Slay the Dragon. Robert Denton Bryant
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have players returning again and again to experience the next chapter in the story; to explore more deeply these compelling worlds.
Although they’re not “playable movies,” their graphics and sound are cinematic. Advances in motion capture and a thousand other bits of technology allow more realism and beauty. The worlds and story lines have attracted A-list Hollywood talent. Music tracks are no longer the ping-ping-ping of an 8-bit chip but sweeping symphonic scores. World building and mythology are unparalleled. What was the norm for the video game industry now has become a key point in every story conference for movies and television. The creators and narrative designers of these games—Ken Levine (BioShock), Susan O’Connor (Tomb Raider), David Cage (Heavy Rain) and many others—are treated like rock stars at game conferences.
Agents, managers, and writers talk about how a writer in today’s world should know how to write it all: movies, novels, plays, articles, and “webisodes.” Even video games.
HOLLYWOOD CALLING!
Film and television industry executives have long been fascinated by video games. But, like many grown-ups, they’ve had a very hard time understanding them. But if there’s one thing blockbuster movies and games have in common, it’s that their creators and distributors are always pursuing The Big Idea.
Hollywood loves The Big Idea. The high-concept one-liner. The story that gets butts in movie seats. The tantalizing “What If?” question that people pay you to answer. The IP that can feed the fans’ insatiable appetite for sequels and spin-offs (and book tie-ins and toys and T-shirts). Every big media company wants nothing more than a franchise like Star Wars, in which the slightest announcement of new information or release of a new trailer can fill the halls at comic conventions and might even crash Twitter.
The appeal is twofold: for creators and fans, it’s about the fun of exploring an exciting world and getting to know fascinating characters; for the suits, it’s about the money! As Gus Grissom (actor Fred Ward) says in The Right Stuff, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”
The first modern American transmedia franchise was, arguably, The Wizard of Oz (and we don’t mean the beloved 1939 MGM film—that came almost four decades later). L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. The book was a best-seller for years, and Baum wrote thirteen more novels based in the “merry old land of Oz.” He then brought the franchise to the stage as a musical play, which had a successful run on Broadway and toured the United States. In 1914 he expanded into movies with a series of silent films produced by his own Oz Film Manufacturing Company.6 There were spin-offs and merchandise (both licensed and unlicensed) for nearly forty years before audiences ever got to see Judy Garland wear her sequined ruby slippers.
All these journeys to Oz across multiple media made Baum a fortune. (He later lost a fortune, but that’s a different story.) Audiences bought his books and tickets to his shows because they already knew of Oz and its characters, but wanted to know more. It was much easier for Baum to sell a new Oz-based book—for which there was an existing audience—than it was for him to sell a new book set in a different world. (He tried many times with non-Oz stories.) The 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