Video games and writing

Recently I finished my 80-hour playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third instalment of the Dragon Age series.

For those unfamiliar the Dragon Age series are role-playing video games by BioWare studios, set in medieval times.

I started the first instalment of the game only about 6 months ago, despite the original title having come out in 2009. I was going through a pretty rough time mentally and wanted something to distract me.

After 6 months of slowly working my way through the three games, I feel like I’ve lost a group of my best friends and have spent the last few days mourning my loss and trying to re-associate with normalcy.

It isn’t that different to finishing a great novel. These are your companions, characters you’ve spent hours upon days upon weeks getting to know, learning their wants and needs and their likes and dislikes, and then suddenly they’re ripped away from you and you’re left with only the words you’ve already heard before as solace.

I find this feeling happens to me a lot. I suppose not really having grown up with friends and struggling to connect with other kids, it was inevitable I’d latch onto any fictional characters I could.

One of the first video game characters I remember resonating with was Crash Bandicoot. Yep, the marsupial that doesn’t even speak. I suppose he and I had that in common. The not-speaking bit, not the marsupial bit. Nights in bed were spent creating scenarios in my head of Crash and I going to defeat Neo Cortex and save the world from his domination.

Relatable. Credit: Vicarious Visions

These days, I like to imagine myself fighting dragons and saving the world. I guess not much has changed, really.

Storylines and gameplay mechanics draw us in, but we stay for the feelings of intimacy and bonds that we form with other characters.

As children, we’re often told that video games are a waste of time and offer nothing of substance. But video games inspire me to write. They inspire me to think a different way. They inspire me to be imaginative.

Video games are so similar to novels in so many ways, but also so different. Rather than us create interpretations of worlds and characters in our heads, we’re given these images on screen. We have the opportunity to explore these worlds, choose our own conversations and make our own decisions, and ultimately face the consequences.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for imagination to fill in the gaps. Often, I’ll create my own scenarios of what would happen next in the game. Or, what happens between scenes. What do my characters talk about when they’re just sitting around a campfire? When they’re running between battles, do they talk to each other? Where do they go to do normal day-to-day things, like shower and eat? These are fun scenarios that get the creative juices flowing.

Most things I’ve ever written have been inspired by video games in some small way; be it intentionally or unintentionally. Sometimes if I’m struggling to write a scene – one of my methods is to sit and write out a scene from one of my favourite video games and see where it leads me.

I suppose what I’m trying to say here is play games. It’s not a bad thing. Play cheesy RPGs. Play that game you loved when you were 5. Hell, play that Colonel Sanders dating sim game if that’s your thing. It will help your writing and you won’t even realise it.

Not gonna lie, he’s kinda hot. Credit: Steam

And when you’ve finished that 80-hour run-through of your favourite game and find yourself in a spiralling pit of depression when you realise you’ve lost everything that ever matters to you, write. Maybe it will be great. Maybe it’ll be the most putrid pile of garbage you’ve ever written. Maybe it’ll be a steamy Colonel Sanders fanfic. But I promise you, if you find a game with characters you love, they will always be in the back of your mind when you write, helping you create interesting and complex characters.