Should my story be made into a film or a video game? [Professional Tips]

Last fall, Media & Communications instructor Cullen Thomas gave a lecture titled Cave Paintings and Video Games (read the recap here).  He touched on the differences between films and video games, and the creative processes behind them.  Cullen emphasized that when creating a story it’s important to use the right medium when no other medium can be used.  “Some stories have to be novels, some stories have to be films,” he said.   But how do you know what the right medium is for your story?  The following will answer that question.

Cullen Thomas, who recently taught Writing for the Screen 1 and 2, says that creating a film vs. creating a video game engages a different part of the brain: when you write a story for a film, it’s a personal experience requiring significant creativity.  Video games on the other hand are much more analytical to produce.

“There’s a big difference between a video game and a film.  At first blush they may appear to be similar because they both occur on a screen, and they have characters in them who do things.  That’s about where the similarities end,” says Thomas.

It’s true that to the untrained eye these two mediums might look like two sides of the same coin.  But there are fundamental differences not only in their production, but in the development of the story behind the finished product.  “In a video game environment, your audience interacts with the world.  And it’s hard to correctly emphasize how much of a difference that makes.  You don’t get the fine level of control over characters’ circumstances.  A film packages an experience which has a stamp of approval. This moment, experience, transformation, theses characters in this environment — have been vetted to be great.  And this sequence of events is going to be really good.  So you can sit down in a movie theatre with a certain degree of faith, in theory, that the experience you’re going to have is good.  In a video game, because you’re constantly making choices, not every outcome is going to be completely engineered.  Because the strength of the video game is that the audience is making choices as it moves through the world.  That’s what [the medium] has to offer.”

“So if the question,” he muses, “is should my story be a video game or a film, then the question becomes, how do you see the story unfolding?  Because the answer should be immediately obvious.  Is this a story in which the protagonist’s choice is constant, and affecting the world and always interesting from a skill level that can be transformed to a person sitting at a keyboard using a mouse?  If the answer’s yes then it might make a good game.  Far more often, the answer is going to be that specific choices by the protagonist are what make this story interesting.”

He uses Romeo & Juliet as an example: “Romeo & Juliet is interesting because Romeo decides to pursue Juliet.  Because he takes risks that most people wouldn’t make, it turns out.  It’s interesting to watch him do them, but you shouldn’t rely on a player at a keyboard to make the same set of choices.”  So, if you look at your story from the level of how much audience participation is needed, you should quickly realize if your story will work better as a film or a game.

Cullen explains that even with his background in film and writing, his first venture into the video game industry was more than he expected.  “The main thing that I’ve learned in the last few years of working on a video game project is how hard it is.  And how much more work it is that I thought it was going to be.”  He explained that a film normally takes him two years “from the first words on the page to a finished product that’s delivered to an audience.  But it’s nothing compared to game development.”  He cited his game currently in development as an example, saying, “We haven’t published our game yet.  It’s been three years.”

While both films and video games require years of work, it is easier for a writer to break into one industry than the other.  I asked Cullen how, differences in other aspects of production aside, a writer might get their story out there to companies who design games or produce films.

“From an industry standpoint my understanding is that writers are often not hired by game design companies.  [Companies] have for the most part, and with very few exceptions, writers in staff.  They don’t spend a lot of time hunting for writers.  There are so many people who want that job, and so few people that have that job, that they have no need to go have pitch sessions.  The same is sort of true for films,” he continues, “but it’s much less true.  There are far, far more people making movies than making video games, so there is a market for screenplays.”

Cullen commented that even as a casual endeavor, someone could write a screenplay and make a short film with friends.  But this can’t be done with a video game.  “I think that generally speaking it’s going to be easier to sell your work in screenwriting than for game writing.”

“[Game companies] don’t show up at film festivals, looking for screenwriters,” he added.  “They don’t buy scripts; that doesn’t happen.  Instead they have a set of game designers who are long-standing industry professionals who will have an idea and hire people that they know to help them write it.”  And even more commonly, he says, studios use dialogue writers already in their staff.

Not to discourage writers from producing their own video game, Cullen advises that if you have the skills or the opportunity to learn the skills required to produce a video game, “then it’s probably worth doing or at least trying.  If you don’t have the skills but the idea is strong and you have the time, then it’s worth doing— it’s worth learning.”