But when it comes to shooters, why is it that the stories don't seem to change all that much from generation to generation or iteration to iteration? That's what I always hear and I can't say that with absolute authority, but I do know from a friend whose agency came very close to doing marketing on the new Call of Duty, that is the concern the company has, both that perception but also that reality: The games keep telling the same story over and over again for the same audience over and over again.
Okay, so, I think the reason is -- because I wrote, or originated the story for the first Black Ops. I didn't get credit for it, by the way. [Laughs.] Because I left the company before the game ships and that's just kind of how it works.
I didn't do any of the writing. There was a great guy called Craig Houston who wrote the script. But I came up with the story for it, and I realized the reason you can't really go more complex and why the same story keeps coming up is because the kind of person who buys a Call of Duty game has a very short attention span. And I know that's a stereotype, but it's also true. I mean, we just do.
Those people in general do not want to sit down and watch a 15- to 30-second cutscene. That's too long for them.
So what kind of story can you tell where they're firing an AK-47 while helos are flying in overhead and mortars are going off behind them and you've gotta hear some guy saying dialog about a deep, compelling character-driven story behind it? It just isn't going to work. You have to stop the action to tell that story.
That's why games like Last of Us work. You have to stop the camera. But the people who buy Call of Duty, they say they want a bigger story but they don't want to stop the action. So the development team looks at it and goes, "Hey, we just can't do that."
They have to think they want something different. We can't change their thoughts on it. But the truth is if we gave them something different, they would be upset with the game. They'd say, "Oh, it's so plodding. Oh, it's so slow. That cutscene took so long."
So, in the end, you just end up with a generic story of, you know, the hero guy who is basically double-crossed by someone on his team and he's out after this bad guy and he finds them and then realizes the bad guy isn't really the bad guy. There's a guy above him who happens to be part of his -- it's the same story.
It's a good thing I was sitting down here.
[Laughs.] It's exactly the same story over and over again because that's what the market wants. And that sounds awful. I sound like a marketing guy. But if you want something different, don't play Call of Duty and don't expect them to do something different.
Go play The Last of Us, a company that says, "This game is a narrative game. If you don't like it, don't play it."
But that perception of the audience is totally true, at least as far as your ability to say it so plainly. When I first got into freelance writing full-time, I did some work with Adult Swim, and the first thing we talked about was their audience. I asked, "Well, who do you feel your audience is?" And they said, "Well, it's pretty much what you think it is: insomniac stoners."
[Laughs.] Yes.
But I feel like these shooter games get picked on a lot, and sometimes they do sort of deserve it. I mean, the whole, "Press X to pay respects" thing [in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare]?
[Laughs.] Oh my God, yes. That was the one I left over.
Can you tell me about ways that teams working on these shooters are trying to broaden the types of stories that are being told?
Well, if you're working with a company -- so, the last salary job I had was with Naughty Dog, where they make those kinds of games. They're not shooters. But if you're working at a company that encourages an interactive narrative, like, something deeper, then the field is open. But if you're working at a company like Treyarch or EA for the Medal of Honorgames or something like that, the field is not open because at the top line is always: Don't stop the player. You cannot stop the player.
So, invariably, when you're developing a story for one of those games, that's the governing narrative for your entire game. You're limited completely by that. Whereas, when you make The Last of Us or you make Uncharted or you make Mass Effect or you make Skyrim or any of those games, you can stop the player for as long as you want because the player has bought into that.
So when you're making decisions on Call of Duty about how you try and stretch the story out a little bit more, you just come up with "jump the shark" moments. Right? [Laughs.] Because that's all you've got. That's all you've got in your arsenal. I mean, honestly, we jumped the shark a little bit in Black Ops where the story was that the lead guy had been brainwashed and all of his actions that seemed to be benevolent you learn, "Oh my God, he's been brainwashed by this guy when he was in a Siberian gulag." It's ridiculous. But it's all you can do in all the time you have and it's Manchurian Candidate and it's a kind of fun thing to do. So there's not much else you can do.
But when you're working at somewhere like Naughty Dog, all of the decisions are based on what tells the story or what draws the player into the story. Not what makes them sit back in their chair and say, "Wow." It's what pulls them forward in their chair and brings them closer to the screen.
I remember this one meeting I had, and I think it was with Bruce Straley, who's one of the creative directors at Naughty Dog. And he told me something I'd never heard after 10 years or 11 years in the industry. He said, "Simple thing. Simple mechanic. Hey, when we start a cutscene, we want the player to start that cutscene by pressing a button. So when they go up to a door, and they'll open the door, let's have them press 'X,' and pressing 'X' starts the cutscene because it makes them feel in control of the world."
And now every time they approach a door they're gonna be thinking, "Okay, I might be getting a bit of story." In Call of Duty, that doesn't happen. You run through a gap you hit a trigger, and suddenly a cutscene happens. So you're detached from the story which we have to be because otherwise the judgmental crowd that play Call of Duty and Halo and those kinds of games are gonna be saying, "Oh God, here we go. I'm gonna run through this game and any minute now they're gonna take camera control. I want my gun back. I want my gun back."
So, it's very hard to make decisions on how you tell the narrative when you're doing Call of Duty. You just go for "bigger is better." The more explosions, the more outrageous the story, that's the only direction we can take. We have to take.