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ОглавлениеCHAPTER 00
LOADING …
When Desmond Miles is kidnapped by a sinister corporation, they use a machine to send his consciousness back in time, where he is forced to re-live the adventures of his ancestors—a secret society of assassins. Can Desmond survive and stop the evil company’s plans to change history?
After his airplane crashes in the middle of the Atlantic, Jack discovers a man-made underwater Utopia called “Rapture.” But the city has gone mad: its gene-splicing-addicted citizens attack him, monstrous “Big Daddies” try to kill him on sight, and Rapture’s autocratic founder will stop at nothing to maintain control. Can Jack escape to the surface before he becomes an unwitting pawn in this sub-marine madhouse?
After landing on a gargantuan, ring-shaped planet, the Master Chief, a genetically enhanced super-soldier, must battle a fanatical civilization known as the Covenant. Can he stop them before they can use their super weapon to destroy all life in the galaxy?
DO THESE BLURBS sound like the plots of Hollywood’s upcoming summer blockbusters? They easily could be. Each of these story lines forms the basis of a multi-million-dollar franchise with a global audience, shelves full of licensed merchandise, legions of cosplaying fans, and side-stories in multiple media.
But these are NOT the plots of movies coming to a theater near you (not at the time of this writing, anyway, although Halo: Nightfall is a TV series). These are the story lines, worlds, and characters of blockbuster video games: Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, and Halo. They are huge franchises born from video game stories. These games are interactive narratives that take place in very rich worlds populated with involving characters that inspire players to continue to interact and explore even after they’ve “beat the game.” Video game stories and characters—their intellectual property (or “IP”)—are the next great frontier of our collective pop culture imagination. Video games have finally come of age. Great stories are being told.
We’ve only mentioned three so far, but you can probably name many more: Call of Duty, Borderlands, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, and God of War.
Does that list seem too hardcore?
Let’s not forget the billions of dollars amassed by such family-friendly game franchises as Skylanders, Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, Professor Layton, Ratchet & Clank, and Clash of Clans. That list goes on and on as well.
Where did this all start? When did games become more than games and a place where great stories might be told? Just as the movies can be traced back to the success of a lovable tramp, we think the first “box-office star” … the Charlie Chaplin of the arcades … was a plumber who helped to launch a thousand quarters, quests, multiple sub-franchises and a billion dollar industry: MARIO!
W00T! A.K.A. WOW, LOOT!
Consumers in North America spent over $21 billion on games at retail last year,1 and that’s just on traditional “games-in-a-box” played with game consoles and personal computers. Worldwide and across all platforms, including mobile and tablet games, the number has been estimated at $93 billion.2 (We’re not great with big numbers, but here’s a comparison: for the same period, worldwide theatrical box office revenue was $35.9 billion.3) Even though thousands of “free to play” games are available nowadays, passionate players are still willing to spend big on games that engage them.
Furthermore, everyone plays video games now. Think about that. Video games have been around for almost 50(!) years, and for much of that time games have been made for and played by teenage boys. But we play games at all ages now: Roughly a third of gamers are younger than 18, a little more than a third are older than 36, and the remaining third are in the 18–35 year range. And the gender breakdown is almost even: 48% female, 52% male.4
The audience for games has exploded in the last 10 years, with the advent of touch-screen smartphones and tablets, as well as easy-to-use download stores like Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and Steam. And we can’t forget Nintendo’s million-unit-selling Wii console, whose groundbreaking wiggle stick controllers helped thousands of parents and grandparents to play video games—many for the first time. But while more people than ever are playing video games, not everyone identifies themselves as a “gamer.” (And that’s okay. We’ll discuss this later on.)
With this huge and diverse audience playing games, some Cassandras are now foretelling the END OF HOLLYWOOD AS WE KNOW IT.
It is not. Video games (and interactive fiction) are merely the latest media for writers to use their storytelling skills. We have a generation that has grown up with games. The Xbox has replaced the cable box. Hollywood is not going anywhere, but neither are video games. We believe that—just as television learned from film and film learned from television—it is time to examine the similarities and differences between games and film as storytelling media. The new writers in Hollywood have grown up with games in their homes and in their purses. From mobile to desktop, games are part of the pop culture conversation.
The emerging and the established writer in Hollywood—or who dreams of Hollywood, or dreams of storytelling anywhere in the world—should know how interactive narrative adds to the conversation and adds to the content.
A CRIMINALLY BRIEF HISTORY OF STORYTELLING TECHNOLOGY
Writers have always been drawn to new tech. From cave walls to the printing press—if there is a new way of delivering a story, storytellers will (usually) embrace it. Gutenberg’s press was first used to print the Bible, but many other works soon followed. As books grew less expensive over time, newspapers, magazines, and “dime novels” were even cheaper—as they were designed to be mass-produced and distributed as widely as possible. Charles Dickens—a master of serialized storytelling and therefore the great-grandfather of binge watching—delivered his novels one chapter at a time in cheap, disposable weekly or monthly magazines. Devoted fans of his work and his characters would bark at him as he walked through London: What have you in store for poor Pip?
When radio emerged as a mass medium, writers began scripting radio plays: comedies, mysteries, science-fiction, adventure, melodramas … you name it. Families gathered around the radio each night and listened to stories (and sometimes musical numbers). Orson Welles, who had made his name as a stage director, used this new medium in a legendary way when he staged H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds as a radio play, without telling the audience it was a play. America thought they were listening to a music program when the performance was interrupted with a special news report: Martians were invading the Earth via Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. Welles’s cleverly disguised narrative made use of then-familiar radio tropes to cause a national panic, if only for one night.
Remember those two names: Welles and Wells.
When film arrived around the turn of the twentieth century, it was a novelty. Early projections of trains coming into a station alarmed viewers. Wanderers in penny arcades would put coins into kinetoscopes to watch what we would now think of as animated .GIFs. (BioShock Infinite uses a silent movie within the game to tell part of the story. The machine the player sees it on: a kinetoscope.)
But there were no stories on film … until very short fiction films began to appear, like Edwin S. Porter’s twelve-minute The Great Train Robbery (1903). Audiences (groups of people watching together, rather than the lonely experience of the kinetoscope) sat on benches or chairs in tents, or in theaters. Barely a dozen years later D. W. Griffith’s incredibly successful (and incredibly racist) The Birth of a Nation (1915) proved that longer, “feature-length” movies were a viable means of telling longer, more complex, and multi-threaded stories. Even silent movies needed writers (or “scenarists”). Someone had to conceive the plot and write the intertitles.
Movies came of age in 1939. This was the beginning of Hollywood’s golden age. Why 1939? The years 1939 to 1942 saw the release of a trove of classic films that continue to captivate viewers to this day:
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Destry Rides Again
Gone with the Wind
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
The Maltese Falcon
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Ninotchka
Rebecca
The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu)
The Wizard of Oz
Young Mr. Lincoln
Citizen Kane changed the medium. It set new expectations for cinematic storytelling. Its director? Orson Welles, the same boy wonder who created a national panic with his radio play.
Americans went to the movies in record numbers each week. But things change. Television landed in living rooms, so many moviegoers landed on the couch. Today, not as many Americans go to the movies as they did back then, but more of the world goes. Hence, Hollywood’s appetite for computer generated imagery (CGI) and animation spectacles. KA-BOOM! and SPLAT! are understood worldwide.
Pick up any issue of any magazine that covers entertainment, eavesdrop at a table where writers hang out, look at the original programming offered by not only the broadcast and cable networks, but also Netflix, Amazon and other streaming providers, and you will hear this consensus: we are in a golden age of television. It has never been better. Broadband and binge watching have changed the way stories are told. Audiences love long-form serialized storytelling. Kind of like what Dickens used to do. (Then again, many big game franchises have been providing longform episodic storytelling for, well, a lot longer than Netflix has.)
Television as a storytelling medium did not begin with a golden age. Mom and Dad America did not unwrap their TV dinners and enjoy Breaking Bad or The Sopranos. For decades, many TV shows were essentially radio programs with pictures. (Many very early TV shows, like Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, started out as radio programs.) TV’s current golden age—with its nuanced, cinematic storytelling—took close to seventy-five years to get here. For decades, television was the most underappreciated and most often disparaged medium (besides comic books). Theater critic John Mason Brown famously called TV “chewing gum for the eyes.”5 It was unfashionable in smart circles to declare that you might actually enjoy watching television. Does that attitude seem familiar to those of us who love video games?
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GAMES?
We’ve come a long way from the bouncing ball that was Pong. We are now in a golden age of video game storytelling. Thankfully, the technology has plateaued in recent years. In the last generation of high-def game consoles, you could see the nose hair growing out of the nostrils of the zombies that were about to kill you. In the current “next generation,” you can see individually animated legs on the mites on the nose hairs of the zombies that are about to kill you. For most game players, the most meaningful technological advancements of the last decade have been innovative controllers (via touch screens, cameras, plastic guitars, and wiggle sticks), better networking and, by far, the portability and ease of use provided by both smartphones and their app stores.
What’s been so exciting about this is that so many creators have been able to focus on making more immersive and emotionally compelling stories with better gameplay, rather than having to spend so much time learning how to render graphics on totally new platforms. Half-Life, Halo, Assassin’s Creed, Fallout 3, BioShock, Uncharted, Mass Effect, The Last of Us—all these landmark story-driven franchises have players returning again and again to experience the next chapter in the story; to explore more deeply these compelling worlds.
Although they’re not “playable movies,” their graphics and sound are cinematic. Advances in motion capture and a thousand other bits of technology allow more realism and beauty. The worlds and story lines have attracted A-list Hollywood talent. Music tracks are no longer the ping-ping-ping of an 8-bit chip but sweeping symphonic scores. World building and mythology are unparalleled. What was the norm for the video game industry now has become a key point in every story conference for movies and television. The creators and narrative designers of these games—Ken Levine (BioShock), Susan O’Connor (Tomb Raider), David Cage (Heavy Rain) and many others—are treated like rock stars at game conferences.
Agents, managers, and writers talk about how a writer in today’s world should know how to write it all: movies, novels, plays, articles, and “webisodes.” Even video games.
HOLLYWOOD CALLING!
Film and television industry executives have long been fascinated by video games. But, like many grown-ups, they’ve had a very hard time understanding them. But if there’s one thing blockbuster movies and games have in common, it’s that their creators and distributors are always pursuing The Big Idea.
Hollywood loves The Big Idea. The high-concept one-liner. The story that gets butts in movie seats. The tantalizing “What If?” question that people pay you to answer. The IP that can feed the fans’ insatiable appetite for sequels and spin-offs (and book tie-ins and toys and T-shirts). Every big media company wants nothing more than a franchise like Star Wars, in which the slightest announcement of new information or release of a new trailer can fill the halls at comic conventions and might even crash Twitter.
The appeal is twofold: for creators and fans, it’s about the fun of exploring an exciting world and getting to know fascinating characters; for the suits, it’s about the money! As Gus Grissom (actor Fred Ward) says in The Right Stuff, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”
The first modern American transmedia franchise was, arguably, The Wizard of Oz (and we don’t mean the beloved 1939 MGM film—that came almost four decades later). L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. The book was a best-seller for years, and Baum wrote thirteen more novels based in the “merry old land of Oz.” He then brought the franchise to the stage as a musical play, which had a successful run on Broadway and toured the United States. In 1914 he expanded into movies with a series of silent films produced by his own Oz Film Manufacturing Company.6 There were spin-offs and merchandise (both licensed and unlicensed) for nearly forty years before audiences ever got to see Judy Garland wear her sequined ruby slippers.
All these journeys to Oz across multiple media made Baum a fortune. (He later lost a fortune, but that’s a different story.) Audiences bought his books and tickets to his shows because they already knew of Oz and its characters, but wanted to know more. It was much easier for Baum to sell a new Oz-based book—for which there was an existing audience—than it was for him to sell a new book set in a different world. (He tried many times with non-Oz stories.) The film studio and game publisher marketing executives call this “pre-awareness,” and it’s the Holy Grail they’re always pursuing.
Those pre-aware movie audiences love being taken to explore new locations within their favorite worlds, going on new emotional journeys with their favorite characters. The dramatic theory (according to Aristotle—more on him later) is that the audience empathically bonds with the main character, and as that protagonist changes, the audience comes to experience emotional change, or catharsis.
And all this happens when they are sitting—passively—in their movie seats. But we’re not here to discuss passive entertainment; this book is about interactive entertainment.
WHY “SLAY THE DRAGON”?
With video games, players are in the driver’s seat (sometimes literally, if it’s a racing game like Gran Turismo). They are immersed—emotionally and physically—in the game. A hero in a movie might need to rescue the princess by slaying the big dragon, and we in the movie audience want to SEE him do it. But in a game, we the players want to slay the dragon and rescue the princess (or prince) through the vessel of the player character (PC). We also want plenty to do and see along the way. We’re players; we want to play.
One of the axioms of dramatic writing is that action is character. If we see a character doing something, it defines who they are. But in video games, we’re the ones driving the PC’s actions. We’re helping to define (and become) the character we control on the screen. These game mechanics are what the player gets to do in the game: Run. Jump. Shoot. Explore. Collect. Solve. Beat the Boss. Be the Boss. (More on all this later). They are motivated by story and quests and goals to pound the joystick, press X, Y. To lean forward and live in the story as the character would.
In the past, this was the most humbling thing for game writers to learn. Players are often not as interested in what happens in the story you have authored as they are in what happens in the story they are authoring themselves by playing the game. You, the writer, have to learn to tell your story through the lens of PLAYER ACTION. If the player cannot succeed, the character does not succeed. But the times have changed: players and audiences want deeper content and characters they can connect to. Why do we see gamers jumping back to Liberty City any chance they get?
In his groundbreaking book on Hollywood screenwriting, Save the Cat, the late Blake Snyder showed us how important it is for us in the movie audience to invest emotionally in the hero. He called those scenes that make us begin to root for the movie hero the “Save the Cat scenes.” Video games have a very similar but more active principle: The players have to invest emotionally in the journey you’ve laid out for them.
The player wants to slay the dragon.
This is what the player cares about. The story has to involve the player. The player has to want to do and see cool things in the game world.
The game mechanics (such as dragon slaying) should enhance the story, and vice versa. They have to work in concert. We’ll guide you in the coming pages so you understand how to tell your story through the gameplay in an integrated fashion. Gameplay is like action scenes in movies. They have to be organic to the story line for the audience to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride. The best games accomplish this fine alchemy between narrative and gameplay so that one enhances and reinforces the other (think of the big mid-game twist in BioShock). Your quest, outlined in the chapters to come, is to master that alchemy.
MEET YOUR QUEST GIVERS: BOB & KEITH
In video games, NPCs are the non-player characters who often guide the PC through the world. These digital sidekicks hand out missions and information to the PC. They are the quest givers, the rule enforcers, the explainers. (Think of Cortana, the Master Chief’s AI sidekick in Halo.) You know them in game worlds as mentors, vendors, barkeeps, pass-ersby, teachers, and trainers. We are going to be your quest givers. We’re excited to explore with you this complex, awe-inspiring world of video game narrative.
We are not going to steal your virtual loot and sell it on eBay (though one of us knows how).
Our story begins in a 1920s apartment complex on Orange Grove Avenue in the heart of Los Angeles. If the story has a title, it’s Aristotle vs. Mario. It’s a branching narrative (which is something we’ll discuss later on when we talk about structure).
Bob and Keith had both recently graduated with master’s degrees from top film schools—the University of Southern California and New York University, respectively. The found themselves living two doors from each other, and became friends over Ethiopian food on Fairfax Avenue, too many Oki-Dogs, the L.A. Riots, and drives down to the San Diego Comic-Con (back when you could still find parking).
Keith’s path took him on the road to Hollywood. He co-wrote feature film scripts with his wife Juliet and was a working screenwriter for years.
Bob went to work in the video game business. He started at the bottom as game tester (think production assistant, mailroom clerk, or script reader). Bob quickly worked his way up the video game ladder, moving into product development and then becoming a studio director, serving as executive producer on dozens of games.
Bob spent hours playing all kinds of games, and way too much World of Warcraft. Keith would get schooled in Halo by his nephews. They continued to be friends, have dinners, go down to Comic-Con with professional passes, read comic books, and talk movies and games.
But even though they thought they were on divergent paths, their two worlds were gradually coming together. Xboxes and PlayStations were being marketed to adults, not just teens and parents. Kids who grew up playing video games were now working in the film business as writers, directors, and visual effects artists.
One year Bob took Keith to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) at the Los Angeles Convention Center. (Think of it as the Cannes Film Festival for the video game industry.) It was Keith’s very first time, and he felt like Luke walking into the cantina at Mos Eisley, but with less danger and fewer loppings. Way more lightsabers, though.
Keith saw a giant world of entertainment and exciting story lines enjoyed by millions of people. The crowds were huge, rushing between gigantic booths with stadium-sized screens set up by the game publishers and hardware makers: Activision. Ubisoft. Electronic Arts. Square-Enix. Xbox. PlayStation. Nintendo. The booths were lavishly designed, with characters from the games walking about for photo ops. The giant screens played the trailers for these games on continuous loop, their orchestral soundtracks booming throughout the halls: Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy.
These games looked and felt like movies! The quality of the content was seductive. The computer animation was as good as watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But more importantly, the stories that were up on the screen were inviting, begging to be seen. Film and games are no longer distant cousins, they are blood brothers. The South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival focuses on music, film, and games. The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival debuted footage from a game called Beyond: Two Souls “starring” Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. Kevin Spacey (House of Cards’ Frank Underwood) plays the villain in a recent Call of Duty. Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer wrote the music for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
The worlds have collided and the landscape of entertainment is bigger and teeming with possibilities. (Side note: the last time Bob and Keith went to E3, they accidentally wound up at a bar in the nearby Hotel Figueroa having cupcakes and beer with an adult film star, who was pitching her own game project. Our point is: everybody is getting into video games!)
Sure, movies have influenced games. Uncharted is an interactive Indiana Jones. Tomb Raider is a female Indiana Jones. In Minecraft, you are Indiana Jones.
But every relationship works two ways. Video games have also been influencing movies and books and television. Are we the only ones who thought the levels of the mind portrayed in Inception played out like video game levels?
The first blockbuster mainstream CD-ROM game was the classic Myst, about an island that contains lots of mysteries. Does that premise seem familiar to modern TV audiences? Here’s what Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof had to say about the similarities:
For me certainly, the big game-changer was Myst. There’s a lot of that feeling in Lost. What made it so compelling was also what made it so challenging. No one told you what the rules were. You just had to walk around and explore these environments and gradually a story was told. And Lost is the same way.7
Booker Prize-winning novelist Sir Salman Rushdie used video games as a form of escapism during his years of hiding from Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa. He has said he is quite fond of Mario. Video game structure has influenced his storytelling. His novel Luka and the Fire of Life contains a main character, “Super Luka,” who is given 999 lives and has to pass through a number of “levels” to steal the fire of life and use it to wake his father from a coma. He remarked how non-linear narrative is fascinating for him to explore. “I think that really interests me as a storyteller,” he said, “to tell the story sideways.”8
SCREENWRITER MEETS GAME PRODUCER, FIGHT BREAKS OUT
Remember we said our story was branching? Let’s return to it. Keith continued to work as a film and television writer, but he always kept one eye open a little wider on what was happening in video games. Bob went on to executive produce more games. He was working on a game that had been mechanic-driven and was based on a toy company’s IP. The game world, though, seemed a little thin.
“I need a writer,” he said to Keith in the food court of the L.A. Convention Center. They were taking a break from a comic book show.
“For what?” Keith asked, his feet still aching from walking the picket lines for the then-in-progress Writers Guild strike.
“A game I’m producing. If you want to audition for it, I need you to write some barks for the NPCs.”
“Barks?” “NPCs?” Bob was speaking a language different from what Keith was used to hearing. (It’s a language we’ll teach you in the coming pages.) Keith asked a few questions, figured it out, wrote some barks and auditioned for the job of “narrative designer,” which is game-speak for “staff writer.” Then Keith went to work for Bob at a toy company writing video games.
Although they’d written and commented on each other’s work for years, this was the first time they worked together professionally. They got along very well, except when they would argue about the role that story should play in the game.
“It’s not a movie!”
“The character needs more of an arc!”
“Agency?!? What the heck is that?”
“The audience has to care! They have to be involved!”
“They’re players, not an audience!”
It was story points vs. game mechanics. It was Aristotle vs. Mario; drama vs. fun. They would spend hours discussing dramatic structure of movies and television and video games. What was the same? What was different? It was an ongoing education, from which they decided to create a course in game writing offered through the prestigious Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.
Their very first class was a day-long seminar. They had no idea who, if anyone, would show up. It was on a sunny 75-degree Sunday in Westwood. Who’d want to sit in a room with Bob and Keith and learn about story structure, game mechanics, and barks?
But the classroom was packed. Every seat was taken. There were people who worked in game design and community management; there were screenwriters; there were aspiring game designers; and, most surprisingly, an A-list actress/producer and her husband/producing partner, himself a working TV actor. During a break Keith asked her, “Why are you taking this class?” She said it was because she knew this was an emerging arena for storytellers and as a producer she wanted to know more.
Keith and Bob went on to expand the class to a full-semester course in the Writers’ Program at UCLA. Keith then moved east and now teaches the class at Syracuse University. Bob has taken the class to new heights, both teaching it online internationally and incorporating it into game production courses he creates at other schools.
They have seen their students enter the game industry armed with a deep understanding of how story works for games.
This is our goal for you, the reader of this book. To level up your abilities as a writer.
WHO NEEDS THIS BOOK?
We’re convinced that in order for them to succeed, today’s screenwriters must understand the interactive medium.
Many film directors working today openly acknowledge the influence video games have on their work. Listen to director Joe Cornish, discussing his movie Attack the Block:
“The monsters were kind of inspired by a SNES game called Another World, which was one of the first games to use motion capture,” Cornish said. “It had some terrific creatures that were made out of silhouettes.” The idea of staging Attack the Block’s events in a single location was something else that, Cornish maintains, came from the realm of video games. It was, he said, a “unified space”—something commonly seen in first-person shooters.9
Dan Trachtenberg directed an original short film based on the video game Portal. It went viral, logging more than fifteen million views.10 He is now attached to direct the movie version of the comic book Y: The Last Man written by Brian K. Vaughn, a comic book writer and producer on Lost.
Warner Bros. scored a huge hit with The Lego Movie. Audiences have been playing with Lego for years. But in all the reviews (which were glowing) and discussions of the film’s success, we noticed a complete lack of love for the Lego games. For years, people have been living in Lego worlds, not just with the toy bricks, but with the funny animated adventures that go along with playing any of the Lego games, including Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Star Wars, and Lego Batman. It’s the Lego games of the last 10 years, made by English developer Traveller’s Tales, which inspired The Lego Movie’s comic sensibility. The Lego movie only broke new ground in movie theaters. There was an audience of millions already familiar with that world. We were disappointed that film reviewers didn’t acknowledge this.
Seizing on the success of the Lego movie, it’s no wonder Warner Bros. has put Minecraft into accelerated development as a feature film franchise. To millions of people around the world it’s already a franchise! A movie would be icing on a very big cake that has already been baked. (BTW, the creator of Minecraft was able to purchase a $70 million home in Los Angeles. We guess you need a pretty big kitchen for that pretty big cake.)
Remember those story pitches that started this chapter? As we write this, they are all in development as motion pictures. Michael “Magneto” Fassbender is attached to star in Assassin’s Creed. Ridley Scott’s company is developing the Halo feature film. Although, as of this writing, it’s stuck in “development hell,” we fully expect to be on line the first day for the BioShock movie.
Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft has been compared to the next Marvel for raising money to develop its own properties for the big screen, including two games based on Tom Clancy novels-turned-game franchises: Splinter Cell (with Tom Hardy attached) and Ghost Recon.11
Games are not just about games anymore. The worlds are colliding. Swirling around you. It can be very confusing. We’re here to clear up the differences, to bridge the similarities, and to get you thinking about that alchemy!
We hope you find the ideas and exercises within to be a worthy quest. We wrote this book for you, if you are:
• a writer who wants to explore interactive storytelling,
• a writer who wants to understand the role of story in the game development process,
• a game writer (or gameplay designer) who wants to make your work more integrated and emotionally resonant with gameplay (and vice versa); or
• a passionate fan of story-driven video games.
At the end of each chapter are some Dragon Exercises. We encourage you to do them. Let us be your quest givers here to take you through world-building, character creation, branching narratives, and game mechanics (among many other topics).
It’s time to begin your journey.
It’s time to slay the dragon!
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK (PRESS X TO SKIP)
Movies (and television) and video games; video games and movies. This book is a bridge between those two types of media. Let’s call them linear narrative and interactive narrative.
You may be very familiar with the material on linear narrative: character, conflicts, and all the other tenets of drama. But you might not know anything about game mechanics and gameplay. Or, you may be an avid game player—or game creator—who is familiar with gameplay but might not know about story structure. With that in mind, we have laid out some “choose-your-own-adventure” options to help guide you through the book. As much as we hate to skip over cut scenes, sometimes it happens. So we are providing you with a SKIP button here.
If You Are a Writer and Know a Little about Games
Most of this book is going to be new to you. Sure, you will be tempted to skip over story and jump right to gameplay. But you want to make sure you read the story material also, for it is wildly different in interactive narrative.
Must-read chapters: all of them!
If You Are a Game Developer and Know a Little about Story
For a game dev, a chapter like “What’s in a Game?” may seem like a boot camp tutorial. So skip it. And you can probably skip over game mechanics. But don’t pass up story, or characters. Even level design has something to offer on how it applies to what keeps viewers in their seats—engaging content.
Must-read chapters:
2. Do Games Need Stories?
3. Aristotle vs. Mario
4. The No-Act-Fits-All Structure of Video Games
5. Writing a Great Playable Character
6. Who Am I When I Play? Gameplay as Method Acting
8. The Hero of a Thousand Levels
9. Building Your World with the Narrative Design Toolbox
12. What Happens Next?
If You Are a Film Producer or Creative Exec Looking for the Next Big Crossover IP
Everyone wants to be that genius at the studio who makes the video game movie (or TV show) work. So far it hasn’t. Why is that? We think you should read through the entire book to make your job easier. Bridge the two worlds together. You are not looking to break into the video game business, so you will probably skip most of the exercises as well.
Must-read chapters:
1. What’s in a Game?
2. Do Games Need Stories?
3. Aristotle vs. Mario
4. The No-Act-Fits-All Structure of Video Games
5. Writing a Great Playable Character
6. Who Am I When I Play? Gameplay as Method Acting
7. Game Design Basics for Writers
8. The Hero of a Thousand Levels
12. What Happens Next?
If You Teach and Use this as a Textbook
Everything in this book has been beta-tested in our classrooms. We have structured the book so you can use it to map out your semester. Each chapter contains exercises and projects that we have workshopped with our own students with great success. Our students have gone on to work in the video game field as writers, producers, testers, and even journalists.
Must-read chapters: all of them!
If You Are a Hobbyist and Want to Make Your Own Game
Read it all the way through from beginning to the end. (And don’t forget the exercises!)
DRAGON EXERCISES 00
Playing to Learn
AT THE END of each chapter we’ve suggested some exercises for you to do. This is not homework. This is fun. This is brainstorming, or getting your brain ready to be stormed with your great game idea(s).
1 START YOUR GAME JOURNAL
Games are meant to be played. Funny how simple that seems, but it is the truth. But now when you play a game, we want you to play with a more analytical eye. Start a Game Journal, and fill it with your reflections on and impressions of every game you play, good or bad. Record your thoughts during or shortly after the game.
2 PLAY A BOARD GAME
For your first entry, we want you to play a board game. But not a game that’s sitting in the basement of Mom’s house, or in your closet. Play a new board game—one that you’ve never played before.
Board games have enjoyed a renaissance over the last decade or so. Actor Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation) hosts a web series called “Table Top,” which features celebrities and game industry veterans playing new board games.
But why do you need to play a board game?
The Writer will probably be the player who loves to read the backstory that might come with the instructions; or really like the world as described on the back of the box. But board games are a great way for writers to start thinking about game design. As Writers play board games, they should ask: What are the rules? What are the obstacles? Are there rewards and achievements? Setbacks? How is the game structured? This is not a book about balancing gameplay based on statistics and math. It’s a book on game story. But as Writers will soon learn, story and gameplay go together. How does the gameplay in the board game reflect its story or world?
The Gamer probably knows all about the gameplay. He or she will be able to see the framework of the game the way a screenwriter would see story structure. So the Gamer needs to play a new board game and concentrate on the story—the world—of the game. Who are the characters? How are they represented? What is the story line? What is the goal of the characters, and is that different from the goal(s) of the players? How is the world of the game conveyed to the player?
Play a game and in one page describe the world of the story, the plot, and the game play. Record your impressions in your Game Journal.
Some board games that are well worth playing if you haven’t tried them are:
Battlestar Galactica
King of New York
Myth
Quantum
Puerto Rico
Settlers of Catan
Sheriff of Nottingham
Ticket to Ride
If you’re still stumped as to what to try, there are plenty of great suggestions at www.boardgamegeek.com.
3 PLAY A VIDEO GAME
(We realize this may be stunningly obvious.)
Way too many games; way too little time. Keith tells his screenwriting students to watch all of the films on the American Film Institute’s list of the “100 Greatest American Films of All Time.” Well, aspiring game writers need to do the same sort of thing. However, there is no definitive list of the top 100 games, although many lists agree on many great games. Many game magazines and web sites publish such lists periodically. But you as a writer should focus on the more story-driven games. (Pong is, after all, simply Pong.) Although many classic games have been “remastered” for play on modern systems ranging from PCs to smartphones, not every old game ages well.
Play games that have been recognized in the last five years or so for their engaging stories or immersive worlds. Play games on a computer, on a console, on a smartphone or tablet. Play indie games. Download and play trial and demo versions. Play games in various game genres to get the feel of how they work. Play a sports game like FIFA or NBA 2K. (Yes, these do have stories.)
Play best-sellers, critics’ darlings, and award winners. Although the games industry does not yet have its “Academy Awards,” it’s worth paying attention to any such list. Some of the story-driven nominees and winners of The Game Awards 2014 included:
Bravely Default
Broken Age: Act I
Divinity
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
South Park: The Stick of Truth
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
The Walking Dead, Season Two
The Wolf Among Us
This War of Mine
Valiant Hearts: The Great War
Wolfenstein: The New Order
We also recommend in our classes games from the following list, in which we find the narrative, characters, or world very compelling, and gameplay organic to the story line. They are also interactive narratives that we feel make the best use of the tools of video game writing.
Assassin’s Creed franchise
Beyond Good & Evil
BioShock
BioShock Infinite
Braid
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Deus Ex franchise
Fallout
Fallout 3
Final Fantasy VII
God of War
Half-Life
Halo franchise
Heavy Rain
Ico
Journey
The Last of Us
Mass Effect franchise
Portal
Portal 2
The Stanley Parable
(Please don’t freak out if your favorite game isn’t on the list. This is a short list, and is by no means definitive. We only present it here as a jumping-off point for you to begin to explore story-driven games.)
Play a game and in one page describe the world, the plot, and the gameplay. Record your impressions in your Game Journal.
1 Entertainment Software Association, Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry 2014, p. 13. http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf
2 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2614915
3 http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3805&p=.htm
4 Entertainment Software Association, p. 3.
5 1955 June 6, Time, Radio: Conversation Piece, Time Inc., New York. (Accessed time.com on September 12 2013; Online Time Magazine Archive)
6 Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Oxford University Press, 2008.
7 http://entertainment.time.com/2007/03/19/lyst_cuse_and_lindelof_on_lost_1/ In the same article, he says “we have a lot of gamers on our writing staff.”
8 http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/10/3482926/salman-rushdie-video-game-escapism-hiding
9 http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/18632/the-growing-influence-of-videogames-on-movies
