With all the talk about story in video games these days, we thought that key Red Storm employee Richard Dansky might have an interesting point of view - especially since
Tom Clancy games are one of the few leading game franchises built on books. Dansky has been with Red Storm Entertainment since 1999, and stayed on when they were aquired by Ubisoft in 2000.
He's worked on more than 15 games and published short stories and novels in the horror genre. But if you ask him, he'll tell you he's an international star of stage and screen, fighting crime from his super secret science base aboard a titanic zeppelin - and Gamasutra quizzed him about subjects including his code of ethics for in-game violence and the biggest shortcomings in game writing today.
Let's
start with something easy. What's your official title, and what do
you do for a living?
Richard
Dansky: My official title is Central Clancy Writer, and
Manager of Design for Red Storm Entertainment. What that means is
that I essentially wear two hats. On one hand, I work with the design
department at Red Storm, and on the other, I'm a writing resource for
Ubisoft, particularly as pertains to the various Tom Clancy
games. That can mean anything from working on a game from the
beginning to serving as a reference to doing a little bit of script
polish as needed.
What's
it like working with the design department at Red Storm?
RD: This
may sound corny, but I really genuinely enjoy working with the folks
in the design department. We've got a great mix of people. Some of
them have been with us for their entire careers, while others came
here with experience on other titles, and that combination gives us a
nice blend of enthusiasm, experience, and skill sets.
It's a
really talented bunch, and they do a great job of working with the
rest of their teams as well as each other – there's no rock stars,
just a bunch of really sharp people who are interested in making
great games and having fun with them.
Can
you say what you're working on right now?
RD:
Right now I'm just helping out on a couple of projects, the names of
which I'm unfortunately not in a position to divulge.
I
know you have a few games under your belt. Do you have any favorites?
RD: From
a writing standpoint, Splinter
Cell: Double Agent was definitely my favorite. Any writer
will tell you that it's more fun to write the villain than the hero,
and Double Agent had some great, fun villains to write. It got
to the point where I could hear their voices commenting on the other
characters' dialogue - they were that fully realized in my head –
and believe me, they were not saying nice things about what they saw.
Far
Cry probably comes second, largely because the guards were
so much fun to write. I had people come up to me and tell me they
refused to kill one of the guards in that game because they'd
eavesdropped on him while he was patrolling and discovered he was
from their home town. As a writer, I just find that pretty ineffably
cool, and a great payoff to the player of the effort to put a little
personality into guys who could be just walking gun racks.
As for
the one I'm proudest of, that would probably be Ghost
Recon: Island Thunder. It was a second mission pack, so we
had a good handle on what the game was capable of, and that in turn
let us push the envelope in some interesting ways.
It was a
great team, and we got a chance to take some chances with the mission
scripting that really paid off in terms of the gameplay. The fact
that the story really seemed to resonate just tied the whole thing
together for me - it was a really satisfying project to do.