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