Austin GDC: BioWare's writing process detailed

BioWare's Mike Laidlaw, Drew Karpyshyn, and Mac Walters outlined their company's writing process at the Austin Game Developers Conference.

The company, best known for Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and the upcoming Mass Effect, employs 26 writersâ¦almost a third of their overall design staff.

The jobs those writers are doing varies according to the specific phase of the design process they are involved in. BioWare breaks the process down into prototype, pre-production, and production phases.

During the prototype phase, writers discuss new ideas and develop stories and settings. This early in the process, it is mostly a matter of identifying the game's theme and the motivations for the characters. Where do players start, and what do they do?

"There's as much value in not getting it right as in getting it right," said Mike Laidlaw.

In pre-production, the writing team ramps up to 4 or 5 members. By this time, there are defined story arcs and characters. The writers must make style decisions. Will the game be rated T or M? What is the journal format, and who is the voice of the game? Here, writers work closely with level designers and artists.

During pre-production, writers will have developed asset lists as well as character, creature, and area inventories.

"You're not going to get these right. You will get close enough to allow people to work," Laidlaw says. "By the end of pre-production, the team should be ready to generate final content, and have a solid workflow established with the level designers and artists."

During the production phase, work is divided across the writing team by areas of responsibility. BioWare games average 500,000 words of dialogue.

The lead writer's and the managing editor's job is to maintain consistency of voice across the entire game even as the writing goes through several passes at the production stage.

Writers start with a narrative prototype which is then reviewed by senior staff. Following this review, a first pass is written using BioWare's conversation editor and story manager tools. The end result is a playable level with all dialogue delivered in text format.

Peer review involves all the other writers playing through that level of the game and preparing comments and suggestions. The writer incorporates this feedback into a second pass, which is followed by a senior review by the game's key stakeholders.

With each pass, the scope and scale of the rewrite becomes smaller.

Finally, the QA department plays through the level to identify bugs and offer comments.

"It is very important that you get some fresh perspective from someone outside the story," said Drew Karpyshyn, noting that the story may seem flat after a writer has been involved with so many passes. "It might be brilliant, but it doesnât feel brilliant to you anymore."

The process doesn't end with the voice over recording sessions, as some lines may read well but don't work when spoken. Voice actors may also ad-lib lines on occasion. Even so, rewrites at this stage are almost exclusively "polish," as it is very difficult to make changes after the voice overs are recorded.

The writers' final task is to create a cinematic pass, offering their input on camera angles, music placement, and emotional variants. BioWare's Mac Walters closed the session by demonstrating the use of the company's story and plot management toolkits as well as the Unreal editor used to direct the scenes.

The panel credited part of the success of their games to getting writers involved early in the game-making process. Although the writing process involves a lot of people and may seem quite lengthy, it has served BioWare well.

Noting that the old maxim was true, Karpyshyn said "Rewriting really is the key to great writing."