But I have never in my life felt the least inclination to actually make one. I’m deeply interested in how they work and how they affect me. I’ve been writing about games for decades. Photo: Benjawan Sittidech/Getty Images Creating stories Olivia, the pitiless assassin, needs to find a new path. Is character really as important in a game as it is in a novel or a play? So I’m going to write my story. Their gallery of examples includes The Last of Us, Her Story, Overwatch, and Reigns. They point toward the recent success of narrative games in which protagonists (and antagonists) have displayed more depth and human resonance than in years gone by. Yorke and Marchal’s introduction to the course states their belief that today’s games should focus as much on stories as on activities. Empathy is about finding something inside a character that’s flawed and damaged that you understand.” The games companies think that’s the easiest person for players to empathize with. “I’ve seen a lot of really basic, James Bond-level characterizations in games,” he says. He says games are beginning to escape a long history of character cliches and stereotypes, and he’s looking for his students’ work to reflect that progress. Yorke asks that I mention the game’s genre in my written presentation, but he’s much more interested in the character at the center of my game than in the way the game plays. The session’s first exercise is to create a protagonist. “The audience is actually part of the experience in a way other media doesn’t offer” That creates challenges as well as opportunities.” “So the journey they’re going through is the same as that of the protagonist. “The big difference between movies or novels and video games is that, because they’re interactive, the audience is actually part of the experience in a way other media doesn’t offer,” she says. Quantic Dream is arguably the world’s most ambitious studio when it comes to interactive narratives and character-driven gaming, seen in its most recent title, 2018’s Detroit: Become Human, which has sold 2 million copies. She formerly worked at Quantic Dream, where she was lead game designer for Beyond: Two Souls. Yorke says he plays “AAA, blockbuster games, when I can find the time.” He is assisted by experts in gaming, including Caroline Marchal, CEO of studio Interior Night, which is currently working on a narrative game for Sega. “If developers invest more in the writing, in the very best screenwriters, that’s going to take them to the next level.” “In games, the writing often takes second place to design and technology,” he says. Yorke tells me that games pose a particular challenge because of their interactivity, and their reliance on spectacular visual effects. He’s spent most of his career in British television, holding senior roles on the BBC’s most popular production, the rollicking soap opera EastEnders. He also runs courses on writing novels, plays, movie scripts, and TV dramas. The course is run by John Yorke, the author of Into the Woods, a book on how stories work. Marina Ginestà, photographed July 21, 1936, in Barcelona.
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