Significant Zero

by Walt Williams

  “I’m not comfortable turning in work that falls below my personal standard of quality.”

  “I can respect that. If you need a month, that’s cool with me.”

  A month went by, and sure enough, Mr. Sunshine’s summary appeared in my email. He’d met his first deadline; always a good sign. I opened the document, expecting to find the usual affair—an overview of the main plot points, characters, and thematic arcs, plus a few proposals for missions, environments, and set pieces. I expected this because my mind was small and limited in what it could imagine. What I found inside that document was nothing short of madness.

  The game opened on our heroes scaling a skyscraper and then gunning down a squad of unarmed enemies who were playing volleyball and eating nachos. It only got better from there.

  In Mr. Sunshine’s story, the game’s villain was a soldier turned dictator turned eco-terrorist, whose goal was to turn Dubai into a war-torn hellhole so he could broadcast footage of his atrocities across the globe via cell phone. These terrible images, accompanied by his charismatic speeches, would incite a Third World War that would decimate the earth’s population and save the planet from global warming.

  Highlights included a spunky young reporter who traveled from New York hoping to snag a one-on-one interview with Konrad; a holographic zoo dedicated to lions, giraffes, and other extinct animals; and an overturned boat that had been converted into a dive bar/memorial where the parents of Konrad’s soldiers spent their days getting drunk and lighting candles. Like the cub reporter, these parents all traveled from the United States just to be here, somehow managing to traverse the impassable sandstorm surrounding Dubai.

  Nothing in Mr. Sunshine’s summary made sense. It defied structure, logic, the game’s core design, and any concept of quality I had ever known. The choices he made were so baffling that I began to question whether it might be a work of genius beyond my comprehension.

  I needed a fresh pair of eyes, so I sent the summary to Bonnie. Her reaction would tell me whether Mr. Sunshine was a buffoon or I was a lowly gnat incapable of appreciating his majesty.

  Three minutes later, I had my answer.

  “THEY’RE EATING NACHOS?!?!”

  Thank God. It was just a piece of shit.

  * * *

  I’M NOT TRYING TO belittle Mr. Sunshine. His intentions were pure. Idiotic, but pure. The man had a story to tell, one he was very passionate about. That’s commendable. It wasn’t his fault he had no idea what he was doing. For a video-game story to be powerful and true, it has to grow from the game itself.

  Every game has a natural story, which is the expression of its art, design, and gameplay. Everything has a reason; every action has a cause and effect. As video-game writers, we have to take a step back and look at everything that exists and ask, “Why?” The answer to that question is the story of your game.

  The natural story of Spec Ops was “US soldiers fight one another in a Dubai that has been abandoned to the desert.” Our Dubai was covered in sand because we thought it looked cool. It was mostly uninhabited because we couldn’t figure out a way to believably populate the city with noncombat NPCs (nonplayer characters, or computer-controlled AI). The player controlled an American soldier because our game was a military shooter, and North America was our largest market. We fought other American soldiers because no other game had done it, and we wanted to be different.

  SOMETHING caused Dubai to be abandoned and covered in sand. SOMETHING brought a US Army battalion to the city. SOMETHING turned those soldiers into despots. Later, SOMETHING would bring three Delta soldiers to Dubai, and SOMETHING ELSE would make them go to war with their fellow Americans. None of these things were defined by the story; they were all caused by external constraints.

  Bad stories ignore their constraints. Good stories work within them. Great stories embrace external constraints and repurpose them as the core elements of the narrative.

  Mr. Sunshine’s summary did the opposite. He saw Dubai covered in sand and asked, “Why?” The answer, he decided, was global warming. He ignored the other pieces because they weren’t necessary to his vision. His story rang false because he treated the characters, gameplay, and genre as window dressing. As a writer, your loyalty is to the game, not yourself or the player. Betraying that loyalty is the only way you can fail.

  * * *

  I’LL GIVE HIM CREDIT; he stood by what he wrote. His summary wasn’t the result of a misunderstanding. He consciously ignored my direction because he felt his story was more important. For him, Spec Ops was a platform, an opportunity to speak out against carbon emissions. Not to do so would be borderline criminal.

  I explained to Mr. Sunshine that I appreciated his dedication to his beliefs, but we weren’t interested in making a game about global warming. He was being paid to write a story based on Heart of Darkness, and blatantly ignoring that direction was also borderline criminal. Now that his first idea had been expressed, he needed to rework it into something that resembled the original concept.

  No writer enjoys getting contrary feedback. You can tell the difference between a pro and rookie by how they react to it. Mr. Sunshine got huffy. “I see. You want something dark and gritty.”

  “Yes. But specifically, something inspired by Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness.”

  If you only take one lesson from this book, let it be this one: never challenge a German to be dark and gritty, because holy shit they will take it all the way to eleven.

  “What about a level where the player has to blow up a mosque filled with women and children? Is that more to your taste?”

  “No, it is not. It should go without saying, but try to avoid scenes that might spark an international incident. Think you can do that?”

  “Fine.” He crossed his arms and turned away, like a kid being told to clean his room. “I’ll need another month.”

  “Whatever. Just get it done.”

  Mr. Sunshine spent the next month poring over his original summary and then sent it back to me, without making a single change.

  “Please tell me, because I swear I want to know, what it is about this summary that you think matches the assignment you were given.”

  “All of it.”

  “See, that’s hard for me to believe, because I asked for a new summary, and what you’ve given me is the exact same document as before. Even worse, you took an entire month to do it. How is that in any way acceptable?”

  “I’m sorry, but I think we have a responsibility to say something important about how we’re treating the environment.”

  “By shooting people in the face.”

  “I . . . what?”

  “We’re making a game about shooting people in the fucking face, and you think that is the best venue to start a conversation about global warming.”

  “You’re being purposefully dismissive, but yes. That’s what I think.”

  “Well, okay.” I had no more questions. And Mr. Sunshine had no more time. His career as a video-game writer had reached its end.

  Au revoir, auf Wiedersehen, and good riddance.

  In the end, we built a fantastic writing team for Spec Ops. For some reason the game’s final credits don’t list everyone, but the team consisted of myself, Chad Rocco, Georg Struck, Jack Scalici, Richard Pearsey, and Shawn Frison. Remember those names, because the game would not have been the same without them. Mr. Sunshine could have been a part of that team, if he had just learned to let go. But writers who cannot take feedback are not writers; they are children playing make-believe. All they want to do is bang on a keyboard, hear that fun clickity-clack sound, and be told how special they are.

  Game development is not a day care; it’s a job.

  Video games may be art, but not all of us are artists whose personal visions must be allowed to blossom like a delicate flower. Our value is measured not in ideas but in our ability to execute. A team needs to know you have their back. We ride together, die together, and for God’s sake, learn our fucking place. D
oing so will not make you a soulless wage slave. It will grant you immortality. Don’t like the task you’ve been given? Let go of your ego, find an angle that interests you, and then bring it to life like it’s the last thing you’ll ever create. I guarantee it will be unforgettable.

  12

  * * *

  WE ARE NOT HEROES

  At least once a year, usually during an industry trade show, I tend to look at what we’re creating and ask myself, “Why are games so violent? How did we reach this point?”

  There’s a simple answer—violence is entertaining, easy to dramatize, and sells like cold beer on a hot afternoon. Violence is not a “video-game problem.” Just take a step back and look at your life. You are a person whose body requires the continual murder and consumption of living matter in order to survive. Not forever, but long enough for something—be it drugs, the sun, your liver—to kill you in an equally violent, possibly unnoticeable way.

  Existence has a violence problem. Video games, like all art, are just expressing the world around them. The reason games face more scrutiny is because they are the latest mass-market art form, they are interactive, and most are built around some form of violent game mechanic. Anything that brings joy to children by letting them pretend to kill people will of course get prudes and politicians up in arms. What many people don’t realize is that video-game violence doesn’t belong to the game industry. We stole it from film, along with most of what we know about tone, theme, and story.

  It all began in 1990 when John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack gathered at a lake house in Shreveport, Louisiana, to create Commander Keen, a side-scrolling platformer about an eight-year-old genius defending the earth from an alien invasion. Its success led to the founding of id Software, where Romero, Hall, and the two unrelated Carmacks chose to abandon the family-friendly platformer in favor of focusing on 3-D action games. In just three years, id Software released four games: Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Doom, and Doom II. These first-person shooters were fast, frantic, and violent in a way many gamers had never seen because they were too young to watch films like Evil Dead II.

  If violence was the only thing worth remembering about Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, we wouldn’t be talking about id Software right now. There are plenty of forgotten developers who tried to ride a wave of mutilation all the way to the bank. id Software understood there had to be more underneath the blood; something new. Their games brought people together through LAN connections and dial-up modems, allowing people to play together in the same game. Modular data files and level editors made it easy for fans to create their own levels and share them with one another. These games created communities and popularized the first-person shooter. The violence was just curb appeal.

  In 2001, gaming took another leap forward in the form of Grand Theft Auto III. Published by Rockstar Games, GTA 3 diverged from the early games in the series by presenting a fully three-dimensional world for players to move through and explore. The innovation of an open game world came out of nowhere, but that’s not the reason Grand Theft Auto became a household name.

  Described as a “crime simulation game” by its producer, Leslie Benzies, GTA 3 was an immersive American satire and homage to crime films Scarface and Goodfellas. The player took on the role of Claude, a criminal betrayed by his girlfriend, who works his way through the criminal underbelly of Liberty City, the franchise’s version of New York. The open-world nature of the game allowed players to do all manner of terrible things—run over civilians with a car, shoot police officers, sleep with prostitutes and then kill them to get their money back. There was nothing in the game that could not conceivably be found in an R-rated crime film, but the interactive component transformed players from voyeurs to participants, giving the game a forbidden edge.

  Grand Theft Auto III was the highest-selling game of 2001 and sold more than two million units in its first five months. As with Doom, its success and innovation created a new video-game genre—the open-world 3-D action-adventure game. It was arguably the last earth-shattering leap made by the AAA industry, and the genre is still going strong. When Grand Theft Auto V was released in 2013, it made more than one billion dollars in just three days. That never would have happened if Grand Theft Auto was an open-world game about living in a city, working a nine-to-five job, and obeying traffic laws.

  As a gameplay mechanic, violence is the most dramatic and empowering form of conflict resolution. It’s flashy, it’s familiar, and it sticks with you, which is important, because we need people to notice, remember, and purchase these games. With every new generation of video-game console, our games cost more to make. It took five people less than five months to create Wolfenstein 3D Grand Theft Auto V took a team of around one thousand people over four years to complete.

  Violence sells. If it didn’t, we’d be bankrupt within a year.

  The problem is, constant exposure to imaginary violence can lead to desensitization. Our job is to keep pushing the envelope and make killing great again. Do you need realistic hit reactions? Okay, enemies now grab their crotches when you shoot them in the dick. Too tame? Fine, here’s an X-ray camera that shows your opponent’s organs being liquefied by your punches. Whatever it takes to make you feel something, we’ll do it. But that’s not always enough. Sometimes, to get your blood pumping, we have to let you decide how far you’re willing to go.

  * * *

  “PEOPLE LOVED THE MORAL choice in BioShock,” said the Fox. “It was controversial and thought-provoking. I think Spec Ops can do it better.”

  The Fox and I were in Berlin, presenting his latest idea to Yager. He was adamant we follow in BioShock’s footsteps by presenting players with a moral choice, but he wanted to take it a step further. Where BioShock offered a choice between good and evil, he wanted ours to be a choice between bad and worse. To explain the idea, he came up with a concept he called “the Wailing Virgin.”

  “Imagine you’re behind enemy lines, wounded and low on ammo. Konrad’s men are patrolling nearby. If you’re not careful, they will find you. You try to sneak through the area but are spotted by a woman, a wounded refugee. She knows you’re one of the good guys and begins crying out for your help. Her voice rings out like a siren. Every soldier within earshot is now headed your direction. What do you do?”

  The project leads stared at the Fox with blank expressions, as if he were a schoolteacher who had asked if someone would volunteer to complete a math equation on the chalkboard.

  “Anyone?” asked the Fox.

  Kurt—lead level designer, bird watcher, scarf aficionado—raised his hand. He was an interesting guy. What I liked about Kurt was his tell. I always knew when he disagreed with me, and it made my job much easier.

  “You don’t have to raise your hand,” I said.

  “Yes,” said the Fox. “You are all free to speak. The virgin is wailing, soldiers are coming, what do you do?”

  “I leave the area,” said Kurt.

  “Very smart. To your horror, the woman follows, continuing to scream. What to do you?”

  Kurt shrugged. “I do not know. What am I allowed to do?”

  “Anything,” said the Fox.

  “Hmm, yes.” Kurt pursed his lips, crossed his arms, and nodded his head. “I see, I see.” That was the tell. Kurt knew where this conversation was going, and he did not approve.

  I knew Kurt was done playing, so I jumped in. “I hit her with a melee attack.” There were two basic attacks in Spec Ops, ranged and melee. Ranged attacks were throwing a grenade or firing a weapon. A melee attack was a close-range attack in which you struck someone with the butt of your weapon. It dealt less damage than a ranged attack, and was conceivably nonlethal.

  The Fox turned his attention to me. “You hit the virgin with your rifle. She screams even louder. What do you do?”

  Kurt leaned forward and rested on his elbows. “There is nothing else you can do.” I’d only seen him like this once before. For Kurt, this was the equivalent of fl
ipping the table.

  The Fox looked at Kurt, then at me. “Yes, there is.” He was a little put off. If I had to guess, he probably thought we were ganging up on him.

  “I can’t shoot her,” said Kurt.

  “Why not? You have a gun.”

  “Because she’s an innocent woman.”

  “Not anymore,” said the Fox. “Right now, she’s a homing beacon, and both of your lives are in danger because she can’t take a hint. Your pistol only holds six bullets. If you think that’s enough to survive, then you can let the virgin wail and wait for Konrad’s men to arrive. You might survive, but she is a very loud and hysterical target and will definitely die in the crossfire. Or, you could shoot her and slink away to fight another day. No one will ever know. What do you do?”

  The room was quiet as Yager pondered the question. Kurt spoke first.

  “I see, I see,” said Kurt. “You want us to make a war-crime game.”

  “Whoa! No, no, no! Who said anything about war crimes? I want you to make a game about soldiers trying to do their best in a bad situation.”

  “What you just described is a war crime.”

  “That was an example to illustrate what I meant by bad or worse. The player doesn’t have to shoot the woman. It’s only an option.”

  “The option to commit a war crime.”

  The Fox threw up his hands. “Do you hear this guy? I know you Germans have a history with this sort of thing, but come on. You’re the one who called it a war crime, not me.”

  Timo, one of the company founders, leaned in. “I think what Kurt is saying is this might be too extreme for some players. It is worth asking ourselves if people want to play a game that makes them feel bad.”