Stargate Worlds : diary

Klug talks to RPG Vault

Indelible — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:58:44 GMT

Chris Klug of CME has added the latest installation in his dev diaries at RPG Vault. This time he continues to talk about player choices and how the game encouragews players to listen to his/her conscience.

Last installment, I summarized a mission from Earth & Beyond, where you, as a member of the Jenquai race, were sent to destroy a shipment of Progen weapons. Those "weapons" turned out to be genetically altered children. To deconstruct it, we must first understand what emotion the writer wanted for his audience. This first step is crucial, because this kind of decision goes to the heart of entertainment: a creator manipulating the audience to feel something. In this case, the audience can certainly feel exhilaration at the success of the mission, or frustration at failing it.

The player can either feel guilty for killing children knowingly or feel guilty for killing children unwittingly... a true dilemma.

Head over to RPG Vault to read the full diary!

Stargate Worlds Diary #2: Stories

Indelible — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:36:04 GMT

Stargate World Creative Director Chris Klug has posted his second development diary, which talks about the ways of developing story scenes that influence the audience.

While having the audience empathize with the characters and writing creditable entertaining dialogue both help, these are but modifiers that aid the basic creative effort, which is to arrange the scenes in your work in order to evoke the most powerful emotions possible. The reason this is your goal as a writer is simple. People come to feel something; they don't come to THINK. In essence, they come to be emotionally manipulated, and the writer is the architect of that manipulation.

"Think about telling a joke. There are people who have trouble doing this. Most often, their difficulty comes from not understanding the way the joke is structured (setup, reversal, punch line). Both the timing and selection of all the elements must be in place for the joke to be funny. It is the same with the structure of stories.

As well as that, he posted some new concept images and Jaffa building renders.

You can read the diary and see the images here.

Chris Klug discusses storytelling

Indelible — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:02:45 GMT

Chris Klug, Creative Director for Stargate Worlds, has posted an article talking about the art of writing for MMO titles. In the first of what appears to be an ongoing series of Diaries, Klug talks about how he goes about writing for Stargate Worlds whilst keeping in mind the already-established lore.

I know for certain that structure - not dialogue - is the most important job the writer has as well as his or her primary responsibility, and this job is so important that it eclipses almost every other thing the individual has to do.

Along with that, the article features two exclusive pieces of concept art from the up coming CME MMO, Stargate Worlds.

You can read the full article here