Writing for Games
An interview with Christy Marx

Conducted in January, 2007

by Gamer-girl

Buy Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games here

Photo courtesy of ChristyMarx.com

Christy Marx's eclectic, award-winning career spans more than twenty-five years and includes writing for animation, live-action television and film, comic books, graphic novels, manga, videogames and educational books.

In animation, she developed the cult-favorite animation series, Jem and the Holograms, along with developing, story editing or writing dozens of animation series such as Conan, X-Men, G.I. Joe, Spider-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She was awarded the WGA/Animation Writers Caucus Award, given for making outstanding contributions to the profession of the animation writer.

In comics, she wrote stories for Conan, Red Sonja and Elfquest, as well as creating the mature-level series and graphic novel, The Sisterhood of Steel.

Her award-winning adventure games for Sierra On-Line, Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow, are recognized as classics of the genre. She has done writing and content design for games in the PC, console and MMOG categories.

G-G: How did you get into writing for games? You still write for other media too, right?

Christy: I had been writing animation and live-action for film and TV, as well as writing comics and graphic novels, for a long time before I got into games. How I got in was a fluke, the kind that can't happen any more. Sierra On-Line had a headhunter out looking for artists. My husband at the time, Peter Ledger, was an artist. When the headhunter contacted him, I asked whether the company was also looking for writers. Ken and Roberta Williams were enthusiastic about my Hollywood scriptwriting background. We went up there, interviewed, accepted a deal on the spot and moved up there a month later to create an adventure game. I did all the design and writing and Peter did the art. I knew absolutely nothing about game design when I began, but they were willing to give me the chance to learn it and prove myself.

I continue to work on animation and comics when the chance arises, though at the moment I'm pretty tied up with full time work.

G-G: What are you working on now, if we're allowed to know?

Christy: I'm the Senior Writer on a new MMOG, but we're still in the heavy secrecy phase of development, so I can't say anything else about it.

G-G: Can't you tell us aaanything? Who it's by, for example, and what they've done in the past?

Christy: Nope. Very, very secret right now. They implant us with devices that will make our brains explode if we breathe a word about it.

G-G: What unique challenges have you faced as a games writer that other kinds of writers wouldn't have to worry about?

Christy: The first and biggest challenge I faced was learning to think about writing in a non-linear mode, having come from a background of linear storytelling. I *thought* I was being non-linear when I first began designing and writing Conquests of Camelot, but I have a certain logical approach to how I have my character investigate a room or situation. I was proceeding under the very mistaken notion that all players would operate in much the same way. I finally received my wake-up call when I had the chance to watch typical gamers pound away on the game doing anything in any order with no logic whatsoever. Grasping the truly chaotic nature of non-linear thinking is a vital part of being an effective game writer. Game writing is not for the timid.

Another big challenge is being able to track vast quantities of variables in one's head and still somehow keep a strong grasp on the overview of the game. In linear writing, I may go through the same set of variables while I'm mentally working out with path to take. Once I arrive at the path, I can discard all that other mental work. In non-linear writing, I may have to include all or many of those variables a thousand times over and keep track of them and keep track of how they affect the other thousand variables. Game writing is not for the unfocused.

A third big challenge is keeping the writing tight, pithy, controlled, and short while still being vibrant, exciting, evocative and informational. Fortunately, I came from a background of writing for animation and comics which teaches one how to write in that manner due to the constraints of those forms of storytelling. Game writing is not for the verbose.

G-G: What was your favorite game-related project to work on?

Christy: I loved working on my adventure games, Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. I had full creative and design control from beginning to end, a form of freedom that is unknown nowadays. And I really loved making adventure games because I had the luxury of making them character and story-driven.

G-G: How are writers involved in the game development process?

Christy: Unfortunately, it is far too typical for writers to be thrown at a project as an afterthought. I've seen examples where a project is halfway or more than halfway finished before someone decides to bring in a writer.

The ideal way is to involve the writer at the earliest possible stage of conceptualizing and development. More ideally, this is a writer/designer who understands the design issues, but all the same, having the writer crafting the story elements from the start provides a far superior meshing of story and game elements.

G-G: How are writers involved in the game development process?

Christy: That's a question that involves too many variables for a simple answer. It depends on the attitude and approach of the company combined with the attitudes and personalities of the designer and the writer, and whoever else has a say in the vision of the project. Some companies place heaviest value on the gameplay side and consider story a pesky appendage that sort of needs to be there. Other companies understand the value of story elements and bring the writer in early. It will depend on whether the writer is in-house or an expensive, big-name contract writer. It will depend on who carries the vision of the game because in the end someone has to make the final decisions and it's not usually going to be the writer. There might be a lot of friction or there might be none at all. It really depends on the people involved.

There is also a tension between gameplay and storytelling. The trick is to find the right balance. That takes a designer with an appreciation for how story enhances the game, and a writer who appreciates when gameplay needs to dictate what story can do. This is a collaborative medium. Compromise, flexibility, good communication, and professionalism are vital qualities on both sides.

Storytelling is fundamentally linear while gameplay should be fundamentally non-linear. With my adventure games, the tension comes from finding a way to direct or guide the player from one section of the story to another while allowing for the freedom to explore and solve at the pace and in the manner that the players wants, rather than what I want.

In the Robin Hood game, I set up specific events/puzzles/discoveries that would occur within a chunk of gameplay defined as a "day". The trick was to continue the story via those events, but leave it up to the player to decide when and how to tackle them.

When I worked on a console RPG, I created a story that had some non-linear flexibility. It was all removed in favor of design choices (not mine) wherein the player was essentially run on a rail in a linear manner. I wouldn't have made that choice.

G-G: Why do you think the adventure game genre faded out? Will it ever make a come-back?

I'm not sure why it faded out. I suspect it was because a couple of other technical and design approaches flared up and became hot and popular, such as Myst and Doom. Being the next hot thing, there was an unfortunate tendency to imitate them rather than continue to do something original. There was also a bad tendency to decide that there was a certain type of audience out there (young males) and that games had to be designed for them. But if you design games for a specific audience, that is who will buy them and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe that blinkered approach had a long-term negative affect on game development.

G-G: In games, do you typically work with whole teams of writers, or is it just you?

Christy: Again, there is no "typical" because games can have so many varying demands. I was the sole writer/designer on my adventure games. I did the major part of the writing for a PS2 RPG, but had a second writer working on the dialog because there was so much of it. For most game bible development work, there will be one writer. For games heavy in story and dialog, you could easily have a team of writers. For the CSI game, there were different writers/narrative designers for each of the procedural stories. Finally, there are MMOGs which, by their very nature and size, require a significant number of writers.

For the usual computer or console game, I prefer to do all or the vast majority of the work myself because I usually do have a strong creative vision and that's simply easier. Plus I like doing it. With very huge games and MMOGs, having one person do all the work is out of the question.

G-G: Any advice to writers hoping to break into games writing?

Christy: I spent a long time writing a book that covers this in detail, so I'm going to take the easy way out and recommend that people read the book. It's called Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games from Focal Press. I cover both the freelance and in-house career paths.

G-G: I can't help asking - with all the 80's cartoon revival, will we be seeing Jem again anytime soon?

Christy: I sure wish we could! There's nothing definite on the horizon, but I've been pursuing various avenues for a revival. I would love to re-create Jem for the 21st century.

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