Doug Beyer (Wizards of the Coast): "it’s crucial to have a narrative medium to express Magic’s story (entrevista)

Daniel Tack, do portal de gaming da Forbes, esteve à conversa com Doug Beyer, membro da equipa criativa de Magic: the Gathering na Wizards of the Coast. Beyer é o autor de The Secretist, a série de e-books iniciada em Outubro último que conta a história do bloco de Return to Ravnica através da perspectiva do planeswalker Jace Beleren. O terceiro livro, dedicado à expansão de Dragon's Maze, foi lançado a 28 de Maio para Kindle e Nook. Como não podia deixar de ser, a entrevista incidiu com especial atenção no processo criativo, na importância da narrativa do jogo quando este abrange cada vez mais formatos em vários meios distintos e na dificuldade em combinar as vertentes narrativas e de jogabilidade de um produto como Magic: the Gathering. Dois excertos (destaques da minha autoria):

How will the role of novellas like The Secretist and other lore be used to develop Magic: The Gathering as a transmedia experience moving forward? Are there plans to bring even more of a connection between cards and story content? 

Authoring a fantasy story is hard. Creating a multiple-world-spanning, multiple-viewpoint fantasy story that plays out over novels, cards, comics, web articles, player’s guides, and videos—while working with a team of writers and countless artists, producers, and other creators—is crazy hard, but it’s something we’ve learned a lot about. Cards are awesome at showing snapshots and snippets of the lore behind the game, but they aren’t a great medium for telling sequential plot, and telling the story at a deeper level requires that. So it’s crucial to have a narrative medium to express Magic’s story. The Secretist represents one part of making that happen, and we hope to be able to continue with more story expressions like it.

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Do you feel that Emmara Tandris ended up as a card that exemplifies her role in the lore and story? Did your vision come out in her card form? 

From a creative perspective, she didn’t express everything I might’ve hoped. But cards and characters are developed with input from many people, and the card is the way it is for a lot of good reasons. I now believe I should have pushed harder to make her cohere better with her characterization in the story, since she’s so central in the book. That’s part of why it’s complicated to work on a transmedia property, referring back to your other question — you can do your best to make a character come to life in the right way in a story, but that doesn’t mean you’ve done all you can to make her sparkle in card form. We learned a lot from developing legendary creatures during the Return to Ravnica block, and we’re putting more emphasis on getting those characters to appeal to those players who know them from the story.

A entrevista pode ser lida na íntegra aqui.

Fonte: Forbes