Award-winning video games writer to speak in SA

To date he has worked on more than sixty videogames including Fable Legends, Prince of Persia, Harry Potter, Risen, XCom, Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol, Medieval II: Total War, SOCOM, LEGO City:Undercover, X3 Reunion, and the new Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

His film work includes the English version of Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, while in television he has learned a lot about accents having worked on projects involving Yorkshire men in woolly hats (Emmerdale), Geordie school kids (Byker Grove), a bunch of Canadians (Risk) and others too diverse to mention.

His latest play, an adaptation of the Wind in the Willows, was performed in London over the summer. He won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Videogames Award for Prince of Persia in 2009. He is currently working as lead writer at Lionhead Studios and is developing projects for the stage and screen for Sixteenfeet.co.uk. In any spare time, he is the treasurer of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

Walsh will share not only his experience as a writer, director, producer and story consultant, but is also a one-stop shop from concept to pre-production; from scripting to voice, performance capture and localisation. In addition, he has credits in film, television, radio, stage plays and animation, offering local writers the full package of learning how to spread their talents from film and TV across the full spectrum of new media.

Workshop content

Writing dialogue and narrative in an interactive medium - this two-day workshop will mix talks with workshop exercises to cover a wide range of interactive writing challenges from concept to shipping. Learn to recognise and analyse the different challenges offered by the various platforms, narrative genres and gameplay genres that face writers working in this medium. If one would like to know the jargon, common pitfalls, career paths, formats, narrative structures, speech design principles and to get the chance to test out these elements, then this is the workshop.

Early bird special

Bookings are essential and booking received before 31 December 2013, qualify for an early bird discount. Prices are as follows:

• Standard price for members R3500

• Standard price for non-members R5000
• Early payment (before 31 December): members R2800
• Early payment (before 31 December): non-members R4000
• Bulk sales - 5 or more: Individuals and Corporate - all attendees to become members R2500

• Bulk sales - 10 or more: Corporate - all attendees not members R3000

For more information, email gro.asdliugsretirw@nimda.