Story Developing and 2K Games partnered with the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to create short stories based on the Borderlands franchise. Students were challenged to create a 2-minute trailer and were given the opportunity to win an internship with 2K Games. Through an intensely interesting narrative “The Art of the Game” shows us the typical student life of someone trying to break into the game industry as an artist. Big Shiny Robot! Sat down with Matthew Davis Walker of Story Developing and Kelly Miller of 2K Games to discuss the project. It launches on Machinima on May 12, 2014, and we will of course have the video for you to watch. Check out the trailer below, and the interview directly after!
BSR!: How did the partnership with the college and 2k come about?
Kelly: After we launched Borderlands 2 we are looking for ways to engage the community, and we came up with this idea to partner with a local university and give them assets to the game to help them produce assets to us, in a partnership where we give them real world experiences like assets from a real world game developer. The project became the Borderlands cooperative and to make it more interesting we offered an internship to the winning storyboard, and the best 3 storyboards were handed over to the college and built into an animated short, which is the focus of the documentary. But it was really us looking for a way to get involved with the community and keep the brand in the minds of people in ways that are interesting and a little bit different.
BSR!: The documentary covers a huge span of time very quickly, what was shooting like?
Matt: Yeah we did, when 2K approached us about the film we basically had to dive right in with these kids. We just let the whole process grow organically from there. We got ideas early on for certain pieces of coverage, and we actually used some of the kids at the school to shoot footage for us. But we also bought a bunch of small cameras that we gave to the students themselves so they can shoot themselves working on the project. We needed to make sure we have our teams there to get stuff, but when we aren’t there the kids can shoot what’s happening to them. A lot of that made it into the film; some of it was the best footage we got. But it was a short amount of time.
Kelly: Also we initially planned on doing this project with the students, but once we met the school and met some of the studenst and saw their enthusiasm about the project and Borderlands and just, their passion for video games, we knew there was much more to this. When we saw what the students can produce we knew we could give some insight into the gaming world and their story. So when we found Story Developing they helped us tap into the experience they’re going through and evolve that into a really compelling story in the film.
Matt: Yeah, we really let this thing grow organically and as we followed the students the story emerged that we wanted to cover, and it was great to have them with a guide.
BSR!: One of the students Leslie, got hired full time at 2K. What is she working on?
Kelly: Well, she’s working on Evolve on their production and art team for cinematics. Her internship was with creative production and they were impressed with her work and a position became available and she is part of the team now.
BSR!: What did the students creative process look like?
Kelly: We started out by briefing them, in the film you see this huge auditorium where we announce the project. We brief the students and give them a challenge that they’re making a 2 minute product and worked with them like an agency. We gave them all the parameters, time and an overview of what we wanted them to deliver. We then went through 2 rounds of having them present to us and we would give them feedback, and they would return with revisions. We wanted this to be as close to real world as possible so they’d have content for their portfolios, and so that they’d know what it’s like to work in the real world, whether on a team or in that agency environment. We then narrowed it down to the top 3, which was pretty gut wrenching since everything was so good. We picked what we thought was best, you know some of them did a great job, but it didn’t quite fit the parameters. There was a ton of good stuff since there was such great talent at the school.
BSR!: The documentary mentions the parameters changing sporadically, was that intentional or did that happen on the student side.
Kelly: From our side we tried to be very consistent and focus on what they had to do and set constant parameters. So there wasn’t any set up to make it more dramatic, or trip them up. A lot of it I think came from the students and from them doing this as a passion project. You see them working late hours in their free time, it came from them being so passionate and trying to be a good job naturally generated that drama.
BSR!: Do you have plans to do more things like this?
Kelly: We don’t have concrete plans right now, but we love how this turned out and may want to look at doing this with a different game.
BSR!: The documentary launched on Twitch and then goes to YouTube, why that type of choice?
Kelly: We wanted this film to be available to as many people as possible. We wanted to tell the story of the students; this isn’t a revenue-generating tool for us. We wanted to partner with Machinima to reach a broader audience, and specifically the gaming audience. Their core values are taking gaming created content and distributing it, which is exactly what these students are doing. That ideal, as well as their reach and audience fit us perfectly, which is why we chose Machinima. Twitch is the best at creating these live streaming events, which is why we wanted to do it with Twitch and the Machinima Xbox App for a sneak peak and then live via YouTube. It created a premiere and then got it out to as many people as possible.
Matt: Just to add to that, I’ve worked on a few other projects and films which have been released through traditional distribution, and everyone in this industry sees the future in alternate distribution models.So right from the get go Story Developing and 2K wanted to find a way to get this out as quickly as possible while pursuing different and interesting ways to release the film. I see it as the future of film making and distribution to reach people in the future and I couldn’t be happier with the way it went out.
BSR!: Matt, are you a gamer sir?
Matt: I am not, I grew up playing Mario and a few and played quite a few games like 007 in college, but not now. It was a great chance for my partner Ryan Lynch and I to look at this industry in a whole new way. Not just from a dollars and cents perspective, but after diving into the community and students as a whole we began to uncover the incredibly positive things that are happening the real world at large. Take the example of the Wheaton Central school, that had video games introduced into their curriculum and raised their test scores dramatically. Or meeting people like something price, that are writing games in a personal way that let people empathize with her own life. We were so astounded at the way you can convey stories in this day and age, we couldn’t have been happier with the people we met and the positive things we’re finding.
BSR!: How did you find the school and the senior center and your different examples.
Matt; A lot of it is just diving in and researching. Once we started the project with the students we didn’t want to just tell their story. We wanted to give context to the industry that they were entering into. And show the perspective that the industry changed so much. You know a certain group of people didn’t feel that video games…weren’t very deep I guess. We wanted to show that that wasn’t the case, that it had all sorts of people form all walks of life, so we really dove in learning about teachers and people in senior communities. We really reached out organically through cold calling and got people interested in us and our story and they were such enthusiastic people to interview, the story turned out great.