How the Developers of Oxenfree Managed to Write Teens Who Sound like Teens
The supernatural adventure game heavily features angsty teenagers, who are not always the kinds of characters you want to hear talk endlessly.
Convincing dialogue for a video game is already a tough assignment. Dialogue that sounds authentically teenager sounds even harder. But credit to the folks at Night School Studio with Oxenfree, a delightfully spooky adventure game from 2016 about a group of teenagers who accidentally opening a dimensional rift—it totally worked.
There are light puzzles in Oxenfree and its 2023 sequel, but these games about characters walking from one place to another, and players taking in the atmosphere and chatter. The vibes are very important. These games do not work if the characters do not work. There are no clever combat or platforming mechanics to fall back on.
Oxenfree clicked because it felt authentic, but it was basically a happy accident.
“I never really considered how an ‘actual’ teen would talk, or try to write through the prism of someone specifically that age,” said Night School Studio creative director Adam Hines in an interview. “I don't really care how people ‘actually' talk, in general, just that it's interesting and entertaining to hear them speak, and that nothing they say pulls the player out of the experience because of how ‘off’ the dialogue is, either by sounding too theatrical or too polished. I just wanted them to sound like authentic, individual people with interesting vocal tics and cadences. It was important that their interests were age-appropriate; no one should complain of back pain or rising mortgage rates. But that was really the only consideration given to their age.”
Accident is the wrong word, perhaps. Hines’ goal was authenticity, but it wasn’t authentically teenager—it was authentically human. Teenagers are younger, more awkward versions of ourselves trying to figure out where we slot, even if most of us don’t have to solve a supernatural mystery along the way.
“I never want to write characters that are just jokes,” said Hines, who noted the short-lived 1999 TV show Freaks and Geeks and the classic 1986 drama Stand By Me as huge influences, “that the audience is meant to only just laugh at, or meant to feel above. It really just means to have every character respond and behave as honestly as you can, and not reduced to tropes.”
Perhaps it’s not a surprise that Oxenfree worked on me if Stand By Me, released one year after I was born, and Freaks and Geeks, released as I was in the midst of being a teenager myself, were creative pulls for the people putting it together. It was speaking to the interpretations and depictions of teenagers that were swirling me at the time.
“I definitely drew from my experiences as a teenager,” said Hines. “I would think about what used to make me nervous or self-aware. Especially in the early goings of the game, when Alex [the main character in Oxenfree] is being introduced to her brother, and forced to introduce him to her ‘friend’ circle. I remember moments like that in my life, when you're trying to balance spending social currency, trying to not make a fool of yourself, trying to not take anything too seriously while also trying to make a newcomer feel welcome and included.”
I’ve been fortunate in having a core group of friends most of my life. People come in and out, and it’s expanded and contracted, but it’s rare when I’ve been the newcomer. Instead, I’m trying to make people feel comfortable, because they’re joining our group.
There was one time in college, though, where I tried to merge two distinct groups of friends and it went spectacularly wrong. I invited my college friends and my lifelong pre-college friends to get drunk at my family’s Wisconsin getaway, thinking it’d be a good time, and it was the opposite of that. Everyone fought, one of the doors got busted down, and we didn’t collect enough money for the booze. It was terrible.
…anyway.
An easy worry in crafting dialogue for a game like Oxenfree would be making it sound so authentic that it ended up being a turnoff. There is a reason many people are anxious to leave teenage years behind. How long would you want to listen to teenagers?
“The only aspect of the dialogue I thought some people might find annoying is my natural tendency to add in a lot of ‘uh's’ and stutters,” said Hines. “But it's important to me that characters trip over themselves, or start to say something a particular way, and then stop, back up, and try again. It's just how I write, and what I look for in writing—an awareness and acknowledgement of the messiness of communication. I don't do it seeking true naturalism, but use it as a tool to indicate the character's mental state, how confident they are in what they are saying, and to hit what I see as a musicality in the dialogue. It should ultimately sound pleasing to the ear, still, even if a character is struggling to say something important to them.”
Hines told me Night School Studio didn’t playtest the game with teenagers before it shipped, but it didn’t take much searching to find teenagers who played the game.
In a highly amusing reddit post from when the original game was released, there’s someone worried they’re out of touch because they find the dialogue annoying and “every character just puts me off.” Quickly, several self-identifying teens weighed in:
“Teenager here. I first played the game shortly after its release and loved it since. I can tell you that most teens definitely talk that way. That's one of the things I personally loved about Oxenfree: the authenticity in each character's dialogue. I wouldn't say you're "out of touch", but the game probably does appeal more to a teen/adolescent audience than it would to others.”
“I just think Ren is plain annoying but I love all the other characters 😂 Im 12 and some people do act like that, not all the time tho.”
“being a teenager, I find this dialogue rather natural.”
Hey, seems like they pulled it off!
Oxenfree's sequel, Oxenfree II, was released earlier this year. Because the developers are owned by Netflix, you can play the game for free if you already have a subscription.
They’re both delightful games, and well worth your time during this spooky season.
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Also:
Oxenfree II didn’t work as well for me as the original, but I bet it would’ve landed harder had I played them them back-to-back, which I highly recommend.
Can you think of other examples of kid dialogue that sounded natural? Life Is Strange doesn’t really try to feel grounded, but it still totally worked for me.
Stand By Me was a longstanding “I can’t believe I haven’t seen it” movie, but I finally fixed that during the early days of COVID, when we were stuck inside.
My partner and I played through Life Is Strange over the past few months. I'd heard various things about it, notably divisiveness around the dialog. I totally get why. I felt some off moments, oddly most prominent in random "Look" internal dialog half-jokes. Overall it really worked for both of us, especially when paired with character choices that felt very true to kids dealing with impossible situations.
This makes me want to give Oxenfree another try. It also makes me wonder how much plot and setting influence the "appropriateness" or "natural" feel of dialog.