fact I’ve come to believe the man is incapable of saying or doing anything wrong (sure Invisible War didn’t turn out as good as it should’ve been, but Warren had actually anticipated several of its problems, such as the ridiculous universal ammunition - he just left the final cut to Harvey Smith, the lead designer)3. That said, I do enjoy the occasional linear storyline. I mean when it comes to listing my favourite games, I’ll throw down titles such as Torment, Deus Ex, KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights 2, Jade Empire (more on that when I finish it), etc. But that doesn’t mean Half-Life 2 and the Max Payne games aren’t on that list somewhere. Shared authorship games ring truer to the “games are not movies!”-credo, but I think there’s still plenty of room for linear narration, don’t you?
Oh but by the way, what the hell is this supposed to mean?
Player-generated titles include The Sims and Neverwinter Nights. Spector admits that players can create stories in these titles, but adds that except to those players, those stories are “…typically not very interesting.”
I hope he not talking about player-created mods and modules 
1 I’m sorry, but isn’t GTA more like no authorship? I guess he means GTA3:SA. Maybe he was misquoted, but there’s a hell of difference between the first 4 GTA games and San Andreas, in my less-than-humble opinion.
2 Don’t believe me? Count for yourself: There’s the main story, the fighters’, mages’, and thieves’ guild quest lines, and finally the Dark Brotherhood. And that is to say nothing of all the caves, ruins, towns, camps, inns, and daedric shrines with single-shot quests.
3 What do you mean, “what’s my source”!? This is a blog, not a newspaper. It’s in a pre-release interview somewhere, go find it yourself.
EER said,
March 14, 2007 at 17:17
I like playing the sims, but really, there is just no purpose, it keeps going on and on while nothing interesting happens (except for some dastardly social intrigues ;)). That is why the expension packs sell so well, you need them to do more stuff that you have not done before, get a purpose: buy all the stuff that wasn’t available before.
Shared authoring seems to be more like giving us the purpose, but let us figure out how to meet the end goal. I like to know that the game is actually going somewhere instead of just going on and on.
Maybe I’m totally missing the point btw, I haven’t heard of the term “Shared authoring” before either
Jonas said,
March 14, 2007 at 22:16
I’d like to know what he means with player-generated. I assume he means games where the creation of content is a PART of the gameplay, which would make The Sims one of the very few games in that category. But placing NWN in the same category is kinda weird, as the player-generated content for NWN is exclusively made in the editor, rather than the game client itself.
Oh wait, the DM client can be used in the original SP game. Which allows a small group of players to use the game as an improvising framework.
EER said,
March 15, 2007 at 11:39
I really have to buy NWN.
Jonas said,
March 15, 2007 at 15:50
NWN has given me some of my most emotional gaming experiences in its secondary function as a visual RPG-engine. I’ve played in a particular campaign for around 3 years, and it’s only now drawing to a close. A DM can tailor the campaign around the player characters and make their histories and personalities carry the story to a far greater degree than a prewritten narrative, and just as importantly, he has the freedom to shape the storyline around the choices of the players, with frequently overwhelming results.