A portion of a Gamasutra interview with animation/game writer, Paul Dini...
GS: Talk a little bit about writing for games versus writing for animation. In a way, it's a little more similar than writing for movies because you've got to get your marks in there, but in games there's a whole lot more of it. What are your general thoughts?
PD: It's like writing the same movie about 12 times, you know? For every variation. You go down and the character has a certain goal to accomplish -- like he's got to get to this room and then there's a certain boss along the way, and he's got to go through the other guys. But every loop has to be written, and scripted, and accounted for.
So I find myself looking for variations of thug dialogue a lot, like "What's that?" "It's the Bat!" "The Bat, he's here!" It's like, how do you say the same thing over and over again? Because every movement -- "We got him!" "He got away!" -- has to be done over and over again.
Also it helps I work with a tremendous team of game designers and story people at Rocksteady. The story changes -- and remember you never write a script and it's just done. It has to be changed and revised to go with the demands of the play, or the demands of technology. Somebody always has a better idea how to approach a scene, so you have to be open to that and very fluid. So I work with some terrific writers and designers.
I want to give a shout out to Paul Crocker, who's our head of story on the Batman games, and he's really amazing, and shoulders a lot of the burden as far as the writing of it. Every time we do a game, I sit down with him, and with the gang in London, and we come up with the ideas. I go off and write a treatment, and then they start breaking it down as far as the scenes and everything.
It's very collaborative, much more so than a movie, because you're writing for -- you know, a lot of people are going to be doing a lot of things to determine the stories you're telling through the game; it's much more than just our story.
Full interview here
GS: Talk a little bit about writing for games versus writing for animation. In a way, it's a little more similar than writing for movies because you've got to get your marks in there, but in games there's a whole lot more of it. What are your general thoughts?
PD: It's like writing the same movie about 12 times, you know? For every variation. You go down and the character has a certain goal to accomplish -- like he's got to get to this room and then there's a certain boss along the way, and he's got to go through the other guys. But every loop has to be written, and scripted, and accounted for.
So I find myself looking for variations of thug dialogue a lot, like "What's that?" "It's the Bat!" "The Bat, he's here!" It's like, how do you say the same thing over and over again? Because every movement -- "We got him!" "He got away!" -- has to be done over and over again.
Also it helps I work with a tremendous team of game designers and story people at Rocksteady. The story changes -- and remember you never write a script and it's just done. It has to be changed and revised to go with the demands of the play, or the demands of technology. Somebody always has a better idea how to approach a scene, so you have to be open to that and very fluid. So I work with some terrific writers and designers.
I want to give a shout out to Paul Crocker, who's our head of story on the Batman games, and he's really amazing, and shoulders a lot of the burden as far as the writing of it. Every time we do a game, I sit down with him, and with the gang in London, and we come up with the ideas. I go off and write a treatment, and then they start breaking it down as far as the scenes and everything.
It's very collaborative, much more so than a movie, because you're writing for -- you know, a lot of people are going to be doing a lot of things to determine the stories you're telling through the game; it's much more than just our story.
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