Playing With Toys

Join over 2,000 readers who are making game development more fun!

When I get to write for a brand I genuinely love, it feels like rolling a nat 20 at the table. This week is the official release of Dungeons & Dragons: Worlds & Realms, a hardcover anthology that’s a fictional journey through the D&D multiverse, accompanied by 50 years of gorgeous D&D fantasy art. I contributed three short stories to the collection set in Mystara, Eberron, and the Feywild. I received two boxes with five books each and they are heavy. If I dropped a box on a nilbog’s head, it’d kill him in one turn. Worlds & Realms makes a great holiday gift and blunt weapon for 1d6 bludgeoning.

This newsletter is about my personal creative projects, but I’d be lying if I said this kind of client work didn’t bring me joy. For me, I think it goes back to playing with action figures. I had a motley crew of Ninja Turtles, Real Ghostbusters, and X-Men figures growing up and they were well played with. I could sit for hours in my bedroom gaming out stories in my head where Donatello, Beast, and Egon solve the world’s problems with their combined intellect – and no one picks on them in the cafeteria, even though they’re three obvious nerds! If my mom, a professional actress, hadn’t instilled in me the idea that professionalism is the ultimate goal for a creative person, I might’ve gotten into fan fiction when I was older. I certainly loved making up new stories for popular TV and movie characters.

When I was in grade school, I had a friend growing up named Sam, and he had all the Battle Beasts. They were 2 inch tall animal cyborgs with heat-sensitive holograms on their chests. When you pressed the holograms, they revealed one of three natural elements, and the idea was to play a version of Rock, Paper, Scissors with them to determine who won the battles between them. I only had two or three Battle Beasts and they battled each other incessantly. Sam had dozens of them, plus their vehicles that were shaped like other beasts. At Sam’s house, we had so many battle-tunities!

I remember Sam being cool about how we’d play Battle Beasts together. He wasn’t too controlling or obstinate. I have memories of playing at another kid’s house who was highly particular about how we could play with his Ninja Turtles. Leatherhead wasn’t allowed to fight Ace Duck, because Ace Duck was hanging out with Mondo Gecko and Leatherhead is afraid of Mondo because he has a very mean older sister, Geoffrey!

Who owns the “toys” complicates writing for brands, too. My experience with D&D was ideal. The editors at Ten Speed Press let me pick the worlds I wanted to explore and gave me tons of creative freedom. It was as fun an experience as adventuring in the Forgotten Realms with pals on a Sunday afternoon. I had a similar experience writing for Sesame Street comics, where I got the smartest and most complimentary notes I’ve ever received from their product licensing department. Other times, though, the licensor is very prickly. The collaboration feels like walking casually across a field, and unbeknownst to me, there are a hundred unmentioned guideline landmines buried in the dirt below. I’ll get a note like, “Queen Zipzop can’t make that joke,” and I point out the similar joke Queen Zipzop makes in the third movie, and that does not sway them at all, lol. What the client says goes, whether they explain the logic of their notes or not.

Recently, I joined the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, which was referenced in an article I read about a flawed Stephen King text adventure game. (Liam Neeson voice: “I have a very particular set of interests.”) The IAMTW is a group of authors from around the world who write licensed media adaptations. I would never have guessed such a group exists. I thought media-tie in writers were like the 1970s Incredible Hulk, who must travel alone from license town to license town. Genres are a uniting force that create community – mystery writers, romance writers, etc. – but media tie-ins are so diverse in nature. It’s interesting to read about the varied and impressive work other writers in IAMTW have accomplished. My credits in this world are modest compared to some authors who’ve written, like, dozens of Mr. Bean books, and I didn’t even know there were any Mr. Bean books!

I feel fortunate to get this type of work. In this case, I have to thank my longtime friend Paul, who works at Wizards of the Coast. Years ago, I met Paul at San Diego Comic-Con, when he was an editor at Boom Studios. I was a young writer in a Warner Bros fellowship who was super excited about Boom’s upcoming line of Muppet comics. The Muppets have a special place in my heart and I really wanted to write for that title. I pitched lots of ideas for the series. Paul loved them, but nothing came together before he left the company. That’s a very common story with pitching, where your champion at the company leaves and the pitch becomes doomed.

The story could’ve ended there, but Paul and I kept in touch. Over the years, we became close friends. Amanda and I have monthly eBrunches with Paul and his wife Heather, a celebrated YA author and comics writer with many licensed books under her belt. (Including some with Paul.) Paul has recommended me for many gigs over the years, and I’m extremely grateful, but I’m far more grateful for his friendship. As I get older, I’ve learned the best part about playing with toys aren’t the toys themselves. It’s who you play them with.

🎲 Your Turn: Is there a media property you’d love to work on creatively someday? What is it about the property that you love? You can reply to this email or let the world know your thoughts by commenting with the orange button below.

📨 Next Week: The Phenomenals is due to launch, but Amanda and I struggle with our health. The next newsletter is sick and not in a cool skateboarding way.

Geoffrey Golden is a narrative designer, game creator, and interactive fiction author from Los Angeles. He’s written for Ubisoft, Disney, Gearbox, and indie studios around the world.

6 responses to “Playing With Toys”

  1. John Evans

    I had a few Battle Beasts. In fact, I have one on my desk right now! I believe they may be the very first instance of Grass->Water->Fire as a Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship.

    I didn’t know the IAMTW was a thing, but last year at NYCC I did attend a panel of tie-in authors, and they talked about their experiences writing various properties. (Mostly Star Wars, I think? I can’t remember if it was specifically a Star Wars panel.) Super interesting stuff. There are a lot of those authors out there!

    I have a deep affection for cult classics and hidden gems, so I’d love to do a Buckaroo Banzai game! Or how about a Red Dwarf point-and-click?

    1. Awesome, which Battle Beast is it? I have Deer Stalker on my shelf. Futuristic goggles and a drill hand? Irresistible.

      I also love cult classics. A quick Google tells me there was a Buckeroo Banzai game in the 80s, but I think the audience would be more receptive to it now. Red Dwarf point-and-click is an amaaaazing idea.

  2. I’m a superhero comics guy from way back, but not super-into the idea of work for hire.

    1. I respect that. It sucks not owning what you write. I often have to make that trade-off (whether it’s for a media tie-in or not).

      1. I feel like the doctrine of work for hire is the most obviously exploitative part of IP law as it exists. I realize massive media projects kind of need the financial backing of major publishers to exist and it would be a nightmare trying to assign ownership of the components of massively collaborative works to individual contributors, but it will never not seem unfair that a creative can pour years of their life into something only to be left with nothing to show for it because they have a falling out with the executives or the executives decide to pull the plug on a project, can find themselves in a position where they can’t even build on their own past work without risk of being sued into poverty, and if something is a smash hit, that the executives can roll in ludicrous profits while the creators get nothing beyond a normal paycheck or creators being forced to watch executives run the thing they brought to a natural conclusion into the ground with inferior sequels, reboots, continuations, etc. outsourced to less capable people. Especially since it always seems to be the creative staff that suffer for the bad decisions of the executives.

        1. A lot of good thoughts here.

          The second part, “if something is a smash hit,” that’s where royalties come in. Unfortunately, royalties are not common in licensed projects like comics, books, etc. based on an IP, because the licensor takes that share for themselves, in addition to a fee for using the license. So authors of media tie-ins often make a normal paycheck and that’s it.

          As for there being nothing to show because the plug was pulled, yeah, I’ve lived through that many times as a gamedev. An industry friend once told me only a third of games ever ship. That certainly feels true. The industry takes shipped games heavily into account when hiring, so if you’re junior or have bad luck, then it’s difficult to find work.

You might also like