How To Think About Stories In GTA

How To Think About Stories In GTA.

This is just my approach! But, if you try it, you will come up with some great ideas. Just think logically, how does this (whatever is the subject), work in the real world.


In stories, the way you must think when designing the game world, is to think.

1. What am I doing now?
2. How did this start?
3. Where does all the produce and products I am using come from?
4. Trace it back to the next logical real-world source and restart these questions?

As an example, a gas station. (To refuel cars).

1. What am I doing now? Well. as a customer, I an buying fuel for my car and logically, gas stations also provide a lot of other items for sale, like cigarettes, newspapers, confectionery, snacks and bottled drinks etc. As well as small car part accessories like fuses, indicator, head and tail lamp-bulbs car cleaning products, shampoo and wax polish. Wheel trims and window wash, de-icer, anti-freeze, wiper-blades, motor-oil. Milk, bread, toilet rolls, etc. Not in order, (and I am sure there will be other things I have forgotten). But this gives you a basic idea to work from. 
2. Now ask - How did this start? (In the game, it could have already been up and running and a business that you can work-for, buy-into or take-over. Or it could be a disused building that was previously a Gas Station, that you have rented or bought and set-up a business in from scratch). The latter, being a more complex thing to put together, because you have to discover all the places to get stuff from and make those contacts in the first place. Then have enough money to set it all up.
3. Next question. Where does all the produce and products I am using come from? Every single item should have an original logical source, where you have to get a supply of whatever it is. We are selling a commodity. - GAS, that is an already manufactured item, but, in many cases, we can bring raw materials together to produce a finished product, like wood and nails to make goods pallets. Or plastic pellets to use in machinery that produces plastic bottles. The other items mentioned in the garage - gas station, should all have their own source, which at minimum, should be via purchase from a warehouse, that in-turn buys in the bulk-stock from the overseas, docks imports. or a manufacturer within our game-world, (like beer, news-papers, toilet-rolls). e.g. Candy-Bars (of several and various types). In the GTA4 game world, where I base my game ideas, there is a petro-chemical plant, pumping in crude oil and refining it on one of the center islands. So, I assume we get deliveries from there as we buy it. But it is only delivered on a set-schedule.
4. Last, Trace it back to the next logical real-world source and restart these questions? Everything comes from somewhere. If you have a toilet roll, it came in a pack or 6, 8 or 12, and was an import or a game-world produced product. From a game-world produced product, the toilet-roll factory has to buy in large rolls of tissue paper that is already produced and shipped via the docks. The factory has to order it and pay for it, then get it delivered or collect it. Next they have to use the raw material, loading it into a machine that makes the toilet rolls. Other raw materials or parts may also be involved, like card-tubes for the inner of the toilet roll. Plastic wrap or cartons to wrap the finished products into pacts of 6, 8 or 12. Then they have to be pallet-ed, shrink wrapped and transported, keeping account of the number of stock and remaining raw materials at every point and the finished value of the product as it goes to various customers, like warehouses and export, or direct to customers or retail outlets. Pricing differently for amounts in bulk.

Next:- Use this layout as phase one of the story to write a more detailed description of every aspect, trying to keep each in its own category so that you can move those aspects around later.

Finally, write a story of how you see this idea developing. (Whatever it is, (like the Gas-Station), Niko, (or whoever our protagonist is), pulls into the gas-station to buy petrol and the store owner comes chasing out after a car that has just driven off without paying. As Niko, you hand the gas-station owner a few notes to pay for your petrol and tell him quickly that you might be able to catch them for him and off you go... This introduces you to the gas station owner, when you return having caught and arrested the perp, (not killing him), or perhaps just giving him a beating and taking his money to pay for the fuel he stole). You give the owner the money for the fuel and he offers you a job. "I need a guy like you, who can work the forecourt for me" he says. Also, in my own Gas-Station story, all gas stations have a forecourt attendant like in Mafia2, where the attendant serves you the fuel and you don't actually have to get out of your car! (But, I don't like the cut-scene style of how they do it in Mafia2, I'd have the attendant serving in a similar fashion to how you are approached in the Triangle Club, by the exotic dancers).

So, did you see what I did there? I explained how the story got started and backed up my vision by relating it to things that are already available in GTA4 and another similar game Mafia2. Doing this, helps with explaining yourself so that when it comes to explaining what you want to a games engineer, they have references to what you expect or are trying to achieve in the game or mission storyline.

You will often find yourself running into explaining other related things and get side-tracked without realizing it. This happens all the time, (don't worry about it), if it flows, no-matter how long the text ends up being, that is what is needed to explain it. 

Lets take another quick example, because this is what I am looking for when / if you write for NewGTAgame.co.uk.  I write my brief and the detail around each other. And, if my imagination runs off  on a fantasy daydream, I just run with it, because this is what all of this is about! See below how I have the brief with indented detail, that remains separate and I can alter or re-position it later if I need to.

The Pallet Making Factory.
http://new-gta-game.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/gta-businesses-pallet-company.html

1. What am I doing now? Well. as a customer, I am able to buy pallets to put stock on. This is a business to business - operation, supplying transport pallets, that are manufactured from raw materials bought in and used to construct pallets. 
• We manufacture pallets, that are sold to other factories within the game world. We can produce as many as we like, because all surplus goes to export, (but for a lower bulk price). So, we have to develop our business by drumming up new trade, perhaps putting other pallet making companies out of business, (illegal shenanigans), or pay our workers less, buy raw materials cheaper, cut corners in the production, like heat is used in the cleaning and purification process of wooden pallets to kill parasites and hitch-hikers that live in and on the wood the pallets are made from. This is an expensive energy and time consuming process. Giving them a half treatment or no treatment, helps you cut corners (sometimes illegally), to gain better profits, etc.  
2. Now ask - How did this start? In the game, it could have already been up and running and a business that you can work-for, buy-into or take-over. Or it could be a disused building that was previously a factory of some similar sort, that you have rented or bought and set-up a business in from scratch. In this instance, I thought that it would be a factory that was already running, but in another later part to the story, as the business expands, the owner asks you to help him locate and buy a new factory, that you move the business into. This part of this storyline mission teaches you how to expand and upgrade your business and / or move premises to a more favorable location. 
• Some businesses, (Hey look! I'm side-tracking! Its OK! see...)! Start off in difficult locations, with the whole idea being, (its a game secret), to have you realize and develop the business to make it run better. So, you might not have an easy access, to your loading bay and have to look at other available locations, to site your business, to allow it to grow.
• You might start your noisy business, unknowingly, near a residential area and get complaints and attacks upon your staff or vehicles from distraught residents and get hassle from the police being called all the time. It would be better to move, as this would be the only cure. (But, you won't be told this directly as it is a game secret. You will have to work it out for yourself and perhaps listen to the advice of others, more wise in business acumen, in the game world. (Someone like Roman who is a good go-to guy for business ideas and information. This information would become available at certain points, when / if you ask)). This is a real world scenario teaching game as well, in my perfect GTA game.
• You start in the business, working for the company as a yard man sweeping-up and opening and closing the gate for deliveries. Later you are asked to drive the forklift and help when there is a rush on and this gives you the training to work as a pallet constructor, whereby you can earn more money over and above of your basic wage by hitting a certain manufacturing target each shift. 
• Within the jobs, game secrets exist, for numbers and time served, that trigger rewards (or disasters), within the job. Things like getting fired for being late 3 times in a row, or damaging a piece of machinery by crashing the forklift truck into it, or running over a work colleague, arguing with the foreman, stealing from the company, etc. You may get an early promotion if you save the company or boss or foreman money, or do favors for them, (even tackle events outside of the work environment for them). You wouldn't be told what the reward was, it should just be in your nature to help, lead or follow as your own personality directs. And THIS IS A BIG POINT about the whole idea behind how my imagined game works! You can choose to do everything you are led-into or make your own decisions, (just as you have to in real life), when faced with a decision or peer-pressure, or a decision to do good or bad and accept whatever consequences or rewards are going to be for the outcomes of your actions.
• You colleague asks you to go for a drink at lunch, its goes OK for a few days. But, one day, he wants to keep drinking and is getting all out of shape and angry. You can walk out on him, but perhaps he is becoming a good friend (or will be, you don't know), so you decide to knock him out and lock him in a store room at work, till he has had an hour to calm down and sober up. The possibilities are that he is discovered, if you don't keep covering for him. Eventually, he sobers up and offers you the next team workers job that becomes available.   Or if he is discovered, you both lose your jobs, or if you have ingratiated yourself with the boss, or foreman enough, perhaps just that guy gets the sack as they realize you were just trying to help him. Or perhaps he gets a days wages docked, etc. All these are possible outcomes that you won't know about, prior to helping the guy or leaving him to his own devices. 
• You can expand on this much more too. Like if you left him to get drunk, he ends up blaming you for losing his job and his life goes down the drain and he tries to kill you later in the game. Which is another point, when any AI has a problem with you, it is best to always tie up the loose-ends as it were. One day in the next week, on your own time, track him down, follow him, kill him and bury him somewhere he will not be discovered. Feed him to the sharks out at sea or in the Aqua-Zoo or feed him to the lions in the Zoo. Put him in a concrete overcoat holding up the bypass or use him in the foundations of the construction site down the road. Get it? (He will not come back to hassle you). Alternately, if all goes well, he could become a long term friend and right hand man - (as I have described elsewhere in other posts about building Mafia style gangs and families). He could run your Pallet factory for you when you take over and become the boss.  
3. Next question. Where does all the produce and products I am using come from? Every single item should have an original logical source, where you have to get a supply of whatever it is. We are selling a product. - Wooden-Pallets, these are an already manufactured item, many coming from abroad with the natural flow of imported goods. They are either reused by the company or business receiving the goods, or collected by the original transport company, or disposed of by throwing into the waste skips. 
• One aspect, could be to collect, clean and re-spray those good undamaged pallets for resale, or disassemble damaged pallets to be remade into new pallets. This is a normal practice within a pallet factory.  
• The factory operates mainly, by buying in raw materials like wood planks that are delivered from the imports company warehouse. Their availability depends upon shipping times and logistics within the game for time and available equipment to deliver those bulk deliveries to your factory yard. 
• Nails on strips or in cartridges for nail guns are another item purchased from a supplies warehouse that buy in bulk, (and like the wood supplies warehouse), keeps a regular minimum stock level, that you can effect by ordering more stock through that company, but you also have to pay upfront and collect or get the excess stock delivered asap, as that company won't have the storage to support your business 100%. 
• You have machinery in the factory, (that is already in place and maintained by an engineering company, at cost to your company, (under AI control as an initial idea)). New Machinery can be bought via special order within the game, that has a proper process of:- contact machinery company overseas, order brochure, select item, order and pay for machine, wait for delivery to docks, organize delivery to your factory and then stop production whilst location and installation is done within your factory. (Similar to The Sims, in placing your furniture. However, machines like these cannot be easily moved without delays in manufacturing and stopping production with time factors involved for a real world experience). Re-I don't want  The Sims feel where you just pause the game and move the items to a better location, then un-pause the game and everything just continues without any visible movement or delay). 
4. Last, Trace it back to the next logical real-world source and restart these questions? Everything comes from somewhere.. I've sort of already explained most of that, so when writing for a GTA story, keep looking back over what you say, because all stories will develop differently and these guideline questions I give are just that, (a guideline). You will find that you explain things in other areas that don't need any extra explanation in their natural position or category, but to move the article would make the story harder to read or understand.  Just write it as you need to. Also, if you read my other posts here, you can use them to refer to when describing how other related things work in the story. Like, I will often say, 'I made a post about this elsewhere', like how gangs work, or how the games AI stats work. Or I might say - add this idea to the games AI's stats, when it is something that I did not originally think of when I wrote the original AI stats post. By the way, the AI stats post is HERE - CLICK This Link!  So, I will expand on the pallet business idea here a little, just to show you what I do next when writing. I'll out line the business practices and workforce. 
• You buy-in, wood in bulk, in two size types, both in 20 foot lengths, in big stacks, that are delivered on a flatbed truck, that has its own crane. You can see a truck of the type I mean in the post linked to below - (keep it open, in a new tab to reference from here, it should open in a new tab on left click), here's the post called.

  GTA Businesses The Pallet Company.  (post article). 

• As the yard man, your job is to open the gate in time for the delivery truck, if you don't, he will wait for one hour in game time and return the order to his base and your company will still get charged for the delivery, because it actually was done, although you failed to accept the delivery. He will drop the load into the bay that should already be clear, or leave the load in the yard in a bay you can select when you talk to the driver. Technically. this should be easy to do if you think along the lines on how Farming Simulator's 'Tip Anywhere' mod, or the bunker bin process works. 
• The factory can run with one man, but production would run really slow. The idea is that as you meet people, you make new AI friends, who are just other members of the game world public. You can meet and talk with every AI you see in perfect GTA game. For example, if you were a taxi driver, you would gain info and intel on all sorts of people (like real taxi drivers do).    I digress, the point is you meet and learn lots about your game world. If those people you meet are looking for work or have work you can do, you can take them up on an offer or offer them work with you if you are in a position to offer it. 
• If you work at the pallet factory, you will eventually get the chance to move up to the next pay position by keeping up a good work record and achieving targets set. You will be working in a team, as the factory only runs smoothly if all the positions have someone to work them. A yard man, sweeps and cleans and moves raw materials and stock around to supply the construction workers with the raw materials and take away produced stock to loading areas and storage. Also, removes debris build up, from waste sawdust and sweepings to the bins. Also, you attend to the light security, of opening and closing the gate  for taking deliveries and collections of stock and waste, so that members of the public or criminals don't stray into the yard and steal wood or possibly hide in the yard, so they can break in more easily once everyone has gone home and the place is in darkness.
• A yard man is number 5 on the team. Team member number four is the saw man, who also does your jobs when you are not around, ill or off work or late, or in times when there is a lot of activity. He also is the main-gate key-holder as he has already been working there for a time and will have keys to the gate only, not to the factory. He is the main saw-man and pallet sprayer, most pallets won't need spraying, and remain in a bare wood state, but will be sprayed blue, yellow, green or red. Mainly to identify and comply with the customers corporate color request. However, the spray bay is an expansion to the company, as is the heat treatment. Without the heat-treatment plant, you cannot directly supply pallets to overseas customers, unless you get a competitor to heat treat and stamp your pallets for you, before they are shipped. He (the number 4 guy), is also responsible for the heat-treatment and stamping to say that the pallet has undergone heat treatment. You would perhaps collect a pallet load of nails in the company pickup truck. making sure to keep a full unopened pallet load in reserve if possible, when you only have one pallet left, that is the time to start to panic.
• Another job not mentioned yet, will be the large delivery truck, when or if the company expands to owning its own flatbed, that can tow a trailer with the forklift truck on it, so that the delivery can be a one man operation. This delivery job either falls to any worker that has a license to drive such a large truck, who is primarily the number 4 or number 5 guy. - yard-man second, saw-man first to be the driver.
• 
  
• Next in line is the construction workers 3, 2 and 1. Number one constructor, is also the main key holder and foreman for the factory and gets a bonus based on the other two workers production as well as his own! He is also the trainer and you will be taught by him and challenged by him to produce more and more till you hit the targets set.  
• There can also be an expansion to the business with a further 5 workers who are either an identical team or who can be solely construction workers under the number one man. Who also benefits from their production targets. This means that you and guy 4 have to work harder to supply 8 construction workers with materials. But, by now the foreman, number one guy, won't be working much, just telling everyone else what to do and pottering about on his own freestyle schedule, (and this is the job you are aiming for)! Its not that hard keep the supply to the 7 or 8 construction workers, but if it is the case, where they have not enough supplies, they will help and one worker will fall back to saw man till they have enough stock.  You may-well be asked to work an overtime day-shift or night-shift to get ahead with stock levels so that there will be enough cut materials and stock of nails and parts for nail guns to keep everyone running. Number 4 man also has the job of driving to collect stock of nails and nail-gun parts, and since he is the main saw man, must also keep an eye on stock levels. You keep a store room of nail belts or cartridges of 1,000 nail-packs for the nail guns and must always keep enough and make sure you order plenty in time to keep your store shelves full in case of delays in delivery or when the factory is running flat out. There will be other stores items like coffee, tea and sugar for the vending machines (if they are run by the company), and light bulbs and tools like airlines and fuel for the generator the engine that powers the pneumatic compression cylinder for the air guns.   
• Next there are the working Boss-Manager who is a 40% shareholder, (and an office secretary who does the accounts book-keeping and sales and wages invoices and slips). The boss-manager is also a  salesman who goes out touting for new business for his company, and is probably next in line to own the company as a major 60% share-holder. Currently, the sleeping partner is a 60% shareholder who you will hardly ever see. 
•    
• Bla Bla Bla etc. And you can see how this turns out in the post  The Pallet Business Details- Link will be here to - When I get the post finished. So that now you can see the whole process, but that part is not something that I usually post, as it contains all the technical detail like pallet dimensions and raw materials amounts used per pallet and space required to produce and store the goods. There is a lot of initial work and thought, that goes into creating a business idea for a game and the detail in the post that describes how everything works.   
• If you doubt any of this works, take a look at games like Forklift Simulator that works in a warehouse with shelving and pallets, Loading and unloading vehicles and working to a schedule. Next look at Farming Simulator 2011 (not 2013). For generating, storing and transporting produce. Also, consider Skyrim, as it has the feature whereby you can put a single item down, (or many items), like a sword or even kill someone and the body or article will remain in that same position all through the game unless it is moved by you. Re- items in GTA like cars that disappear, when you get too far away from them, unless they are in your garage or parking area. but, thinking more along the lines of moving stock and goods within the game and keeping a record of what is where. If they can do it in Skyrim and also games like Rail-Road Tycoon from 20 + years ago, it still must be possible now.

Next you would write out 'A day in the Life', type of post about how our protagonists day could go, if he had a good day or a bad day. Or how he gets the job, his first day at the new job, the day he gets promoted or the day he gets fired. What about the day he becomes foreman or, deals with an accident at work, gets offered another job working for a competitor, deals with a fire at the factory, a police raid, or stashing guns or a stolen car or drugs at the factory. What if he robs the office safe one night before wages day, or has to buy and install new machinery, deal with the factory moving, chases vandals off or has to repair broken windows and bulbs or chasing a business debt for the owner, (doing some repo work). Buying stock, like new air-nail guns and parts to service them, nails for the guns, driving the works van. Protecting the secretary from the unwanted attentions of a stalker. buying paints for the spraying machine.

So, you can see that there are lots of scenarios you can expand upon, and each can be triggered by other certain events, that may never show themselves depending on you actions. Like, for example, you get drunk after work and agree to sleep it off in the factory, or hide a stolen vehicle in the factory, where the owner of the car, who had cars stolen several times before, decided to mine his own car with a remote car-bomb, (Patric MaCreary style), in case it was stolen again. For whatever reason, the factory goes up in smoke and you are blamed and end up in prison on theft, arson and conspiracy charges.   

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Have a great day!
Niko.



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