Correction: When published, the article reported that Adam Moore was a professor. He is a lecturer in the Film and Electronic Arts department. A paragraph about “Dirt 3” has been moved to clarify the context in which a quote was said about the game. The computer science department will work with the fall 2014 class, not the spring 2013 class, to publish a brand new game for iPhones.
Film and electronics professor Adam Moore launched a brand new video game writing class this semester — the first of its kind at Cal State Long Beach.
The class, Film and Electronic Arts 490, focuses on teaching students how to write story lines for video games. For the class, students are split into “pods,” and are required to bounce ideas off each other to come to a consensus on the storyline for an assignment.
Enrollment for the class is highly competitive and Moore said that all the seats filled up in 30 minutes. The class, however, is exclusive to film and electronic arts majors but it will be offered again during the fall.
“To be a game writer, you just need creativity,” Moore said. “You don’t need anything special.”
Moore said every game-writing job is a challenge, as he experienced one when writing the script for the racing game “Dirt 3,” a best-selling video game that offers a massive open-world map of different cities all around the world, according to ign.com.
“There were no characters on screen, you would just hear the voices,” Moore said. “The game was written completely on Excel sheets. There were at least 10,000 to 15,000 cells with … so many ways to say ‘good work’ depending on how your relationship was with the other characters.”
He also collaborated with other writers for the game “Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction,” the eighth made game in the series and also the first of the series to debut on the Sony PlayStation 3.
The program used for the class is Twine, software that can help even technological novices build a non-linear story.
For the class, students sit squished into a small room facing a projector screen just like any other class. But instead of a PowerPoint, they are greeted with text in boxes and arrows that designate “routes” the protagonist can take in a game authored by Twine.
Class participation was strong when Moore sampled “Starship Fabulous,” a dating simulation game made by Twine users Emma Joyce, Ayse Gursoy and Chris Johnston.
Moore, who is also a writer for film, television and video games, said the fall 2014 class will create a brand new game and work with the computer science department to publish it as an iPhone game.
Before progressing with the production of the iPhone mobile game, Moore said the class play-tested it as a card game to see if it was enjoyable enough to complete.
Moore said that unlike television and film, in video games, the player is in the adventure.
“In a game, you’re an active part of the story,” he said. “You get to connect to the audience in a much more compelling way.”
Moore said he hopes that this class will lead to a “brand new track” in the way that a student can major in film and electronic arts, but with an option in video game writing.
Students like senior film and electronics major Viki Lopez said she wanted to take this class because she thought that Moore’s teaching and video games would be a good combination.
“I focus on writing, so I wanted to know more about how the writing aspect for video games works,” Lopez said.
Senior film and electronics major Micah Sauers said he was leaning more toward programming but would like to gain background knowledge of what goes into video game narratives.
“I’ve always debated what I wanted to go into … [this class] gave me a chance to learn how to do video game writing a little bit to get a kind of better perspective in what I wanted to do,” Sauers said.