This is an archived page! This page is very old and the content is not up to date. Not everything (if any) which is written here will be in the final game!

Interactive Screenplay

An interactive screenplay is just like an ordinary movie screenplay, except that instead of a linear list of scenes, you (or the writer you hire) will have to write independent bits and pieces which can be played in a potentially large variety of sequences. Not only does this make interactive screenwriting very complicated (as it is both imperative and excruciating to ensure consistency), it also makes it long: a typical screenplay for a two-hour interactive movie contains about six hours of material. Writing an interactive movie typically requires 4 to 6 months of work, depending on the author's level of expertise with the medium.

As far as I know, there are still no good tools on the market to facilitate non-linear writing. Some packages support simple branching stories, but that's it. For anything more complicated than that, you are on your own.

Not very many people can write a convincing interactive screenplay, or explain how to do it. I recommend you look up Lee Sheldon's writings on Gamasutra or his CGDC tutorials if you are interested in this topic; he is one of very few masters of the genre.