James Cavin Writes

  There's a finite amount of text space in your game. It's a terrible shame to waste any of it. Item descriptions are actually one of my favorite things to work on in game writing and narrative design. It's an incredible opportunity to do all sorts of things that you couldn't do in your main story! Yet, for a lot of projects, this sort of "flavor text" exists just to exist: Something ought to go here, so here's something. This sums up 95% of mediocre videogame assets. An animation ought to go here – here's something. A texture ought to go here – here's something. Music ought to go here – here's something. A line of dialogue ought to go here – here's something. THIS IS A GREAT TRAGEDY. Nothing is just there. THEME HAPPENS EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. Indulge me with a quick thought experiment: 1. How many items are in your game? (Note: You can include anything else...

  – A Tragedy of Seeing With Open Eyes – – – Also Some Rambling Advice about Narrative Delivery Systems – – – – – And Why Your Narrative Designer Should Draw Even If It's Terrible – – – Long long ago, in the before times, when phones flipped, and skinny jeans had yet to crush their first American reproductive capabilities, I started my very first professional game writing job (the criminally cult Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten ). I was working at a very small studio (the incredibly plucky Level Up Labs). Everyone was wearing a lot of hats. One of the hats that I ended up with (mostly because I grabbed it and ran away before anyone could take it back) was "Just Passable Enough Character Artist." This is actually not a terrible thing for a writer to do. Seriously, I would recommend giving it a shot, if you have even an ounce of artistic talent. Our "narrative-driven tower defense RPG hybrid" (like many games in its budget bracket) ...

In all its rugged splendor. This is a brilliant book, and you should buy it. I was reading Gene Wolfe's Castle of the Otter (a collection of essays and advice named after a humorous misreporting of the title of his book Citadel of Autarch ), and two pieces of advice really stuck out to me: 1) Write a story every day. 2) Buy the New York Times Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, & Mispronounced Words – it's really cheap.   Also an $8 find. I thought, "Okay, but he wrote that back in the 80s. I bet this book is a collectors' item now." Then, I looked it up on Thrift Books. It's only eight dollars! 8! That's, like, half a latte. You could buy three and juggle them! One, it's awesome if you're reading Gene Wolfe, because when he uses a word you don't know (approximately every other sentence), you have the dictionary that he was using right here in your hand. Secondly, you now possess a normal-book sized dictionary with readable size text tha...

      Out of all my 2024 projects, this was one of the ones that I enjoyed the most. Just for fun, I decided to try narrative design in a new context. I took a break from video games and participated in a tabletop RPG adventure design contest – Ben Milton's (of Questing Beast , Maze Rats, and Knave fame) Knave 2e Adventure Game Jam to be exact. Despite never having made anything with the system before, I managed to finish in sixth place! (Out of 117 entries! That's a heck of a lot better than I was expecting!) Plus, you get to draw on all the unhinged influences that you can't allow into your day job! If you're looking to flex your narrative design muscles, taking a little field trip into tabletop games is a great way to practice all of your skills in a slightly alien environment with new limitations that force you to think outside of the box. It's really interesting to start thinking of narrative and quest design in terms of page count and layout and graphic desig...