Slay the Dragon. Robert Denton Bryant

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      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.

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