On Writing Games

interactive flashbacks

In traditional writing, flashbacks serve as a tool to provide crucial information about the story that the reader wouldn’t otherwise know without delving into past events.

As a narrative device, flashbacks retain this function in interactive storytelling, yet…

sunday prompt #1 — memory swap

One goal of this list is to assist traditional writers in crafting interactive narratives.

Taking advantage of the serene Sundays, I’d like to propose prompts specifically designed for this purpose.

probabilistic foreshadowing

Something that particularly interests me about the foreshadowing technique is that it is a local element connected to the global story.

By “local element,” I mean that it is something that appears in the story momentarily with the aim of providing a hint…

natural selection of translations

A third consideration (because we appreciate third positions in this list) is to emulate the book publishing industry.

We can regard the “number of languages the game was translated into” as a metric of success.

i don’t care, i love it

The first approach (of three) I want to talk about is using LLMs to translate to as many languages as possible without worrying too much about the final result.

Given that LLMs have proven to be good enough in the languages I can evaluate, I am going to assume…

the unavoidable cost of interactive fiction

Interactive fiction is less costly to develop than practically any game that requires a lot of graphics, especially with real-time motion and 3D graphics.

llm storytelling in 2024

Every once in a while I like to do a review of the state of interactive narrative using LLMs.

In the past few months there has been some progress, but I’m still not sure if we are at a point where we can create unforgettable experiences.