Presented by Alex Epstein
November 1st17:15 - 18:15Room : Westmount
The craft of storytelling for movies and TV offers a slew of creative tools for game designers. What are the six structural elements for a good story, no matter the medium? What happens when one of them fails? How do you fix them? How do you reverse engineer your hero from your story, so that his or her journey feels emotionally satisfying to the gamer? How do you get away with a bad plothole? Why should you write what you fear? Screenwriter and TV show creator Alex Epstein (Bon Cop/Bad Cop, Naked Josh) will discuss these and other questions, applying insights from his work, books and blog to game design, using examples from both worlds.
Learning Objectives
- Come away with an expanded toolkit for constructing more effective stories, characters and dialog for games.
- Gain new perspectives on the familiar problems of storytelling and gameplay.
- Shake up game creators’ understanding of what their medium can do.
ALEX EPSTEIN is a screenwriter for television and movies, an author and a blogger. He was nominated for a Jutra and won a Canadian Comedy Award for his writing on the hit Canadian film BON COP BAD COP. He co-created the comic drama tv series NAKED JOSH for Showcase and Oxygen; it ran three seasons. He ran the writing room for the Space series CHARLIE JADE and was an Executive Story Editor for Fox’s GALIDOR. He began his career in LA, where, as a development and production exec, he helped produce a half dozen films and worked with directors such as Richard Attenborough and John Badham. He has published two popular screenwriting books, CRAFTY SCREENWRITING: WRITING MOVIES THAT GET MADE, and CRAFTY TV WRITING: THINKING INSIDE THE BOX, as well as a novel, THE CIRCLE CAST: THE LOST YEARS OF MORGAN LE FAY. Epstein got his Master of Fine Arts at UCLA and his B.A. magna cum laude from Yale in Computer Science and English. Recently, Epstein worked on web series development at Ubisoft and is currently working on story and gameplay for Northside’s online game BotColony. Epstein blogs about screenwriting craft at http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com.
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