Guest speaker Susan O'Connor has helped write or consult on games like BioShock, Tomb Raider, Dishonored 2, and more! https://twitter.com/austinfilmfest/status/1252752276990590982

O'Connor: Why are we talking about video games at a film festival? Because story is story is story.

Games aren't a niche anymore. Everyone is aware of games. It's a wave that has been traveling for a while. They've been here all along and the wave has broken through and it's rising.

Storytellers in games have started to look at the setting/worlds as characters in the story. The world is one of your strongest tools for character development.

Where does the writer fit into the game? How do they work in/with the medium. BioShock is next level because it bends the rules of storytelling for this new medium. O'Connor credits the lead on the game for having a screenwriting background as well.

As a starting point, she thinks about what the player wants. Funny place to start for a writer b/c player wants to win, it's about gameplay--but that's what they care about. So the story has to resonate. Player--not even the avatar--in ways is more important character. What they

want drives everything. Through the looking glass. Let go of things you thought you knew. Mindset shift opens loads of new storytelling possibilities. How do they win the game? What does winning look like? How can the world invite the player to pursue that goal? Deepen the world

around them as story progresses. Still on that golden path of the game, some players just blindly barrel through. But some want to live in and explore the world. Ideally games reward curiosity.

In screenwriting, the biz/prod model is the writer creates and tells the story, and it gets made. Which makes sense. Games are not that way. Game needs good gameplay. The game has to work--fun, engaging, all that stuff. Find the fun. Which needs a ton of experimenting, innovating

& throwing work away. Process of making a game requires a level of exploration and discovery & writer needs to be up for it. It's a collaboration more than many, even something like TV. It's a constant feedback loop w level designers, game designers, system designers, directors,

a million types of designers, enviro artists, char designers, animators, etc.

Writing gender split in games is 50/50 holy shit.

Game writing is tricky to explain because it's so chaotic. There's not a nice clean answer to how it works. It's a real dance. Game writer works with narrative designer and acts as liaison between writer and game team. Advocates for story for designers and vice versa.

Game industry is a tech industry, so a lot of the time it's more about software development.

It's a tech environment but story is emotional, and that's what players want. They want a story too, they watch movies and things too. Game designers find the fun. Writers have to find the feeling.

Game writing is digital theatre. Anything is possible, it's a very live experience. So what O'Connor sees set designers and playwrights do translates really well over to games.

We can imagine a screenplay. Whether it's good enough's another question. What does it look like? Not that easy to explain. There's sort of 2 types of scripts in a game--cinematic (like during a cinematic cut scene) and that's a standard screenplay.

Then there's the interactive scripts when you're playing in real time. You'd think there was an industry standard software for this like Final Draft. But we're sort of still inventing it, esp when a new console comes out. Ideally we'd have software that feeds into the machine/

game engine. lol too much tech drama for that. At some point, that's going to exist, and we'll have the tools we need and the quality is going to shoot up.

The style is unique to every studio. It's a mix of storytelling and interactivity. At its worst, it looks like an excel spreadsheet. "It's satan's playground."

Articy and Twinery are good resources to look at. You need a sort of interactive flowchart. There's a critical mass growing every year--game writers--and there's so much potential, and quality is getting better and better.

Someone asked about "show vs tell." O'Connor argues for games it's "do vs tell." She says how they'd spend all their time on cinematics and invest time in those and lots of players just skip them because the medium invites engagement. The storytelling has to happen while player

is engaged. That's what it matters most what player wants most w re: to story. Once you've hooked them in gameplay, cinematics become a wonderful reward where questions get answered, they want it because they're actors on the stage, playing their role.

Medium gives you so much freedom, says Casey Baron, the moderator from Austin Film Fest.

How do you track all the various branches of a story? That's where those dang flowcharts come in. As the writer, you'll collaborate w ppl who help you track them. There's branching dialogue that happens in a scene, when char are conversing.

Can track that in a word document. O'Connor now is at a point in her career where she's consulting more, and looks at the bigger picture, overall story.

When you track the branching narrative, there's branching in a scene. You also fool the player into thinking there's more branching than there is. For example, Telltale's Walking Dead. Was praised for lots of choices. Someone sat down and drew out all the choices, expecting a

massive thing, but it goes out and in. Here's the flowchart: https://venturebeat.com/2013/03/31/the-walking-dead-season-one-plot-graph/

The convos would affect things, but not bigger plot elements.

Plotpoints are the same, always goes back. But the relationships feel meaningful, even when the story spine remains the same.

O'Connor is rep'd by UTA, but argues you don't need one for game writing--industry is set up differently than TV and film.

O'Connor recommends https://gamedevmap.com/  to see all of the available game studios in the world. O'Connor insists that the industry is friendly to newcomers.

There aren't agents, gatekeepers, secret black box of jobs. It's just being a part of the community. When opportunities come up, you're a known entity.

Can you write? And do you know games?

Writing samples. Have you written a piece for a competition for AFF? You've got a great sample. A pilot for a tv series? A play? Short story.

O'Connor's earliest were pieces she'd written for newspaper.

Next--do you know games. O'Connor's advice: Write a book report about the story of a game. What can you deconstruct and take away. What's your creative thought process. She knows, book reports are corny. But it's a powerful tool to show them how you think.

WGA Library has some game scrupts such as The Witcher and Horizon: Zero Dawn, some include branching cut scenes and some are cinematics, but O'Connor warns that most have been reformatted at the WGA's request, so they can be a bit misleading.

O'Connor insists on the book report idea. It honestly sounds super fun.

Someone asked about games with multiple endings. O'Connor says they're tricky because coming up with one good ending is really difficult, let alone telling multiple from one storyline. Not for lack of talent, but PSYCHOLOGY!

Studies have been done that players, no matter which ending, assume they got the worst ending. FOMO is real with multi-ending games. Devs like the idea of multiple endings for multiple play throughs, but ppl already sink a lot of time into one playthrough.

I also think that with the rise of playthroughs and just more game footage on YouTube, players are less inclined to replay games vs just watch the endings they didn't get.

When asked about a game story O'Connor loves, she throws out Katamari Damacy!!!! So good!! She loved how simple the story was, so there was so much improv and storybuilding she got to do as the player.

Like, BioShock is very authored, vs Katamari that's silly and delightful and light. Games don't need story. Tetris is perfect just as it is. Movies and TV need stories, that's their DNA. Story can be optional. Players crave story though.

But games are truly limitless. Can do things in games you literally can't do anywhere else.

The big thing that separates other writers from game writers, and how writers can pivot to games is the writers HAVE to KNOW games.

Same reason genius novelists film studios from the 40s hired and under-delivered was a disconnect from the medium. Need to show a studio. BOOK REPORTS!!!!! I LOVE IT. A thoughtful analysis of why a games story was successful. What were they doing that worked.

Everyone under 35 has been around games from a very young age. You're fluent in games even if you're not a player. Knowing how stories are told in games gives you an edge as a writer in films and TV

Christopher Nolan's films have been described in a way that they make more sense as video games. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/christopher-nolans-games

When trying to translate an IP into a game, you have to break it down to its barebones narrative. Also, obv make sure you have the rights first lol.

i.e. what do we love about Saving Private Ryan? We love the humanity of it. Visceral, how real it is. So maybe you think that would make it a great game. But it won't look that way.

Tom Hanks gives it its staying power. If you try to make the player Tom Hanks, it just wouldn't work. You have to figure out what the magic of the original IP, what's magical about games, and how we bring these two spells together. Take away specifics, get to the heart/DNA of it.

We don't do it often because ppl are so protective of IP.

This does make me think of so many bad movie versions of games. A lot of animated films have awful games. Some have great ones.

Baron brings up the Batman Arkham games, and how Asylum specifically was a groundbreaker for an IP breaking into that space successfully.

You have to break things, do things that shake things up.

O'Connor mentions The Mandalorian as an example of a show that has video game written all over it. Then there's the show adaptation of The Witcher that we could analyze. Look at the game, its development, then watch the show.

If you want to practice game writing not at a studio, honestly, find an improv group. Twine tool she mentioned earlier is good too--take an episode of something you like or your own story and throw things in there, see what happens.

O'Connor recommends the books The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell and Story Anatomy by John Truby

Talking about resources again! IGDA, GDC. Obviously right now in-person events are not happening, but there's lots of virtual events, and there's twitter! Just don't be a creep! lol