Articles
July 2, 2008
Writing the Reset Generation
We talk to story and dialogue writer Jason Bates about the game.
He's been in the industry for over a decade, working as a games journalist for the likes of IGN and PC Gamer, before joining Nokia as the voice of the N-Gage community. An avid gamer and an all-around-astounding scribe, there was no question in my mind that Reset Generation could only be written by the man that they call, Ikona ... the man that I call, Jason Bates.
Foe: Let's start with the big question: Where does the name "Ikona" come from?
Jason: After years of creating Internet user names and passwords, I was pretty much out of ideas. Then I remembered the advice of my old martial arts master, the Ninja: to hide in the forest, become one of the trees. So I took the word NOKIA and moved a couple of letters around. I'm a master of encryption, like that.
Foe: That's some company spirit ... maybe I'll change my name to "Foekia?" But Reset Generation is bigger than just Nokia; Reset Generation is the game about videogames -- the game of decades, the game of a generation. What's your favorite videogame of all time?
Jason: That's the kind of question where either right away you get an honest answer, like Bonestorm III, or some carefully crafted, nuanced statement encompassing the entire history of videogames from PONG to Barbie's Sweatshop in an attempt to make the speaker sound both savvy and cool.
Since I am neither, I'll go with the Europa Universalis series from Paradox Entertainment, a PC strategy game that can be terribly complex yet horribly addictive. If that sounds like I am describing some kind of demon game from the underworld, it's because I am.
Foe: Yeah, you have to have an IQ of 173 to even install Europa Universalis, and I subsisted on a steady diet of lead paint chips and paste until I was about eight. And besides, Europa Universalis isn't heavy on character: Writing for all ten of Reset Generation's ten legendary heroes was challenging, and I know that recording all of that voice dialog to get things just-right was equally challenging. Who was the absolute hardest character to write for?
Jason: You're right, recording all of those voices was the toughest part of the project for me. You don't want to know what I had to do to hit the high notes for the Princess.
Actually we had some amazing voice talent on this project, the good folks at Audio Godz. In particular I thought Lani Minella was great, she did at least half of the female characters and you can't really tell. Also our Announcer is awesome. He just gets so excited when you kill another player, it cracks me up every time.
I think we ended up with a thousand lines of recorded dialogue in Reset Generation. That's pretty amazing for a mobile game, when just ten years we basically had 'SNAKE.' Not a lot of recorded dialogue in that one.
As far as actually writing the lines, the Sci-Fi Knight was the most difficult. After a dozen years of Nerds + Internet, there are only so many undiscovered Yoda jokes left. It's like searching for missing elements on the Periodic Table: we had to keep accelerating particles against the wall and picking through a sticky, subatomic mess.
Foe: Well, I'm glad you expensed that hazmat suit, because the Sci-Fi Knight came out hilarious. Who was the easiest character to write for?
Jason: The Aggressor, because whenever I ran into trouble I just wrote: "Cool Beeping Noise.' Here's a tip for all you game script writers: When the producer says, 'OK we need ten funny lines for all these guys to say when they get punched in the gut,' make sure a lot of the guys are androids or zombies or something so you can just write "SOUND F/X" or "squishy grunt."
Also the Announcer was pretty easy: "Red, it's your turn!" "Your move, Blue!" I'm glad we gave him some memorable lines like, "Yellow, you disgust me!" I like hearing that when I make someone lose. You disgust me too, Yellow. That is why you lose.
Foe: I know that must have felt very special, because I know that you didn’t win too often. Let's bring this back to Nokia: What was your favorite game for the original N-Gage?
Jason: The original Pathway to Glory, hands down, was the best game on the platform. It was a brutally realistic tactical firefight in the war-torn ruins of Europe. So it was fun to work with RedLynx, the original creators of that horror filled hell-march, and find out what those guys were really like. Actually now that I think about it, meeting them was terrifying.
I want to change my answer to Puyo Pop.
Foe: You, of course, meant to say Pocket Kingdom -- which, like Reset Generation, had a ton of colorful characters. What's your favorite Reset Generation character to play and why?
Jason: Pocket Kingdom was clever for throwing self-referentiality and leet speak into a Miyazaki-like fantasy world. It was a D&D cartoon for the massively mobile generation.
In Reset, I play as the Level 50 Elf to compensate for the fact that I never got past level 25 or so in World of Warcraft, when some people here are like 65 or so. That's the game industry for you: it's not how fancy your car is or how hot your girlfriend/boyfriend is -- it's how high up your Warcraft character is.
Foe: Any special gameplay strategies using Level 50 Elf that you would like to share with the community?
Jason: Her power is like always having a Paintbrush ready, so keep that in mind. But what you should really try to do is get her to Level 51. That's when she gets her Epic Mount, the Ultimate Foe. No wait, I made part of that up...
With the Elf, if you are playing someone who isn't any good, you can use her power to build a ton of extra Combos and basically paralyze them and neutralize their luck factor. Turn yourself into a block-painting machine. Then sit back and wait for the Announcer to mock your opponent. It's great.
I should also mention when you win, there is a victory screen that shows your name and character above the corpses of the defeated. The screens says 'IKONA DEFEATED REDRUM' but there are like 300 different variations on the word DEFEATED.
Coming up with 300 different ways of saying X beat Y was pretty hot.
Foe: If I remember correctly, you came up with those 300 lines in under two hours: That's not hot, that's steamy. Steamy, and expensive, because we then had to translate those lines into six other languages.
Jason: Not as expensive as your idea to build arcade cabinets holding PC versions of the game and hire girls to dress up like Princesses to play with them while 8 Bit Weapon played live at your birthday party...I mean the press party.
Foe: Thirty-one is a very significant birthday. Anyway, I'd like to leave our audience with something to look forward to: I'm throwing down the plunger! I challenge you to a game of Reset Generation, one-on-one, to be featured as our first 'game of the week' at launch. Do you accept the challenge? Consider carefully: All online matches are viewable as replays on the player pages, so all the community will know how things went down ...
Jason: I see through your transparent scheme! You want someone you believe you can trounce easily, so that your victory will be recorded for the ages on launch day.
Little do you know that over these many months I have been lulling you, playtest after playtest, into a false sense of security, leading you to believe that your skills are better than my own, so that suddenly, Ninja-like, I will turn the tables on you and give you the thrashing that the fans are clamoring for, your peers are demanding, and which you so richly deserve!
I'm laughing, because Jason is one of the funniest people that I know: His wit and his wack shine all the way throughout Reset Generation. And I'll be laughing later this summer, after the cold, hard rescue of reality leaves Jason bitter and princess-less for all N-Gage blog fans to see. Place your bets now.
Scott Foe
Producer and "Bad-Guy Wrestler"
Reset Generation
Writing the Reset Generation
We talk to story and dialogue writer Jason Bates about the game.
He's been in the industry for over a decade, working as a games journalist for the likes of IGN and PC Gamer, before joining Nokia as the voice of the N-Gage community. An avid gamer and an all-around-astounding scribe, there was no question in my mind that Reset Generation could only be written by the man that they call, Ikona ... the man that I call, Jason Bates.
Foe: Let's start with the big question: Where does the name "Ikona" come from?
Jason: After years of creating Internet user names and passwords, I was pretty much out of ideas. Then I remembered the advice of my old martial arts master, the Ninja: to hide in the forest, become one of the trees. So I took the word NOKIA and moved a couple of letters around. I'm a master of encryption, like that.
Foe: That's some company spirit ... maybe I'll change my name to "Foekia?" But Reset Generation is bigger than just Nokia; Reset Generation is the game about videogames -- the game of decades, the game of a generation. What's your favorite videogame of all time?
Jason: That's the kind of question where either right away you get an honest answer, like Bonestorm III, or some carefully crafted, nuanced statement encompassing the entire history of videogames from PONG to Barbie's Sweatshop in an attempt to make the speaker sound both savvy and cool.
Since I am neither, I'll go with the Europa Universalis series from Paradox Entertainment, a PC strategy game that can be terribly complex yet horribly addictive. If that sounds like I am describing some kind of demon game from the underworld, it's because I am.
Foe: Yeah, you have to have an IQ of 173 to even install Europa Universalis, and I subsisted on a steady diet of lead paint chips and paste until I was about eight. And besides, Europa Universalis isn't heavy on character: Writing for all ten of Reset Generation's ten legendary heroes was challenging, and I know that recording all of that voice dialog to get things just-right was equally challenging. Who was the absolute hardest character to write for?
Jason: You're right, recording all of those voices was the toughest part of the project for me. You don't want to know what I had to do to hit the high notes for the Princess.
Actually we had some amazing voice talent on this project, the good folks at Audio Godz. In particular I thought Lani Minella was great, she did at least half of the female characters and you can't really tell. Also our Announcer is awesome. He just gets so excited when you kill another player, it cracks me up every time.
I think we ended up with a thousand lines of recorded dialogue in Reset Generation. That's pretty amazing for a mobile game, when just ten years we basically had 'SNAKE.' Not a lot of recorded dialogue in that one.
As far as actually writing the lines, the Sci-Fi Knight was the most difficult. After a dozen years of Nerds + Internet, there are only so many undiscovered Yoda jokes left. It's like searching for missing elements on the Periodic Table: we had to keep accelerating particles against the wall and picking through a sticky, subatomic mess.
Foe: Well, I'm glad you expensed that hazmat suit, because the Sci-Fi Knight came out hilarious. Who was the easiest character to write for?
Jason: The Aggressor, because whenever I ran into trouble I just wrote: "Cool Beeping Noise.' Here's a tip for all you game script writers: When the producer says, 'OK we need ten funny lines for all these guys to say when they get punched in the gut,' make sure a lot of the guys are androids or zombies or something so you can just write "SOUND F/X" or "squishy grunt."
Also the Announcer was pretty easy: "Red, it's your turn!" "Your move, Blue!" I'm glad we gave him some memorable lines like, "Yellow, you disgust me!" I like hearing that when I make someone lose. You disgust me too, Yellow. That is why you lose.
Foe: I know that must have felt very special, because I know that you didn’t win too often. Let's bring this back to Nokia: What was your favorite game for the original N-Gage?
Jason: The original Pathway to Glory, hands down, was the best game on the platform. It was a brutally realistic tactical firefight in the war-torn ruins of Europe. So it was fun to work with RedLynx, the original creators of that horror filled hell-march, and find out what those guys were really like. Actually now that I think about it, meeting them was terrifying.
I want to change my answer to Puyo Pop.
Foe: You, of course, meant to say Pocket Kingdom -- which, like Reset Generation, had a ton of colorful characters. What's your favorite Reset Generation character to play and why?
Jason: Pocket Kingdom was clever for throwing self-referentiality and leet speak into a Miyazaki-like fantasy world. It was a D&D cartoon for the massively mobile generation.
In Reset, I play as the Level 50 Elf to compensate for the fact that I never got past level 25 or so in World of Warcraft, when some people here are like 65 or so. That's the game industry for you: it's not how fancy your car is or how hot your girlfriend/boyfriend is -- it's how high up your Warcraft character is.
Foe: Any special gameplay strategies using Level 50 Elf that you would like to share with the community?
Jason: Her power is like always having a Paintbrush ready, so keep that in mind. But what you should really try to do is get her to Level 51. That's when she gets her Epic Mount, the Ultimate Foe. No wait, I made part of that up...
With the Elf, if you are playing someone who isn't any good, you can use her power to build a ton of extra Combos and basically paralyze them and neutralize their luck factor. Turn yourself into a block-painting machine. Then sit back and wait for the Announcer to mock your opponent. It's great.
I should also mention when you win, there is a victory screen that shows your name and character above the corpses of the defeated. The screens says 'IKONA DEFEATED REDRUM' but there are like 300 different variations on the word DEFEATED.
Coming up with 300 different ways of saying X beat Y was pretty hot.
Foe: If I remember correctly, you came up with those 300 lines in under two hours: That's not hot, that's steamy. Steamy, and expensive, because we then had to translate those lines into six other languages.
Jason: Not as expensive as your idea to build arcade cabinets holding PC versions of the game and hire girls to dress up like Princesses to play with them while 8 Bit Weapon played live at your birthday party...I mean the press party.
Foe: Thirty-one is a very significant birthday. Anyway, I'd like to leave our audience with something to look forward to: I'm throwing down the plunger! I challenge you to a game of Reset Generation, one-on-one, to be featured as our first 'game of the week' at launch. Do you accept the challenge? Consider carefully: All online matches are viewable as replays on the player pages, so all the community will know how things went down ...
Jason: I see through your transparent scheme! You want someone you believe you can trounce easily, so that your victory will be recorded for the ages on launch day.
Little do you know that over these many months I have been lulling you, playtest after playtest, into a false sense of security, leading you to believe that your skills are better than my own, so that suddenly, Ninja-like, I will turn the tables on you and give you the thrashing that the fans are clamoring for, your peers are demanding, and which you so richly deserve!
I'm laughing, because Jason is one of the funniest people that I know: His wit and his wack shine all the way throughout Reset Generation. And I'll be laughing later this summer, after the cold, hard rescue of reality leaves Jason bitter and princess-less for all N-Gage blog fans to see. Place your bets now.
Scott Foe
Producer and "Bad-Guy Wrestler"
Reset Generation
