Interview.
Building Worlds with Words: Characters and Creation
Michael Chu, Writer at Area 35, is a veteran of the gaming industry with a storied career. Having lent his talents to world-renowned titles like World of Warcraft, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2, Diablo 3, and Overwatch, Chu is a master of world-building and character development. In this interview, Chu offers a glimpse into his creative process, emphasizing the importance of emotional reality and a deep understanding of the characters that inhabit the fantastical worlds he helps create.
AREA 35 Writer
Michael Chu
Hi! Can you introduce yourself?
My name's Michael. I was born and raised in California so I lived there basically for my entire life. I originally grew up in a very small town called Riverside. A lot of people in California don't know where that is. Basically, the air was not very good when I was growing up but then I moved to Orange County when I was in third grade, and I have lived there since then. And that's also where I worked for most of my life.
I started working at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine after college. I had always wanted to work in games, but I wasn't sure how to get a job in games back then. And just by chance, I happened to know a friend of a friend who worked at Blizzard and I asked him, “Oh, how do you get a job at Blizzard?”
“Just apply.”
Oh, that easy? Okay. So yeah, I applied and ended up getting a job as a temporary quality assurance analyst game tester. From there, I kind of moved up. I was one of the first quest designers on World of Warcraft. Then I took a little detour from Blizzard and worked at Obsidian Entertainment, which makes role-playing games. There I worked on Star Wars and Knights of the Old Republic 2 which was really exciting to me, because I'm a huge Star Wars fan. It was nice to be able to take advantage of all the hours and hours and hours that I put into knowing the Star Wars story - watching the movies, reading the books, playing the games, and everything.
So that was very exciting, but eventually, I went back to Blizzard to work on Diablo 3 and the Diablo 3 expansion pack where again I was a story designer. Then the last project that I worked on at Blizzard was Overwatch where I was the lead writer so I helped come up with the characters in the story and a lot of the background for the universe and maintaining the IP and all of that. Since then I have been working as a consultant, and I worked a little bit on another game called Grounded for Obsidian. And then, most recently, I've also been helping out Area 35 with different projects.
“I'm a huge Star Wars fan.”
One of the main guiding things about Overwatch was the team.
We had decided that the characters were the heroes. They were the most important part of the universe, the game, and everything. So I really tried to base the story elements of the game by centering around the characters. The characters were always the most important so even if things happen in the storyline and there are different events, you experience, all of them optimally through the lens of one of the characters.
And then in my head, I imagined every single character, if it existed, each of them had their own game. So what would the Tracer game be like? What would the Winston game be like?
Then I thought what genre would those games be in? What kind of bad guys? What kind of storytelling do they have? And so I really tried to keep that in the back of the mind and then take all the characters and, and then push them together as much as possible.
I think the other thing that I was really going for was to highlight the world and have characters from all around the world with different backgrounds who would appeal to lots of different people and maybe introduce them to cultures, hobbies, or things that they weren't familiar with.
How did you go about world-building for Overwatch? How did you approach such a daunting task?
Why are you excited about working with Area 35?
I grew up playing video games, reading manga, and watching anime. I was lucky enough that stuff had gotten to the United States. I could watch Dragon Ball on TV. I could go to the grocery store, and pick up manga, and obviously, Japanese video games were everywhere. I really consumed a lot of that. Most of the games that I played were Japanese RPGs. They’re my favorite genre. Final Fantasy 6, Earthbound, and Chrono Trigger, are some of my favorite games ever.
I think being able to work with Area 35 is really exciting because I get to play with these things that really affected me as I was growing up. And also I love coming to Japan. And it's good to come and hang out with the team!
What opportunities can Area 35 bring to the table that’s also challenging for you?
I think one of the biggest challenges is something that I'm very familiar with. I worked primarily at two companies and really one of them for most of my career. And so, a lot of the ways that I'm used to working, or things that I expect to see or talk about are things that are very molded by that experience. And so I think with everything like working with a new group, there are a lot of things to learn and kind of figure out how people do things but I actually think that's great because there is no correct way or one way to do things. And so it's fun to see how other people approach projects and then take things away from that.
I mean, it’s amazing because obviously, I think everyone knows Gundam right? Even people who aren't into anime might not know exactly what Gundam is, like the specifics of the characters but if you show them the picture, everyone knows what it is.
And for me, Gundam was very central to the early anime that was available when I was growing up. It was Gundam Wing and so I love Gundam through that. And so being able to work on that was really incredible. And I think the story that's in “Requiem for Vengeance” is so central to Gundam history.
It's pretty exciting to be able to play around with and explore that. And I think the other thing is honestly just seeing the visuals of the show. It's so cool!
What was it like working on Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance?
I mean, I think every writer will say this but most characters have some part, like a little part of something inside of us. It doesn't mean my attitude towards something but maybe one day I felt this way and that became a character. I think we also look at people who we know and we sort of pick and choose. On some of the games I've worked on like Overwatch, for example, I have a lot of different interests like we talked about. One of the fun things about Overwatch was because the cast was so big and so varied I really got to sneak in a lot of different interests.
I could have a character who's really into football or soccer because I like that but I could also have a character who's into classical music. And so I was able to kind of shave off these little pieces and put them in all the different characters. I think that's really fun.
Another game that I worked on recently, Grounded (which is kind of like “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” but a survival game) takes place in the 90s which is the decade that I grew up. So I put much of the experiences and the weirdness of the 90s into the game. I think people who grew up around the same time as me will really recognize a lot of those elements and stuff. I think some of the most memorable things about the 90s were just the way it looked, like the colors, right? The purple and the teal and you're like, “That's a 90s color palette.”
I consume a lot of entertainment. So, I think video games are really big and all the other things I've talked about. But I also like to read a lot and watch TV. I love to do research. I think especially now it's so easy to get information about a subject and it's easy to talk to people who live around the world. And there are so many interesting ideas.
Before when you were looking to create an original idea, you would sort of take eight parts of an existing idea, and then add some slightly new thing on top of it. But I think now there's so much stuff that you can pull from that it's really easy to create these very new things. But the entertainment audience has matured a lot because there's so much media and story for us to consume. We're very good at doing it now that I think you're able to tell all sorts of different stories in different ways. I think a lot of things that were not possible before are now becoming possible like virtual reality and all these things. It's very exciting.
What is your inspiration when creating such diverse characters and worlds? For example, tabletop gaming, RPG video games, etc.
Is there a character (either your creation or previously existing) whom you strongly identify with and why?
Are you heavily involved in casting the voice actors for the characters you bring to life?
Yeah, generally, I've been lucky enough in my career to be able to do that. I really enjoy that part because I think that the voices really add a lot to the characters, as good as our visuals are, it's not the same as a real person and so I find that the voice really helps to fill in for your brain. Some of the things that we can't quite show you are every single little micro-expression on the face and everything. So I think the voice does a lot of that. Also, casting is this weird, confluence of luck but also experience and then talent where the actors are trying to interpret the words and trying to imagine what you hear in your head. You have a voice you're imagining and everyone is sort of trying to figure out what it's going to be. There's no way to make that into a science, everyone's just sort of trying to feel it out.
I work a lot! (laughs) People who are trying to get started as game designers or writers, you do have to read a lot and watch a lot of things. You need to be familiar with the entertainment that you want to do. But I think it's not just watching or reading it. And it's not even just thinking about it critically like, oh I like that or I didn't like that or I like this because or I don't like this because like those are all really important, but obviously there was a reason that this ended up this way or that someone felt it should be this way. And I think trying to figure out that aspect is really fun. I think it keeps me thinking about how the creative process works and how different people have different ideas and their creative process goes in different directions.
What do you do daily/regularly to keep up with your skill set?
“Well, the thing that I focus on the most is… emotional reality.”
It's funny because I think it's changed so much from when I started. When I started the advice was, basically do what I did which was, be a game tester or something like that, and then see if you can work your way up. But I think now the bar to starting these things is so low. If you want to make a game you can pretty much do it. If you want to make a comic book or draw or anything, just getting started is generally the best advice now because there are so many tools available to you.
Any advice for those who want to be where you are?
Well, the thing that I focus on the most is, I don't know if there's a word for it, but it's “emotional reality.” And it can be different depending on the medium or the genre. If you're making a comedy characters don't have to be realistic because the point is not that it's realistic. But characters still have to behave in plausible and reasonable ways and make sense consistently of what's going on and who they are. So for me, I think one of the things that I really focus on is the characters and their actions, their behavior, and also the way that they change throughout their lives.
These characters must be very believable so that they don’t feel like a two-dimensional character that exists for one story. We talked about this earlier, but I always have in my head these stories that will go beyond the storytelling, or go back farther. And I think to do that, you really have to see these characters as real people and not just a character for a specific story. So, I think that would be probably one of the things, and then the other is I just like a lot of things. I just have taken in so many different angles, and I'm always interested to learn more. So when I start working on another character, I'll try to bring in a whole bunch of new things that maybe I haven't done before.
How is your style different from other scriptwriters?
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