“Games are basically operas made out of bridges.” These are the words of NYU chair emeritus Frank Lantz. His description captures the challenges and opportunities of creating a video game: They require all the engineering know-how of a bridge, interwoven with the artistry of an opera.
In their fifty-year timeline, video games have grown from software showcases to pop culture touchstones. Television shows like The Last of Us and Fallout, both adapted from video games, have attracted new audiences with a simple but powerful premise: that games, like any other form of media, can be powerful storytelling tools. Video games, like any form of media, place specific demands on writers.
I’ve written video games professionally for eight years. In that time, I’ve also written a book, comics, essays, and nonfiction. Each medium demands a different mindset. They require the audiovisual storytelling of a film and the prose of a novel. They teach players how to complete the game, a writing style more akin to social media or newspaper journalism than fiction.
With these constraints and opportunities in mind, here are seven lessons novelists can learn that video game writers must always keep in mind.
1. Motivate Your Protagonist
Video games rely on verbs. What is the player doing? These can be action-oriented: shooting, jumping, or running. They can be familiar: cooking, cleaning, unpacking, organizing, or shopping. They can be rooted in the game’s world-building: casting spells, hacking computers, or piloting a spaceship. All are driven by three key questions: Who is the player-character, what do they want, and what will they do to achieve it?
These questions require character work, something novelists inherently understand. Novels demand that writers dig into a character’s backstory to define their skills. With video games, because the player is controlling the character, one more step is required: The writer must ask, Why would the player want to do any of this? What is the character’s motivation? What do they get out of this? These kinds of questions make the player invested in the protagonist’s journey and, in turn, eager to complete the challenges the game sets before them.
In my first game as an episode lead, The Walking Dead: The Final Season, the writing team knew our protagonist, seventeen-year-old Clementine, would need some basic skills to survive in the zombie (in this world, walker) apocalypse: walk, pick up items, and fight. We knew we needed more, and we needed to get specific. We gave her a bow and arrow instead of a gun because ammo, at this point in the world’s story, is scarce. We introduced different activities through which she could bond with characters in the story: spearfishing, playing with a deck of cards, whacking a zombie like a piñata. We gave these verbs to the player so Clementine, and by extension the player, would bond with other characters through action, not just words, creating more dynamic scenes.
Likewise, novelists who ask these questions will create a protagonist with interesting and believable motivations, earned skills, and an active role in their own story. Readers will understand why the protagonist makes choices and what’s at stake. This creates a much more engaging character with room to fail, learn, and grow.
