Today we welcome Dana Lockhart to The Storytelling Blog. Dana is the author of the urban fantasy vampire novel, The Un-Life of William Moore, and a video game reviewer and blogger. Dana shares some thoughts about storytelling via video game as well as storytelling about video games through reviews.

Storytelling can take many forms. Your average person will probably think about books, then movies, but the general public often overlooks another form: Video games. 

Dana Lockhart

Hello, I’m Dana, and I’m an urban fantasy author and a professional gamer. I’ve reviewed video games on DVS Gaming, SIP Read Repeat, and SwitchWatch, cumulatively for about three years. What I’ve found after all this time is how unique video games are as a medium for storytelling and just how limitless they are in the methods they tap to tell a story.

Game Story Analysis

This blog post will be a sort of two-parter. If you’ve never seriously played video games, then I want to show you what games can teach you about storytelling. On the flip side, if you’ve ever wanted to share your enthusiasm for game storytelling as a professional video game reviewer, then I have a few tips and tricks to get you started. You’ll already be partly there, as story analysis is a big part of reviews!

The Environment Tells A Story

In a novel, too much description can really bog a story down. In a film, everything is moving too fast to get much of a grasp on what’s going on in the background. But with a video game, a player usually has the opportunity to pick through the game with a fine-toothed comb at their own pace. Many gamers instinctively want to look through every drawer, open every door, and circle back in case they missed a hidden detail. Playing some video games can be like a treasure or scavenger hunt. 

The reasons gamers do this is that a bulk of a game’s story often happens under the radar. If you fail to find a certain note or unlock a certain room, you can miss out on something important about the story. A popular game format of the last several years has been multiple endings. Your choices influence the story, perhaps even changing the narrative for better or worse. A wrong choice in Until Dawn can kill beloved characters, and a convoluted series of puzzles can unlock the “good ending” in the Five Nights At Freddy’s game series. 

The Player Interacts With The Story

Some games purposefully hide the story so deep you have to work hard just to see a fragment of it. Item descriptions, non-player characters (NPCs, i.e., characters generated by the game to interact with the human player), dialogue, world design, they’re all grains of sand adding up to an entire beach of knowledge. These sorts of games inspire people to jump to conclusions, create their own theories, and spark conversation. The story takes on a life of its own as others seek to decipher it. 

Personally, telling a story through the environment is my favorite type of storytelling. Dilapidated buildings, scattered notes, unreliable perspectives of characters, and what is left behind can convey a story as effectively as if you are shown a scene or told the sequence of events through narrative. Storytelling is as much about what you leave out as it is what you include. A common writer mantra is “show, don’t tell,” but I dare you to think about how explicitly you need to show and challenge you to tease your readers with truth hidden behind veils. 

Becoming a Professional Gamer

You don’t need a big YouTube channel like PewDiePie or Markiplier to pick up the title of “professional gamer.” You don’t even have to be a streamer. All you need to do is approach video games in a professional manner and contribute something to the video game community. 

A popular way to do this is to review video games. You can post reviews on your own website or on someone else’s. On your own, it’s as easy as hopping onto WordPress or another cheap website designer, but writing on someone else’s website… That may take a little work.

Features Of A Video Game Review

First off, it helps to already have a background in both writing and video games. Bonus points if you have a background in journalism, as that is what reviews are technically classified as. Editorials, new release announcements, reviews, they are all journalism, and as such they have rules and formatting standards akin to other news outlets. It varies website to website, but in general when you review a video game you will rate the following:

• Story. A synopsis and interpretation of the storyline, usually given without key spoilers.
• Audio/Soundtrack. An assessment of the game’s sound design and whether it’s quality and complementary.
• Graphics/Visuals. A description of the graphics of the game and how they fit the style of the game.
• Gameplay/Performance. An analysis of the features and bugs (if any) and how smoothly the game runs.

How to Get The Gig

When applying to gaming websites to be a writer, they will typically want you to submit a potential article to showcase your work. Key things to keep in mind when preparing your article is using search-engine optimization (SEO) keywords, toning down the difficulty level of your writing (Flesch scale), and removing passive voice. This is your time to shine, so clean up your article as much as possible. The website will have editors, but you don’t want to make their job harder!

Working For Exposure, Swag, And Money

I will be honest here and tell you that to get into the industry you will most likely have to start with “working for exposure.” Let me repeat that: Working for exposure. Part of the reason I started writing gaming articles was to direct traffic to my personal website in hopes that my article readers might enjoy reading my novel. Keep an eye on the website’s views, your article views, and whether or not writing for that website is actually generating traction to your own website. It’s not bad working for exposure, so long as you’re actually getting decently exposed. Treat exposure like you’re getting paid, and if you’re not getting exposure then you’re not getting paid!

You can also look at it like this: If you are a serious game reviewer, then you probably will get free games. All of the sites I’ve written for had good relationships with game developers and publishers. Mostly indie, but relationships, nonetheless. I received several free games for the promise of an honest review, and every single one of them I got to keep forever. Sometimes I’d get cheap, 99-cent games, but once I even got a $60 game. It’s a fair trade: A product for your time and effort. Try and look at it positively!

If you’re in the “game” long enough and have quality work, there’s every chance that you can get picked up by a website that pays for your articles. Gasp. Getting paid for your writing? Right?! It can happen! I got picked up by a paying website, and they chose me because of my experience in working for exposure. It’s not impossible, but you do have to work at it. You’ll usually either get paid a flat amount per article or an amount based on how many views your article gets. 

Game on!

I hope you think about video games a little differently now. They really are a worthwhile medium for storytelling. If you made it this far, here’s your reward. My urban fantasy novel, The Un-Life of William Moore, is free on Amazon.com through March 20, 2020. Snag it before midnight! 

If you have any questions about the gaming or writing industry, reach out to me on my website, www.danalockhart.com.

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