Robot Soul

Alice of Wonderland hipped me to a feature that's up at Gamasutra: E3 Report: Developing Better Characters, Better Stories covers a panel discussion on the first day of the E3 Expo in Los Angeles.

Among the cast were Toby Gard, Game Designer for Crystal Dynamics and creator of Lara Croft; John Milius, the Hollywood screenwriter responsible for Apocalypse Now and Conan the Barbarian, who just had his first experience in games with the script for EA's Medal of Honor: European Assault; Joe Staten, Bungie Studios' Cinematics Director for both Halo and Halo 2, and Tim Schafer, founder of Double Fine, creator of Psychonauts and former LucasArts designer, who graced us with Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and a good portion of the script for the original two Monkey Island games.

Damn, I wish I could have been there to hear John Milius say:

"Drama is no different, in games or movies or whatever. You have to make your characters compelling and unpredictable."

I expect to see more writers on stage with the engineers in the future. I expect progress.

Update 27. May, 11:58: I forgot to put in the other hot John Milius quote:

"It's like acting," he says, "you have to know your characters."

You heard it here first.