How To Fail At Game Story

Anyone can write a bad story, but not everyone can put a bad story into a game and do it poorly, so I'll show you how it's done!

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Music:
Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod

[nitrodms]

the best way to write game story is to force the player to write it, every textwall is empty but to proceed the player must write a 500 page story. this has no effect on gameplay

[eloniusz]

It would be even better if "burn down an orphanage" was the good ending because of some crazy series of coincidences that are explained in the final cut scene and were not foreshadowed at all. So this options really saves the universe and the other option somehow leads to its destruction and the only small clue that this will happen is hidden somewhere in an optional quest. People love plot twists!

[jackunvailable]

Man, I thought "Burn down the orphanage" was the good ending 🗣

[SoulHero]

Its even better to have a linear story where the entire plot can be easily derailed by the player having more common sense than the protagonist! For example, we all know that video game players are stupid and wont think to grab a clearly marked plot important bag of money that's right in front of them that's in the exact same path they need to take to save the protagonist's cat. After all, the story says that money needs to burn so that the protagonist is forced to continue with your perfect story!

[Artindi]

To be clear, both hand crafted stories and dynamic, emergent stories can both be enjoyed, but if we are going to give the player the option to impact the story with their choices, forget the hand crafted stories.

[FoxNamedLuke]

The best way to write a video game story is to make it really meta but for absolutely no reason. Start off by scolding the player for killing enemies, but have no alternative option. And in case they really go out of their way to not kill enemies (which the game is totally not designed for - remember, we only want to bitch at the player, not give them an actual choice) don't give them any reward for it. As a matter of fact don't even change the dialogues. Oh and don't give standard enemies any character, you don't need that to feel sympathy for them.

[RandomizedYoutuber]

If you’ve ever heard of Brandon Sanderson-while he was making the book Stormlight, he tried to fill all the pages with as much info story and magic system explanations as he could. While writing it he just knew something was off, so he rewrote the rough draft and was much more satisfied by putting the story into more sections. He says the lesson there is, “Bigger is not always better.”

[buzzlightyearpfp]

2:20 this shit killed me cause a stupid amount of games do this

[KRBrickBot]

Telltale Games do feel like this sometimes. Like choices affect side characters that don’t change the outcome of destiny.

[chickenpng]

this video could be considered a puzzle game

[MinorLife]

Not gonna lie, I also noticed the similarity with TWA. This is how I got to your channel in the first place, and I totally support developing this series.

The biggest difference between HTF and TWA I see is that while TWA is usually about either lazy writing or graphomany, this series covers deliberate self-sabotage.

[empireempire]

Imagine this guy making a collab with Terrible Writing Advice on artist collaboration

[cosmicspacething]

You should do an episode on difficulty. It’s really fun when the game neuters the normal mode so the “hard” mode has all the fun stuff. It’s also especially great when a game makes itself hard in a completely tedious way, and calls itself inspired by dark souls or something to cover it up.

[adiveler]

Ah yes, when the story and the gameplay are contradicting each other, for example: The Witcher 3 (Don't get me wrong, great game, but still) -
Story: "HURRY UP AND COMPLETE ALL THE MAIN QUESTS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND THE WILD HUNT FINDS AND CAPTURES CIRI!"
Gameplay: "Chill, you have all the time in the world. You can do side quests, explore the map, or just goof around to your heart's' content."

[rockduded]

Step one: Force your main character to enter a radioactive chamber and sacrifice themselves as the ending.
Step two: Give your main character multiple companions that are immune to radiation.
Step three: Eh fuck it, we already got their $60.

[GameJam]

Actually, I will say, 2:40 gives me a hilarious idea for a game about solving moral dilemmas but with the satirical twist that all your choices are extreme in one direction or the other. Seems like the kind of game I'd expect to have some kind of shock factor with a social statement about extremism like many of Nicky Case's games, and the length is fitting too, it very much shouts "goofy game jam idea".

[kronksstronkstonks]

Please note: Walls of text are acceptable in every kind of game EXCEPT text adventures. They're too wordy and you need to stand out so let's do away with all those descriptions and immersive scene-setting. Tell don't show. Your players want to play the game not imagine it.

[artman]

Found 4 more tips to fail:

First: Make your character incompetent during cutscenes, getting captured, knocked out etc. despite you managing to beat enemies left and right during gameplay. Or make the character have superpowers during cutscenes and you being forced to watch the character doing cool things you couldn't do during normal gameplay, maybe throwing in a quicktime event thrown in where you least expect it.

Second: Make sure that there is a huge disconnect between what the player and what the character would do. For an example, make a character go on a revenge spree, then, before the revenge, switch to another person's perspective to give more insight. Then switch back to the original character and make the player decide whether the character would do what the player wants but what makes no sense for the character. Or a choice that would make sense for the character but what the player wouldn't do, given new insight. Or scratch that and take all the choice away anyway.

Third: Make EVERY choice morally ambiguous or bad. Because everyone knows that in real life, there are no situations where one choice of action is clearly better than the other.

Fourth: Railroad the player into doing a despicable action and then shame them for it!

[aliyahwilliams]

YOU'RE STILL DOING THESE? this makes me happy.
this series is funny AND useful..
When Im ready to make the worst game ever, I'll rewatch this series.

[mcbadrobotvoice]

"It's only a game. Why put effort into the anyway, I'm thinking of adding loads of cutscenes and audio logs"