Personally I find there is just as much if not more creativity among game makers as there is among feature filmmakers.
I don't know how video game narrative works.
I don't even make multiplayer games much, so dealing with multiple characters is something new for me - or, rather, something I've had to recall from my days as a roleplaying adventure designer where the party was everything!
You can even express movies and poetry using video games. For those reasons, I've decided to create stories through video games.
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'
I think you have to serve a lot of masters when you're doing a video game: you're not just telling a linear story or doing something that's all action.
I enjoy the process of adding elaboration into games and like to communicate with users through the details I create.
We believe that we can use interactivity to create meaningful games. Games with emotions and virtual actors telling you something. Resonating with you as a human being, giving you food for thought. We don't need to deliver messages or whatever, just need to create a moment in time that will leave an imprint in your mind.
The majority of my work in games, outside of 'Depression Quest,' has been experimental pushes into comedy games. I think there are a lot of intersections there.
Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.
I've had the tremendous fortune to work on games like 'Life is Strange' and 'Horizon Zero Dawn', where there was a lot of collaboration between me and the developers.
This technology will obviously become more prevalent. Who knows what will result? One thing is certain, computer technology will revolutionize the way we tell stories as much as movie film has.
I think there is a lot of technology that is finding its way into our storytelling - it's pretty unavoidable.
Everything in a novel has to be intentional, even the things that aren't.
Plot comes first. The plot is the archictecture of your novel. You wouldn't build a house without a plan. If I wrote without a plot, it would just be a pile of bricks. Characters are your servants. They must serve your plot.
We're growing into an entertainment medium as opposed to 'We make games. We make Mario jump.' We no longer have to focus so hard on the technical hurdles and can ask, as a player, why am I doing this? Why am I making these choices? Games that don't have that strong foundation stumble.
A cartoonist creates his whole universe without any input.
On 'Master of None,' the majority of the episodes were just one story, and that was by design because we really wanted to focus in on the character of Dev and get the audience in his head.
I don't see how anybody starts a novel without knowing how it's going to end. I usually make detailed outlines: how many chapters it will be and so forth.
When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know?
I wanted to be a writer as a teen... so storytelling was my first love. In my late teens, design became an obsession as I realized that I could express myself through the medium. Much later, when I founded Fuseproject in 1999, our slogan became 'design brings stories to life.'
If I really believe that visual representation and narrative are ways to convey important, complex ideas, and if the world is gravitating toward this form, then geez, I better do it myself. I want to do it myself.
Larger game teams are often a bit more experienced at working with writers, which is often a huge relief. However, it also means that there are more people wanting to wander around the narrative kitchen telling you how you should be making your story pies.
I'm not the expert on the great gameplay. I come in for the character design, monsters, atmosphere. I'm not the technician.
