Video Game Creators Seek Out Hollywood for Robust Narratives
- 6 years ago
Video Game Creators Seek Out Hollywood for Robust Narratives
“At Naughty Dog, each narrative beat is infused with not just the ideas of the writers, but also by design, art, and more.”
Gary Whitta, whose film-writing credits include “The Book of Eli,” “After Earth,”
and last year’s “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” said he had seen how storytelling went from nonexistent in games to becoming “more the standard.” Mr. Whitta, who got his start as a gaming journalist, has consulted on narrative and story development for a number of video games, including Microsoft’s popular first-person shooter series Gears of War.
Last December, Naughty Dog, the studio behind blockbuster action-adventure franchises like Uncharted and The Last of Us, announced
that Halley Gross, a writer and story editor on HBO’s “Westworld,” would help write the studio’s coming game, The Last of Us Part II.
Mr. Samuels sought out Larry Fessenden, an American screenwriter
and director whose credits include the horror films “Wendigo” and “The Last Winter,” and the screenplay for “Orphanage,” an in-development English language remake of the Spanish horror film “El Orfanato” from the director Guillermo del Toro.
When Pete Samuels, a founder and the chief executive of Supermassive Games, began working on a survival horror adventure
video game called Until Dawn in 2015, he knew he wanted the story to unfold like that of a horror film.
With a story-based game, you expect to be able to exercise some agency over how the story unfolds — or at least to experience the story in a way
that feels more intimate and personal than a film or television show.
“At Naughty Dog, each narrative beat is infused with not just the ideas of the writers, but also by design, art, and more.”
Gary Whitta, whose film-writing credits include “The Book of Eli,” “After Earth,”
and last year’s “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” said he had seen how storytelling went from nonexistent in games to becoming “more the standard.” Mr. Whitta, who got his start as a gaming journalist, has consulted on narrative and story development for a number of video games, including Microsoft’s popular first-person shooter series Gears of War.
Last December, Naughty Dog, the studio behind blockbuster action-adventure franchises like Uncharted and The Last of Us, announced
that Halley Gross, a writer and story editor on HBO’s “Westworld,” would help write the studio’s coming game, The Last of Us Part II.
Mr. Samuels sought out Larry Fessenden, an American screenwriter
and director whose credits include the horror films “Wendigo” and “The Last Winter,” and the screenplay for “Orphanage,” an in-development English language remake of the Spanish horror film “El Orfanato” from the director Guillermo del Toro.
When Pete Samuels, a founder and the chief executive of Supermassive Games, began working on a survival horror adventure
video game called Until Dawn in 2015, he knew he wanted the story to unfold like that of a horror film.
With a story-based game, you expect to be able to exercise some agency over how the story unfolds — or at least to experience the story in a way
that feels more intimate and personal than a film or television show.