When someone enters your game, or even when you first excitedly announce it on the forums or in a chat room somewhere, you may be tempted to immediately tell them about the wonderful backstory you've created for it. You see, there were these elemental dragons that created the universe, and an evil demonic robot overlord pulped them together into a crystal which then shattered and rained the fragments down onto the world and the minions of the evil demonic robot overlord are gathering the crystal shards together in order to gain complete dominion over the universe and--

STOP!

I don't care how unique you think your setting is (especially if it's as generic as the one above - and most BYOND fantasy settings are exactly that generic). In fact, I don't care about the setting at all. When I enter a game for the first time, there are exactly two things I want to find out:

1. What will I be doing in this game?
2. Is it fun?

Note that "what are all the details of the backstory of the world in which the game takes place?" does not appear in the above list.

Don't get me wrong here; I like stories. Stories make the world go around (and sometimes stop it in its tracks). More than that; I like games with stories too. Grim Fandango was almost entirely story, and it's one of my favourite games of all time. Without the plot, Deus Ex would have been a merely competent shooter.

Both of those games have something in common; they display a cutscene before the game starts. Grim Fandango starts with an amusing introduction to the main character, who tries and fails to sell a travel package to a new arrival in the Land of the Dead. Deus Ex starts with a chilling conversation between two of the bad guys, situated under a statue of a menacing red-lit hand seemingly poised to crush the Earth.

These two models of excellence both start the game with a cutscene giving an introduction to the story, and do it well; so it's okay for you to do the same, right?

Wrong.

There are a number of reasons why you should avoid this in your own games.

1. You suck at cutscenes.

Your talent for cutscenes is most likely lacking. Sure, it's possible that you work for Pixar and have a masterful grasp of the dramatic, and how would I know? I don't. But most people suck at choosing what to put in a cutscene. Imagine if, instead of Deus Ex's conversation about poor people dying of the plague and violent riots in Paris, it had started with a lecture about the growing threat of terrorism in the new world with an overview of the political climate and a brief mention of the plague sweeping the world. *snore*

These things are important to the storyline, for sure; but rather than shove them down your throat the moment you boot up the game, they're introduced as you play. Better still, they're all the more effective for it. You see the effects of the Grey Death first-hand as a sick man begs you to kill him. You're sent to fight terrorists. As the man on the spot, you're required to make decisions with wide-ranging political ramifications.

Even if you know all about cutscenes and have won Oscars for them, your dramatic flair will be curtailed when you run into the fact that...

2. BYOND sucks at cutscenes.

If you spend some effort (and most people don't), you can do animations of sprites moving around. That's about it. If you're really l33t, you also get speech bubbles. Wow. I bet the Academy will be falling over themselves to award you for your stunning use of technology.

It's true that interesting cutscenes can be done using BYOND; a good artist can overcome the limitations of almost any medium. However, I've yet to see someone really pull it off. The best cutscene I've seen in a BYOND game is my car chase in Your Money Or Your Life, and even that was mediocre. Despite the amount of time I spent on it (too long), I somehow managed to make something as thrilling as a car chase seem boring. If I'd been working in 3D, with facial expressions and camera angles and explosions and all that good stuff, it would still have taken forever but at least it would have been something to look at. People are impressed by YMOYL's car chase only because it was done in BYOND. That's pretty sad.

But this isn't why most BYOND "cutscenes" suck. It's not because they're limited by the technology; indeed, most people consciously choose to limit themselves further. When it's time to craft your cinematic masterpiece, if you're like most BYONDers then...

3. You will tell your story using message boxes, which also suck at cutscenes.

Or, as they're called in DM parlance, alert()s. The stupidity of this should speak for itself.

To top it off, they're never even interesting. They're boring and ultimately irrelevant plot summaries, not tightly scripted conversations between main characters. Imagine what The Matrix would be like told using alert()s in this style:



Hey, wake up, I'm not done yet!

Besides being an abysmal method for storytelling, message boxes suck anyway - for almost any purpose. Almost every application in the world overuses message boxes - probably because they're so easy to display. There's nothing worse than stopping the proceedings with idiocy.

This applies to in-game help as well, by the way. There's nothing wrong with displaying help to users when they log in. However, message boxes are definitely the wrong way to do it. Help files should be easy to refer to when and if the user wants to. Message boxes don't do this; they're inconvenient or impossible to recall, and block the flow of the game. They're also hard to read. Avoid them like the plague. We have a perfectly serviceable browser window (well, except that it's IE - but in this situation that's no excuse!) and an even easier to use text area.

4. Plot summaries just generally suck.

I touched on this briefly before, and it bears repeating. Plot summaries are boring. If you must tell the history of the world (and I assure you that nobody cares, so you shouldn't bother), then tell it with a scripted conversation between NPCs played out as the player passes by (in the background! Don't even think about forcing the player to stop and listen); or plant letters or newspapers around the game world for the player to read; or, even better, put the player directly into a relevant situation. Show, don't tell.

Popping up a plot summary when the player enters the game makes a bad first impression. If you want to have any chance of retaining players, DON'T DO IT. I know that when I enter a game, if the first thing I see is an ugly grey message box with a plot summary, my heart sinks. I'm just as likely to quit as to go on.

5. Wasting time on cutscenes sucks.

You don't have time to waste on one-shot content like cutscenes. Professional studios can hire people for these things. You can't. Your time would be much better spent improving your combat system, or creating a new monster type with an interesting unique ability, or whatever. Who's going to read your plot summary if your game isn't fun enough to attract people?

In summary, next time you feel compelled to tell people about your world's backstory: Forget it. Do something useful instead.

This concludes the rant for today.