The thing about writing for games is to remember that the story exists to serve the game design, not the other way around. As much as a game might look or sound like a movie (or graphic novel, or radio play), those surface similarities can be deceptive and a trap for a writer.

A movie is what an audience sees and hears; it's what the characters do. A game is what the players do. There's nothing wrong with having sequences where a player's action is "listen and watch" — call them in-game cinematics, cutscenes, or whatever — but if they're too many, or too long, or too unrelated to the gameplay, players will get impatient and just want to skip past them.

Cinematics can be movie-like, but unlike a movie clip, the content holds interest mainly insofar as it affects what a player can, or can't, or wants to do next.

• Showing an enemy unbuckle his sword and put it in a certain place before he goes to bed could be riveting... if players will get to enter that environment and steal the sword.
• An explosion that collapses a building could be spectacular... if it forces players to devise a new plan for getting where they need to go next.
• A moment between two characters could heighten emotional involvement... if it affects a player's feelings about an action they've recently taken, or are planning to take, or a possible future outcome.

Theater and film writers, actors and directors learn to analyze scenes in terms of what characters want: moment-to-moment, and in the big picture. Every beat, every prop, every word or look or touch is a potential window of insight into the progress of a human quest. To become aware of another person's goal, to watch them try, fail, modify their strategy, and try again to achieve it, is inherently fascinating. Notice how people on the sidewalk will stop to watch someone struggle to maneuver their car into a too-small parking space. Empathy and suspense flow naturally in such situations.

We don't play video games to passively watch someone else's adventures or experience emotions vicariously. (For that, we have movies, novels, and our local supermarket.) We play games to become the active protagonist of our own adventures. Identifying with the player's character or other characters in a game story might deepen or enhance our experience, but the suspense, pleasure and pain we care most about is our own: the feelings that arise in the course of attempting to succeed in our game objectives.

A video game writer should weigh and analyze every scene and script element not only in terms of what the characters want, but what the player wants. When a player is unsure of what their goal is, or how what they're currently seeing onscreen might affect it, an inner boredom clock begins to tick — even if the screen is filled with spectacular action, emotion, sound and fury.

Game cinematics are sometimes described as "giving the player a breather." I think a more accurate metaphor is pulling the player underwater. Hold them there too long, and your game will start to drown. My advice is to use cinematics sparingly and judiciously: not as window dressing or to show off production value, but at moments when you truly have something important and useful to tell players about the game world and gameplay objectives they're invested in.