Current Events > Neil Druckman: Next game is structured more like a TV show

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean, what else could he mean?

The structure is basically THE defining characteristics of a TV show. Whether it's an episodic narrative, long form, or somewhere in between, the only thing separating it from a movie is the structure.

I mean, what else is there? Title cards? Commercial breaks? Getting cancelled by netflix?

Having a writers room instead of entirely writing the game on his own or with one other person was the example used in the article.

Yes, but without cute girls

what do you suggest

Which is hardly a "TV show" concept.

Most movies and games from big studios do that, already. Which brings us back to "breaking up into episodes is the only unique quality of a TV show."

Still, he was bullish about the shows prospects. I think it will change things, he said. Sometimes adaptations havent worked because the source material is not strong enough. Sometimes they havent worked because the people making it dont understand the source material. Whenever screenwriters gut-renovate a property, he observed, it rarely ends well: You think you need to fix it, and in trying to fix it you change too much, or youve lost what made it special. But Hollywoods relationship to video games, he thought, was changing by degrees. Partly, it was the result of a generational shift: more film and TV professionals had grown up playing them. There was also an increasing flow of talent between the industries. Ten years earlier, hed surprised his teammates by persuading Gustavo Santaolalla, an Oscar-winning composer, to score The Last of Us. For its sequel, hed enlisted Halley Gross, best known for HBOs Westworld, as his co-writer. Druckmanns own approach had changed as a result. He had continued to recruit from television, and made it clear to a cinematographer on The Last of Us that the door was open if she ever wanted to jump mediums. His next project, he revealed, was a game that was structured more like a TV show than anything else Naughty Dog had madefor which hed taken a highly unusual step. He wasnt writing the script alone, or with a single partner. He was assembling a writers room.

Well The Last of Us 2's writing certainly wasn't that.

Druckmann is just at the 'look at this bitch eating crackers' stage with gamers which happens to most notable developers after they've been around in the public long enough.

Honestly I'm not even a dev but I still have utter contempt for 99% of gamers.

So I imagine it's much worse if you've worked in the industry and had to deal with them in a professional capacity

Note that the first TLOU game was really structured like a TV show. It was very directly split into very clear sections that would take you about 45-90 minutes to play through (depending on stuff like difficulty and how good a gamer you are) that ended with very obvious "this is the end of the episode" moments for you to put the game down and come back to later.

It was honestly one of the strongest points of that game, and something TLOU2 strayed from, which is part of the reason the 2nd game isn't as good (I mean, I really liked the 2nd game, but I think the first one is better).