After Dark

If you have not seen YOU ARE SO UNDEAD yet, we're screening at the Toronto After Dark Festival, at 9:45, Saturday, October 22nd.

We will also be at the New York International Children's Film Festival. Which kinda troubles me...

In Appreciation of THE GOOD WIFE

We finally got our DVDs of THE GOOD WIFE and we've been watching steadily. Just finished S1 disk 3 last night. What a deftly written show. You almost wouldn't think it was on broadcast. I love a TV show that's written for an audience who's ready to pay attention. Nothing is said twice, and many things aren't completely said.

Of course, it's inevitable that it's essentially a detective show. These days, you can have any kind of hero on TV, so long as they solve crimes. You can have a lawyer show or a doctor show, so long as they solve mysteries.

There's almost a template for a high quality broadcast show. A TV show wants to delve into its characters, and that means story arcs. But viewers want to be able to tune into any one episode and get 45 minutes of entertainment. How do you square the circle? The way VERONICA MARS did. Every episode has an episodic A story that entirely begins and ends over the course of the episode. It has an interpersonal B story that gets resolved by the end of the episode, too, but is part of a longer dramatic arc. And there are a few beats allocated to the show's uberplot -- in this case, the political and legal battles of Alicia's husband.

Within that template, the show is subtle. Alicia Florrick is intentionally hard to read. Does she want her husband back? She doesn't seem too sure. She'll defend him against an outsider but will barely give him a smile when they're alone. What Alicia and the other characters leave unsaid is at least as important as what they say.

Nice work.

2nd Time Through

Weird. My first time playing through DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION, it felt too hard, especially the bosses. It took me five hours (!) to beat the first boss on easy, and I didn't even try on the second. I turned her over to Hunter. I kept getting into shooting matches with squads of guards, and I'm a terrible shot.

Now on my second playthrough, on hard, it's almost too easy. I've learned how the guards' AI's work. They never look around corners. My character has 7 seconds of invisibility, which is enough to go almost anywhere safely, and with a few candy bars he can stretch that to 21 seconds. So now I never get into shooting matches. My character has learned the Importance of Not Being Seen. And that means the nasty shooty robots never even come out of their closets. Playing as a stealthy pacifist is so easy, I'm almost considering stopping playing.

(If I were designing a Give Me Deus Ex hardness setting, I'd just have the guards walk around a little more randomly. Or walk past the corner instead of just short of the corner. As is, the setting only makes guards harder to kill. Which, if you're never killing them, is irrelevant.)

Now here's the weird thing. Even though the game isn't, strictly, a challenge, I still have the urge to keep playing. It feels mildly rewarding to keep beating the guards, even though it's not hard. I like winning the little hacking minigame. Partly it's that I'm enjoying the world more -- actually reading all the e-books scattered everywhere, and paying attention to all the corporate politics. But most of it is, I think, just my lizard brain enjoying all the random rewards.

So I'm torn between quitting the game, and playing right now, in the middle of the day.

I recognize that as addictive behavior, so instead of procrastinating by playing a video game, I am procrastinating in a slightly more productive (and much less time-consuming) way by blogging. The thing about addictions is that the feel more like need than fun. Am I really enjoying DE3 right now, or do I just hunger to play it? I can't actually tell how much I'm looking forward to it, versus how much easier it would be to fall into the game than try to get my 5-10 pages today.

At least I'm not this guy...

Manager?

A young writer friend of mine has someone who's offering to manage him. She wants a 2 year contract. Various friends of his (including lit managers) are shocked by that -- they don't sign contracts with their clients. I find this very odd. I can't imagine a manager not wanting a contract. How else do you ensure you get paid when your client breaks in?

The only odd thing about the contract to my mind was that there was no escape clause if he doesn't get a bona fide offer over a period of 4 months.

Anyone want to comment?

Game Pitch?

What exactly does a game pitch look like when someone's bringing a game idea to a company? Does anyone have one I could look at?

Manage Your Manager

I've written various posts on how to agent your agent. But I was having a chat with a dear friend of mine who was complaining that his boss waltzes into the office, riffles through everything on his desk, and quizzes him on what he's doing. He feels disrespected. In previous jobs, he had some autonomy and people assumed he knew what he's doing.

I told him that his boss probably doesn't know what he's doing. That may be his boss's fault -- his boss never takes time for a sit-down meeting -- but what he really needs to do is manage his manager.

I suggested he bombard his boss with information on what he's doing. Send lots of memos. Keep his boss constantly updated. Eventually his boss will say, "Fine, I get it, you know what you're doing, enough with the emails." But til then the boss will feel like she is being kept informed.

You have to manage the information flow with your boss. The less time they have to think about managing you, the better. For example, if you have a question or a problem, try to present it along with your best guess at the solution. That way, if you guessed right, they can say, "Yep, do that," and you're done.

Some bosses like an email with 15 points that they can go through and respond to. Some guys are prone to latch on to item 3b, give an in-depth response to that, and ignore everything else. For those guys, one question per email.

Make it as easy as possible for your boss to delegate responsibility and authority to you, and they will.

Panel Discussion February 6

On February 6, I'll be moderating a panel discussion at the McGill Faculty of Law on How to Read a Contract. Basically, what are the sorts of contracts screenwriters have to deal with, what do the different clauses mean, what terms should you make sure are included, what should you ask for, and what should you not bother asking for 'cause you won't get it.

Mark the date!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I beat Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the first time last night. "The first time," because I immediately started replaying it on the highest difficulty level. It is that good.

The first way through, I was still mastering the game, which is my first stealth game. One of the beauties of DE3 is that you don't have to play it as a stealth game. It plays perfectly well as a MASS EFFECT-style crouch-and-shoot game. But for me it's a lot more fun sneaking around and knocking out enemies without being seen.

(And I feel better, too. I don't like killing security guards just because they're working for an evil corporation. Don't mooks have families too?)

(Oh, and you get lots of XP for Not Being Seen. And if you can get through the whole game without killing anyone, you get an Achievement. So I sort of feel the game is meant to be played that way. Hunter, however, prefers shooting mooks in the head with his silenced pistol. To each his own.)

One reason Deus Ex is such a lovely game is there are multiple ways to do missions. To get into that room, you might be able to sneak past the guards if you time it right. Or, discover the vent that takes you past them. Or, stack boxes so you can get over the fence on the other side. Or, get that enhancement that turns you momentarily invisible.

Another reason is there are consequences. At the beginning of the game, you're told there's been a break-in at a manufacturing facility; you're needed to resolve the situation before Detroit SWAT charges in. In most games, that situation will wait while you explore the world, do side-quests, etc. In DE3, you have 15 minutes to get on the helicopter. After that, there's no mission. The hostages are dead and your boss is not happy with you. Needless to say this adds a great deal to a feeling of verisimilitude

Another reason is that dialogue is gameplay. In most games, dialogue is only part of story. There may be dialogue options, but no matter what you say, if you need information, you can keep clicking on the Non Player Character until you get all of it. In DE3, you can talk your way past a guard, or you can fail to, in which case you may have to go through the sewer.

Clausewitz said "war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means." In DE3, dialogue is a continuation of combat by other means.

All of this takes a great deal of work in development and production. The story has to make sense whether you save the hostages or not. It takes much longer to playtest scenarios in which the hero can shoot, sneak, jump or talk his way somewhere. Kudos to Lead Game Writer Mary DeMarle for her awesome work, and to Eidos for giving her the authority to do it right.

But everything about the game is first class. Programming (I've only run across two glitches), rendering, the richness and density of the world... I think I'll hang out here for another little while.