David Gaider on the Nuts and Bolts of Writing, Part 5

David Gaider talks budget considerations in the fifth part of his “Nuts and Bolts” series of blog posts on videogame writing. Here’s an excerpt:

First off, writing for a BioWare game is considered a bottleneck of development meaning that every bit of writing we do creates work for other people further down the line. Every line of dialogue has to be edited, translated into several languages, needs voice-over (first in English, and then into at least some of those other languages), very likely needs cinematic design, and this is no small thing creates more stuff that needs to be tested. Thus our budget is taken very seriously, as it’s a number derived not only from the amount of work the writers can do but also the work these other departments can do (taking into account the delay caused each time the writing needs to change hands).

So let’s say I’m talking to whichever writer created this plot, and I have to decide whether cutting the scope back down to 200 lines would be worthwhile. On one hand, that might make for a less fun plot. at which point, is it even worth doing? On the other, it would be more responsible to the budget (and other peoples’ time). Let’s say I decide, no, the plot is really cool at 270 lines. Go ahead and begin writing.

The next issue is something called scope creep. That’s the tendency of projects to bloat over time and it always happens. Every single project I’ve ever worked on slowly gets bigger as time goes on.

Why? Because as we test the game, we run into issues. and, many times, those issues can only be fixed by adding more content. Let’s say we’re testing this plot and it’s felt an extra step is needed somewhere. That requires another conversation of 40 lines. A QA tester feels we missed a really logical step in the end with Bethany, and thus we need to add lines both to her as well as the resolution dialogue with Leandra. another 30 lines, say. Now were up to 340 lines for the plot, 140 over budget.

There’s also the fact that you can’t always quantify writing. I’m putting together a character that I’ve estimated will take 40 lines to write, but by the time I’m done it’s at 55 lines or 100 lines. It’s not like I got to 40 lines and then just stopped. I could look for some places to trim, but maybe there aren’t any. Maybe I needed all those extra lines.

That, in and of itself, is not a problem. It’s just a few lines here and there. But now play this out over every plot and character in the game. Suddenly we’re halfway through the project and our actuals are showing at 35,000 written lines for a game that’s budgeted at 30,000 lines. and we’re not even done yet. That trajectory shows us going to 40,000 written lines or even higher by the time we’re done.

Can the project meaning all the people downstream from us absorb the extra 33% added to their schedules? If not, we now need to look for places to cut scope.

Thanks, Gui Ohm.