March 21, 2008

Part 2: WGA Award Winners Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan Talk Dead Head Fred
By Louis Bedigian

“Gamers play games because they want to be special, they want to be part of the story and contribute to its outcome in a meaningful way.”

GameZone continues its interview with Dead Head Fred writers Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan.

In your experience, which gives you more control over the story: games, comics, movies, TV, novels, or some other form of entertainment?

Dave Ellis: Having written 16 books (all non-fiction), I guess that I’d have to say that books offer at least some level of control that you don’t have in games. You’re pretty much only limited by word count and schedule in books. When you’re writing cut scenes for video games, you have to be mindful of what can and can’t be done on the hardware you’re developing on and what the animators have time for given the schedule of the game. Cut scenes are generally not top priority — n-game elements always take precedence.

On the other hand, creatively (and this was all on Adam as the designer who created the characters and the world in Fred) games provide more opportunity than, say, film or TV to explore bizarre situations…like 1940s detectives with interchangeable heads, for example.

Adam Cogan: One of the reasons I like to write comics so much is because it involves a very, very small creative team of people (some writers illustrate and self publish). I’m pretty much free to explore my ideas to their conclusions without much input, and they turn out pretty close to how I had originally envisioned them. I suppose that can be both good and bad, but it’s a wonderful feeling for a writer. Every writer should write comics!

Games are a much larger collaboration, more on the level of a movie or television production. There are always a lot of opinions and voices and people to make happy, code or hardware limitations to work around, publisher concerns that need to be met, budgets and schedules, and all of these voices and elements contribute to the shape of the game. I can see a lot of Dave and a lot of me in the final product, but I also see the mark left behind by lots of other people who contributed ideas and jokes and designs and artistic flourishes, all of which helped make it the unique game it is.

Some games fail because of the wrong group dynamic, and a great idea can end with a horrible execution. But in Fred’s case, all of those combined influences made the game a richer experience that I never would have arrived at on my own – it took lots and lots of help.

How will the face of story design change as games become more interactive? Right now, linear stories are still the most popular via books, TV and film. Could that change?

DE: It is changing, at least in terms of presentation. Look at BioShock, for instance. The story in that game is told almost entirely without using cut scenes. It’s still linear … but it’s up to the player to interact with the world and actively collect elements of the story. This lets the player take in as much or as little of the narrative as he wants, which is cool. It presents a huge challenge to the writer and the designer, though – you have to craft the story so that a player who just wants to blast his way through the game gets enough information to know his objectives, but so that players who really want to dig into the narrative have the means to do so.

Truly interactive storytelling – where the player’s actions truly influence the path of the story – is still in its infancy. Mass Effect is a step in that direction, to be sure. We’re just getting to the point where the gaming hardware and storage media is sufficient to include a meaningful number of branches in a story to make it seem like the player is truly in control of his destiny. The farther we go down that path, the bigger the role of dedicated writers is going to be in games.

That said, I think we’ve seen recently that the appeal of a linear story in games is not a thing of the past. In addition to Dead Head Fred, there are some great games out there that have linear story lines. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a phenomenal game with a feature film quality story that doesn’t suffer in the least from not being interactive in nature.

AC: I doubt that linear storytelling will disappear, but non-linear storytelling must be the future. We’re still learning how to make game experiences more immersive and more open to the player’s actions. The problem is, game writers continue to run into the same obstacles, and it will likely take years, probably decades to evolve beyond them.

We still have to anticipate the player ahead of time, and that always feels restrictive. Games are very limited in how they can respond to the player and help create the story the individual player is interested in being a part of. We may offer branching dialogue trees and multiple paths to explore and various endings, but all of that is finite. Play the game a few more times and you’ll have seen it all. Some of the best non-linear games allow the player’s experiences tell most of the story, and I think that’s a path we’ll continue to head down. We just need to find ways to expand the potential of those experiences.

Gamers play games not to be entertained (movies, TV, and books still do plenty of that), but because they want to be special, they want to be part of the story and contribute to its outcome in a meaningful way. They don’t want to sit there and watch it happen to other people.

I think we’re heading toward a convergence between movies and games, and that adorable little offspring will be something new, something we aren’t talking about yet, but it’ll be able to entertain us in ways that resonate on a deep, individual level. Fifty years from now, it’s possible that both forms of storytelling may be discarded in favor of something new that isn’t easy to imagine. There may be a time when computers will be making up all the good stories, the new stories. Right before they rise up and destroy us.

Dave – The Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com, credits you as having something to do with the voice-overs. Could you clarify?

DE: “Back in the day,” (I’ve been in the industry for about 16 years now), it was very common to cull voice talent from the development team. At MicroProse, the sound guys thought I had a pretty good voice and I had the reputation for being able to get things recorded with very few takes. As a result, I ended up doing minor voice work (pilots and such) in a number of games: European Air War and X-COM Interceptor for example. My biggest voice role was as the main villain, Korek, in Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard (one of the first games for which I wrote the VO script). We got the recordings of the actor who was originally supposed to play Korek, and I was listening to them with our sound guys. None of us thought he sounded Klingon enough, and I commented that I could probably do better. I did a couple of test recordings, and the sound guys agreed. So…I got to play one of the main parts.

These days, union rules apply to video games, so (unless I get my SAG card), I guess my days of voice acting (outside of stub VO for demos and such) are over.

Did you get to work with the actors at all during the voice-over sessions?

DE: We were linked via-telephone to the recording studio in Los Angeles, so Adam and I were able to provide direction from a distance — describe the characters, provide context for the scenes and mood, and so on. All of our voice actors were great, and they pretty much nailed the characters on the first try.

The highlight was working with John C. McGinley and Jon Polito. John was the perfect choice for Fred, and he was awesome to work with. He was happy to take direction from us non-Hollywood types, and bent over backwards to work the (many) Fred VO sessions into his Scrubs shooting schedule. He did a lot of ad-libbing, which just made the dialogue funnier. Adam ended up adding lots of lines to the in-game VO that played to John’s take on the character in the first couple of recording sessions.

Jon Polito was also great as the villain, Pitt. It was awesome to get him, actually. Adam’s character description of Pitt said that the character should be a lot like Jon Polito’s character in the film Miller’s Crossing. I watched the movie before I wrote the cut scene dialogue for Pitt, so the dialogue was written as if it were for Jon Polito. It’s no surprise that Pitt sounded exactly like we imagined he would. Jon came into the recording session super-prepared. It was obvious he had read the entire script and had the character down cold. He seemed to enjoy the script, and at one point commented, “I want to play this guy in the movie!” That was a great compliment.

What did you think when you first heard about the Writer's Guild of America award? Were you surprised they placed video games alongside movies, TV, and other traditional forms of entertainment?

DE: I was happy to see it … but not completely surprised. Video games get bigger every year, and other branches of the entertainment industry were bound to take notice of them sooner or later.

AC: I was certainly surprised. I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but … how come it took so long?

How long have you been guild members?

DE: Since we submitted the Dead Head Fred script for consideration. The rules this year didn’t require the writers for the video-game scripts to be members when the game was written, but we had to join when the script was submitted.

From your perspective, do you see the Writer's Guild of America – and perhaps others that are typically associated with Hollywood – seeking games in the future? Could there ever be an Oscar for game design, game writing, game effects, and/or game direction?

DE: I think that would be awesome! I don’t really see the Oscar thing happening, though. More likely, the game awards that already exist will be expanded a bit and gain a bit of prominence. There is already a separation of entertainment awards for movies, TV, theater, etc. That probably won’t change. The WGA award is different … it covers all forms of entertainment. Didn’t the Golden Globes or the Peoples’ Choice Awards, or something like that give out a video game award this past year?

AC: I agree with Dave, and it seems like some of the awards are already gaining a little more prestige and momentum, but we still have a long way to go. Games ARE a form of art, despite what Roger Ebert says. Groundbreaking achievements in game development happen every year, and they deserve to be recognized. While I would like to see a video-game Oscar some day, simply for the recognition, I guess maybe it’s the wrong forum. It’s just not the same kind of entertainment.

On second thought, let’s try examining it another way: a developer could hire an academy award-winning writer to write the game script, an academy award-winning actor to play the role of the protagonist, and an academy award-winning director to oversee the other guys, and there still wouldn’t be any chance whatsoever for Oscar Award recognition, even though each of them are essentially doing what they were doing to earn those awards. So what exactly is the barrier that prevents games from being recognized? Is it the digital thing? Is the Academy afraid of computers? I can’t imagine why.

What are the benefits for game developers (who are also writers) who might want to become guild members?

DE: It’s a little early to tell. Recognition is the main thing at the moment. I do worry that there will be a HUGE amount of resistance to game writers joining the WGA in the future. The buzz among a lot of the writers at this year’s Game Developers Conference was that “games don’t need to grovel for recognition from Hollywood.” I don’t really see it as groveling for recognition as much as gaining much deserved legitimacy as a form of entertainment, but I may be in the minority there.

AC: I think that membership from the developer community will continue to grow, and as the WGA continues to be infiltrated by us gamer types, they will eventually be forced to kowtow to our outrageous demands! Right before computers rise up and destroy us.

Would you like to see Dead Head Fred appear on another platform?

DE: Sure!

AC: Yes, please.

On your official site, www.monstermenace.com, you say that the game you're most proud of designing is Robotech: Battlecry. Having achieved other success stories, what is it about developing Robotech that made it the best?

AC: What makes Robotech the best? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but the most compelling one is the fact that I haven’t updated that part of my Web site since I completed Dead Head Fred. It’s pathetic but true. No, actually I have to say that Fred is my new favorite. It was a new intellectual property I had the opportunity to help create, and I’m very happy with the results. It was also an immensely rewarding and memorable experience to collaborate with Dave. He’s an amazing writer, and someday I want to grow up to be just like him, even if that means I have to grow up.

What's next for you guys?

DE: I’m the lead designer on two (unannounced) games at Vicious Cycle, one of which I am also writing the script for. Beyond that – I’d love to work on a Dead Head Fred sequel if we ever do one. I think Adam created a cool game world and a lot of great characters that really deserve to make an encore appearance.

AC: I’m continuing to design games, write comics, and create new IPs. I’m also in the market for handouts and bribes.

Thanks for your time guys, it’s been great.

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