All the stuff I love most in game storytelling is never the big-picture stuff; it's the stuff that feels like curlicues, stuff that's just there because it's a game and because you can do it.
Interpretation
Game storytelling thrives on small, intricate details rather than grand narratives.
In this quote, Tom Bissell emphasizes the importance of the subtle, intricate elements in video game storytelling that contribute to a richer, more immersive experience. He suggests that it is these 'curlicues,' or small details, that elevate the medium and engage players on a deeper level, reflecting the unique possibilities that gaming offers.
In practice
In a game development conference talk, I quoted Tom Bissell to emphasize the value of incorporating small details in game design.
To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.
When I'm about to train a new opera, I first listen to how Jussi Björling did it. His voice was unique and it's his path that I want to follow. I would more than anything else wish that people compared me with Jussi Björling. It's like so I'm striving to sing.
Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore, the object must be eliminated from the picture.
The strange dilemma of the 'ethnic-fiction' writer is that you are supposed to carry a banner for your homeland, be a voice for it, and educate the rest of the world about it, but I think that's far too onerous a burden for any writer to bear.
If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.
Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.
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