Novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland has explored genres in his film projects ranging from zombies (28 Days Later) to interstellar sci-fi (Sunshine) to comic book fantasy (Dredd). It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that he’s also a lifelong gamer. Here, we talk to him about his contribution to the ill-fated Halo movie, the oversaturation of zombie games and the action-RPG that awakened his love of single-player console gaming.
When did you become interested in games?
My best friend when I was a kid got Pong. His parents got it and we played it on his TV with two paddles and a single fat white pixel bouncing around the screen. And then a few years later another kid on the street got an Atari. There was also a fish and chip shop where I used to spend all my 10p coins playing Space Invaders. So I basically grew up playing videogames right from the earliest one except for a brief period when I was a student and didn’t have any money. When I came out the other end of university, that’s when the 16-bit machines had arrived and everything had changed.
Is it satisfying to have witnessed the entire evolution of games from Pong to the shooters of today?
It is, but at this stage I feel like I just need more. I feel like the evolution needs to take another big lurching step. And I’m trying to figure out where it’s going to come from. There’s obviously brilliant stuff being done today but like that jump you got moving from a 16bit to a 32bit machine, or from a ZX81 to a 48K Spectrum. I want one of them. I feel like I’m waiting for one of them. We’ve been circling the same territory a bit for the last few years and it needs a bit of a leap, I reckon.
What about the traditionally more innovative spheres of mobile and indie games?
You’re exactly right, that’s where I think it’s going to come from. In games like Braid I see a flash of something really interesting and I wonder if it’s the lower development costs of the iOS, XBLA, PSN type platforms that will allow for something really game changing to happen. Clearly some of these guys who are designing games now are like Matthew Smith and Jeff Minter and they have that kind of adventurous anarchy about them. And maybe it’s because of my age, but I really respond to that. I’ve spent a lot of time this year playing Battlefield 3 and I think it’s great, but the kind of electricity I get from some of those lower-budget games is really exciting.
Of course, in light of your profession, these games tend to involve the least writing and story.
The best writing I’ve seen in a game has to be the first BioShock, I would say, and I agree that’s clearly a big game. But I thought BioShock also had a kind of underground sensibility. In some ways it feels more connected to Braid than it does to Call Of Duty. It’s referencing Ayn Rand for Christ’s sake. I thought that was terrific. I love that game, I really do.