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Side-story episodic content

Durakken · 2014-04-17T05:31:09

Let's see if I explain what I'm talking about without giving too much away so that I can ask the question I want to ask... I'm making a game built around the idea of more of a tv series, in particular a sci-fi series. I have a main story, but in sci-fi shows you generally don't have every episode focusing completely on the main story or even that there would be a main story... For example Star Trek TOS/TNG has no main story. Many Farscape episodes don't really progress the story forward for the first and last eps of a season and ST:DS9 would often have eps that have nothing to do with the main story just for fun. I think that those are great. Part of the fun of sci-fi is exploring with these. The problem is incorporating it into a game. I feel like having them might be problematic and a rip off too as it seems like those episodes would have less game play or feel like it might be more running around doing things people would find boring. Another, similar thing, I'm finding it hard to not feel repetitive as with each "episode" there has to be game play and story where you might want to just explore or have fun, but it seems like having full episodes or just a huge amount of time where the story isn't progressing which seems to be unusual for a game and thus might not be acceptable. So to trying to sum up... What do you think of non-main storyline related content in episodic games (which, in the way I'm talking about don't really exist yet >.>)? How do you incorporate this stuff...should I even try, given the medium? I hope I've been clear enough to give you an idea of what I need help with...

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by Durakken April 06, 2014 01:27 AM

9 comments, last by jsj795 10 years, 2 months ago

jsj795

265

April 17, 2014 05:31 AM

The game "Walking Dead" comes into my mind. If you can make each episode self-contained with different main characters (a protagonist) and market your game as a story-based game, I don't see much problem from it. A game doesn't have to have only 1 main character.