PaulCallaghan.net

2010 is shaping up to be a pretty interesting year…

I’ll be at the Format Festival – Academy of Words in Adelaide on March 13th. Definitely talking about non-paper publishing, but might also be chairing something else. Details here.

I’m also taking part in the next Meanland event – Reading in a Time of Technology – on May 19th at the Wheeler Centre.  Details here.

And, lastly,  I’ll once again be talking at the Emerging Writers’ Festival, sometime from May 21st to May 30th.

17th Annual World Congress of Science & Factual Producers

Collaborate to Innovate: A Networking Opportunity for Producers to Meet Digital Media and Gaming Experts – Friday 4th Dec

Taking linear broadcast projects to online and gaming platforms can present new possibilities in creativity, finance and audience reach. The key to a successful transition lies in the collaboration of teams with multi-disciplinary expertise. This session gives the opportunity to a limited number of experienced filmmakers interested in convergence to meet one-on-one with Australia’s leading digital media and gaming experts. The morning will provide an overview of techniques and possibilities followed by 15-minute one-on-one sessions for targeted advice and potential collaboration with any or all of the digital specialists.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2009

Games Literacy – Sunday 6th December

Presentation – .mov

Today’s students have never seen a world without video games.  They’re an integral part of life now, becoming a new cultural artifact, a new entertainment medium, and bringing with them a whole slew of new employment opportunities.

But how do they work?  And what are the parameters for having a meaningful dialog about them with our students?

In this session, Paul Callaghan, a veteran game developer, will explore the elements that contribute to games literacy and how that can be applied to traditional literacy and numeracy skills.

What does a writer do anyway? – 3:35, Tuesday 8th December

Presentation – Google Presentation

Telling stories is an essential part of our cultural fabric, but in the face of a new medium, one in which mechanics, rules, and play are at the heart of the audience experience, we’re still learning how to work the thousands of years of accumulated knowledge in writing and storytelling to our best advantage.

An often-neglected discipline in video games, this session will look at the skills and craft that writers use when approaching storytelling, dialogue, structure, and characterisation, and how to apply those to video games without losing the particular strengths of the medium.  By dissecting the craft of writing, it will demonstrate the thought processes behind story creation, what does and doesn’t work within the medium of games, and why some of those boundaries exist.  It will also show how some of those core concepts are applicable to games without stories, informing mechanic, level, and systems design.

Looking to the future, the session will lastly speculate on the marriage of traditional narrative and mechanics, and the sorts of stories that can only be told in the medium of games by exploiting the fundamental gameplay forces of agency, choice, rules, and goals.

IGDA Melbourne

Trends for local indies – 10/11/09

Presentation – Google Presentation

An overview of local industry trends since 2000 and options for independent development.  More detail on the numbers can be found in the blog posts The State of Things and Collated data.

iDef 2009

Do you have a game plan? – 30/10/09

Presentation – .mov

The state of the industry worldwide by Tony Reed from Reed Interactive followed by an overview of the roles and career paths in development.

Take me by the hand – 31/10/09

Presentation – .mov

Join game developers Craig Duturbure and Paul Callaghan as they walk you through their favourite games and reveal the highlights and hiccups of game development.

Academy of Interactive Entertainment

Guest Lecture: Independent Development – 14/10/09

Presentation – .mov

The shape of the local industry and opportunities for indie developers, including what to focus on, experimental gameplay models, and options for funding and distribution.

Screen Australia

Innovation Session – 1/10/09

Presentation – .mov

An overview of games as an industry and medium, their relationship to film, and their relative strengths and weaknesses.

RMIT Games Program

Mechanics and Narrative – 8/09/09

Presentation – .mov

Lecture on symbolism and grammar and how that can be applied to traditional media and games.

SYN Media Learning Week 2009

Gaming and Learning: Panel Discussion and Play – 28/8/09

Games Industry and IT experts will help you learn and experience the educational potential of video games and gaming culture. Starting with a panel discussion on how games help students learn useful skills and ending with a chance to get your hands on some gaming consoles and play!

With Vincent Trundle and Michael Woods

Freeplay 2009

Where to from here? – 15/8/09

At the first Freeplay in 2004, there was no steam, no App store, no XNA, no Xbox Live Arcade, no PSN, and no WiiWare.

This panel looks at where we might be in another 5 years.

VITTA ICT Career Expo 2009

How I got a job playing games for a living – 1/8/09

Presentation – .mov

An updated version of my talk from 2008

Video games don’t just appear from nowhere.  Somewhere, right now, there are people writing code, making art, designing levels and putting the finishing touches on games that will eventually find their way into PCs and consoles all over the world.  In Australia, there are around 2500 people doing just that and this number is expected to grow dramatically over the next 5 years.  In this presentation, Paul Callaghan, who has worked as a programmer, a game designer, and now a games teacher, will talk about how he found his way into the industry, how things have changed since then, how it’s possible to earn a living from it, and how it’s not all just sitting around playing games all day.

Emerging Writers’ Festival 2009

I can say yes now but in the end it will be no – 31/5/09

You spend hours deliberating over your punctuation, only to have actors, artists, directors and all and sundry throw out semi colons with barely a thought! This panel looks at maintaining ownership over your own words.

With Liz Argall, Angela Bentzien, Paul Callaghan and Luke Devenish

Hosted by Andrew Horabain

Doctor Who – Computer Game Storylining  – 31/5/09

In late 2005 Paul Callaghan found himself unsuccessfully pitching to the BBC for the new Doctor Who computer game. Eventually, he worked with them on developing the game – and what followed was a writer’s dream in aligning with the revamped TV show, and a nightmare of restrictions due to the differing viewpoints of the BBC.

In conversation with Daniel Ducrou

CAE Melbourne

Industry Overview – 13/5/09

As part of the PWE Industry Overview subject, an outline of what writing for games involves and how I found myself doing it.

National Screenwriters Conference 2009

Writing – It’s More Than A Game – 26/2/09

Presentation – .mov

Games On Net Article

Presentation Footage

Panel Discussion Footage

The differentiation between games and films is blurring rapidly. As game graphics and other technical innovations reach a highpoint, games are depending more and more on character, story and plot… and traditional screenwriters are becoming a valuable resource for the games industry.

The major global film market (15-30yo) is spending more time and money on games than cinema – and the trend isn’t slowing. So is there a place for you in game writing? Do you have to be a user to appreciate the form? How do your skills translate to this exciting field? And is the sky really the limit? Find out how you can tap into this exciting writing opportunity from three internationally respected games writers.

VITTA 2008

From designer to teacher and back again – 24/11/08

Presentation – .mov

Today’s students have never seen a world without video games.  According to ABS statistics: 12.5m games were sold in 2006; 6.1m video game consoles have been sold since 2000; 3.6m Australian households have a video game console; and 4.8million Australian households have an internet enabled PC which is capable of playing games.

In this session, Paul Callaghan, a veteran game developer now teaching programming & game design in the VET sector, will discuss his experiences transitioning from industry to teaching and how playing games and learning are inextricably linked.

Critical thinking about video games – 26/11/08

Presentation – .mov

Today’s students have never seen a world without video games.  They’re an integral part of life now, becoming a new cultural artifact, a new entertainment medium, and bringing with them a whole slew of new employment opportunities.

But how do they work?  And what are the parameters for having a meaningful dialog about them with our students?

In this session, Paul Callaghan, a veteran game developer now teaching programming & game design in the VET sector, will discuss the theory of how video games work and how that knowledge can be used in the classroom.

GC:AP 2008

Towards a theory of Everything: Lessons learned as a programmer, designer, writer, and teacher – 20/11/08

Presentation – .mov

One of our first instincts is to play. As children, we use it to explore our environment, to test roles, to establish our position in the world. We test the rules imposed by our psychology, our biology, our social structure. We form our own individual goals as we go, trying to build a model of how the world works, trying to work out who we are and why we’re here. We skip and stumble and run and tell stories as we move further and further away from our comfort zone towards the extreme limits of our abilities, where we fall, hopefully not too far, then pull out our pencils and scribble down that we found the edge of the map.

Video games tap deeply into our need for play, but now the goals are constructed, the rules are more rigid, and how we interact with the world has been carefully designed as an experience. But that experience is still an act of exploration. The player is wandering through a game space finding the edges, charting the terrain, failing and trying again.

The process of creation is the same. We begin with a vague sense of where we are, and where we want to go, and then we write experimental programs and sketch thick lines in photoshop and build prototypes from paper. We tentatively map the programming and art and design space, finding new things, stumbling, falling, mapping the edges, still following that same urge we have as children – to play.

This instinct is central to how we learn, how we create, and how we live. Drawing on experience as a programmer, a designer, a writer, and a teacher, this presentation will discuss how that knowledge can inform our approach to the development process and the eventual player experience.

iDef 2008

Industry and Education working together – 14/8/08

Panel with Kurt Busch & Damon Raynor from Krome Melbourne

VITTA ICT Career Expo 2008

How I got a job playing games for a living – 2/8/08

Presentation – .mov

Video games don’t just appear from nowhere.  Somewhere, right now, there are people writing code, making art, designing levels and putting the finishing touches on games that will eventually find their way into PCs and consoles all over the world.  In Australia, there are around 2500 people doing just that and this number is expected to grow dramatically over the next 5 years.  In this presentation, Paul Callaghan, who has worked as a programmer, a game designer, and now a games teacher, will talk about how he found his way into the industry, how things have changed since then, how it’s possible to earn a living from it, and how it’s not all just sitting around playing games all day.

ACMI Game Girls Event

Workshop with Moran Paldi

Game developer and educator Paul Callaghan and games designer Moran Paldi will host a workshop where groups will get hands-on with the design process by conceiving a game around your favourite TV franchise.

Freeplay 2007

Independents Day

Panel presentation with Jonathan Blow and Robert J. Spencer – video; powerpoint

How can independents come up with earth-shattering ideas that change the face of gaming? What are the parameters of independent game making and who are the innovators outside of the big-publisher system? This session investigates innovation in independent gaming to date, and discusses where it might come from in the future.

Why I still really love you

Chair of panel with David Hewitt, Eve Penford-Dennis, and Andrei Nadin – video

Newbie game developers are everywhere, but their love of game development is often short lived; like puppy love it goes away real quick when the going gets rough. So how do great developers maintain the love through the tough times and, perhaps more importantly, why do they stick it out? Veteran insiders express the real reasons why they still love games development.

Freeplay 2005

What happens when you become a designer?

Panel discussion with Clint Reid and Kirsty Baird

Everyone has an idea for the best game ever, the most awesome combination of favourite game x plus sensational game y, but what is it really like to be a game designer?  These panellists talk about the experience of designing a game for the first time.

Game Stories: How to make yours much, much better.

Panel presentation with Mark Angeli and Jackie Turnure -   powerpoint

There are many ways to tell an interactive narrative – scripted sequences, cut scenes, emergent storylines to name a few – our panel of expers will argue about when to use what to improve your story and whether you need one at all.

Burning down the Shed.

Chair of panel with Greg Costikyan, Mark Angeli, and Katharine Neil

This is our Australian Indie Answer to the GDC’s ‘Burning down the house’ session.  Angry game developers vent their spleen.

Sunday morning was spent rewriting my panel presentation – I’d decided late Saturday to change the focus of my talk from how great the collaborative process is, to talking about the collaborative relationship between author and audience and how that manifests in games.  This meant I missed seeing the speakers, but luckily through the wonders of technology, they had a speaker in the coffee room you could listen in on.

After lunch, I saw The Art vs Craft panel.  It was interesting structurally – having the panellists debate both sides of the argument against themselves – and the speakers were entertaining – Nathan Curnow wore a bunny suit to speak – but I came away with the same opinion I had going in: both Art & Craft are equally important.

Next up, was me speaking on the panel I Can Say Yes But In The End It Will Be No, talking about issues of collaboration and ownership as a writer with Liz Argall, Angela Bentzien, and Luke Devenish. Both Liz & Luke focused on the positives of the collaborative experience – an opinion that I share.  When it works, it’s brilliant, because other creative people take what’s in your head and make it better than you could have imagined it.  when it goes wrong, as I’ve seen it do, it can be incredibly frustrating though, but I think we all thought that the working with other artists had made us better writers.  Angela spoke about the practical nature of the work and of having ownership of it – especially as a theatre group, and having to come to a creative consensus.

I spoke about the role of collaboration between the author and the audience, and how that relates to ownership.  My theory is that you never really own the work, and that there’s always some form of collaboration, because writing – or storytelling – is about communication, and in order for communication to happen, you need at least 2 people.  In established media – prose, games, theatre, comics – the communication you have with your audience is one way -  it’s a creator / consumer relationship – but with games, you get the chance to turn that communication into more of a conversation.  Games are built in such a way that the audience actually has to engage with the telling of the story, they have to take action, they have to own their own agency, and they have to push through the game’s story.  Done well, narrative games have access to the audience’s emotions in a far more visceral form than the empathic response of prose or film because you aren’t watching someone on a screen do something, or reading about them doing it in a book, the audience is actively making a choice and then acting on that choice before seeing the consequences play out.  That’s something that’s really exciting and powerful to me as a writer, and hopefully I got that across in my allotted ten minutes – at least when I wasn’t suggesting members of the audience were stalking me, telling stories about mental illness, or talking about a girl who got away.

It was a lively panel, I thought.  From where I was sitting, everyone shared something of themselves, and I felt like I knew everyone a little bit better afterwards, which is exactly what I’m looking for when I hear people speak.

Next up, I went straight into my From Here to There session to talk about my experience writing games generally, and more specifically Doctor Who.  I think, a few years after the project ended, that this was a nice way to finally put the whole thing to bed.  I got to talk about how I got my start as a games writer, the greatest creative experience of my professional life (so far), the worst creative experience of my professional life (hopefully ever), and to talk in a bit more detail about the strengths and weaknesses of games as a storytelling medium.  It was tremendous fun, but also a little strange, because at times it felt like I was just having a conversation, but then I’d turn around and there would be 20 people in the same room, all listening to me, and all laughing in the right spots.

The last session was Letters to the Editor, a chance for David Ryding, the festival director, to bring back speakers and ask them questions from the audience.  It was a good way to finish up the festival – funny, insightful, and focused on the process of writing.

And that’s the strength of the emerging writers’ festival – it’s about writing, not writers.  I felt energised and inspired about my own work after hearing people speak.  I was reminded that there are as many ways of working as their are writers and that you need to find not only your own voice, but your own reasons for doing the work, and your own path through that.  I got to speak to some incredibly talented and interested people, who in turn, seemed to see me the same way – which left me with an insufferable ego for the following few days – and who also shared my drive to write and share and communicate and make it work in whatever way we need to.  That for me is the crux of the festival – bringing writers together and building a community, no matter what stage of your career you’re at.

Which brings me to a question I’ve been thinking about since I was asked to take part – am I an emerging writer?  Well, yes and no, I think.  I’m still learning.  I’m still finding my feet.  I’m still bluffing my way through some of it.  But, I know I can do it – at least for games.  So, in that area, I don’t know that I am emerging, but I don’t know that I’m established quite yet either.  Maybe we need another definition – something between emerging and emerged – but I suspect we’d then need two more definitions to bridge those, then 4 more to bridge those, then 8, then it would never stop and our dictionary would contain nothing but words to describe the stages of a writer’s career.

Maybe then, it’s enough to just say, I’m a writer, and I’m doing this work, and that’s where I’m at.  I think that’s what I’ll do.  At least until somebody stops me, takes my hand, shakes their head, and says, ’sorry son, ‘fraid you’re not a writer.’

And I’ll look them in the eye, and there’ll be a moment between us that stretches out just a little bit too long but neither of us will say anything, and when they’re just about to pull away, their fingers losing their grip, their cold hand retreating, I’ll smile, and then I’ll kick them in the shins and run off down the street!

I spent the entire weekend wrapped in the Melbourne Town Hall (and Fad Gallery) for the 2009 Emerging Writers’ Festival.

On Saturday, I wasn’t speaking so I was able to attend panels, get a sense of the space for Sunday, and hear cool people talk about interesting things.

First up was Seven Enviable Lines where the festival’s six ambassadors – Luke Devenish, Kathryn Heyman, Rachel Hills, David Milroy and Pooja Mittal – spoke about the seven pieces of advice they wished they’d been given starting out.  As a fiction writer, I found Luke Devenish and Kathryn Heyman most interesting.  Luke is a playwright & teacher who’s worked on both Neighbours and Home and Away.  He had a really strong sense of the craft of writing and was an incredibly open and personal speaker, both things that I look for and try to do when I’m presenting too.  Kathryn Heyman is a novellist, and again, had a strong sense of craft and willingness to share.  I knew I’d get to catch up with Luke at some point because I was on a panel with him, but I resolved to talk to Kathryn at some point, but sadly only got to shake her hand as she was leaving the bar on Sunday Evening.  She told me I had very soft hands.  I told her I was a writer and had never done a day of hard labour in my life.

I saw two From Here to There sessions – Hollow Fields with Madeleine Rosca, and The Librarians with Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope.  These sessions were designed to give the audience more of an in depth look at a particular piece of work.  There’s something consistently comforting in hearing the stories of how people create.  There are always enough trials – the length of time it took to get the Librarians off the ground; Madeleine having entire pages of her comic rejected and having to rework them – that it reminded me that this is part and parcel of the writer’s life.

The Great State Divide was an attempt to answer the question – is there a regional voice for each state in Australia.  As an outsider, I find the question of an ‘Australian Voice’ an incredibly interesting one, but I’m not sure this session managed to answer the question.  The speakers were diverse in both content and quality – the highlight being Sean Riley who told the incredibly personal story of him growing up in Tasmania and the very clear moment where he realised he wanted to be a writer.

Last on Saturday, before retreating to Fad Gallery in Chinatown, was The Pitch where a broad range of publishers – some established, some independent – let the audience in on what they were looking for.

The day let me put into words something that I’ve thought for a long time but never actually verbalised.  Seeing such a large group of writers, with such broad ranges of experience, I still found myself drawn to particular things – and it wasn’t necessarily what they said, but how they said it.  I’m interested in people who share something of themselves at conferences, who, afterwards, you feel like you know a little bit better.  If they manage to impart something useful, some glimmer of knowledge about how to proceed, great, but I’d much rather hear someone talk who could speak with conviction and passion about why they write, letting their personality shine through.

Sunday writeup coming soon…

Arts Hub have a proile of me up as one of the speakers at this year’s Emerging Writers Festival.  You can read it here.

And a gentle reminder that I’ll be speaking this coming Sunday as part of the EWF’s Town Hall program.

Now that the program has been officially launched, I think it’s safe to tell the world that I’m going to be speaking at the Emerging Writers’ Festival next month.  I’m doing a panel session talking about what happens when you’re the writer on a much larger project and then a From Here to There session talking about the process of writing for games and how I got my start in it.

Both sessions are on Sunday 31st May at the Melbourne Town Hall

1:45 in the Yarra Room – I Can Say Yes Now But In The End It Will Be No

3:00 in the Melbourne Room – From Here to There

It’s been a busy, but incredibly positive, week.  The biggest news is that I’ve submitted the final work for a project that I’m incredibly excited about and should be able to talk about very, very soon.

I also finished the first draft of the first new content for my novel in over a year.  I’m working on adding chapters to fill out some character development and to stop the main beats of the plot feeling so rushed in the second act.  It’s been really strange to go back and write new content for those characters in that world, especially as it’s a novel that I began 3 years ago and the person I am now is very different from the person who sat down to write it originally.   What’s been most surprising is seeing patterns evident in the book that reflect things I’ve been going through in my personal life, and only now being aware of them.  It really brought home how the creative process is, in many ways, a process of digging through yourself.  It also really brought home how crappy first drafts are.

Other news is that I’ll be talking at the Media and Design School in Auckland at some point in the next few months, and hopefully at the Melbourne Emerging Writers’ Festival in May.

I also received feedback from my two presentations at the Victorian IT Teachers Association Conference.  You can find it here.