Jane Jensen Quotes

You can even express movies and poetry using video games. For those reasons, I've decided to create stories through video games.

You can't just come up with an idea for a game and stick the drama on top. It all has to be one driving thrust.

I don't know how video game narrative works.

The video game market is huge, and the ability to tell stories, and tell different kinds of stories in the gaming space is quickly evolving and changing for the better.

First of all, I don't dislike direct storytelling - people seem to think that about my games! Actually, the truth is, I'm just not good at implementing direct narrative in my games.

I've had the tremendous fortune to work on games like 'Life is Strange' and 'Horizon Zero Dawn', where there was a lot of collaboration between me and the developers.

'Guild Wars 2' is a wider world in that we have a lot of different mechanics available for storytelling. We have our personal story, the story of you, which is tailored for your character. You answer some basic questions; you make some decisions early on, and that follows through.

A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.

I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.

I always try and come up with a clear theme when I'm making a videogame.

Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.'

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

I believe that even today we can only tell a simple story without really interfering with gameplay. But in the future, I think it will almost be a requirement of all storytellers when they create games, how they can tell a more complex story without conflicting with the gameplay.

There's a misunderstanding that I've always tried to address straight on when this question comes up, which is that a 'Half-Life' story can somehow exist outside of a game. It can't. The story is created through the process of trying to figure out how to best use the features of the engine within the interesting set of constraints it poses.

One of the turning points in the look of the Guardian is when we decided Logan Thackeray would be a Guardian as opposed to a Warrior. Logan's own protective nature and the fact that the humans have been knocked back into defensive positions informed a lot of what the Guardian became.

I'm not the expert on the great gameplay. I come in for the character design, monsters, atmosphere. I'm not the technician.

I don't even make multiplayer games much, so dealing with multiple characters is something new for me - or, rather, something I've had to recall from my days as a roleplaying adventure designer where the party was everything!

Who I love reading is Jordan Mechner, who wrote 'Prince of Persia.' He put all his journals while he was writing 'Prince of Persia' online.

I don't want to work on any games that don't have some kind of story component because that is the draw for me.

I think you have to serve a lot of masters when you're doing a video game: you're not just telling a linear story or doing something that's all action.

I enjoy the process of adding elaboration into games and like to communicate with users through the details I create.

When I started, I wanted probably to make games that were inspired by films that I liked.

Most games end up with quite caricature scripts because they are just here to serve the game-play mechanics but not to trigger any emotional response.

We're growing into an entertainment medium as opposed to 'We make games. We make Mario jump.' We no longer have to focus so hard on the technical hurdles and can ask, as a player, why am I doing this? Why am I making these choices? Games that don't have that strong foundation stumble.

I think if someone has a gaming obsession, 'Ultima' became mine. I would say no other series ingrained itself in how I want to make games or what I want them to be more than 'Ultima' did.