Crafting stories in an age of short attention spans.

​

What tricks can we use to tell an engaging story that keeps the player's thumbs away from the skip-button? How do we tell what's needed fast and efficiently?

​

Oh, and is our attention span really shorter now than before?

Lead writer Morten Brunbjerg goes through the 2,5-year long development of the story, branched dialogue, and thematics of indie sensation, Forgotton Anne.

​

From pre-production to release, writers had to collaborate closely with game and level designers, and stay in line with the directors' vision.

What questions must we ask to write clear mission briefs for players through dialogue?

 

Get do's and don'ts on how to avoid forced exposition. How do you communicate goals and story naturally to the player while staying true to your characters and story world? Can we create hints that widen the world and the urge to explore?

Why should you care about the theme of your game? How can it improve your entire production and even team communication?

 

Using practical examples, game writer Morten Brunbjerg gives suggestions on how to find, create from, work with,

and develop literary themes for video games.

 

Game writer Morten Brunbjerg talks about how to approach evoking an emotional reaction when creating story and characters for video games.

 

What makes the players feel emotionally connected to a

game story or character? What are the simple do's and don'ts?

 

How do you construct fictional worlds that work on every media? Is there a method?

​

We look at examples from games, books, and movies. We learn how to build conflict into the world itself.

​

During the workshop we work with cases and assignments.

​

(UK or DK)

Is every story the same? Yes.

​

In this talk, we go through a standard dramatic structure known as The Hero's Journey.

​

You'll see that every commercially successful movie follows the same structure. As examples, we go through The Matrix and Pretty Woman (two box office smash hits from the '90s) and see that they're exactly the same story.

​

Life is not perfect. Perhaps you already noticed? No matter how much we plan, unforeseen things pop up. Especially in game development.

 

As game writers, we must be ready to rewrite during production. That's like fixing the engine of a car while driving. Despite knowing absolutely nothing about fixing cars, I share what works for me when I'm met with the demand of - more or less - real-time story rewriting.

(Workshops for Danish schools.)

​

Hør hvad en en spilforfatter laver. Lær hvorfor det er vigtigt at kunne en masse dansk og engelsk for at skrive til spil. Se hvordan mænd og kvinder er portrætteret i spil. Hør sjove eksempler på gode og dårlige fortællinger i spil.

​

Lær at skrive dit eget simple tekstbaserede computerspil på 10 minutter.

​

Kan tilpasses 3.-9. klassetrin.