He mentions living through the dialog fast and says that the takeaway is that people don’t care about the story. However, I wonder if his players just read very fast. I grew up on JRPGs and read through dialog quickly, to the point that people around me don’t believe that I could possibly be following the story. But that’s just how fast I can read game dialog.

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ACCount37 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I've seen quite a few streamers that click through the text and don't care about the story.

It's even more common among playtesters. Ever noticed how some games seem to go out of their way to avoid any subtlety and repeat the major plot points at least 4 times? Or give way too many hints for the easiest of puzzles? One of the causes is that a game was playtested within an inch of its life.

Someone ended up optimizing for the kind of player who doesn't care much, because the playtesters didn't care much - they were only there for a paycheck.

But I've also seen a couple of streamers that can just scan entire pages into their mind in a second and click through text while retaining all the information.

I thought myself a quick reader, but even I was in a disbelief seeing someone read this quick on the first playthrough.

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vidarh 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm sure some do, but also I know some don't, because I typically don't. There are (rare) exceptions, but most game dialogue is predictable and boring, and so after the first couple of screens I will just hammer whichever button to skip the dialogue as fast as I can, repeatedly, until the dialogue is gone whenever it pops up.

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aleph_minus_one 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> There are (rare) exceptions, but most game dialogue is predictable and boring

I guess this depends on the genre. For point&click adventure games and visual novels, the situation that game dialogs are predictable and boring occurs much more rarely.

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latexr 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fortunately, these days it seems more common that games highlight important pieces of information in the dialogue, so you at least get the important keywords.

I used to be very much into the story in video games, but at a certain point the overwhelming majority have become so generic and dull that I no longer bother. The biggest offenders are the ones who throw an insane amount of exposition at you before you even start playing. I remember one where I was pressing “A” furiously for minutes, with no way to skip, before anything even happened. I eventually quit the game and ended up returning it without experiencing any gameplay.

A great example of how to do this right is CrossCode. It throws you directly into the action and shows you “this is how the game is going to feel” from the get go. Then it pulls back and gives you the story and a tutorial before carrying on. It was super effective on me. Because in the first few minutes I immediately got a taste for what was to come and liked it, I became much more interested and patient in experiencing the story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrossCode

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ACCount37 an hour ago | parent [-]

Yeah, exposition overload is a rookie mistake a lot of writers make.

And video game writers in particular? Sometimes it feels like just having a Wattpad account could put you in top 50% of them. I've seen AAAs where saying the writing was "fanfic tier" would be an insult to fanfics. Like they either hire the cheapest people they can get, or give the job to someone like an executive's daughter with big ideas and no ability to execute on them.

A good writer knows the power of "show don't tell", and knows the value of keeping the audience hungry and wanting for more.

	▲	andrepd 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		But to be honest, isn't this also true of the basic Hollywood or Netflix fare?. I've been watching season 5 of Stranger Things. It has a budget of approximately 1 gazillion dollars. The writing is utterly basic predictable, boring, cliché, it's either a marvel-tier quip or a hollywood trope. Most Netflix shovelware isn't better than this. So I don't think it's unique to video games :)

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hyfgfh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Two words: Disco Elysium

Maybe you need VA too