GRAEME DAVIS PORTFOLIO AND SERVICES MAY (720)

Transcription

1 GRAEME DAVIS PORTFOLIO AND SERVICES MAY 2017 (720)

2 TEXT CREATION AND EDITING A modern AAA game can feature as much dialogue as 30 Hollywood movies. In addition, there is the less glamorous written content: tutorial and help text; user instructions; even the words on interface buttons. You may have all that covered in-house, but there are always unforeseen circumstances: if a key writer/editor gets sick, or has to focus on another project, or finds a better job, you ll be glad you kept my contact information. I have written or edited text for more than 40 shipped electronic game titles and over 100 tabletop game products. I understand the constraints of interface design and limited string lengths. I am an experienced smoke-jumper and text doctor, accustomed to short deadlines and steep learning curves. From 2012 to 2015, I worked on a dozen titles for Kabam, including their entire first generation of mobile games. I wrote text of all kinds, from in-game tutorials to character dialogue to unit and item descriptions. String length was often as low as 32 characters, including spaces. Localizing imported Chinese titles into English was a particular challenge because of the nature of written Chinese. The UI layouts very rarely allowed a comfortable amount of text space, and part of my job was to find English expressions that would fit, as well as being meaningful. In 2005, Bethesda Softworks hired me to finish the writing for their CRPG Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth after a team member quit unexpectedly. I jumped in and kept the text on schedule; the game was well reviewed.

3 LICENSED PROPERTIES The ability to develop a rapid and thorough command of the parent property is perhaps the most important aspect of working on a licensed game. It is not enough simply to avoid contradicting the existing lore: one must also be able to see opportunities to develop compelling gameplay and narrative design organically from ideas, themes, and characters within the property. It is this ability that distinguishes the lackluster knock-off or re-skin licensed game from the true video-game adaptation that fans will love. I have worked on multiple licensed games across multiple platforms, both as a writer and as a lead designer. I have a good level of pop-culture general knowledge, and can research a property quickly and in depth, producing a setting bible that the whole team can rely on. When Kabam won licenses for Web and mobile strategy games based on Peter Jackson s blockbuster Hobbit movie series, they turned to me. I created setting bibles for both teams and consulted on building, technology, and troop design, providing reference art where necessary. The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth topped 10 million downloads from the Google Play store and the iphone version climbed to number 2 on the App Annie charts; The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age gained over 1 million users in its first month. In the early days of mobile games, I wrote and edited text for Men in Black: Alien Assault (Ojom, 2006) and America s Next Top Model (PressOK Entertainment, 2009). When the PC/Xbox adventure game Highlander: The Immortals was canceled in 1996, Highlander franchise owner Bill Panzer invited me to turn my game story into a movie treatment.

4 IP CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT I can help you develop any new or existing game setting into a flagship IP, capable of supporting games in multiple genres as well as licensed products and merchandise. I have created and maintained setting bibles for multiple clients over the years. My first job in the industry saw me acting as a de facto loremaster for Games Workshop s blockbuster Warhammer fantasy IP. My contacts in the games, miniatures, and publishing industries will help you find the best licensees for your intellectual property, and create a web of mutually-supporting products whose commercial effect is far greater than the sum of its parts. Warhammer started in 1983 as a generic-fantasy tabletop miniatures game with very little in the way of setting. I joined the team in mid-1986 to help create Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, in which the Warhammer world first took the form that sustained it for the next 30 years. It helped Games Workshop grow from a second-tier games and miniatures company to a dominant force worldwide. The Warhammer IP has spun off novels, comics, and art books, and shaped the look and feel of a generation of fantasy and science fiction games. My work for Kabam included developing settings for their first generation of mobile games. Many were based on their existing IPs, such as Kingdoms of Camelot and Dragons of Atlantis, which were expanded to accommodate new game-world areas and gameplay features. In 2015, Kiloo (Subway Surfers) hired me to develop the setting and backstory for their swipe-and-slash fantasy RPG Dawnbringer. Released in 2016, the game has earned 4 stars on Google Play and 4.5 stars from the itunes Store.

5 STORY CONSULTING Story is a powerful tool for creating immersion. Backstory underpins a game s look and feel, giving it a strong identity that helps it stand out from the competition. Unfolding storylines give expansions a reason for being: they offer a means to explore new areas and discover new races; their ties to unfolding world events keep the game fresh and challenging, and keep players coming back. A game story is not like the plot of a movie or a novel: it has to be interactive. It has to offer the player meaningful choices and show clear consequences arising from those choices. Players quit if they feel reduced to the role of audience. When Kabam decided to add a PvE campaign to Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, I created a storyline that springboarded from the game s main scenario (which I also created), allowing players to hunt the Questing Beast, save King Pellinore from a Pictish plot, and interact with more than 50 characters from Arthurian lore. In 1994, Psygnosis hired me to create the story and characters for their SF combat flight sim G-Police. I also wrote voiceover and other text. Released in 1997, G-Police received favorable reviews and spawned a sequel, Weapons of Justice, in Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North Between 1985 and 1992, I wrote 14 adventure gamebooks and several magazine articles on interactive fiction, as well as story and conversation trees for two PC games.

6 FLAVOR TEXT AND TIE-IN FICTION Short pieces of flavor text can be placed in peripheral locations such as in-game encyclopedias, web pages, game wikis, and marketing communications. This text is an invaluable tool for communicating a game s atmosphere and general ethos. As a game IP gains traction and starts growing to flagship status, tie-in fiction is often one of the first spin-off products. Novels, novellas, and anthologies are easier to publish than ever, and can be sold through the company s e-commerce site alongside virtual goods and other game essentials; physical books can be produced and sold through a third-party publisher that specializes in printing and distributing tie-in fiction. During Games Workshop s mid-80s golden age I wrote short atmospheric fillers and flash fiction for Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and many other games, as well as word stories on the backs of miniatures boxes and in magazine ads. This is a common practice in the tabletop games industry today, but it started at Games Workshop. In 2006 I beat more than 1,000 other entrants in a Wizards of the Coast open call and won a contract to write a novel in the then-new Eberron setting for Dungeons & Dragons. War-Torn 4: Blood and Honor garnered 4-star reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. In 2013, Sony Online Entertainment hired me to write novella-length fiction for EverQuest Next. The commission was completed successfully, although with the game s cancellation in 2016 it will probably never be published. In 2016, Fantasy Flight Games commissioned me to write a tie-in novella for their Arkham Horror board game. At the time of writing, the book is in editing and is scheduled for release in mid-2017.