Annotated Bibliography

Bryant, Robert D., and Keith Giglio. Slay the Dragon Writing Great Video Games. 2,

Micheal Wises productions, 2015.

This book is Formatted very much like the one before, a self help book like format

with the freedom to bounce around to different chapters as it pertains to your

personal needs. It was also written by professionals in the industry as well,

Flint Dille of Transformers, GI joe, OG teen titans, and John Platten of

Travelers tales, Developers of the widely acclaimed lego video game

franchise. It was written in 2007. I would say it is outdated by today’s stander.

The Video game medium is constantly evolving and is moving at a much

faster rate than many other industries. Video games didn’t exist 50 years,

most experts saying the first game to be released was Pong in 1972. A dot

bouncing off of two long dots, now we have long epics that have been

compared to movies in terms of story and production value. A lot can happen

in 12 years, many advancements have been made in terms of what is

acceptable and new technology has expanded our reach in terms of what

Developers can accomplish with the medium. Most of the information found

within this novel is very similar as the one above, only different is that the

depth of the content is greater than Slay the Dragon. As well as the new topic

of having a developer document. A Developer document acts as a hub for all

the information pertaining to the game, it is filled with any and all knowledge of

the game, even information that will never find it’s way into the game, for

example: the entire history of the world that the game takes place in, maps
 and history of towns and characters, family trees, relationship maps, ext. I

began to keep one of my own after reading and learning about the importance

of one.

Dille, Flint, and John Z. Platten. ​The ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and

Design​. Lone Eagle Publishing Company, 2007.

This book mainly focuses on the writing aspects of making a video game, going over

the differences between screenplays, stage writes, and fictional novels, pitfalls

one might fall into when first writing for a video game, what is the writers job in

the video game, the unique aspects of writing for an interactive medium, and

Many more. The book is written as a self-help book where each chapter goes

over a different aspect of the craft, letting the reader bounce around if needed.

Each chapter also ends with activity for you to practice the concepts brought

up in the respective chapter.

The book was written by experts in the gaming industry who have worked on

projects such as gears of War, Halo, and more. The book was written in 2012,

a little outdated with the advancements in technology and how the medium is

being handled but contains enough familiar ground to still be helpful towards

my project

I was able to use the lessons in the book to better my writing in different ways, one of

the lessons I learned was that the main driving point of stories and drama are

the characters. There are 2 major groups that characters fall into when
designing video games, 1. Player stand ins, and 2. Independent characters.

The first group is somewhat self explanatory, these characters act as black

slates, tabula rasa you might say, for the player to project themselves on.

They act as the gateway that allows the player to become immersed in the

world you have created. They can either be very generic with brown eyes and

brown hair, or you can implement a character creation tool that allows your

players to create their own character. These characters will almost always

have either no dialogue or have every conversation have a dialogue tree. The

player must also be able to name the character, it is hard to try to imagine

yourself in the shoes of a character if the immersion is constantly being

broken by you being called by a different name. The second ground are

characters that act more like the ones in the other forms of media, The player

is simply experiencing their story with them. They are in direct control of the

player, but they are not the character themselves. These types of characters

are good when trying to tell a certain type of story, one where if the player had

the choice to be evil and start bad mouthing every NPC (non playable

character) it wouldn’t bold well. The first character relies on the situation that

they are placed in, and the supporting cast to keep the player’s interest. The

gameplay takes the focus when it comes to a game like that. The 2nd type of

character relies heavily on the writing of the story to keep the player's

attention; Now that you won't have that Immediate connection between the

player and the character. You will have to spend time forging that connection

between the character and the player. Once you have that connection is
 easier to keep the player playing as they will want to see through these

character to the end of their journey.

Extra Credits. 5 Aug. 2011. Youtube,

//​www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1ziCvLkJ0&list=PLB9B0CA00461BB187​.

Extra Credits is a web series created by a game designer as a college final, but then

developed into a education series that covers all things about the gaming

industry, including but not limited to: How to start and finish your first game,

up and coming tech and how it might benefit the development scene, and

Different aspects of development/design. The group consists of animators,

designers, programers, writers, producers, and more. All of them have worked

in the industry, and most still continue to do so doing extra credits only as a

side job. The series is still going and is even used in some collage in their

game design courses as required watching. Their video series on how to

create your first video game was especially helpful for me this time, in it they

cover everything that needs to be done when making your first game, going

over things that many people forget when they get started and get all caught

up in the process. Going over topics such as a minimal viable product, a topic

touched upon by Mr. Bonichi in his presentation on prototypes, publishing and

marketing, and more.

RPG Maker Forums​. Degica, 2010, forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php.

RPG Maker Forums is a forum page for the RPG Maker engine, where moderators

either well-versed individuals or employees from the company come together

to answer questions, solve problems, or just otherwise help the community.

Each post is rated by the people who view the post making sure that the

information being past on is reputable and helpful to the problem at hand. I

used this site as my go-to site if I had a question or problem with RPG Maker

as it was much more detailed than the other websites I would go to do

research. The advice and help I got from here were often more nuanced and

better informed as the people here were much more familiar with RPG Maker

and their engines.