Level Up with Author and Video Game Creator Andrew Auseon

Join Beth McMullen and Lisa Schmid  as they welcome Andrew Auseon, a talented author and video game writer. Dive into Andrew's  journey across the realms of video games and kids books, exploring the creative synergy between these two worlds.

Spellbinders Series: Discover the magic behind Andrew Auseon's middle-grade series, starting with Spellbinders: The Not So Chosen One and the upcoming sequel Spellbinders: Break the Game. Follow Ben's adventures as he navigates personal challenges and a fantastical world where he's seen as a prophesied hero.

Video Games & Books: Examine the role video games play in storytelling and socialization, particularly for middle-grade audiences. Learn about the evolution of video game narratives and their impact on kinds of storytelling.

Creative Process: Andrew shares insights into the differences and similarities of writing for video games vs. novels, emphasizing the importance of pacing, thematic exploration, and character development.

Career Journey: From debut author and a respected name in video game narrative design, Andrew offers advice for aspiring creators, highlighting the importance of storytelling skills across media and the value of collaboration.

Getting Involved in Game Writing: Tips for aspiring game writers on immersing themselves in the gaming industry, developing a strong portfolio, and understanding the technicalities of game development. Whether you're interested in narrative design in video games or crafting stories for books, Andrew's journey is a testament to the power of storytelling across different mediums. Dive deep into the worlds you wish to create and continuously refine your craft.

Listen Now: Don't miss this episode's insights into video game storytelling and creating compelling narratives.

Remember: Visit the podcast website at writerswithwrinkles.net for more about Andrew Auseon and to support and share about the show. 

Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:30

Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmid, and we're the co-hosts of Riders with Wrinkles. This is season three, episode eight, and today we are thrilled to welcome Andrew Auseon to the show. Andrew is the author of several books for children and young adults, as well as numerous bestselling and award-winning video games. A transplant from the Midwest, he lives in Washington DC with his family and two very naughty cats, one of which we just saw so cool. He loves breakfast cereal, the sound of the ocean and the feeling of a brand new book in his hands. So welcome, andrew, and thank you for being here.

Andrew Auseon: 1:06

Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. This is a fantastic way to spend Valentine's Day.

Beth McMullen: 1:11

I know it's Valentine's Day, so before we launch into questions, you had a book come out called Spellbinders, the not so chosen one. This was in last year, 2023. And you have the next in the series due out in June 2024. Can you tell us a little bit about the series and how it came to be?

Andrew Auseon: 1:32

Sure I'd love to. So Spellbinders is the first series I've ever written and it's kind of been a dream of mine to write a middle grade series ever since I was itty bitty. I think that's the genre and the age group that really has always appealed to me. So it's called Spellbinders.

Andrew Auseon: 1:46

It is about a boy named Ben who is obsessed with games of all kinds. That's kind of how he sees the world is through the lens of gaming, whether it's board games and tabletop role playing games or video games or multiplayer games. It's really how he escapes his reality. But it's also kind of a reality on its own when it comes to his social life and the way he copes with everyday life. And the story starts with Ben going through some tough times in his personal life. In the real world. His parents are going through a tough separation. He has moved with his mom to the suburbs outside of the city where he grew up and it's making it difficult to see the friends that he's grown up with and that our primary social group and the people that he games with and sort of faces the world with, I guess you would say. And so he's all he feels very much on his own out in the burbs and he disappears into the games that always give him comfort and that allow him to go and feel powerful. He kind of goes into this fantasy where he is a powerful hero, he has skills and abilities that give him some control over the world that he is, in which he resides. You know, I identified with that a lot as a kid growing up. It's one of the reasons why I love playing games is being able to change roles and be someone I'm not and try on those different skins. Well, ben thinks gaming is all great and fun and easy because you get to go and be the all powerful hero.

Andrew Auseon: 3:10

Well, one day, when he's kind of at his lowest, he meets a mysterious girl named Nihara, who at first glance and by all appearances seems to be like right out of one of his fantasy role playing games. And when she invites him on a quest back to her world, he thinks it's all part of some larger game narrative that he is very excited to jump in on and join. And he soon realizes it's real and that this other world is a real other world and that in this other world he is seen as this prophesied, destined, chosen one who's supposed to save this entire kingdom and this entire fantasy continent from this giant sort of conspiracy that's going on. And he learns pretty quickly that being the hero and being the one everyone's looking to to solve their problems is not as exciting as it is in the stories and that it's actually kind of the worst of all, like all of his worst fears come true. Where everyone's looking at him, he doesn't have the answers, he doesn't have any of the powers he normally does when he's fantasizing and he starts to look back on his life back home as something really special and that he misses it quite a bit and he kind of has to balance those two things. And along the way he meets some great new friends. They sort of become his new group of friends, his newfound family. They have a lot of fun together and they go through some tough times and help each other through it.

Andrew Auseon: 4:27

The next book is Spellbinders Break the Game. It's coming out in June of this year, 2024. It is an expansion of the universe that is introduced in the first book and the different characters get to go on some of their own sort of side adventures. We get to explore their backgrounds and their wants and desires and things. It's been a lot of fun. The series will continue. I'm working on the third one now and you know fingers crossed for a bright future.

Beth McMullen: 4:56

That sounds so fun.

Andrew Auseon: 4:58

Thank you.

Beth McMullen: 4:59

I mean I love the intersection of video games and the impact on life and that escapism. I think that is really appealing for kids of that middle grade space. You know they are gaming for most of them, a lot of them, is a big part of their socialization and their interaction with others and I think being able to bring that into a book and into this fictional world is going to be a lot of fun. My 19-year-old is a huge gamer. You know Dungeons and Dragons and all these huge multiplayer, whatever the. I'm clueless but he's like very dialed in and it's always been a big part of how he thinks about stories. It's been interesting to watch that evolution.

Andrew Auseon: 5:44

It's a huge part of my life. Before we started talking for the podcast, you had asked if the writing came first or the games came first. The game writing came first, and definitely writing traditionally, I guess, but pen and paper, and then eventually a computer came first because there weren't really tools for a lay person who wasn't a technician or computer science programmer to code video games, unless they were very multi-talented right. But I did grow up during sort of the early mainstreaming renaissance of home video games, so it has been something that's just baked into how I see stories. I feel that semi-kenship with current young generations because for them it's much more prominent. It's how they see everything.

Lisa Schmid: 6:25

So, Andrew, can you share about your journey from a debut author to a multifaceted creator in both literature and video games? How do these worlds intersect? For you, People will want to know how did you make that jump? How did you get involved with writing the narrative behind a video game?

Andrew Auseon: 6:44

It's interesting because it's changed so much just in the last two decades that I've been working in the business and even before that, to where, how involved writers are in the process and how prominent a role they play. I never expected to be able to make the jump. I think that the reason I was able to was a mixture of serendipity, location and, just like the connections I made from being a sociable person who likes to form relationships with my jobs, and by chance I was really lucky. I grew up wanting to write games or wanting to experience game stories.

Andrew Auseon: 7:16

There was no true path to that career when I was young, unless you were interested in computer science, and so I never thought about it as a career path. It was just something I really enjoyed doing. I used to always joke with my brother I'd say, who is a physician now I'd say I envy you because you know how to get where you're going. You know the path to your profession, to your occupation, but as a writer you don't know what you're going to do. As a writer for a living, it can be a number of things. You'll be lucky if you're actually writing for a living, whether you're doing manuals or reading cards or copy or books or whatever.

Beth McMullen: 7:56

So when you're writing a novel, you have approach A and when you're writing a video game story, you have approach B. So do they intersect at all? Are they totally different? I find that whole area so interesting. I mean, I was at the movies a couple of weeks ago and they did a trailer and it was intense and it was action adventure and it was for a video game. It wasn't a movie and it kind of blew my mind. I mean, I'm aware enough because I've watched my son play and I've seen how the evolution in video games has really brought to bear the intensity of storytelling, because that keeps you in it, rather than like asteroids from our day and age when you're like, ok, I'm blowing up these little whatever and who cares? But you know these? This intense storytelling just gets you vested and then you come back and you come back so I get why they're doing it. But so in your experience, where do these? Is there an intersection and what is it?

Andrew Auseon: 8:57

There's definitely overlap between the things. I've been really fortunate enough to work with teams of writers who are playwrights, who are comic book writers, who are screenwriters and then those who are, you know, seasoned or veteran game writers, and there's a lot of overlap with all of those kind of skills and experiences. And, to your point, I think what ended up happening was when games suddenly became cinematic experiences, when they both in look and in sort of storytelling style started to resemble what we think of when we think of film storytelling, suddenly the industry saw a demand for writers who could tell more traditional, like single player, linear stories. Because there are, you know, there's so many different kinds of storytelling now in games and but I think they do all share aspects of traditional prose, narrative or like a screenplay.

Andrew Auseon: 9:53

When I was thinking about this question, I was thinking pacing is a huge part of it. Pacing and being able to assemble a story, that that goes through story beats in ways that allows the player or the reader to process information. So when you build out a game story, in the same way they be able to build out a novel. You have moments of action and intensity, followed by these like quiet moments of to process some of the stuff that's just taking place. For you to understand the context of everything that's going on around you and we really do approach it from, you know, from thematic points of view, from character driven points of view all the things that you would expect to look at when you're writing a story are things that we go about doing first. But the real divergence is the trying to discover what kind of story you're trying to tell and whether or not the game you're making needs a certain kind of story. Because every time you sit down and make a game like, the point of the game is interaction. It's giving the player an experience that they enjoy doing and then kind of creating variances of that variance of that experience. And some games demand, like a traditional story of what you expect, a linear start to finish story. Other games are more about what I, you know, emergent narrative, which is the kind of story that you go in and you experience, but you're individual experience.

Andrew Auseon: 11:18

Playing the game is kind of the story that's being built around you, where you're not like playing through scenes like you would in a movie, but it's more like you go into a world and you go from point A to point B and all this crazy stuff happens to you and it's different for everyone who plays.

Andrew Auseon: 11:31

And you come out with a story on the other end that it's like you are unique, customized story. And then there are anecdotal stories that's what I call anecdotal narratives, which are like you go into a multiplayer game, you have an amazing time with your friends and then you tell other people about the story and what happened to you and your friends and you kind of talk about it over the water cooler for the next six years and not all games are the same. So you kind of get to go in and say, okay, what is the gameplay we are leveraging here? And then how can we best leverage it with a story? Or here's a story and how can we best leverage it with a gameplay that players get engaged with and interested in and it keeps them playing?

Beth McMullen: 12:07

Who comes up with the game idea? So do you get somebody who says, here's a summary of the kind of game that I want to create and make a story to go with it. Or do you say I have this idea for a story, what game can go with it? So are you just kind of developing together at the same time? So is it like the technical aspects of the game and the kind of game and the way that it's going to be built? How much do you have a say in that? Or are you just delivered an idea and then you have to kind of run with it and make the story? Kind of chicken or the egg comes first.

Andrew Auseon: 12:40

I mean, it really depends on a lot of factors. It depends on the scope and budget of the game, it depends on what the if there is a vision holder or creative director who has an idea that they want to and then they get other members of the leadership team to sort of agree on something they want to build, then it's. You know. Then, for example, there's an Indiana Jones game coming out this year that everyone's excited about, and it's because there's never been a game that has captured what it's like to be Indiana Jones, Whether it's swinging on a whip, fighting Nazis, jumping on tanks, solving weird historical puzzles in the jungle, like that fantasy.

Andrew Auseon: 13:19

So usually we start off talking about like what experience do we want off of the player? Is it a puzzle game? Is it like a small puzzle game but it has some narrative elements on top of it? Or is it some ambitious epic game, that where you're fulfilling what we call player fantasy, which is allowing them to embody a type of character or a role in the world and then live out that fantasy and all the things you expect to come with that?

Beth McMullen: 13:44

I want to be Indiana. I wanted to be Indiana Jones when I was a kid, so this is for me. This might be, you know, at my advanced age I might just be breaking in to play video games. This might be the one.

Andrew Auseon: 13:55

No, it's amazing it's taken this long to like. I mean, I've had other Indiana Jones games but, like you know, the one that captures that like core Harrison Ford experience.

Beth McMullen: 14:03

Right.

Andrew Auseon: 14:04

To answer your question, there's usually creative directors involved and if it's a small team, that same person could be the main programmer and the main artist, right? It could be a team of five people, where one person has a great idea and you all sit around and say, ok, well, let's test it, let's figure out if this is fun to do, and then either someone's already got an idea for how that would narrative in the sense, or they some you know in a lot of cases the kind of skmush something on top of it that that is a story, and then the two sort of grow together in a weird Frankenstein anyway.

Beth McMullen: 14:36

So, yeah, this is so fascinating and I think that this you know that these generations that are coming up through the experience of video games, their storytelling is going to be from that gaming perspective and you know, giving the player all these different options Instead of one narrative. You've got all these different fingers, you know, going off from the main story, that are driven by your choices and your direct involvement in the story.

Andrew Auseon: 15:05

Well, it is interesting to see the interactivity of, or just interactivity itself, being applied to film or television series in Experimental ways, like very, very carefully, but like things where they had recently on Netflix they've done a couple interactive specials where it's an established universe, like whether it's black mirror or I think there was one for Kimmy Schmidt or Puss in Boots, where they're sort of interactive TV shows, because I think there's an expectation now where young people or people who grew up being the focal point of story, of the story.

Andrew Auseon: 15:40

So one of the big differences is that when you play a game, you are the center of the universe. Usually, I mean even through the story, you are touching the world, you are reaching out into space, for that's two-dimensional, three-dimensional or virtual reality or whatever. You are the one who is interacting with the space around you and making things happen and In a traditional piece of writing, you are the cameras focused on the characters, not on you. It does not, does not turn around and focus on you. And I think with games you are the center of attention and people have a somewhat of an expectation, going into Media now and in the storytelling and think like, well, why can't I change this? Like I want to interact with this in some way, and It'll be interesting to see where that's going.

Lisa Schmid: 16:24

So, with all that being said and that's a lot based on your experience what would you give writers who are interested in exploring narrative design in video games? Like I know you said, there's like no real set path, but there's. Do you have some suggestions on how people, if they're interested, how they would deep dive into this and get involved?

Andrew Auseon: 16:44

Definitely it's. It's funny I I talked to more parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends about the video game world, and I ever do about the Children's book world. I get a lot of emails from friends who have friends who's you know daughter is Coming up and wants to go to school for video games or wants to know how to get in the industry. So I'm always willing to help, like I always have those conversations and I love to help people out because I didn't. I didn't have that when I was young and and that's, I think, that's unique to my generation was that there was no path. I think there are paths now. There are a lot of paths.

Andrew Auseon: 17:20

I mean most, most schools have, you know, handful of courses, if not a whole program, around interactive media and game development or software Development. There are special schools that that that is like their focus, where they prepare designers, developers of all kind, with, you know, instead of just programmers. We've got, you know, game art programs. There are game design programs, there's writing for game programs. The people that come out of those are very strong. I knew a lot more than I ever did starting out in the business. I'm just about how games are made. I think that's the biggest puzzle that people have to learn when they go into game development is just sort of how these things are made, and especially some of the larger projects. I mean these are 100 million dollar teams of 400 people working for five years, down to teams of two people working in their basement, but they all kind of follow the same Process, like you have to do similar things, just at different scales. And so I, you know, I usually advise that people have a very strong game literacy, play a lot of games, read a lot of books like, watch a lot of film and TV, just sort of understand how stories are told in different media, prototype things, create portfolios of game writing, of Game design documentation, which is a big part of it. I mean, I spent a lot of my time as a game designer writing game documentation, which isn't necessarily anything the players are ever gonna see.

Andrew Auseon: 18:41

I would say it's akin to pitch documents or look books for TVs series, things like that, where it's you know more the team Understands the game they're making and the stories they're telling and the characters that are involved, the better their content, their product or lack of a better word is going to be and the more everyone can align towards the same vision, right?

Andrew Auseon: 19:00

So everybody's working on the same thing and it's not one person's vision, and for me, that's the best part of games like. That's why I do it, even though I write books too, is it book with? The book world is where I get to tell my stories, as weird as they are, and the game world is where I get to work with, like, incredibly talented people on stuff that's very exciting. That's where I'm inspired every day is by working with people like that, and and when you do that, everybody sort of in the best environments put their, puts their egos aside and Strives to one goal, which is making this game that everyone kind of kind of sees in their head, even though it's years away from fruition. So I would say create portfolios, make your own game, practice with writing and editing and revising your own work, marinate yourself in the video game industry in the world and what's out there so you can talk about it.

Beth McMullen: 19:49

It's the same advice we give often on this show to aspiring writers You've got to be in it, You've got to immerse yourself in the world, read the books, things that you aspire to do. Then you read everybody who's done it before you. So you're taking all that knowledge with you. So that's a good place to wrap up and, Andrew, thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your wisdom and experience with us. I know this is a topic that we have never touched on before and I think it will be very interesting for our listeners to hear about it.

Andrew Auseon: 20:23

Of course. No, it's been my pleasure, and I would encourage you to reach out with any additional questions about it, because I talk about it in a lot of sort of vague.

Beth McMullen: 20:33

No, we are 100% smarter than we were at the beginning. So, mission accomplished on our end. And listeners, remember. You can find out more about Andrew in our podcast notes and on our website writerswithwrinklesnet. Visit either of those to follow, support and share about the show. I will also be loading in links to Andrew's series, the first one which is already out, the second one which you can pre-order now and we always appreciate pre-orders and we will see you again next week, february 26th, for a deep dive episode. So please make time to join us for that and until then, happy reading, writing and listening.