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Writing for Games with Dan Martin · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Con podcast, sit down and actually write, So
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let's talk about it. Do it. You know, there's a lot of
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times that you have to spend thinking about your story or how you're going to
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crack something. You're raking the leaves, and that's productive time. But nothing
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beats getting your butt in the chair, putting your fingers on the keyboard,
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and actually putting something on the page. Welcome to writer Con, the gathering
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place for writers to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your
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hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of The Red Sneaker books
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on writing, and Laura Bernhardt, Award winning author the Want Limb Files book
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series. Hey, they're writers readings from me and Laura and our sound engineer,
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Jesse Orrich. Spoiler alert, this is a very special episode of the
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writer Con podcast. No, we're not doing an after school special, but
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we are doing something kind of sort of that I've been working on for a
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long time. In that, of course, is finding a Star Trek related
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guest for Jesse for the podcast. Yes, I mean, maybe even someone
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you haven't met on all those cruises. Who knows. I tried. Patrick
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Stewart is on tour for his new book, but I couldn't get him.
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William Shatner has a new book whatevery three weeks or so, but I couldn't
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get him. But I do have the wonderful Dan Martin, who has worked
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on I've been a writer in minifields, including the gaming field, and has
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recently worked on Star Trek Resurgence, the hit video game. And most importantly,
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he's had his picture taken with Jonathan Fraakes. That's Commander Riker. Well,
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that dude, Jesse is this year dream guest. I mean I would
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say like it's my dream guest. But it's pretty great. I'm pretty happy
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about it. Okay, who would be the dream guest? Well, again,
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like either either one or one of the two writers who make up James
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s A. Corey from the Expand series of course, or of course Brandon
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Sanderson, so who does have his own podcast. I feel like I feel
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like, even though he's super busy, I bet I can make it happen
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if I tried. So I'll see what I can do. Okay, work
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on that on the forums. Well, offer a swamp, tell him you'll
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be on his podcast. Oh, he'll come on hours perfect what about you,
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Laura, do you have a dream guest. Hmmm, well we've been
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watching the new Doctor Who. This is true. Oh you want because he's
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so cute? Oh god, yeah, I mean I figured I was trying
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to keep it in like the writing space. We're just talking about dream guests
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of all time, like for for anything. Yeah, let's get David ten
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on the podcast. He also had them podcast during the Lockdown. What a
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great show that his lockdown with his buddy. I can't remember the other actor's
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name, but uh that that show was great. So I re watched that
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recently actually, just cause well, if we wanted to within the writing space,
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maybe Davies. He does. He writes some of our favorite episodes.
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I think of Doctor Who. Oh, that'd be pretty great T Davies,
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Yeah, sor RTD for the Insiders. I want Stephen Moffatt on the podcast.
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That guy is hilarious. So he's he's so Scottish and angry all the
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time. He's great. That's my dream guest. I want the Scottish angry
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guy on the so great. But instead, actually this is much better.
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Today is with Dan Martin, who is an l A based writer and narrative
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designer with extensive experience in world building and story development. In other words,
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you write stories for video games and industry, which, by the way,
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is now bigger than Hollywood. We've had we had a game writer on the
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podcast at least once before I remember, but it's been a while and we've
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never had anything who did anyone who did anything for Star Trek. So this
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is going to be spectacular. Dan has worked on games for many franchises.
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In fact, as you will hear, we've done Batman and The Walking Dead.
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But now it's Star Trek Resurgence, a game getting fantastic reviews for its
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writing, and a game which I, despite my complete lack of video game
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skills, have actually played okay halfway through. But still that's better than most.
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We will talk to Dan in considerable detail about the opportunities for writers in
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the gaming world. But first the news see take us Away. Our first
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story actually dovetails nicely with all this talk about Star Trek and media and whatnot,
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because this is basically me reporting on many other reports that the book to
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movie market is really heating up. Some people think it's because the lockdown is
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over and people are going back to the thriller. I go back to the
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to the movie theater, is what I meant to say. Or some people
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think it's because the strikes are over, our projects are going into production.
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But one reason or another, we're seeing a big uptick in book to movie
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deals, which is why I've been posting some information about how to make that
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happen on the writer Con Facebook page, which you might want to join if
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that interests you. We saw Universal close a deal after a big auction for
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an action thriller, which is get This based on a forty three page short
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story called Run for Your Life. There's also a preemptive purchase for a book
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called safe House, and a bunch of others, but this short story.
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There's another short story by Aaron Jay that's going to be produced by Todd Lieberman.
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Something you big money, and of course the biggest deal one is the
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biggest book out there. Britney spears new memoir, The Woman and Me,
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which Lauren and I talked about. This released at the same week as Barbara
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Streisen's new memoir, which you would have thought would be The Titan, but
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no, it's the number two two book behind Britney's Rears. And there are
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so many people circling around this property that everybody wants it. They don't know.
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It could become a TV series, it could become a feature film.
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It could be a documentary about her and the Free Britney movement than all of
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that, and nobody really knows. Laura, you think this is a flash
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in the pan, or you think we'll see more books made into movies.
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I'd like to see them continue to draw more from books. I think some
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of my favorite works I very often see in the credits that it initiated from
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a book, is based on a book. I think we just get so
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much character and stronger stories in adaptations from books. It's kind of already there
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for them. I think we just get a lot more emotional content in those
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movies. Well, if you are picking which one of your many published books
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would you like to see made into a movie into a movie, probably Shadow
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of the Tage, because I think that one would just lend itself well to
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a cinematic treatment. It is a very wild series. Would be a nice
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little Netflix series that would be fun. I don't think I mean, you
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could make it into a series of movies instead, but I think I think
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that would be fun. As a shadow of the Taje. Well, it's
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it's you know, it's serious, but it's also got a thriller story.
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I think that'd be a terrific movie. Jesse, what book would you like
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to see made into a movie? Well, I've been saying this for years
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and going back to people we'd like to have on the podcast. Neil Stevenson.
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I thought it was going to be George R. Martin for sure.
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He has a trilogy of books. It's they're sort of about the history.
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It's it's sort of like a retail it's a fictional way of telling you,
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like the history of science. It's like the beginning of mathematics and the modern
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economy via the via fictional story where you're falling around three different people, one
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of whom was like Isaac Newton's best friend. It would make a great HBO
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or Sorry Max mini series or Netflix show because it just it's got a lot
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of wild characters in great locations and also teaches you something secretly, as all
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of his books tend to do nice. Wait, who whose books are we
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talking about? Who? Neil Stevenson. Oh, those are like one thousand
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pages long, right, Yeah, like they in the Bible. Yeah,
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I listen. You know, if I read something under three pages the Netflix
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series, yeah listen, I'm listen. People need they need content. People
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need content. So okay, news story too, which of course involves Amazon,
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but this time in a I shouldn't say it that sounds awful, but
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in a positive life, because Amazon has brought suit against spammers and scammers,
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which are unfortunately all over the place in the book world right now. Anyway,
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Amazon announced that it's filed an actual honest to god lawsuit in California against
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more than twenty people who are scamming authors by you know they send Usually it's
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an email that claims that they have some affiliation either with KADP you know where
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self published people upload their books, or Amazon Publishing, which is their traditional
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publishing branch, and then the scammers run fake Amazon websites or they create knockoff
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websites to lure people into ultimately paying a fee to get published, and then
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you know, they get substandard work or no work at all. How many
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times can we say this on the podcast, do not pay anybody to publish
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your book if they want money, I don't care whether they call it an
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advertise fee or what if they want money before they'll publish your book, They're
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not a real publisher. Okay, Laura, how do we stop these people
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who are ripping off all our friends? It's ubiquitous with the best thing we
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can do is just keep getting the word out there, keep saying don't what
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you just said, don't send people money, really, really do your research.
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This applies to everything. I watch a guy on YouTube whose grandmother was
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sadly caught up in a scam, and he now has made it his life
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goal to clap back at these scammers. So when something hits his inbox or
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he gets a phone call from someone, he turns it around. He actually
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scams scammers. It's pretty brilliant, and I think all we can do is
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just keep encouraging people to be very smart about it. Ask around. If
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something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Shoot. Someone
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I know that I work with just told me they got taken in by They
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purchased something on Facebook and it just never showed up. They took They take
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your money and go. You've got to It's it's a hard lesson to learn.
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You've got to be careful. Okay, go with me on this.
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This could be the plot of Saw eleven. I'm thinking, because the pattern
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is somebody does something to dig Saw. Any exact city is revenge. Right,
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Okay, so first he's written his memoir and who wouldn't want to read
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that? Oh no, I'm getting behind this, and they either don't publish
12:33
it or no, let's have scammers rip him off. Although and then of
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course he has to exact his revenge. I think we've got a horror film,
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Jesse, what do you think? Yeah? I mean it's one where
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everybody wins, so you know, you torture those scammers. I'm not going
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to see that for him. He's gonna have our sympathy from the get go,
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right, Yes, it's a good it's a good like twist on the
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normal sauce store where we don't feel bad. We do we dislike him.
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In this case, we love him. He is doing he's doing what he's
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doing what we call street justice. Yeah, yeah, I think we got
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something. Guys. Somebody make a note trademarked Internet. That's our that's our
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nuts. That's all it takes on the Internet. Right to scream trademark copyright
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trademark. Sure, all right, Jesse, Cue up the music. Let's
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talk to Dan Martin. Ben. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for
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having me. Oh, thank you for being here. This is terrific.
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Okay, traditional first question, If you could offer writers one piece of advice,
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one above all others, what would it be, sit down and actually
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write. So let's talk about it. Do it. You know, there's
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a lot of times that you have to spend thinking about your story or how
13:50
you're going to crack something. You're raking the leaves, and that's productive time.
13:54
But nothing beats getting your butt in the chair, putting your fingers on
13:58
the keyboard and actually putting something on the page. Then it is terrific having
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you on this podcast. I've been wanting to talk to you for a long
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time because I've been following your work for a long time. I know you
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did some writing before gaming. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah,
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Well, I went to USC Film School for their production program, which
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is not their producing program, but it covers every aspect of filmmaking television,
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sound, cinematography, editing, writing, and sort of. As I got
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through that process, I realized the kind of stories I wanted to tell were
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too big for me to make at that point in time. Probably still too
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big for me to make on my own, so I wanted to write some
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big stories, and that's where I ended up going, focusing down from every
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piece of filmmaking down to writing. And I worked in story development in Hollywood
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for a while, reading scripts and sort of the other things that go along
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with it, driving hard drives from one post house to another. But eventually
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it was I wanted to focus on telling my own stories, so I spent
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some time working on my own writing, and randomly I just got an email
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from one of my film school classmates, cousins. I think it was.
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It was at a game studio that needed writers, and the apocryphal story,
15:22
perhaps is that they had over a thousand applicants for two positions because they'd had
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this massive hit, they were expanding, and they had no way of actually
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sifting through that, you know, in any reasonable fashion, so they just
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turned to personal networks. And that's how I ended up on an email list
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that they reached out. I sent them some writing material and they kept bringing
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me back for interviews, and next to vived, I was driving up to
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the Bay Area to start my new career and wow, but of course you'd
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done the work, which is what Laura and I often say conferences. You
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can't have a good break unless done the work first, Right, You had
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some writing to show, Yes, I had. I had a portfolio of
16:04
scripts, and I also had spent a lot of time reading scripts. You
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know, I was a professional reader writing screenplay coverage, which is a synopsis
16:15
as well as a critique of the script for the studio executives who don't want
16:19
to read them just yet. I'm sure they obviously they read them eventually,
16:23
right of course, all the way through from start to finish in that order,
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but we give them the executive summary and say whether it's worth giving another
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read. And you know, it's kind of hard, hard to think that
16:36
some you know, fresh out of college or film school twenty something is the
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first and sometimes last line that you have to get through. But it could
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be that's the way it was. At least it's not AI yet, but
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I think there are already reports that Random House and other New York publishers are
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using AI to sift through manuscripts. So that'll be a hot minute. Anyway.
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So you mentioned that she got into this gaming. Now is that Telltale
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Games or is something before Telltale that's Telltale Games, which was about ten years
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ago, a little over that, so in here for a decade, there
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you go. I remember when those games first starting coming up. Actually,
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my youngest Ralph showed me the Walking Dead game, and I think his pitch
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there's more to it, But his pitch was basically, look, Dad,
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you just choose from a menu what they're going to say, even you can
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do this, dad, is what he was saying basically. Of course,
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as it turned out, there was a lot more to that. But I
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do feel like you guys at Telltales sort of developed a new kind of video
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game that was more accessible to you know, non professionals like myself. Yeah,
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and that's actually it is a pitch that I give people when I'm trying
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to get them to play these games. I say, it's not you don't
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the same kind of spatial awareness. There's a little bit of it that goes
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on, but a lot of it is just deciding what you're going to say
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to people and how you're going to navigate relationships and how you're going to make
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a big choice about you know, life or death situations or moral quandaries.
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And that's something that to some degree we all know how to do because we
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live in the world. We developed relationships here. So it was Telltale Games.
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It was This was the expansion of the company right after the first season
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of The Walking Dead came out, and they really did develop something that felt
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very new. There there are some other games that are similar that were concurrent,
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but it was really crystallized things in this relationship gameplay as well as these
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moral questions. It actually got taught in some high school civics and philosophy classes.
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As I understand it. It was a model of the trolley problem basically
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in many different formats. Well, there were at least two Walking Dead games,
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right yep, and a Batman game I recall starting, but it was
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too hard for me. And the Wolf something the Wolf in the title,
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the one that's based on a comic book series. But I'm sorry, I'm
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blanking on the title I wrote. I wrote on the Wolf among Us,
19:18
which was that was good. It was based off the Fables comic book by
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Bill Willingham. Recently, he declared it public domain to get out of his
19:27
contract, or rather, he couldn't get out of his contract with DC Comics,
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right. He declared it public domain so that anybody could use the underlying
19:37
although they can try. I think DC Comics has a different take on the
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subject. But at the same time, it's based off of fairy Tale,
19:45
so it's kind of in the public domain anyway. And then yeah, I
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wrote for two Walking Dead games season two in season three and their Batman game
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in their season two of that, And then somewhere in the in the middle,
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I worked on their Game of Thrones game, which yeah, very much
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the hot property at the time, and no kidding, and I became a
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fan of as I was working on which doesn't always happen. Well, you
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probably have to immerse yourself in the mythology to write the game, and there's
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probably no mythology on Earth bigger than Star Trek right at this point in time,
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like over six hundred hours of Star Trek programming. I read somewhere over
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that Yes, yes, were you already so this now is talking about your
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newest game, Star Trek Resurgence. Were you already a huge fan or like
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you're talking about, did you become a fan as you worked on the game,
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and then if you didn't, I suppose either way, did you then
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have to submerge yourself in the lore? And this extensive world that exists out
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there now. Well, I was definitely a fan long before this was even
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on the horizon. So I remember watching it at seven pm on Channel fifty
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six in the Massachusetts area where it was in first run syndication sold to three
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hundred individual markets in the eighties and nineties. And then I watched, you
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know, I watched the movies. I watched the original cast movies. Then
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sort of when DVDs became available and you could get the whole season on Netflix,
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I started going through everything start to finish, and I did that,
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and I was It was funny because we actually talked about Kirk, Spock,
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and McCoy, these three decision making pieces of kind of one brain, if
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you will, as a model for how we would build our choices in a
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lot of the games that we did before Star Trek even came up. Because
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you've got Spock pulling on the logic, McCoy pulling on your heartstrings, and
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then Kirk somewhere in the middle in this third way, and that's kind of
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how we would always look at making these choices. Because you don't want it,
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it's yeah, it's not just yes, no. Maybe there have to
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be these shades. Particularly if you're going to make over a hundred of these
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choices over the course of a game, it's it can't just all be the
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same thing. You have to really have a science or ground making the choices.
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So I was well aware of it, but then I went through everything
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a couple of more times over the course of preparing to make the game,
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and then well making the game. I usually had Star Trek on in the
22:30
background while I was writing. I know that people might say, hey,
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why you're writing with TV on the background, But you know, some people
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listen to the movie soundtrack. Some people have this down to the ocean.
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For me, sometimes it's nice to have, particularly when you work with the
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licensed ipe, you have that IP or something similar to it in the background.
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Sometimes you might pick up a word or a phrase that you're like,
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ah, yes, that's exactly what I need for this specific moment in this
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specific world. Bill, You're right. I guess all good writing comes from
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Star Trek. You know, here's Dan supporting it. You know all of
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my tween birthdays I won't give away. Someone might calculate my age from that,
23:15
but that's what I did. We got the first three movies on tape
23:21
because that's what we had back then. And I had a Star Trek themed
23:23
birthday and the girlfriends I invited over for the sleepover, and I felt very
23:29
wicked because we stayed up very late. We were living it up. Certainly
23:34
if you watched number one, because that's a pretty good, pretty long one,
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we were all confused, or it seems that way anyway. So Dan,
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does this mean you were what would that be one of maybe ten or
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fifteen people on earth who have written dialogue for Spuck. The number might be
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bigger than that, but yeah, it certainly felt special because it seems to
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me we we were able to cast a phenomenal voice double for the role.
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He is dead on, I mean and he you know, we listened to
24:10
hundreds of auditions and some big name voice impressionists in that world. Uh,
24:15
and he was the only one that we could even really consider. He was
24:18
the only one that was anywhere close and heat Michael is his name. He
24:23
voiced. He did the voice doubling for George Carlin in the last Bill and
24:26
Ted movie. U. This is this is his stock in trade is he
24:33
does voice acting of sort of a general variety, but also he's known for
24:37
voice doubling, and he's a technician about it. He knows he's talks about
24:41
well, you know, Leonard Nimoy had dentures at this point, and that
24:44
effects the way you talking this way. And Leonard Nimoy was you grew up
24:48
in East Boston. But he was trying to cover that. So that's why
24:51
certain vowels sound a certain way, and why he says sensors and you know,
24:55
because he's trying to cover for censors and senses. You know, the
25:00
sensas are reading some magnetic interstuence. English isn't Spock's first language, I assume,
25:06
right, so yes, as well, he is half human, so
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it might be his mother might have been speaking him speaking English and him and
25:15
his crib. Okay, while we're talking this, let's just get down to
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it. I know, Laura, you want to talk about writing and stuff,
25:21
but this is Star Trek, So okay. I was playing your game.
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I really loved it. Then we got to the tricourder stuff that was
25:29
harder, but I managed it. And then we got to a shooting scene
25:33
and I'm like, there has never been a shooting scene in the history of
25:37
Telltale. And of course, ultimately I just texted our son Alan and said,
25:41
Alan, come get me through this, and he did that I could
25:45
get through the rest of the game. Oh you should have texted me.
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There's a story modes that you can It makes it easier at least where when
25:52
you can reach I'm already on that Dad, Okay. Well, you know
25:56
it's it's funny because I think that as a as a group, video game
26:03
fandom yearns for innovation in the method of interaction, and it's something that we
26:11
wanted to bring sort of more of those video game elements into the Star Trek
26:17
game than a lot of the Telltale games had before, because you know,
26:22
people there were a lot of criticisms over the course of the Telltale the history
26:29
of Telltale from Walking Dead forward that the games weren't really changing a lot,
26:33
and to me, as a writer, I think they're totally different stories.
26:37
It's like saying you want a television show to not be a television show like
26:42
that, having a television show with completely different characters and completely different structure isn't
26:48
enough. But that's the way that video game fans oftentimes look at what is
26:56
new in the game, not what's new in the story. So we wanted
27:00
to bring more of these interactions in stuff that we hadn't done before in the
27:04
Telltale games, and in fact, over the course of those sort of the
27:08
decade from the release of The Walking Dead Season one and the eventual collapse of
27:17
Telltale games, that they were doing generally less of those sort of gameplay moments
27:22
and doing more of the story gameplay, which as a writer I'm fine with.
27:27
But that was a common criticism that it didn't have those tactile moments or
27:33
they in the game. But of course that's what made the story stronger,
27:37
because you know, the story was continuous instead of okay, now let's take
27:42
a two hour break while you shoot through all these bad guys on the island
27:47
or not talking about Star Trek now, of course, general yeah, and
27:51
I think that one of the things that we did want to do in The
27:53
Star Trek in Star Trek Resurgence was make sure that we for the most part,
27:57
didn't drop you into one of the sections that went on for too long.
28:02
We looked at it like an action sequence in a movie or a TV
28:06
show. How long do you want us to step away from the the the
28:12
dialogue driven part of the story and go in a different mode because we wanted
28:18
it's the same thing we wanted mystery, you get to investigate. We wanted
28:22
action, we wanted romance, we wanted some exploration, and we tried to
28:26
give little bits of all these other side dishes outside of our main course.
28:32
Now, I thought the story was terrific and very Star Trek, And of
28:36
course it's what you're talking about right now. You know, the fact that
28:40
there aren't a lot of tactile moments constantly that keeps the story rolling and makes
28:47
it I watched that same sun play video games, sometimes because I'd much rather
28:51
watch than have to do it, but sometimes because there's so much going on,
28:56
you kind of lose the sense of the story. But not in your
29:00
games. Yeah, we do a lot of time, you know, we
29:06
play through them and we see where does it slow down, the same way
29:07
that you do with a script or a book. You know, you start
29:11
seeing where your own eyes are glazing over where you know, we have outside
29:17
people play play tests, and it's all about, particularly this type of game,
29:22
it's about keeping forward momentum so that you know it's We actually modeled it
29:26
after what we id call like an airplane novel where you buy something at Hudson
29:30
Books, and you want to read the whole thing until you land and you're
29:34
not even standing up when the plane on the ground. You want to read
29:37
the whole thing, Like my dad says, he wants to keep people up
29:41
past their bedtime. There were people that were tweeting saying, you know,
29:45
I started playing, I was going to play for an hour. And our
29:47
structure in the game is alternating chapters for two different POV characters. And when
29:55
you do that right, you get to the end of a chapter and it's
29:57
got a little cliffhanger and see, oh man, I kind of don't want
30:02
to go to that other POV because I want to stay with this story.
30:06
But then the other POV does the same thing. It just keeps pushing you
30:08
forward. And that's you know, for me, it's all about the story,
30:14
the narrative experience that we take you on to put you in interesting you're
30:18
sort of describing what we go through with novels of having kind of the editing
30:22
process and beta readers. You have beta players, right, you have people
30:26
who are giving you that feedback. So what does your writing process look like.
30:33
I feel like there are some people who maybe don't even they wouldn't really
30:37
understand exactly what it is that you do. What does your day look like
30:40
as a writer, Well, it depends on the project. So, you
30:44
know, there's the video game side of it, which is most of what
30:47
I've done, but I've also you know, I write screenplays and television pilots,
30:52
and I also wrote a comic book for Starturek Resurgence, and I wrote
30:56
a podcast narrative podcast for the videome Halo, and they are all kind of
31:03
contrasts in style. But for the video game world that I do, for
31:07
the most part, you know, it starts with having that idea that generally
31:12
when you're working with license IP, you've got to pitch to the IP holder
31:18
and there are things that are certainly understood, like the world of Star Trek,
31:22
but then you have to you have you could bring new characters in,
31:26
Are you reviving some old alien civilization which we did in the game. You
31:30
have to pitch that we did. Then we do a story break session with
31:34
all the kind of the stakeholders, whether it's the on the IP side on
31:40
our side, and then it's it's not all that different from writing something linear,
31:48
except for something like this, you just have to remember all these moments
31:51
where you say this is where you're going to have a big choice and kind
31:52
of bold it so it stands out in your outline, say this is going
31:56
to be a big choice, and we're gonna have to follow this, and
31:59
then where it's relevant, you kind of have to have those side by side
32:02
in your outline document. Uh. And eventually it goes from that phase where
32:08
you've you've got your big picture of the story and it starts getting really left
32:15
brain for a while. Where we have this flow charting tool, and every
32:19
company that does this generally has their own proprietary tool. There are some that
32:22
are available to commercially where it's this little here's a little chunk of content and
32:30
you click on it and there's the script on the side, and then you
32:32
say, okay, this is a set of choices, and then these are
32:36
the chunks of content that follow the choice. And then this is a down
32:39
the line, you'll have a thing that says, okay, this next part,
32:43
check that choice back there and split this off, because it'll be different
32:47
in each of these three scenarios because you can remember and recall any decision that
32:53
the player made, and then it's all these different branching. I'm so sorry,
32:59
but this is this is so intriguing to me, with all these different
33:01
branches and options and things. So a novel probably will land somewhere between eighty
33:08
thousand ninety thousand words. Sci fi fantasy can be a little longer. We're
33:13
talking about averages. What about for you? What does a what does a
33:16
game project look like? Do you know what's your final word count? With
33:20
all those different story branches going off in different directions. I don't actually have
33:25
a word count for it. But what are script's output in screenplay format?
33:30
And it just stacks every piece of content on top of itself. So this
33:35
game was over fourteen hundred screenplay pages, which if you if you compare it
33:40
to a forty six page script for an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation,
33:45
it's more than a single season, yes, Next Generation, which is
33:50
twenty wow, twenty six episodes, So it's a lot. That's yeah,
33:55
Well I'm intrigued by you know you're talking about sending your workout. I mean,
34:00
we we send novels to maybe ten beta readers, but they're all getting
34:06
the same manuscript, whereas in your case, different playtesters could take the game
34:12
off in completely different directions, so you must need like a thousand playtesters.
34:17
Well, rangually, that's kind of what happens when the game releases. There's
34:22
there is an element of it where in the first twenty four hours that the
34:28
game was released, there were probably more playthroughs by consumers than there had ever
34:34
been by everybody making the game, because internally, we have you know what
34:38
sort of a QA test or quality assurance that will play the game, and
34:42
they'll they'll do it kind of on a you know, a map. They
34:45
have these plans to make sure they hit as much as they can through multiple
34:50
playthroughs, and they follow the big choices. They try to hit everything as
34:54
the versions come out, just to make sure nothing really unexpected shows up.
34:59
But it's just kind of impossible to account for a every choice that people can
35:04
make in every possible combination. And I'll get to that later. But also
35:08
be there's a lot of different computer builds out there, so you know what
35:15
an Xbox or PlayStation hardware is going to be, but the options for you
35:20
know, a PC are also almost infinite, so you know there will always
35:24
be a surprise. I think the biggest thing is it does rely a lot
35:30
on the creatives behind the scenes to just know everything inside and out, like
35:35
to know what happens in each of those fourteen hundred pages so that you keep
35:42
Because as much as the program, the computer program can map things and is
35:45
necessary for writing it and playing it, the program doesn't know what's important.
35:52
So when you get to a point that you say this is relevant to something
35:58
that happened before, you have to remember that it's relevant and program in okay,
36:02
go look at that and tell me what they did there so that we
36:06
can build off of that. Allen is actually beta testing DLC content for a
36:15
very established, well known game, but he had to sign a non disclosure
36:19
agreement, so I can't even I don't think I can even mention it's okay.
36:22
But it's this idea that, like you said, people have to play
36:25
through it and make sure he reports back if he has any snags or if
36:30
it doesn't work properly, or and he gives them feedback on what his play
36:34
experience is like. So I'm fascinated with it. I think it's brilliant.
36:37
You said the right word player experience. It's it's very different than kind of
36:40
the even the audience experience because it's Yeah, it's the player is really a
36:47
part of it, and we're always thinking about what is the player investing and
36:53
how does this change the way the player is managing information in their own head
36:59
because all the things that we can call back to with our technology, the
37:02
biggest and best tool we have is making the player think something's important, and
37:09
usually it is, sometimes it's not, but they're always wondering about it,
37:14
like what's going on behind the scenes for these other characters based on what I've
37:16
said, and what changes about their understanding of the character based on what they
37:22
said, Even if it doesn't specifically get called back to later, it changes
37:25
that map in their head of the world of the story. Dan, you
37:30
mentioned a minute ago your father, So I assume it's going to be okay
37:34
if I inform everyone absolutely see extremely well known best selling author William Martin who's
37:43
been on this podcast before and it has keynoted at writer Con as well.
37:46
We need to get you out to writer Con absolutely already. Bless you mentioned
37:53
how video games or computer games have evolved just in the decade or so you've
37:59
been working on them. Where do you think it's going in the future.
38:01
Well, you know, it's interesting because it's bifurcating in a lot of ways
38:07
because there's consoles are getting more and more powerful and getting closer and closer to
38:13
sort of this simulation of the real world. There are there I've seen demos
38:19
out there where you can't tell that it's an inn engine. It looks like
38:22
somebody's carrying a camera around the real world. It's fascinating. And then on
38:27
the other hand, half of the games industry is on mobile phone. So
38:32
right, so there's half of the games are made for mobile phone, which
38:37
you know, they're great little devices. They're more powerful than your Nintendo was.
38:42
They're more powerful than my probably computer two generations ago was. But it's
38:46
not a big screen. It's not enveloping in the same way. So I
38:50
think that there's sort of there's going to be the casual gaming on your phone,
38:55
and then there's going to be kind of the big events on your computer
38:59
or your PlayStation or your Xbox, and that's going to be a big,
39:04
you know, a big split, and it's kind of like what you see
39:07
in Hollywood. You've got the big budget you know, what we call the
39:09
Triple A games, and then there's there's a lot in between. But then
39:15
a lot of it is kind of what can be done for the mobile side,
39:17
the sort of yeah, the indie there are platforms nowhere where indie designers
39:25
can can even hop on and distribute smaller as it won't be like what you're
39:30
describing and what you've worked on those great, big, immersive ones. But
39:34
I do think that it's important to remember how critical story is because I think
39:37
the most successful games are the ones that are going to have strong story and
39:42
strong character elements. Yeah, and you know, you asked me at the
39:45
top, what's the advice I give to writers? And you know this is
39:49
for people. Ask me, what do you give advice for people who want
39:52
to be game writers? And it's similar, but I say make something interactive.
39:57
Because I was lucky enough that they were looking for a writer, I
40:01
had sort of the circuitest personal connection to get my foot in the door.
40:07
And because of what they were doing was very new, there wasn't a lot
40:12
of examples for, you know, to show people what they wanted, or
40:15
for people who had made samples of that type of game, so they were
40:20
willing to read my screenplay samples. But nowadays there's there's this whole narrative game
40:27
genre that is pretty well established, and there are tools for people to write,
40:31
you know, whether it's a program called twime, there's some others where
40:36
you can write something that you can play through and click through and it'll be
40:38
in text format. But it's that's making something playable, is going to show
40:45
your skills as somebody who can write for interactive far more than writing something that
40:51
is linear and doesn't have to take into account the fact that the player gets
40:55
to play a role in it. Yeah, right, so do you have
40:59
any you touched on it? There? But more specific recommendations for people who
41:05
might be interested in writing for the gaming industry. I think that it's one,
41:09
have a gaming sample, have an interactive sample, and the other is
41:13
that you know, it is a difficult time in the games industry right now.
41:17
There have been over seven thousand layoffs this year. Really, why is
41:22
that You guys are making major money, aren't you. I think that it's
41:25
a contraction after you know, people were stuck home for a few years.
41:30
There was maybe a bit of a bubble, and then there is a contraction
41:35
going on right now. And then there's also just a cyclical nature to it
41:39
where there were a lot of big games this year, and I think that,
41:44
you know, when a big game comes out, studios tend to contract
41:47
after that as well, because they don't need to carry as much staff as
41:52
they start the next project. So, but that said, unlike say writing
42:00
for film and television, writing jobs in games are put on LinkedIn and you
42:06
know job sites. They have websites that say, hey, we're hiring for
42:08
an open role for a junior writer. So there is there are fewer barriers
42:15
to actually getting into the industry than there are, say, you know,
42:20
one to write for you know, Marvel movies. That's a little bit more
42:24
of a closed system. Right, Well, this has just been a fascinating
42:30
talk, but I should probably let me ask you one more question. What
42:34
are you working on? I'm not sure if I should say now or next,
42:38
but to the extent that you can talk about what's in the future,
42:43
Well, right now, I'm working on some linear spec projects rather than games.
42:49
You know, when I have kind of my fill of writing interactive when
42:52
I'm on a job like Star Trek that takes several years of your brain being
42:59
kind of pulled like happy through all these different directions, and so I'm working
43:02
on something some linear projects that are a little bit more straightforward where the main
43:09
character can surprise you at times, because you know, in games it's the
43:14
player that surprises you more than the character. You want to let the player
43:19
do that kind of that decision making rather than you know, taking it away
43:23
from them. So sometimes it's nice in a way for me to be the
43:27
player and for me to be able to write something where I get to make
43:30
all the calls. Right, I get that that makes the wait. Does
43:36
this mean there won't be a resurgence too? I didn't say that. You
43:40
know, we all hope that the crew of the USS Resolute. We hope
43:45
that the USS Resolute gets more missions and yeah to you know see and whether
43:52
it's in a game format or like we like I said, we did a
43:54
prequel comic for the game as well with id W Publishing, and that was
44:00
that was fun because you go from having fourteen hundred pages and it's very dialogue
44:05
driven to something where you want to just feature the art. You want to
44:08
keep the words as kind of spare as possible so people can look at the
44:13
art. So there's there's more life out there for Captain Rydeck and the rest
44:19
of the crew. That's fabulous. Dan thanks so much for being on the
44:22
podcast. My pleasure, thanks for having me. Just a few parting words,
44:32
Laura, You've got a Christmas novel, don't you do, the Wollum
44:37
Files Christmas Spirit, and it is currently on sale for ninety nine cents.
44:43
Yeah, go ahead, No, you can't beat that. And well,
44:46
oh now I'm embarrassed to hold up a book that calls a whopping I think
44:51
one nine on the book because it's discounted for Christmas. I tried to hang
44:57
this on the tree behind me, but that just didn't work. So Christmas
45:00
Tapestry is a lovely anthology and I've got a story in it, and so
45:06
do some other terrific writers, all of them Christmas stories, but all of
45:10
them different. You know, it's not all romances or all mysteries or whatever.
45:15
It's a tapestry and that's what I liked about it. And let me
45:19
also say Writer Con has a magazine and you don't want to miss the Holiday
45:24
issue, which comes out tomorrow as this podcast is released. And you know,
45:32
it's all about writing and advice for writers and help for writers, but
45:39
this time it all has holiday themes. So the issue is like a warm
45:45
cup of hot cocoa. Oh, that's so much better. But instead of
45:51
cocoa being in it, there are articles about how to write a Christmas story
45:58
and what else help me out here to market during the marketing during the holiday
46:05
seasons, which different to give your writing friends, and also what kind of
46:09
gifts to give you, as well as some humorous pieces and pieces and an
46:15
interview with Santa Oh, I can't turn that down. So that's writer Con
46:20
magazine. And to subscribe, just go to substack that's s U B S
46:24
T A c K and look for writer Con w R I T E R
46:30
c O N and that's how you get the magazine. There are free subscriptions
46:37
which will allow you to read the post, and of course the paid subscription
46:40
that allows you to actually get the magazine. And that's what you want,
46:44
right all right? Until next time, keep writing and remember you cannot fail
46:52
if you refuse to quit. See you next time. Spence BA does spends