Seamus Sullivan introduced himself immediately as somebody who is not intimately involved with the video game industry, but as a playwright. Before anything else, a game is a drama. We invest in the game in order to see if the character will succeed or fail. The difference between a movie and a game is that the player has an impact on the overall outcome. Characterization, dialogue, and world interaction are all aspects that distinguish between a good game and a game with carefully crafted characters.
Character Tip #1: Start with what your character wants and how they pursue it. What is their main objective, or super objective? This becomes the goal of the game and can change throughout the game.
Character Tip #2: Apply the Plinkett Test. This test is to describe the character without describing the character’s profession, appearance, or what they do in the story. The way we describe a character using the Plinkett Test is why we are interested in the character. The things that you don’t include in the test are the reasons why we enjoy playing the game.
Character Tip #3: Show, don’t tell. Don’t use words where imagery will work instead. Rather than having a narrator or another character describe the characteristics of a character when those traits could be shown through a scene or an action.
Character Tip #4: Have your hero save the cat. Let the audience know early on who they should be rooting for. Similarly, have the villain do something early on that defines him as evil.
Character Tip #5: Give our characters distinctive voices. Both the sound of their voice and the things that they say make the character memorable. A great example for those familiar with Portal 2 is Wheatley.
Dialogue Tip #1: Find a new way to say it. Rather than say “i dont’ want to die” create a way to say it unique to the situation and character involved.
Dialogue Tip #2: Avoid stock expressions and cliches. These phrases don’t teach the player anything about who the character is. The more cliches there are, the less interested players will be in the character.
Dialogue Tip #3: Omit needless words. This is especially important in dialogue. Every word must tell something about the character. Watch 30 minute shows for examples of this concise dialogue.
Dialogue Tip #4: Keep it active. How do the words or tone of what one character says affect the other characters? There are endless ways to deliver each line.
Dialogue Tip #5: Avoid expository dialogue, or at least hide it well. Never have a character tell another character something that they already know. If you’re explaining something, make sure it’s something that really needs to be explained or is being told for another reason.
Dialogue Tip #6: Read it aloud. If the dialogue is bad, it will sound awkward or clunky or too long when read aloud. When writing dialogue, get friends to act it out.
Dialogue Tip #7: Keep writing and rewriting. Accept when lines don’t work and recreate them into something new and better.
World Building Tip #1: Make your world say something about the characters, and vice versa. The world should shape who the characters are, they can’t be completely out of place. Characters should not leave their world completely untouched.
World Building Tip #2: Make your world provoke as strong an emotional response as a character does. The environment should almost feel like another character. Portal’s world give you a sense of being a lab rat and that you’re being watched, evoking a sense of paranoia and a desire to escape. Once you reach the back paths of the laboratory, the dirty roughness of the place shows you that things have been going very wrong in the labs.

Overall, i think that this lecture was very interesting and showed me a lot about the effort that goes into video games that we, as players, may not always see or think about. I enjoyed the relatable examples of popular games that many people have played, or at least heard about, that gave me a tangible example of the point that Sullivan was demonstrating.

Galloway attempts to focus the broad concept of video games by separating the concepts of machine action and operator action. Using examples from a variety of game types, Galloway describes an operator action as an action or decision made solely by the player, such as finding a power up in a game. In contrast, a machine action is routed in the basic programming of the software, such as the increase in health that the power up supplies the character. He also defines video games within diegetic and nondiegetic terms. Diegetic play elements are the onscreen and off-screen elements of the game. Nondiegetic play elements are external to the narrative action. Using these four parameters, Galloway is able to categorize various video games.

It is interesting to note how these parameters have evolved as the complexity of video games have increased. The gamer-machine interface was much more direct in a game like Asteroids, where the player had to rotate and shoot. More modern games, such as Halo, expand into more diverse range of motion and controls as well as the broad spectrum of online play. As these games have changed over time, I wonder whether it is the operator or the machine that is gaining more control over the game environment. Surely the machine has increased in power and capability, but the operator’s control over his environment has grown exponentially. The machine is, of course, still in control over the operator by restraining the operator’s movements to within the constrains of the game. However, the operator has more choice in his actions within these constrains.