Earlier in the week Sony Online Entertainment announced that famed comic book writer Marv Wolfman was joining the DC Universe Online team as the third major talent from the comic book industry. Fortunately for you, we were in New York for Comic Con and had the chance to ambush an unsuspecting Marv, talking him into sitting down with us and even answering a few questions. During the interview we discovered how much of a gamer Marv really is. Calico Vision for the win my friends!

Tamat : To start, welcome to the DCUO team. It's a cool project to be on, I'm sure.

Marv Wolfman : Yeah, I've been waiting for it to happen, because I've known about it for a while. But, now it's finally at the stage that I can come in.

Togikagi : To start off, how long ago were you approached with this?

Marv Wolfman : San Diego Con last year, beforehand, because I have heard about it and there's always been talk back and forth. I've written other video games before, and these things take a long time to gestate, because the technical stuff has to be done first, and all the setups, and THAT takes forever. So they knew where it was going to be, they knew it would take about a year to get to the point where I even had to come in. I'm sure they were working on it beforehand, long before that, but that they would know. But they said to me, "would I be interested", and I said, "you'd better believe it." As both someone who plays games, you know I have every console out there. Not the PS3, I have the PS2.

Togikagi : Well, you have to get the PS3, right?

Marv Wolfman : Well, I thought my wife was getting it for Christmas for me.

Draknorr : You can get a free one now.

Marv Wolfman : No, they don't give free ones, unfortunately. She didn't get it for me for Christmas, so now I have to buy it. I think that was her plan. But I have the PS2, the Xbox360 and the Wii. But I had them way back to the Calico Vision.

Tamat : Ah yeah!

Marv Wolfman : You remember those?

Tamat : I had over 50 games on the Calico Vision.

Marv Wolfman : It was because it played the Nintendo and the Atari! So, you know, it was a great little wheeler.

Tamat : Awesome.

Marv Wolfman : So I've been excited about it. I haven't written an MMO, but I've written straight games for the Xbox and stuff like that.

Draknorr : What games did you write?

Marv Wolfman : The only one I can talk about, and it's sadly not the good one, is Superman Returns. It's one of those games where you have to do a movie tie in, and you have to get it by a certain date. I did Superman Returns with Flint Dille, who's a brilliant writer, and he's a great game writer; he wrote a beautiful book on writing games as well. He's written tons of games, and the two of us came in to write this one, and we went down to Orlando. God it was beautiful, the stuff that they wanted to do and everything. Sometimes the games don't work out that way, but everyone there had absolutely 100% the best dedication. They loved the character and such. The other two games, unfortunately - not due to me, because my scripts were long done - for other reasons, one company went bankrupt, and another one, the game had some problems technically, and it just came never came out.

Draknorr : Were they both comic book licenses?

Marv Wolfman : Yes.

Togikagi : What are some of the major differences between writing for print, specifically comic books, and then writing for a medium such as video games, where you're kind of writing action sequences and trying to tie it all into playing.

Marv Wolfman : Well the nice thing is, I think people assume that we write the action sequences. That's the gameplay! You're in charge of the action! We're not. We lead you to the moment of action, we'll choreograph where a character may go, but we're not devising how you're going to fight this character. Not in an MMO, not in an open world. The difference, primarily, is comics are a series of still photos. I control it, you don't. I'm telling you exactly what you're going to see, I'm telling you exactly what the concepts are, I'm feeding you every bit of information.

An MMO is exploration. It's about you finding out the information, and it's about continuous movement. I write a still picture, I can put five thousand words in that panel if I could fit in and have a stupid enough letterer who would actually do that. But here you can't spend the time with a lot of words on screen anymore. Those are the old days. You know, Zelda, the old days. "I enter cave." But what's done today is, we get you moving, but the story is there and you come into the story in a completely different way, and you have to think about it in a completely different way.

Comics are linear, like books and movies, but unlike movies, comics are still pictures. Games are not linear, so you have to tell the story in a way that's never been done before. You know, there are great games in the past, whether it's Myst or Seventh Guest, or something like that, where the puzzles you have to work out in your head are just brilliant. Games let you come up with a different way of approaching any of that math.

Togikagi : So, would you say it's more difficult to write for video games, or just a different kind of difficulty, would you say?

Marv Wolfman : It's more challenging, because we're trained from birth to think linearly. And, as a writer, you get to used to rhythm. The first time I wrote a game, as I said, I wasn't sure I could actually do it, because I played, but that doesn't mean you could write it. I'm going, "How do I do this? How do I approach it?" Fortunately, Flint was there to help me. And I realized, I actually enjoyed that tremendously, because, nothing is rote. Which actually goes back to the Captain Power Days, if you remember that TV show, because I did some game stuff for Mattel back then, so it's been a long time.

I worked for Imagineering and I created a game ride for them, Which is both a game and a ride simultaneously, and it said Disney Quest. So this is something I've loved doing, but every time I do a game, it requires you to think in a completely different fashion, and that's what's exciting to me, because I can't do anything by rote. I can't settle back. You know, it's like, can this work, is this a good comic book concept or is this a good game concept? And that's where the gamer part of what I like do comes in, because I've played enough games that I'm bored stiff with, and I don't like writing that kind of sequencing.

Togikagi : That actually leads into my next question, which is, you've played every console there is, what are some of your favourite games that have inspired you?

Marv Wolfman : My favourite game is God of War 1. I'm still stuck in God of War 2. I'm at a level I cannot figure out, I even went online to cheat, and the cheat didn't work. I'm also stuck on Portal level 17.

Tamat : That was a difficult one, I almost gave up on that one.

Marv Wolfman : Oh god, what I do is I put it away for a little while and then I come back and I go, oh, how could I not have come up with that? God what an interesting game. And it doesn't work on any level. So on my PS2, I'm trying to get through God of War 2. God of War 1, to me, is the most imaginative game I've ever seen. Brilliant, brilliant game. Both because you have to think your way, and you have to fight, but some of the levels are pure thought. Loved Bioshock. I checked with everybody I knew who played the game, and I came up with a completely different way of killing the guy at the end that nobody else had done. And I'm going, that's a great game, when everybody can come up with something else - I sent the bees after them, and the bees killed him! Everyone else went for a direct attack, and I went; "no, he killed me twice, I can't do that. I'm not powerful enough... Why don't I just send the bees at him?" And when he was weak, I just finished him off.

I'm currently playing Dead Space, which I'm really enjoying. Story-wise, my favourite is Bioshock. Gameplay wise it's God of War. But I'm not far enough into Dead Space yet. I just got to some level, and they keep killing me, so I have to figure out where the creature is coming from. So once I figure out where he's coming from, then I can figure out how to save myself. Because he just suddenly appears behind me, and I'm going "no!"

Draknorr : Have you played any Massively Multiplayer Games?

Marv Wolfman : I played City of Heroes from the week it came out. What happened was, I had met the guys there, and they told me about it beforehand, so I knew about it. I went on; I played 6 to 8 months. I know that they have, like, a 5000 page Bible, and they had a whole story and all that, but after 6 to 8 months, I didn't find my story yet. I wasn't sure why I was doing anything. Also played Warcraft. My wife is a senior producer at Blizzard, so it's in the blood. But Warcraft - maybe I'm just not a good enough player, I enjoy it, I'm not good enough. I kept getting killed. Again, I couldn't figure out where I was leading to.

Togikagi : One of the interesting things I thought you just touched on was with City of Heroes, you said you didn't know why your character was doing what you were doing. That's your job with DCUO, so-

Marv Wolfman : That's specifically my job.

Togikagi : Exactly, so you've seen this work, and in other games, you've seen it not work. Without going into detail, obviously because you can't, how are you going to make it work?

Marv Wolfman : Oh so I don't know how it begins, because that stuff has you writing missions, you don't know where the beginning is; the exact moment that you open. But from everything I can tell from the overview, from everything else, you'll pretty much know what you're purpose is, and you will understand how you fit into the equation. And I never felt that with a lot of others, I felt, "Oh go attack that spider," or "Oh go get that formula from the Old Wizard," or "There's a gang on so-and-so street, go stop them." And I loved the games! As I said, I played City of Heroes for months, but eventually as a writer, and I have little time, which also hurts, at least when you're playing an MMO. I don't have the patience to wait, while someone who's a lot younger than me would. I just run out because I have all these other games I want to play, and I only have limited time. But everything that we're talking about, in the case that you will be part of the storyline, and you will understand your basic concepts; you won't the depth of the story, you won't know where it's going, but you know that something big is happening that you're part of. That immediately tells you you're not just going out to kill a spider. You're not just doing this. You know that something is happening, and of course you're familiar with the heroes and the villains, you know that something is being planned. You won't find out what the mission is maybe on day one, but on the next day you will. But you understand your position, and I think that's a major difference for at least the games I've played. I haven't played every MMO, and I certainly haven't played them for long, but, for me, that would have made the difference, and I would have stayed on some others if I understood that.

Togikagi : So with your writing style for games is that you want to have a build up in your cases and capers, where it gets to be, as you level up, more and more exciting, or do you want it to be crazy exciting right from the first quest.

Marv Wolfman : I think you need to bring people in the story where they go "OK, this is important to me, and it's going to be big." And I don't think you need to keep ramping it up, I think you need to make it more interesting. It doesn't have to get larger; it has to get more intriguing. You have be someone who, while you're playing, goes, "OK, I can't stop now because of this." It's really more of your participation in it, rather than we're suddenly going to explode this. Which we will! But that's not what it's about. It's about our characters. And that too I like.

Togikagi : This is, kind of just an open ended question, just because you have so much history in the industry. You've been in the industry for, forty years, if I'm not mistaken?

Marv Wolfman : I started in 1967, so over 40 years.

Togikagi : And you've been involved with Marvel and DC. You've created so many of the characters that are probably going to be appearing in this game, like Teen Titans, Robin, all sorts of fun stuff. So how are you going to take all this stuff you know about the DC universe, and kind of compact it into that, you know, DC Universe they were talking about on the panel, where it's the one that everybody's going to know. I guess how do you take all of that history and put it into one game.

Marv Wolfman : I'm so happy to answer that one. Jeff did it in his document; I just have to flesh it out. Jeff thought of all of that, and did a really good job with it, and I don't have to worry about it, because they've already made those decisions. My job is just to try and take it to the next level.

Tamat : How to tell that story?

Marv Wolfman : How to tell Jeff's story, which is really good. I am so glad, I could not do it anymore. I think I levelled out at Crisis on Infinite Earths, with 450 characters. This is like Jeff's crisis. Jeff's magnum opus on this. It's a really big story, but it's not a story that one would necessarily do in a comic, because it requires the interactivity, and it requires the ability to go anywhere, which you can't do in a comic.

Togikagi : Just really, really quickly; is it cool to see characters that you've created, seen in an MMO?

Marv Wolfman : It's always cool to see that, and I won't say anything, because I won't give you a hint as to who's in it. But since I've played other games, written other games with characters I've created, I can definitely say that's cool.

Tamat : Thank you so much Marv!

Marv Wolfman : You’re welcome! Take care.

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
ZAM.com