Show, don’t tell.

Like many of you guys, I attended Seamus Sullivan’s “Dramatic Storytelling in Games.” Sullivan shared quite a few tips on how to write strong characters and dialogue, tips which, I thought, were very insightful. But one point especially got me thinking – Character Tip #3: “Show, don’t tell.” One example he used to illustrate this point was the first cut scene from Thief: The Dark Project, in which Garrett first encounters a Keeper. The scene begins with a voice-over by Garrett, and transitions into dialogue between him and the Keeper. Other posts have described Sullivan’s analyzing process: in short, he extracted information about the characters and their environment based on the way they spoke and behaved, rather than by what was explicitly said.

When he first used the phrase “Show, don’t tell,” I was a bit confused, as I thought he was encouraging purely visual rather than verbal information, and the scene from Thief was pretty wordy. While I recognized seconds later that he was referring to the “between the lines” of the words in the cut scene, that initial thought stuck with me. Obviously, dialogue is invaluable for its implied message as well as the explicit. But there are also instances where even layered dialogue falls short of the image. As great as the script is (but not the original one) of the “Tears in Rain” scene from Blade Runner, the imagery of Rutger Hauer releasing the dove has depth and symbolism that I don’t think could ever be properly translated into words. In film, the filmmaker determines the narrative context of every frame. So in a way, films have something of an advantage over games in visual communication. Still, thinking about this has made me want to be more perceptive to the imagery in video games, not just to the dialogue.

One thought on “Show, don’t tell.

  1. Professor Sample

    I’ve been thinking a lot about this “show, don’t tell” dictum, which is one of the first things that beginning creative writers learn about their craft. It does seem applicable in videogames, but I was struck how Sullivan used a cut scene to demonstrate the power of show versus telling. Given the procedural nature of videogames, a cut scene (I would argue) is the videogame equivalent of the “tell” part of show, don’t tell. That is, what would be even better in videogames than “show, don’t tell” is “do, don’t show.” The real power of videogames is having players learn about situations by enacting them, rather than seeing them played out (show) or hearing about them (tell).

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