In Game Dev, There's Nowhere to Hide

Why Games Make Great TV/FILM Adaptations

Since moving to LA I keep hearing that Hollywood is gobbling up game IP as fast as possible. I was having dinner with some TV writer friends recently, and we started talking about Fallout. Everyone was talking about the amazing iconography and signage, and the unique tone. It got me thinking about games, how they're put together, and whether there are advantages to creating IP in game development.

I think there are -- and a lot of it can be seen in all the little details that made Fallout a successful TV adaptation. These details are reflective in two aspects of game development:

• The interactive demands of creating a game world

• The unique collaborative process required to make an interactive space 

World Building for Invested Players

Players are the raptors testing the cage—they'll go anywhere you let them, and especially places you don't want them to. This unpredictability adds a strange dimension to world-building, making it one of the most challenging yet rewarding aspects of game development. You have to put content everywhere.

Even with invisible walls or gated areas, the freedom players have to explore these worlds is staggering. Developers know this and delight in cramming every nook and cranny with intricate details. This requires fleshing out the world more fully than linear media often demands.

In a screenplay, you can suggest the essence of a setting without providing the details to back it up and make it believable. Not so in an open game world. In Jedi Survivor - we wrote hundreds of pages of bonus dialogue accounting for when players veer from the golden path and interact with characters across different scenarios. Wanna know about how Turgle came to Koboh? It's there. Gulu and Gido's first date? Start exploring. 

When I wrote for Borderlands, we used echo logs to build out our planets, giving spotlights to side characters. Hell, the Typhon De Leon echos basically tell the history of the discovery of the first Vault on Promethea through Nekrotafeyo. We're talking 50 or so pages of scripts that found their way into off-the-beaten-path echoes. 

Much will go unseen, but some will find it. That's the pleasure and sorrow of being a game writer. You're writing for a variety of players, some of who will never veer from the golden path. But many will. And so you have to consider the full breadth of a world, its history and its characters. 

This extends beyond pure writing --  devs across disciplines layer in subtle world-building elements - art, design, narrative - ensuring a consistent, richly immersive experience throughout your world. Which brings us back to that iconography and signage in Fallout, which world-builds while directing the player through the environment.

And  all this meticulous foundational work proves invaluable for potential adaptations. The heavy lifting on setting, costuming, locations has already been explored from multiple angles and multiple disciplines, giving would-be TV and Film adapters an embarrassment of riches to choose from.

Deeper Worlds Through Iterative Collaboration

I'd hazard a guess that there aren't other mediums where so many different disciplines come together to build a world, with the exception of theme park design. Game worlds are often massive -- too big for any one person to make all the creative calls. Because of this, the approach to decision-making many game studios take mirrors a dynamic startup, with a willingness to experiment and iterate rapidly.

Does this sound chaotic? It is. We spend a lot of time in meetings and then in playthroughs, where  I'll see new details in an environment. Sometimes these additions surprise and delight me. Sometimes it's terrifying. You put that THERE? But for better or worse, a lot of the collaboration in games comes when you see it all working together in a level. It's part of game dev culture to get content in a game quickly, lending generally to a looser creative process.

On any given day in game development, I'm talking to sound designers, level designers, concept artists, narrative designers about details that make up an interactive world. What a character should be wearing. The environment where the player would find them. Whether it's raining or sunny. Every discipline views world building differently.

While this isn't true at all game studios -- there are definitely some that do top-down decision-making -- even then there's so much to build in tandem that no single person can completely define an interactive world. Harmonizing so many creative voices has its challenges, but when it works, you've got a bunch of amazing creative minds each lending their perspective and expertise to creating a unique, interactive experience. And it's all the product of iterative world building and teamwork.

The Indie Game Gold Rush

While every medium presents unique obstacles and opportunities, the dynamic, deeply collaborative approach to worldbuilding in game dev is a core strength of TV/Film adaptations.

I've been thinking a lot about where TV/Film adaptations in the indie sphere offer a bounty of fresh perspectives. As Hollywood has likely optioned most major game IPs, I expect they'll increasingly mine the indie realm for standouts like Inscription and Dave the Diver - offbeat worlds even AAA rarely explores. And even games that don't have explicit stories are ripe for adaptation. Strange kids cartoon set in the world of Animal Well? Yes please!