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WildStar, the upcoming MMO from NCsoft and Carbine Studios, is developing a quest text system influenced directly by Twitter.
Writing on the official developer blog, senior narrative designer Cory Herndon explains how the writing team designs quest text that fits within the 140 character length that Twitter users have become so familiar with.
“No one likes writing text that doesn’t get read, and getting our players to read what we write is a challenge we take seriously,” says Herndon.
“Therefore the narrative design team set about finding the minimum amount of text that can convey story and character without immediately being skipped over for the ‘tl;dr’ of quest objectives and visual icons. After much trial and error, we settled on the Twitter-length text limit of 140 characters.”
He adds that the visual side of an MMO is in reality the most important narrative element in the genre:
“If you want to deliver a story in an MMO, it’s important to remember that story does not necessarily equal onscreen text or mountains of exposition. There are plenty of other tools that can tear down the walls of text. These include things like VO (voiceover), visuals, animations, cut scenes, and music cues, none of which require text-averse players to waste precious eyespace with words. But you don’t have to know everything that’s going on word-for-word to know what is happening in the story.”
Last year Carbine unveiled the first look at gameplay footage of their upcoming game.
WildStar has no current release date.
