Quote: I've also been told by one developer, a guy who worked at Valve, that storyboarding simply isn't valid in their process of testing and testing over and over until the interactive direction works. I personally see this as arrogance - even in a 3D space, you're still working with a 2D screen. Someone who knows how to use compositional space to their advantage surely has more directorial nous and thus is capable of solving more visual narrative issues straight out when presented with such problems than a games tester. How much time did the testing process waste when someone could've been brought in with prior knowledge? Then again, competitor id Software actually went so far as to storyboard their Doom 3 opus from beginning to end as a movie. Whether they're more successful or not is up to you and largely down to the basis of each individual game's components.
If games are to truly compete with movies, the strange attitude to direction which seems to curse many productions needs to cease. Lately I found out that a major, major games company has assigned their sound designer for cutscene direction. As someone who works within direction... it makes you do a double take. The sound designer? If anything it sounds like cutting economic corners... professionally... but when you take into account that this is a AAA title that outright RELIES on cinematic direction and has a big grounding in storytelling, it does make you wonder what's going on.
Unfortunately companies see narrative as something to tack on. It's only very rarely that it's applied as part of the design document, but if you're creating a game with a narrative then automatically that becomes the backbone which drives the player through. If the narrative doesn't fit the picture, why bother? It will do your product a disservice.
My User Contributions master list - my initial post links are down but scroll down page to find list to active links
