Video Game Writing 1: Conception is an Intensive, meaning it happens in a short time span (1 day in NYC, or 2 days on Zoom, or 3 weeks Online). It’s open to writers of any level. Farther down, you can view a syllabus for this course.
If you feel you’re solid with the basics of video game writing, you may go straight to Video Game Writing 2. If you’re in doubt about this, start with Video Game Writing 1; it will be valuable even if some of it is review.
Video games have exploded into our culture (sometimes literally), earning double the annual revenue of movies. They have also become wondrously diverse, ranging from shoot em’ ups like Call of Duty to sophisticated stories like The Last of Us to offbeat indie games. Simple ideas like “avoid ghosts” have evolved into complex storytelling not unlike what you find in literature and drama.
Video games require writers, but they must understand storytelling craft as well as the games’ multidimensional and technical demands. Here you’ll learn about structuring a story, crafting a script, world-building, characters in gameplay, and the intricacies of the medium.
We’ll show you how to write (and create) awesome video games, be it a sweeping epic or a time-killer for your phone.
This course gives an overview of how to conceive a video game script. Course components:
- Brief lectures
- Writing exercises
The syllabus varies from teacher to teacher, term to term. Many topics will be similar to those covered in the Online classes.
Online classes
- Week 1
- Playing a Story: What’s different about videogame writing? A tour through the various video game genres. Bringing story to game mechanics—goals, objects, actions, space, rules.
- Week 2
- Creating Characters, Gameplay, and Theme: How theme works. Character goals (extrinsic and intrinsic) and tactics. Merging character and theme with gameplay.
- Week 3
- Interactive Story Structure: A tour through the various types of game story structure— traditional, multiple ending, branching, modular, and emergent.
About
- The Online classes bring students from all over the globe to Gotham—New York City’s most famous writing school.
- The Online classes happen asynchronously—not in “real time.” You can participate in class any time, day or night, but the classes advance week-by-week, and certain things should be accomplished within that week-long session.
- You can take an Online writing class from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. The majority of our Online students are located in the U.S. but we also draw students from practically every country in the world.
- Tech support will be available.
- Aside from the convenience of time and location, you have a record of everything that transpires in class, which you can print out and keep for future reference. (The material is text and image, not video.)
