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September 12th: A Toy World

  First of all, just as stated in the “instructions” screen; September 12th is NOT a game. It may resemble an old-school arcade-ish game, at first glance, but this is just an illusion masking the...

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The Brains behind City of Steam

I’ve  recently had the pleasure of talking with David Lindsay, a fellow Kiwi who is now General Manager and Lead Designer at Mechanist Games, the studio behind the new steampunk MMORPG, City of Steam....

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Interview with Rhianna Pratchett

I stumbled across this fantastic interview with fellow fiction engineer, Rhianna Pratchett.  It’s a great insight into the realities of being a writer in video game industry.  After her anecdote about...

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Story Glyphs

There’s a recurring design flaw in games that really bugs me.  Non player characters that I meet, start to get to know, and never see again. They’re a storytelling one night stand!   Here’s the sort of...

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Eve Online – First Contact

As a relative noob to the MMO (massively multiplayer online) genre, I felt intimidated to fall into the universe of EVE online as a beginner. And, for very good reason; the game is simply HUGE. As...

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Making Games that can Educate

…by NOT making ‘educational games’!!  That’s what The Fiction Engine is all about for me.  I’m on an alchemical quest to make video games that will teach you valuable skills and knowledge WITHOUT...

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Staying Human

I was recently sent an article about how Naughty Dog game director, Bruce Straley, and creative lead, Neil Druckmann, and their conception of PS3 title, The Last of Us.  It’s not out yet, but what’s...

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The Reward

This beautiful animated short film has managed to sum up EXACTLY why I play, make, and love video games. It’s the journey, man…it’s the journey

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EVE Online – Disengaged

If you’ve read the first impression article I wrote a while back, you might’ve noticed that I was excited and had high hopes for EVE Online.  It looked amazing, and I really couldn’t wait to get deeper...

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Game Writing Workshop

Turning story in Game Story! As part of Animation Revelations hosted by AUT and the Auckland Art Gallery, I’m offering a four hour workshop on the art of Fiction Engineering…enriching games with...

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Extra Credits

Ah, to have more time to blog at the moment!  Still, I suppose having too much Fiction Engineering to actually do trumps having plenty of time to write about Fiction Engineering.  Still, I’m looking...

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NPCs are Real People Too!

Hi all, Just finished presenting this at AUT as part of Animation Revelations.  I was on a panel with Justin Brown (Author), Nick Ward (Writer), Kathryn Bennett (Scriptwriter), and Kerynn Walsh...

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Akaneiro: Demon Hunters – Beautiful and Fun, but lacking in Staying Power

   ”Akaneiro: Demon Hunters”, from the creators of the brilliant “Alice: Madness Returns”, is Spicy Horse’s re-imagining of the story of “little red riding hood” in the form of a F2P (free to play)...

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Do Educational Games Really Work?

From personal experience…yes!  But I know there’s still a host of scepticism out there, and rightly so.  We’ve yet to reach the sweet spot where engagement and learning are balanced on any sort of...

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What is a Fiction Engineer?

A Fiction Engineer is a writer who works in the Video Games industry, or in some related field of interactive storytelling. They are not to be confused with “code writer”, who is a creator of source...

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Evolution of Game Writing

Game Informer takes a brief look at the Evolution of Game Writing.  A juicy little feature worth sucking into the cortex.  In it, I found one thing that I wholeheartedly agreed with and one thing that...

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WHY is the Fiction Engineer’s favourite question

Well…WHY should be the Fiction Engineer’s favourite question but I’m afraid we get tied up in the What-When-How-Who-Where of it all and often forget about the ‘WHY’. So why is WHY such an important...

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The Future of Game Writing

Rhianna Pratchett does a fine job of defining what it is to be a Fiction Engineer, both the ideal and the reality.  And I like the term ‘environmental storytelling’.  Expressing narrative through the...

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Should a Player Character speak?

Just stumbled across an article in Game Informer by Odell Harmon that makes a good case for keeping our favourite game protagonists muted.  Resident Evil 1 wouldn’t have been nearly as atmospheric had...

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Games need Interactivity, not Cutscenes

Jeff Yohalem was the Lead Writer on Far Cry 3 and talks a whole lot of sense about Fiction Engineering.  I’m paraphrasing here… If a Player can still understand the game’s story when all dialogue is...

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