Shrapnel Games Blog

Dark Sword Miniatures, known for bringing to miniature life the work of well known fantasy artists, recently posted photos of their greens for the upcoming line based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. I have a few minis from Dark Sword and have been impressed with the overall quality and faithfulness to the original subject, but frankly all someone has to do is mention they’re Ice and Fire figures and I’d fork over my cash. In my eyes anything associated with Martin’s masterpiece can do no wrong.

If you have not delved into the series you’re missing out on the greatest contemporary fantasy series of our time. A fantasy retelling of the War of the Roses, Martin is a superlative storyteller and writer weaving a tale of fully realized characters and a gift for surprise. You’ll never know what to expect chapter to chapter; heroes become villains, villains become heroes, and death hovers all. While you’ll follow multiple plotlines and characters, never once does it become convoluted, nor do you ever feel that Martin is simply padding it out.

We’ve seen board games, CCGs, RPGs, and even a comic line based on Martin’s series, but surprisingly we haven’t seen a computer game. Considering the legion of fans the series has, especially within the industry itself, this seems odd although I suppose there are plenty of geeky IP that is adored but not turned into gaming.

But let us loose our imaginations for a moment and consider what type of game we would like to see on our computers set in Westeros. Role-playing game? That could work, although it would have to be a more mature CRPG than we’ve seen on the PC. Killing rats and grinding for XP just wouldn’t work. Action game? Ugh, no. Real-time strategy game? Been huffing primer again? What if we removed the first two words, though…

A strategy game? Now that could work. Make it epic, make it turn-based. Maybe throw in a little role-playing, too. Anyone remember Melbourne House’s War in Middle Earth? While it had a lot of problems (including the real-time nature) combining the role-playing and strategy gaming was a nice idea, and one that could be replicated here as you control the well-known characters of the novels along with the armies. While I suppose some folks would want to see something akin to the Total War series with 3D battlefields and the like I would be just as happy with hexes and counters.

Of course we’d want to make sure that Martin is responsible for the story aspect of the game, right? Who better to tell the tale than the New York Times bestseller author himself? I mean we definitely wouldn’t want Ted, the mail room boy, writing the script. Right?

Well…maybe.

Maybe?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe Ted the mail room boy can do just as good of job with the script. Recently I’ve been thinking of whether bringing in a well known and respected author to help with your game has any affect at all, or if developers would be better off putting the money elsewhere in development.

Consider World in Conflict. Checking out the comments about the single-player portion of the game, specifically the story, yields a lot of folks who don’t think it’s that hot, if not consider it downright forgettable. Not everyone feels that way, but there are enough that it doesn’t seem like a lunatic fringe. Problem is that World in Conflict’s script was done by Larry Bond.

Larry Bond is a pretty good writer. Red Phoenix, Cauldron, and Vortex are all great, and who can forget Red Storm Rising? He’s a gamer too, and not just as a player but as a designer. So he’s not some vanity published writer that Massive hired on the cheap, but someone with credibility, not that you get that vibe from the negative reactions to the single-player story.

Anyone remember Tom Clancy’s SSN? Did Tom Clancy do anything to help that stinker out? Personally Clancy is nowhere near as good as Bond, or Harold Coyle, but he sells a lot of books so he must be doing something right, something which didn’t translate into saving SSN.

I suppose one author who did right with computer games was Douglas Adams. At least I think. I never played Starship Titanic, but can’t really recall anyone bitching about it. And it’s Douglas Adams! Of course it was probably cool.

Then there was Raymond Feist and Sierra’s Betrayal at Krondor. He had nothing to do with the game itself, but he later turned the game into a novel. Guess that doesn’t count for what I’m talking about here.

Another author turned game writer that gets a thumb up would be Mark Laidlaw. At least I think so, but to this day you have people debating whether Half-Life actually had a story. It did. Story in game does not equate to cut scene exposition.

So sometimes a professional can help a game’s script, but I think when you look at the history of computer games more often they simply have no effect on the game other than giving marketing another bullet point. Which begs the question, is the problem with the writers or the medium?

Do professional writers, when approached to write a game, have the view that games are primarily enjoyed by kids and slackers living in their parent’s basement so they just phone it in? A paycheck is a paycheck? Or do they give it their all, only to be rebuffed by what’s possible with the technology and game design itself?

Perhaps it’s gamers themselves. Do we want a full blown emotional experience that will resonate for years to come, or do we just want to blow crap up?