Another WHF Update

This one dates to November 25, but I forgot to put it up on the blog.

Three recording sessions this week.

I brought back the Voice of the Honey Bandit, Jay Simon, for a slew of new barks about, among other things, the Plague. A big Marvel no-prize to whoever figures out what the Plague Wastrels are saying, once they start saying things in the game.

Lisa (new writer) and I finished our rewrite of the playthrough of She Who Must Not Be Named, which meant I was able to call back the actor who plays One of Her Many Fans. And I brought back the utterly charming Alex Wyndham (Arthur) for a slew of new barks – plague, again – and to pick up revised lines for many of the cinematics. There’s been a fair amount of carnage in the cinematics; it’s a sign of how healthily we’ve staffed up that we can afford to burn some old work in order to do even better work.

We are starting to design a slew of new encounters, particularly in the Village. It’s always challenging to write dialog for an encounter that hasn’t been built yet, because I have to guess what the events will be that will trigger the dialog I’ll write. On the other hand, I get to shape the encounters so that they are revelatory of our world and its people.

A little while we all went to MIGS. I blogged a bit about what I heard about dynamic stories in Richard Rouse III’s talk.

Two more recording sessions next week, one with She Who Must Not Be Named, and one with an evil Hammer-movie-villain scientist named…

So we at Compulsion Games are looking for a third writer.

The immediate need is for someone to work on We Happy Few DLC in Montreal with us. This is a contract gig, so probably you have experience working in video games; but if a TV writer/playwright/novelist, at least you play video games.

We are agnostic about some things (PT or FT? junior or senior?); the key criteria are you know what a video game is, and you can write dramatic dialog with distinct, memorable voices. So I'm asking for a 2-4 page scene, which I'll probably look at first.

By "dramatic dialog" I don't mean "people shouting while exciting things are going on." I mean, two characters are talking to each other in order to get things they want (respect, an orange, the truth, assistance, etc.).

Also Compulsion is a really cool place to work.

Check out our posting for the deets...

Gamesutra Interviews Yours Truly

“We started with a few mandates: an isolated town that takes drugs and wears masks; Britain in the early '60s; no kids. From there, we retro-engineered the story. Why are they taking drugs and wearing masks? Probably to deal with a trauma. What sort of trauma? Why not something to do with the kids? If it’s Britain 1964, it probably is a trauma associated with World War II.”

Each piece led to others. After roughing out some ideas about the setting and the time period, more details started to fit naturally into place. “Given the drugs, it made sense that the characters all have individual traumas in their past, in addition to the overall ‘original sin’ of the town.”

Alan Bradley asked me a few questions about how Early Access shaped (or didn't shape) the narrative in We Happy Few. Check out the interview.

Q. How do I be a voice actor

A. Get a demo reel together, get an agent, audition for roles, get a better reel.

This is my current casting proecess

1. Post a breakdown on Breakdown Services (North America) or Spotlight (UK). Generally I will only send it to agents, because those actors are already “curated.”
   
2. They send me submissions of people with demo reels.
   
3. I listen to the demo reel. My #1 criterion is “do I believe this performance?” Does the actor sound like they’re reading lines, or do they sound like a person in a situation.
   
4. My #2 criterion is vocal charisma. Does their voice “pop”? Some actors sound a bit generic. Some have a distinct voice I want to hear more.
   
5. I ask some of the submitted actors, through their agents, for an MP3 of them performing sides - a scene I’ve written for the audition. Here’s where having a home studio is better than just having a phone to record the audition, but so long as I can clearly hear the performance I don’t care about sound quality.
   
6. I listen to those. Same criterion. Obviously, are they right for the part? Do I believe the performance? Do they have charisma?
   
7. I direct (and record) an audition over Skype / Facetime / Google Meet. I see how well they take direction.
   
8. I pick an actor.

To give you a sense of the scope, I just got 200 submissions for a role, listened to maybe 50 demo reels (I was pressed for time), asked 8-10 people for MP3's, and called back about 4. I have no idea what other people do, but I think I spend more time on casting than other voice directors.

Seth Barton Interviews me for MCV

Seth Barton and I had a lovely chat for MCV.

We all remember things in ways that suit us. In Arthur's playthrough, he is the hero, or the victim, of events; it's not his fault. Sally comes across as a bit of a flake, a bit of a mantrap, even though he's mad about her. But maybe he was not listening carefully, because Sally's explanations sound a whole lot more convincing in her playthrough. Sally even remembers saying some things that Arthur flat out doesn't remember."

I've been in the news!

With WE HAPPY FEW coming out in three weeks, I've had some lovely chats with journalists about the game. Here are some of them:

• WCCFTECH's Nathan Birch, We Happy Few Interview: Alternate History, Early Access, Retail Discs as Coasters, More

  I do think our world is grounded in some sort of honesty and reality. I think the best science fiction takes the real and pushes it further, until it can make its point. But if there’s no reality to begin with, it’s not grounded and there’s no emotional meaning. If it is grounded, it becomes clearer what you’re trying to talk about.

• VARIETY's Giancarlo Valdes, The Evolution of ‘We Happy Few’ From Survival Sim to Story-Driven Adventure

  “What the community told us is that they liked these goofy encounters with these crazy people more than they liked the systemic situations. We said, ‘OK, we’ll write more goofy encounters then,’” said Epstein.

• Xbox Achievements's Richard Walker, How Compulsion Pulled Back on Survival Gameplay and Put Narrative (and Puke) Up-Front

  I think we have an organic process, so I can't speak for Guillaume (Provost), who's the studio head and the Creative Director, [but] we're a studio that has kind of a flat structure, so Guillaume hires immensely talented people like Whitney Clayton (Art Director), David Sears who did SOCOM, who is our Design Director on this game, and then, y'know, lets them rip. And it's an iterative process, so you don't want to draw up a design document and then just make that design document, you know?

• READY:SET, We Happy Few built a dystopia with Mod culture, psychedelia, and Facebook

  “There’s a proverb that you shouldn't copy the masters — you go after what they went after,” says Alex Epstein, the Narrative Director for We Happy Few.

• PC Games Insider's Alex Calvin How Compulsion developed We Happy Few on Early Access

  "On our forums, people were asking over and over whether there was going to be a story. We were like: "Yes, there's going to be a story. We're making the story; we're making three stories". But there's been so much vapourware in this business that people are like: 'Pull the other one'."

In which Alex is interviewed at E3

So at E3 I had a super fun interview with the brilliant Julia Alexander of Polygon about We Happy Few. Did I mention it's coming out August 10th?

Can't wait to see what she thinks of Sally.

Pitch, Beat Sheet, Step Outline, Treatment

Q. Do you have examples of great treatments you could send me?

I don’t. I will read a great script, but I don't read other people’s treatments. Most pro writers will tell you that a treatment isn’t really a thing they like to write. It’s a step in the WGC contract, but it’s not really useful.

There are two things that look like treatments:

a. pitches
b. beat sheets

A pitch is for selling. It tells the story of the movie in 3-8 pages. Shorter is better. The idea is to get someone to pay you to write the movie. Or, if someone is saying they only want to read an outline, this is what you give them. There’s a fair amount of handwaving in a pitch. You don’t have to work out every last detail. You should put lots of sizzle in a pitch. Make sure the reader knows how cool everything is. Don’t put in dialog.

A beat sheet is for the writer to write the script. Mine are usually 10-12 pages single spaced. There’s usually about 40 beats in a movie. A scene can have two beats, or a beat can comprise several scenes, in the case of an action sequence. A beat sheet can include the emotional heart of a scene, if you think you might otherwise forget. If you have much more than 45 beats, you probably have too much going on in your movie.

Once you add sluglines (EXT. IAN’S FLAT - DAY) it’s a step outline, which is just a more detailed beat sheet.

Almost no one except writers and a few directors can read a beat sheet. Producers think they know how, but they don't, and giving a beat sheet to a producer usually results in tears. It is often unavoidable though. Producers will complain that a comedy beat sheet isn’t funny, or that a horror beat sheet isn’t scary, because beat sheets don’t express style or tone or pacing or emotional well. Beat sheets are the skeleton you hang scenes on. Never give anyone a beat sheet if you can avoid it, without first telling them the story in person over lunch.

Some producers and funders (e.g. Telefilm) are now requiring a 20-page “just add water” treatment, with indicative dialog. This creature is an abomination before the Lord. To get to this thing, you have to basically do all the work of writing a script without getting paid for a script, and without any of the fun. No writer I know considers a just add water treatment to be a useful step in writing a script. I have literally written the script first and then boiled it down afterwards, because writing a script is easier and much more fun.

The best way to write a pitch is to tell the story off the top of your head, without looking at the script. Just tell it the way you’d tell a friend the story of the movie. Then punch it up. Feel free to move events around if they sound better that way.

The best way to write a beat sheet is to tell the story to anyone who’ll listen, for three months, until you’ve worked out all the kinks in your story. Then write it down.

The second best way to write a beat sheet is with index cards, on the kitchen table. That way you can move things around easily.

I’m not sure looking at other people’s treatments is useful, except to see how different they are. The key point is to remember whether you’re writing a pitch or a beat sheet. If you’re writing a beat sheet, it doesn’t matter how you write it, because it’s just a long aide-mémoire for yourself (and your writing partner if you have one). If you’re writing a pitch, it’s a sales document, so just make your movie sound as awesome as you know how.