Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Screenwriters segue to video game plots

Chris Morgan has become the latest high profile American screenwriter to start working in the video games industry, reports Chris Morris in Variety.
Morgan will oversee the writing on the titles [adapting Robert Jordan's The Wheel Of Time books], working with executive producers and writers to help develop story arcs and helping to digest the book series' 10,000 pages and over 1,700 characters.

"There are a lot of good writers in the games business," says Rick Selvage, co-founder of Red Eagle. "However, I don't think stories have been the compelling driver in many games to date. Game play has been the thing that has motivated people to buy. We believe story is going to become more important to players."

1 comment:

  1. There are lots of interesting ways that story and interactivity could be combined. So far, though, we've mostly seen either the bolt-on solution (imposed story sets rails for the player, eg Metal Gear Solid) or a half-hearted attempt to integrate the two (player is presented with multiple plot choices - so what?).

    We're only going to see interesting evolution in this area when people start to come up through the system who have first-hand experience of both storytelling and videogame design. Just asking a writer and a designer to work together isn't likely to do it.

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