The Game of Writing Games with Matt Costello Pt 1/3

Matt talks about story worlds and how the game play is very dependent on the underlying story and how more importantly they really need to be developed in parallel. He uses Bioshock and the first Halo as examples of how story is really starting to permeate games in a more integrated way. Matt also refers to two games he recently wrote, Rage and Pirates of Caribbean as how the iterative and creative process work from first hand experience, but points out that each game development and production is often different from the last. “There is a heightened awareness that the story is important. Not that the narrative has to be linear or has to drive the gameplay, its just that the way the next generation machines look, the graphics and the new engines that are being developed, it has to be treated as a very serious thing…do I find that a lot of people create that bubble of time to sort of play with those ideas? Sometimes yes and sometimes no but often it can show in a project. But if there is one suggestion I would make to the industry in general is make that time, do the retreat, go for a week in the mountains, and come back and have in paper form the world and the story and the gameplay you want to have.”

Matt Costello 01The discussion moves to adaptations of games using existing properties like Aladdin, the aesthetics of games and in part two the cross-over form between film and game and the skills required by future creatives. Matt thinks that screenwriters are not being given the opportunities at film schools to immerse themselves in interactive media and visa-versa interactive students do not learn the deep storytelling skills. This doesn’t create the opportunity to create a new kind of person – a talented script writer who understands non-linear and interactive. Matt uses the examples of early animation when writing stories for cartoons seemed quite odd at the time of early Disney and then about games leading the film writing and Matt’s work informing the story for the next Pirates of the Caribbean film. The interview finishes with a discussion about the lack of courses looking specifically at growing story worlds and writing for games.
All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes. This podcast presentation produced and presented by LAMP @ AFTRS.

Filmed by Fadia Abboud, Sound by Peter Giles and Fadia Abboud
Podcast description, editing, processing and publishing by Gary Hayes

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