Area 161

The Importance of a Good Story, Part 1: Your Personal Story

// July 19th, 2010 // By LordBron // Company Related, iDevBlogADay, Storytelling

In my one brief year of college, I studied Computer Science and English – Creative Writing. It was the 93-94 school year. In the 16 years since, I’ve read a few hundred business books. One thing I’ve always found odd was how the latter pretty muched ignored most of what I learned in the former.

Business books tell about profits, products and growth. They’ll tell you about a lot of the logic behind building a successful business. This is because those things are repeatable and concrete. “Keep tabs on cost until cash flow is positive, then focus on growth.” There are 3 stages to a startup that can easily be mapped and checked for progress. As indie game devs, these logical steps provide a checklist that we can use as a sanity check.

There is one thing, however, that cannot be described in books, because for each and every business it is unique. The item I’m referring to is: Your Personal Story.

eBay Has a Great Story, or Does It?

Let’s take a quick poll:

Why did Pierre Omidyar start eBay?

1. To help with his girlfriend’s PEZ collection
2. He had a long weekend and wanted to code something

Every programmer has the “B” story, but very few have the “A” story. If you approached a news reporter back during the internet bubble, chances are you had a “B” story. However, there was only ever one “A” story and that was the story of eBay.

Funny thing though, there was no girlfriend with a PEZ collection. It was a complete fabrication by eBay’s earliest PR people. However, most of you probably thought the answer was “A” because a good story is hard to let go or forget.

Now, I don’t advocate flat out lying like eBay did. Lie or not though, it was that story that got eBay it’s earliest press. (Sidenote: For a really good story, but not press worthy, look up why the company went with the non-sensical name of “eBay” vs their more intuitive sounding “Auction Web”.)

Pixar (King of Story) Revealed a Gem During Lunch at WWDC

Michael B. Johnson from Pixar gave a great brown bag chat during WWDC. Amidst showing cool footage, talking about internal tech initiatives and showing off in-house tools, he talked about something that Pixar gets that not many other companies do:

Story is King.

When Michael started with the company, he went to one of the tech guys (Anthony A. Apodaca) who explained the history of the company including where the name “Pixar” came from.

“It’s a moon of Degobah.”

Michael then went on to talk about how he met one of the founders, Ed Catmull. During the meeting, Ed started to also give the rundown of Pixar history. When he came to where the name Pixar came from, he said, “We wanted something computer related like Pixel, but we also wanted something more…” Michael interrupted Ed and said, “Tony already told me where the name came from.” “Oh yeah, what did Tony say?” “He said it was a moon of Degobah.” Ed paused for a moment then said, “Oh that’s a better story, run with that one.”

Michael’s point was that from the tools his team built to the directors of the films themselves, there’s a common goal among them all: To deliver a well-told, compelling story.

Every Story is Different, But…

Here’s the long story of Area 161.

In the fall of 1993, Tom is in line at a 7-11 to get change to ride the bus home. In the register line before him is Smiley, about to get some quarters to play some video games. Smiley opens his wallet to remove some bills to exchange. A picture in Smiley’s wallet catches Tom’s eye. “Hey, is that a picture of Spider-Man in your wallet?” Smiley says, “It sure is.” A geek bond is created in that instant. As we all know, geek bonds are the strongest.

Many years pass and the two share a myriad of experiences:

• They work briefly together at a software shop. Smiley teaches Tom a lesson in business he never forgets, “You work for them. If they pay you to pick your nose, you pick your nose. They pay for the luxury to tell you what exactly to do with your time.” That bit of advice makes working for others tolerable for Tom.
• Smiley’s wedding ceremony is inside his wife’s parents’ home. Oddly enough, Smiley’s wife and Tom’s life criss-cross years before Smiley meets her. Tom stands as co-best man in the ceremony that takes place in the living room.
• Smiley eventually buys his in-law’s house. During the house warming party, Tom visits and says, “Some day we’ll live close to each other.” Smiley asks, “How? I live here near Seattle and you’re wife never wants to move here?” Tom replies, “I don’t know how or when, but I know somehow, someway we’ll live close to each other.”
• Tom finds himself in Arizona years later. While looking for work, he gets a call from a recruiter up near Seattle. “We have this gig.” “Where exactly?” Tom looks up the address, it’s 3.5 miles from Smiley’s home. Tom then finds himself living in a spare bedroom inside Smiley’s house. He tells Smiley, “See.  I told ya, we’d live close.”
• Life works in odd ways. Realizing that the year-long job contract is no chance experience, the two friends strike up a company. While debating company names, they settle on Area 161. Why “161″? As far as we can recall, that was the issue of Spider-Man that Smiley had a reprint of in his wallet.

Almost twenty years have past and not only is the geek bond stronger than ever, but it’s still finding ways to permeate their lives.

Now that’s obviously a lot of story there. Is it a great story? I can’t say, but it’s our story. Is it a good story? Well, I think it’s a heck of a lot better than , “Two geeky friends start a game company.” Which is pretty much every indie dev story, right?

Tools of the Trade

Storytelling is an art, but so is game making. Since you’re all game makers, you know that you are artists. You’ll have to use some of that skill to create your own story. Never told a good story before? Don’t worry there are tricks. The two simplest ones are:

1. Put an ordinary person in extraordinary situations or Put an extraordinary person in an ordinary situation. – From the fantasy world, think Batman (for the former) or Superman (for the latter). In the real world, think Pierre/eBay during the dot com bubble (for the former) and John Carmack/ID during the shareware days (for the latter)
2. A story should always end where it begins. – This one used to confuse me til I realized they didn’t mean quite literally. They just mean you mention something at the start that you then bring back in towards the end. In our case, Spiderman issue 161. It was there at the start of Area 161 history story and pulled back in again towards the end. From the fantasy world, Alan Moore is a master of this technique.

Dig into your history and find your story. The sooner you find it, the sooner you can “own” it. It’s important to own it, because like a good joke, it’s get better every time you tell it. Whether in your head to yourself or to others. You don’t want to be in the middle of an interview with a reporter and find yourself bumbling, “Oh wait, before that…oh and I forgot about…Then was it after or during that time we….”

Next week, I’ll talk about stories in your games. A game is just like a company. There’s a story there, you just have to find it. And when you do, it’ll help you stand out that much more.