Slay the Dragon. Robert Denton Bryant

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. СКАЧАТЬ