A little over a week ago, I joined some friends in watching the Nebula Awards online. We talked about who we hoped would win, or who we thought would win, and when it came to the Game Writing Nebula, a couple people confessed they really had no idea since they don't play games.
If you read my blog at all, I'm a huge gamer, so I've always followed the Game Writing Nebula, and it's a relatively new category, so it's interesting seeing it evolve. The very first award in 2019 was dominated by what we might call Choose Your Own Adventure after the children's book series (with the odd God of War thrown in).
While interactive fiction is a game in the sense that you do interact with it, I have trouble calling it a game. Since I grew up reading a lot of CYOA books, even those with stat blocks and combat like the Lone Wolf series, I tend to consider them "books" and not "games." Where was Lone Wolf shelved? In the middle grade/YA section of the bookstore, and not with the Dungeons & Dragons game material. But I can see a case for interactive fiction being a game, even if it's not what commonly comes to mind when you think of one.
The Game Writing Nebula has expanded since then though. In 2020, half the nominees were from video games, and the first instance of tabletop gaming cropped up with the Fate Accessibility Toolkit from Evil Hat Productions, bringing us to the three types of game writing honored by the Nebulas: interactive fiction, tabletop game writing, and video game writing.
And it just seems weird to me that all of them are honored in the same game category when they require different skill sets, just as novels and short stories do. A tabletop game writer is also part game designer. Even if they're not laying down stat blocks, they're working to instruct either a player or a game master in how to tell the story, how to play a character, what the game world does or could look like, etc. It's definitely game writing, and it's creative, but parts of any given game book are going to be written as non-fiction. Possibly most of it. A few game books might hint at a story here or there for flavor, but it's not most of the content.
Interactive fiction and video game writing on the other hand are trying to tell a story, but interactive fiction is heavily based on conventional prose and video game writing usually comes out in the from of dialogue with animated characters acting out the story. Because of this, the latter is typically more collaborative with the artists and animators, and key moments of the story could be just a line in the script but a beautifully rendered cutscene for the player. It's kind of like the difference between writing prose and writing a screenplay. Two related, but different skillsets.
I realize there probably aren't enough game writers or enough will to split up the game writing category into three separate awards, but when Thirsty Sword Lesbians, a tabletop game, won this year, I couldn't help wondering: how can you really compare it against Wildermyth, a video game where you follow a group of characters over time? You might like one more than the other, but in no other award would you pit a tabletop game versus a video game. Their audiences might overlap, but they're very different mediums.
Monday, May 30, 2022
Monday, May 9, 2022
Anime Talk: Ya Boy Kongming!
I wrote a short story a while back called "The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang" for the Swords v Cthulhu anthology, which takes place during the Three Kingdoms period of imperial China. Specifically, it follows the death of Zhuge Liang after the Battle of the Wuzhong Plains. He didn't die from battle, but passed away from illness, after which the army of Shu Han retreated, unable to defeat Cao Wei has they had hoped.
My short story follows Jiang Wei, who was left as Zhuge Liang's successor and in charge of the retreat, and because I hadn't written anything in this time period before, I gave myself a crash course in Three Kingdoms history while outlining it. It's fairly popular in Asian media, from comics to video games, but growing up in the US it's hard to absorb the details by osmosis.
But what I do know, has given me an appreciation for one of the anime airing this spring season called Ya Boy Kongming!. Kongming is Zhuge Liang's courtesy name (basically what his friends called him), and from the irreverent "Ya Boy" you would be right in thinking this is not the usual Three Kingdoms story.
Ya Boy Kongming! follows the death of Zhuge Liang on the Wuzhong Plains to finding himself inexplicably reborn as a younger man in modern day Tokyo. Since it's Halloween, no one initially thinks anything of his weird clothes and he amusingly thinks that he's arrived in hell for judgment. The series doesn't really dwell on why he's been transported into the future or why/how he's now able to speak fluent Japanese (which is fully acknowledged by the show) and quickly gets to the central premise of the story:
What if Zhuge Liang decided to apply his tactical mind to building the career of an aspiring pop star?
It's so weird and yet, it works! I really don't know who the fanbase for this series for this series is intended to be, as it blends tidbits about how music works in clubs (like arranging the songs played by bpms to provide the appropriate cues to the audience) to Three Kingdoms stragems that Zhuge Liang is famous for. I can't help but imagine that the number of people whose interests fully intersect both topics is rare, but even as someone who's only coming in from the Three Kingdoms side, I'm finding it quite enthralling. Eiko is a sympathetic singer, and unlike a lot of anime, her singing voice is performed by a separate singer rather than an actor pulling double duty. Not a knock on other voice actors who also sing, but 96Neko's performance just sounds more polished, especially when it comes to belting out the English lyrics of Eiko's "Be Crazy For Me."
Zhuge Liang knows that he's lost in this new world, but is quick to catch up on the 1800 years he's missed. He's thrilled to discover he has his own wiki entry, but saddened to learn that Shu ultimately lost the war. During all this, he is taken by Eiko's underappreciated singing (she sings at the bar she works at when there's a free spot) and thus she comes to occupies the position of "liege" in his mind, where if she gives the order, then he will carry it out to be the best of his ability.
Eiko is reluctant to believe that he can really do anything at first, though she is grateful to have her first real fan. She certainly doesn't believe he is the real Zhuge Liang and not some dedicated cosplayer, but naturally she begins to have more trust in him as she goes from singing at her boss's bar to performing at her first festival.
At the point the anime is in now (five episodes in) we're in the first story arc rather than stand alone episodes, so I'm not sure where it's going, but I really enjoyed the first three episodes so I'm willing to stick it out for the ride.
My short story follows Jiang Wei, who was left as Zhuge Liang's successor and in charge of the retreat, and because I hadn't written anything in this time period before, I gave myself a crash course in Three Kingdoms history while outlining it. It's fairly popular in Asian media, from comics to video games, but growing up in the US it's hard to absorb the details by osmosis.
But what I do know, has given me an appreciation for one of the anime airing this spring season called Ya Boy Kongming!. Kongming is Zhuge Liang's courtesy name (basically what his friends called him), and from the irreverent "Ya Boy" you would be right in thinking this is not the usual Three Kingdoms story.
Ya Boy Kongming! follows the death of Zhuge Liang on the Wuzhong Plains to finding himself inexplicably reborn as a younger man in modern day Tokyo. Since it's Halloween, no one initially thinks anything of his weird clothes and he amusingly thinks that he's arrived in hell for judgment. The series doesn't really dwell on why he's been transported into the future or why/how he's now able to speak fluent Japanese (which is fully acknowledged by the show) and quickly gets to the central premise of the story:
What if Zhuge Liang decided to apply his tactical mind to building the career of an aspiring pop star?
It's so weird and yet, it works! I really don't know who the fanbase for this series for this series is intended to be, as it blends tidbits about how music works in clubs (like arranging the songs played by bpms to provide the appropriate cues to the audience) to Three Kingdoms stragems that Zhuge Liang is famous for. I can't help but imagine that the number of people whose interests fully intersect both topics is rare, but even as someone who's only coming in from the Three Kingdoms side, I'm finding it quite enthralling. Eiko is a sympathetic singer, and unlike a lot of anime, her singing voice is performed by a separate singer rather than an actor pulling double duty. Not a knock on other voice actors who also sing, but 96Neko's performance just sounds more polished, especially when it comes to belting out the English lyrics of Eiko's "Be Crazy For Me."
Zhuge Liang knows that he's lost in this new world, but is quick to catch up on the 1800 years he's missed. He's thrilled to discover he has his own wiki entry, but saddened to learn that Shu ultimately lost the war. During all this, he is taken by Eiko's underappreciated singing (she sings at the bar she works at when there's a free spot) and thus she comes to occupies the position of "liege" in his mind, where if she gives the order, then he will carry it out to be the best of his ability.
Eiko is reluctant to believe that he can really do anything at first, though she is grateful to have her first real fan. She certainly doesn't believe he is the real Zhuge Liang and not some dedicated cosplayer, but naturally she begins to have more trust in him as she goes from singing at her boss's bar to performing at her first festival.
At the point the anime is in now (five episodes in) we're in the first story arc rather than stand alone episodes, so I'm not sure where it's going, but I really enjoyed the first three episodes so I'm willing to stick it out for the ride.
Monday, May 2, 2022
VN Talk: Billionaire Lovers
Platform: Windows (also on Mac and Linux)
Release: 2022
I admit I cringed a little at Billionaire Lovers' title, which suggests you will be romancing a string of fabulously wealthy men whose most defining trait is their money. But the game is oddly not very romantic at all, even though it initially looks like it will be.
The nameable main character (whose pronouns can be "he" or "she" depending on the player's choosing) receives $100 million dollars at the start of the game from their largely absentee uncle and is allowed to live at his estate, though he is not there himself because he's always traveling. Their uncle calls it an early taste of their inheritance as his sole heir. For a broke college graduate without a job, it's a nice deal.
Their uncle does leave them with a warning though, to stay inside their swanky community because people might be out for their wealth, and though the MC is good about that, that doesn't mean they aren't in danger.
The game offers a warning at the start that it may contain sensitive content, and that's fair because if there's any game I'd compare Billionaire Lovers to, it's Doki Doki Literature Club and not any romance game. It's not as straight up intense as DDLC, but it starts out the same way in that you think you're in a romance game only to reveal a different kind of story.
Spoilers after the break. Seriously! I really like this game and think more people should check it out, but play it first. It's only $3 and 2-4 hours long depending on whether you chase all the endings.
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