on writing games

the handstand walk

Writing stories with multiple possibilities is leaving behind the uchronia.

It’s taking responsibility for all possible versions of the universe.

This is what Jorge Luis Borges posed as overwhelming in The Aleph.

It is no coincidence that this is difficult for us.

Our brains evolved with a strong illusion of the passage of time.

Of a single timeline.

Every time we try to work on multiple timelines or time loops, our brains are veering off course.

I’m writing this to convince myself that feeling overwhelmed while working on interactive narrative is more than expected.

It doesn’t say anything about how good or bad we are at storytelling.

This will be determined by the players later.

Telling solid stories with multiple paths is like walking on our hands.

We can do it, with a lot of effort and training. But it’s hard.

If writing is overwhelming you: scale down.

Fewer timelines, fewer characters, fewer variables.

There’s always time to expand later, when you have more trained muscles.