On the lovely island of Holmen in Copenhagen, stands the proud National Film School of Denmark (DDF). The Film School is already well known for its graduates and especially the Dogme 95 movement. What you might not have known is that the Film School also hosts many public events in English.
EWC have posted some event highlights on Instagram, but if you would like a deeper dive on how to write for video games read on!
Who writes for games anyway?
The speakers at this event were veteran writers Soni Jörgensen -scriptwriter on ‘It Takes Two‘- and Jim Ashilevi -voice director on ‘Disco Elysium: The Final Cut‘-. The talk was moderated by DDF alumni Camilla Lyngbo Wolden-Ræthinge – behind Fight Like A Girl Games.
Soni Jörgensen, describes herself as an accidental game writer. A USC School of Cinematic Arts graduate, Jörgensen initially wrote for TV and film in Sweden. She had little gaming experience and was lured into the Games Industry through her collaborator/friend Josef “Joe” Fares. Fares was a film director who had broken into the Games Industry with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons a few years previously and he tried pitching his idea for a video game about a divorcing couple to Jörgensen over lunch.Though hesitant at first, Jörgensen was eventually won over by Fares’s words that “a story is a story” and joined Hazelight Studios.
Jörgensen and Fares wrote It Takes Two together. It Takes Two is a game that throws two players into a unique adventure. You and your second player play as a bickering couple, magically doll-sized, forced to team up to fix “your” relationship.
It Takes Two Official Reveal Trailer:
Jim Ashilevi on the other hand comes from a background in theater. Debuting as a playwright, Ashilevi graduated from the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School at Tallinn University. While working on TV and short films, Ashilevi also participated in an Estonian culture group called ZA/UM, a creative blog/community. Between 2016-2019, ZA/UM members started a game studio and developed a game called Disco Elysium. ZA/UM (the game studio) later invited Ashilevi to help them remake Disco Elysium with full voiceover dialogue. He joined as a voice director on what would become Disco Elysium: The Final Cut. Ashilevi remarked that unlike Jörgensen he liked playing games before Disco Elysium, but was not addicted to games. He noted Fire Emblem: Three Houses as one of his favorite games recently.
In Disco Elysium, you play as amnesiac detective Harry Du Bois. Through the journey not only will you figure out the murder mystery, but also figure out your own past!
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut Trailer:
Writing Techniques for Games
Even for experienced writers, games are a very unique medium. The story of a game is not necessarily presented in linear sequence, so writers are presented with some interesting challenges. When games take 14 or even 32 hours to go through, keeping track of everything going on requires some unorthodox methods.
For It Takes Two, Jörgensen and Fares had a clear vision of what the story should be. But through development and play testing they wound up polishing the story for years. Indeed, Jörgensen said the script for the game was continuously updated until the game was released. It was quite a hassle to finish writing lines, record actors with motion capture and then to update their character models inside the game.
In fact, It Takes Two took two scripts. First there was the main script, which was written as a scenario like a screenplay. That is where the story lies. The second script was where the interactivity comes from, and it was a massive excel file that defined all the ways characters could react to the players’ actions. This second script handles dialogue for when the player idles about or interacts with objects. Jörgensen described this approach as marrying the storyteling and the game mechanics. It makes it so that players can feel as if they are living in a story book.
Where It Takes Two had a well-defined narrative; Disco Elysium is much more ambiguous, featuring branching paths. Ashilevi affectionately describes Disco Elysium as akin to absurdist theatre – a story where logic and purpose are maybe not so important. Rather, it’s a story where players have some limited freedom to pick their own interpretation of the detective Harry du Bois, giving players just enough freedom to feel agency over their actions.
> With 1.2 Million words, Disco Elysium has an abnormally lengthy script. That’s something like all of the Harry Potter novels back-to-back. What’s more is its branching text influenced by player choices. You could not do something like this as a film, and that I believe is the real power of storytelling in games.
- Jim Ashilevi of Disco Elysium.
In a world with dozens of characters and locations to explore, the player can create their own sequence of events. To accommodate those player-choices, studio ZA/UM used a tool called articy:draft X to organize events into a mind map of cards. This way, Ashilevi and his actors knew every possible outcome and had to record lines appropriate for that scene and its context. Yet, within the game a player will only see some outcomes and no two playthroughs of the game are the quite same. There is also a factor of randomness to make it especially challenging for players to get the more desirable outcomes or good endings. Ashilevi’s team have created a story that encourages players to go back and reexperience it differently over and over again.
There is a certain harmony between what kind of game you are making and what kind of writing is needed. It Takes Two was about telling a particular narrative and so it benefitted from having a scenario. Disco Elysium focusses much more on character choices and so it required writing for many many hypothetical character interactions. An aspiring game writer should try to find games that have tried a similar premise, understand the development cycle behind them and adapt to their own needs.
The EU Games Industry: Strengths & Weaknesses
Through the evening, the conversation moved towards discussing the Games Industry within the EU. This was understandable, given that a Swedish writer and an Estonian writer were attending an event in Denmark. The audience lamented that the Games Industry in the EU was too isolated, appealing mainly to people who have been playing games all their lives and those who have Triple A experience in the big companies.
Jörgensen emphasized the constant need to network. It’s very difficult for creative backgrounds to break into the games/entertainment industry without making a conscious effort. She was backed up by moderator Lyngbo who pointed out that it goes both ways, folks who are mainly entertained by video games are not going to automatically consider working with film or theater writers.
However, Jörgensen also acknowledged that there were certain problems exclusive to Europe, leaving the region in the shadow of the US. For one thing, there was the question of why a mostly Swedish team would publish under the American jugernaut Electronic Arts. Jörgensen said it mostly came to creative freedoms and open-mindedness. Director Joe Fares was approached by several game studios, but generally they had very harsh terms on publishing. Electronic Arts simply had a program where they were used to working with smaller studios and so they could establish a partnership with Hazelight Studios.
Europe’s also falls behind on reception. Jörgensen noted that after the success of It Takes Two, several US agencies approached Hazelight Studios to discuss a possible movie adaptation of the game. Through that dialogue there now is an It Takes Together movie adaptation in the works. However, Jörgensen was also disheartened that there was no similar European interest, not even in Sweden. In general, the US seems to appreciate TV/Film writers more. This is unfortunate because it hurts local artist communities in Europe who share history and common ground. Jörgensen believed it was a strength to be working with Fares and Hazelight, who managed to establish a healthy artist community, in spite of the ambivalence prevailing in Europe.
Later I also chatted with Jim Ashilevi to get his take on the situation. Compared to the broad appeal offered by It Takes Two, Disco Elysium was much more niche, carrying European and Estonian idiosyncrasies. In addition to the origins of ZA/UM as an Estonian creative blog, the atmosphere of Disco Elysium was also inspired by Estonian punk and metal, in particular the anarchist band Vennaskod.
Ashilevi believes that the unique cultural flair their game had was what truly set it apart from competition. Whilst the US and UK have many more resources available to them, ZA/UM and Disco Elysium offer identity, which can be hard to come by nowadays. In fact, Disco Elysium has arguably redefined the Estonian identity in public consciousness. Many players have never experienced the Baltic nation of Estonia before, but wandering through Revachol they experience something similar. Disco Elysium has, in a sense, put Estonia on the map as a sight for the world to behold!
Ashilevi went on to say that creating the final cut of Disco Elysium was absolutely worth it. He described it as discovering a new planet, with a team of elite explorers- all good people. It was a very intense, almost surreal process but he says that he has no regrets. There were certain challenges, such as some of the original actors from the 2019 version of the game being unable able to return for the remake. But he was also very happy working with his casting director Mikee Goodman who players may recognize as the voice behind Reptillian Brain. Ashilevi said he loved it all despite the laborious work, because he was able to be the storyteller he wanted to be through helping actors perfect their line deliveries.
Jörgensen and Ashilevi’s journeys stand as a testament to how European creatives can succeed in the Games Industry. Though it’s folly to think they faced no challenges. Creative expression and identity emerge as strengths that games in Europe can offer, but we must also recognize failures in communication and more limited funding. There is a lot that can and should be done to promote creatives.
More About the Danish Film School
This event was organized especially with the Film School’s DADIU Program in mind.
> DADIU is a lively, creative production environment very unique to Denmark. Students enrolled in DADIU produce 3 games in a semester, with interdisciplinary teams. It is an opportunity for creative professionals to hone their craft while learning to collaborate. We believe it’s a great simulation of the Games Industry and it gives students the chance to experiment, set firm expectations and take their first step into the Games Industry.
- Thomas Vigild, head of the DADIU program.
You can find last semester’s games here.
If you have read this far and are still not sold on the Danish Film School, don’t worry. It’s not all games!
For starters the Film School offers a number of courses in English. They range from one-day workshops to an entire semester in length. When it comes to events, unfortunately the Film School’s Event Calendar is in Danish, so if you are not fluent you will have to spot out the occasional English events. But if you want my insider recommendation, most English events are not listed on the website. If you can physically visit the Danish Film School you can find fliers and posters for events hosted by various creative groups around Copenhagen. So if you have any friends who want to break into acting, send them their way!
