Thank you very much.
We did try to reduce our speaking time to seven minutes because we know there are a number of people.
Good afternoon, members of the heritage committee. My name is Maureen Parker and I am the executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada. Also with me today is Kelly Lynne Ashton, WGC's director of policy. Thank you for inviting us.
The Writers Guild is a national association representing more than 2,000 professional screenwriters working in English language film, television, radio, and digital production in Canada. We are here before you today to talk about the work they do specifically in writing for video games and how the government could support their work as part of the Canadian video game industry.
There is a common misconception that video games are nothing but shoot 'em up games for teenage boys. People are often surprised to hear that WGC members work on video games and that our guild has jurisdiction over that work.
What writing could a game need? Well, writing is an essential element of production of a video game. While in many ways it is the same craft as film and television writing, there are differences as well. Unlike television, the video game writer rarely initiates a project.
While every game is different, screenwriters can be engaged from the beginning to work with the game designer to write out a whole story for the game, including the world that the game inhabits, and end up with hundreds and hundreds of pages of script. We brought a sample script with us today to show you. It's hundreds and hundreds of pages. Or, they can be brought in late for the development of a game to write a few lines of dialogue for non-player characters who will add personality to those characters. Those lines of dialogue can add up over a game to 20,000 lines or more, depending on the game. Even if it is a simple shoot 'em up game, there has to be a story to explain why the battle is going on, and there are cinematic elements to move the action forward. An increasing amount of time and attention is being given to create the world in which the story is taking place, with detailed back stories and bonus scenes of action or dialogue among characters.
Fighting bad guys can be fun, but there needs to be a reason why to make the game truly interesting. In the crowded video game market developers want to be as engaging as possible to attract players, keep players with their game, and ensure that the players buy the series over multiple titles. Increasingly, the game community is turning to mainstream drama and comedy writers to bring plot and characters to life in their games. While Canadian screenwriters are being hired to work on video games in Canada, some Canadian-based video companies are still going to L.A. for their screenwriters.
We would like to describe a few games written by our members to give you a better idea of the kind of work they do and the role they play in this process.
Adrian Vershinin, who is also a television writer, has been writing video games since he got started on the racing game, Need For Speed: Underground2, in 2004. At times he writes dialogue for non-player characters and other times more involved scripts, such as for Battlefield3, a game where the player becomes a U.S. marine sent to battle terrorists in the Middle East. His video game scripts are often 300 pages long. In comparison, a feature film script is 90 to 100 pages long.
Matt MacLennan is an accomplished drama series writer. He has worked on The Listener and Republic of Doyle. His most recent work was as a writer on Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, an ongoing adventure series about a fictional American black operation division that takes out terrorists around the world. But before you think that story-based video games are all about terrorists, we can tell you about our member Mario Azzopardi's work on Warriors: Legends of Troy. He wrote 300 pages of script to tell the story that allows players to participate in the battle of Troy.
Some video games can take up to two years to write. Game developers can also be hired to perform the job function of game designer or level designer, which includes writing responsibilities. Job descriptions are certainly more fluid in the video game industry than in film and television, but the role of the writer is increasingly recognized and valued. For example, there are now awards for best writing for a video game around the world, including in Canada.