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Writing for Games

Greg Roach explains why the gaming business is good for writers.

Greg Roach, Creative Director of Hyperbole Studios (www.hyperbole.com), offers advice to writers considering swapping their word processors for games consoles.

One of the epicentres of the radical change in the communications industries is the global gaming business. Much has been made in the gaming community and press over the fact that worldwide games industry sales now out-gross domestic US feature films. The reality is that the games business is still small compared to the total market for traditional media programming and platforms (books, movies, DVDs, magazines etc.), but it is a significant economic force, and becoming more so as time goes on. And it presents opportunities for writers.

If you’re a traditional writer the first thing you’ll encounter is massive culture clash. Those game people are different! So, if you’re looking to break into the games world, as with any other subculture, you’re going to need to speak the lingo. Read games magazines. Go to games conferences. Log on to games web sites. And best of all, play games. If you don’t know the difference between an FPS, RPG or RTS - you’ll need to.

Once you perfected your patois, it’s time to set your sights on some targets. If you can convincingly use the phrase ‘let’s lock and load’ in casual conversation, you’ll do well in the games world - which breaks down into two fundamental flavours of fun: publishers and developers. Either can provide opportunities.

Publishers are conceptually similar to their traditional counterparts. They manage the quality assurance and market exploitation of a given product. They will often assume all or part of the upfront financial risk. They often have brand identities that represent a certain style of game experience to their audience. Electronic Arts, for example, the world’s largest games publisher, is best known for its brand and style of sports games. Publishers will both work with external product development teams (using the time-proven producer-developer relationship) or house and manage a development team internally.

Publishers often control interactive IP (intellectual property) rights to linear franchises of brands. The latest popcorn monstrosity to come out of Hollywood is sure to be licensed for game exploitation as well. Increasingly, games publishers are divisions of larger media conglomerates, and as a result may have access to the brand’s library of IP. Do your homework. You need to understand a company’s place in the market, style of working and IP brands to identify the opportunities you’re best suited for.

Developers, by contrast, are smaller organisations that are long on creativity and tech know-how, but probably short on cash or product distribution mechanisms. The developer is usually the primary driver of a product’s artistic and technical execution, while the publisher peers over the developer’s shoulder, doling out cash and worrying. Often large publishers work with a combination of internal teams and external development companies.

Projects themselves usually come in three basic flavours: original work, licences of current properties, or properties pulled from some dormant spot in a rights holder’s backlist. Let’s look at these one at a time.

Original work: games that exist only as games. These products began life as an idea for a game. Often small games companies will have a game idea that they develop with ‘sweat equity’ and then license or sell to a publisher to exploit.

Licences: brand or line extensions to existing IP. Think Spiderman, Harry Potter or Lilo and Stitch. There were games in the shops as soon as these films were released. Because of the cost of licensing, large publishers control significant percentages of these kinds of properties.

Backlist properties are products connected to an extant property, but not tied to the launch of a current release in another medium. Winnie the Pooh’s Print Shop is an example of one of these. This approach is probably under utilised - so as a result, there’s a lot of opportunity here for an enterprising, creative type. If you can approach the right publisher with the right proposal - a way to breathe life into a forgotten franchise (Mr Toad Teaches Driving, for instance) - you can strike gold.

So, we’ve identified the developer or publisher we’re going after, we understand their catalogue and style, we’ve ripped our jeans, skipped a bath and downed a can of Jolt Cola - now what?

You need to understand how the writer fits into the overall structure of a game or interactive production.

I’m sad to inform you that, not unlike the film business, the writer is not at the apex of the digital food chain. The real top-level predators are producers and game designers. Writers will most often answer to one or the other of these.

Often the writer will collaborate with the game designer on the execution of a project - adding valuable literary sophistication and gravitas - but it is usually the game designer who calls the shots and who defines the scope, style and function of the game.

Writers can be called on to write lines of dialogue, script ‘ cut scenes’ (game parlance for the chunks of story often found between game levels) or develop high-level plotlines and scenarios.

It’s very important to keep in mind that the material in games is most often experienced in a non-linear fashion. Often dramatic material is delivered in a very ‘granular’ way. Rather than watching long scenes, players trigger small snippets of material non-linearly - pretty much screwing any traditional notions of continuity. Again, this is why it’s important to play games, so that you can see how games are experienced, and how they use dramatic or literary elements.

Get with the programme

So, now to the question that’s been tugging at everyone’s sleeve - do you need to learn how to programme in order to be in the games business?

The answer is a definite ‘yes and no’!

No, because programming has become a highly specialised and complex field. Teams of experienced professional programmers very often undertake the programming of games. The learning curve for literary types is unforgivingly steep, so best to leave that to the pros.

Yes, because it is very helpful to understand the basics of both programming logic and software production methods. You don’t need to design and build cars in order to drive them, but understanding how they work and the physics behind them will probably make you a better driver. Often writers are called on to track the states of objects or characters inside of a design, and then create contingent events or scenarios based on logical comparisons (if A and B have both occurred, then execute scene C when the player enters this location). So understanding the difference between a Boolean variable and a linked library will both make you better at writing games and prevent the programmers from throwing pizza at you in the break room.

Beyond games

Not all the opportunities in interactive entertainment involve games. There’s a fascinating high ground out there that uses new platforms and new technologies to reinvent the way we experience every kind of media.

The current explosion of DVDs is a great example of this. Right now, the ‘extras’ are usually just the same behind-the-scenes stuff we’ve seen for years - but the format itself can easily support bold new dramatic forms: user-controlled narratives, navigable story spaces or multiple points-of-view.

And the best part is that the rules here have yet to be written.

 

Profile

Greg Roach founded Hyperbole Studios (www.hyperbole.com) in 1990. Considered a multimedia pioneer, Greg wrote and designed The Madness of Roland, the world's first original interactive multimedia novel. As a filmmaker, Greg created the world's first narrative interactive film, The Wrong Side of Town, and since then his interactive movies have garnered more than a dozen awards around the world. He also created VirtualCinema, which is both an engine and a narrative approach to interactive movies, and the cornerstone of The X-Files CD-ROM Adventure, completed for Fox Interactive last year. He has been a featured speaker at many conferences and trade shows, and has been lead tutor for the last four years at the SAGAs Interactive Scripting Workshops run by the Munich film and Television School in Germany.