Macro and Micro Narrative Storytelling with Chella Ramanan | Game Dev Unchained

"The thing that lots of people do with people of color, when they’re writing with people of color is that they reference movies. They think the black people in movies or tv are real black people, but they’re obviously not. Black people tend to be stereotyped and they tend to be from a very small pool of what that community is really like. Don’t use Hollywood shorthand to inform you what you think a group is. By far, I think that’s the biggest, BIGGEST mistake."

CHELLA RAMANAN (WRITER)

Chella: “My name is Chella Ramanan and I'm a videogames journalist but not for much longer. I've been writing about videogames as a journalist for about 18 years. I’ve written stuff for the Guardian, the game section, and I’ve just written my last column for gameindustry.biz who are based in the UK. Additionally, I'm the co-founder of POC in Play which is a diversity organization which focuses on improving the representation and visibility of people of color in the games industry. We’re based in the UK but hopefully one day we’ll be international. Furthermore, I’m a game developer as well. I’m working on a game called Before I Forget, which is a narrative adventure game about a woman with dementia.

With my partner, Claire Morley, we’re 3-Fold Games, a little micro studio. I’m currently working on another game called Windrush Tales, which is about the Windrush generation… And last year was the 70th anniversary, my dad was part of that generation so I wanted to celebrate it but then we found out that our government was trying to send / deport some of that generation under the hostile immigration policy that our government currently employs so it just made that game even more worthwhile to make.”

“Well, I mean, I haven't really worked in big teams, but that’s about to change as I’m about to join Ubisoft. But in terms of my teams, I was thrown together with the people on Before I forget, and although there were only three of us, and I was the only person of color, we were all women. There were moments where I said "Oh, I just quite like her to be Asian, to be Indian." And they were just like "Okay, fine cool." That was nice, but my own personal experience differs from my peers who are still are in small teams. Some have sometimes struggled to get their voice heard or their perspective is sometimes overlooked. So that is a bit sad and sort of dispiriting and wearing down that person. There’s a lot of emotional labor in that being the lone voice that perhaps isn’t listened to.”

Chella: Yeah DON’T EVER DO THAT (Laughs).

Chella: So I’ve always been writing fiction on the side and that was my first love. My goal was to be a novelist. Which is a very common goal. I mean, if you had a penny for every journalist that wants to be a novelist, we’d all be rich. So I was always attending either writing classes in the evenings, or I was writing something.  I think, at that point, I was running a writing group and seriously working on a novel. At about draft 3 of my novel I came across this ad from gameindustry.biz. It was an article about writing for games course with an organization called the Argonne Foundation. Which is a really highly respected writing foundation that does writing courses across all sorts of disciplines: playwriting, radio writing, biographies, all sorts of things. When I saw the ad I was at the Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath House, which is up in Yorkshire, and the Tutors were David Varela and John Ingold and guest tutor Rhianna Pratchett, During that time I was already going on writing retreats and I writing about games, so I was like “Oh this is a cool intersection of things I enjoy.” I immediately signed up from the ad and it kind of changed everything. It changed my perspective and my focus. because I thought "Oh, this is something I can REALLY do, and I enjoyed it. It was a week residential and from listening to the Tutors and their journeys I picked out the common threads that they’ve done, which was all different types of writing. I went home and decided “I’m going to start looking at interactive fiction and write a game.”

“Well I think there’s space for both… I suppose you have companies like Telltale, that have tightly written stories but are very good at giving the illusion of choice and getting the player emotional investment through the sheer craft of the choices they give you. But in my personal choice, I do like the Uncharted games. It's so beautifully written… We’ve always been searching for that game that feels like a movie and Naughty Dog gives us that. It’s a sheer joy to play in that respect. It’s living out that dream of being able to sit on your couch and play a game that feels like a movie and they did it perfectly.

I do prefer that than more open world games. It’s hard to create a satisfying story experience in an open world, which is a real challenge. It’s one that narrative designers are having a good go at it. It’s one of the things that really sets us apart from film, to give the player this open world where they can do whatever they want while also making it feel satisfying with a narrative that isn't packed on. It’s a challenge, but what’s great about games is there’s space for a variety of things.”

“Well I suppose the thing that’s good that we have now is the internet and social media. There’s “Black Twitter” and Irish Twitter, Jewish Twitter. That’s a good place to start to see what conversations those communities are having, what their concerns are, who they’re listening to, who their spokespeople are, and the media that they go to. After following that, immerse yourselves as writers, filmmaker, theorists from that group, and marginalized voice (wherever they may be.) You can also do consulting with people, especially if it’s a commercial product. Pay a consultant to look over what you’ve done to help you get it right. Overall, just try and immerse yourself. Because the thing that lots of people do with people of color, when they’re writing with people of color is that they reference movies. They think the black people in movies or tv are real black people, but they’re obviously not. Black people tend to be stereotyped and they tend to be from a very small pool of what that community is really like. Don’t use Hollywood shorthand to inform you what you think a group is. By far, I think that’s the biggest, BIGGEST mistake.”