Tom Bissell Quotes

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 don't just write a script, and then someone takes it away and builds a game. I am continually getting input in order to create a big suspension field to hold the gameplay together so that the gamers aren't doing arbitrary tasks, so that they are doing things that seem meaningful.

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 things we joke about in the FPS development is it's so hard to get the player to actually bother to look at all the cool stuff you've been doing. You spend a lot of time making really cool things, and usually the player isn't looking where you want them to.

You don't really want to talk about 'Duke' in terms of, how many levels are there, how many guns does it have, how many monsters… It's got everything it needs in terms of that, but it's always been about the experience.

When I mention that I'm a game designer as well as a writer, someone will nod and say, 'Ah, that's what we like about your script. The videogame feel.'

I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new game-play experiences.

With a movie, it's probably easier to sustain intensity and seriousness over the 90-minute duration. But in an open-world game it becomes exhausting, demotivating and even uninteresting for the player.

My goal is to make a player think, 'I want to reenter this world of lies tomorrow.'

The most important thing in games isn't the designer's narrative, but the story the player creates through his experiences.

I would say I'm a storyteller first, but game making is very wrapped up in how I think of story. If I were to have a story idea, and I decided to write a novel with it instead, I'd have to very consciously de-couple it from gamedom - for example, deliberately add in things that could not be represented in a game scene.

'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.

Game designers are obsessed with emotion. How do we create the emotions that we want gamers to feel, and how can we really make it this intense, emotional experience?

When I create a game, I try to focus more on the emotions that the player experiences during the game play.

The letters were universally complimentary, and we designers loved hearing that our games were being enjoyed, but if they weren't sending us a picture of their screens most of those writers would have spent their time playing the game rather than writing letters.

I don't know how video game narrative works.

When I play a game, I want to play, not necessarily laugh. If you try to make me laugh at the expense of interactivity, then you've just created another funny game that isn't very fun. The videogame medium itself is a terrible place for complicated humor, drama, and character development.

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.

I still like to play games that have a beginning, an end and a story.

Writing for videogames is really unique. You learn all the rules of writing, but there's a whole other set of rules for game writing, and we're changing them as we move along as well, which makes it more challenging.

Stories in which the player doesn't inhabit the main character are difficult for games to handle.

The thing about games is, players often say they don't care about story, but then if you took the story out, what would their reaction be? If no one cared about story, we'd all still be playing Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with Pac-Man, but the point is, there's a genre of games in which you want to become part of that world.

If the game designer produces more content than he can consume per month, some fraction of the people will say more quests, more tests, more challenges, more whatever, and they will be compelled by it.

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

The intention behind the high difficulty of the games I direct is to evoke a feeling of joy and accomplishment in the player when they overcome these challenges.