Claire Jia - Transferring Skills Across Industries: Co-Writer for We Are OFK: Pop. Love. Panic!

Claire Jia (She/Her) was the Co-writer for We Are OFK: Pop. Love. Panic!, the origin story video game for the indiepop virtual band called OFK composed of Itsumi Sato (She/Her), Jey Zhang (She/Her), Carter Flores (They/Them), and Luca Le Fae (He/Him). Before her work on the game, Claire has been a writer for personal essays, short stories, articles, and television! Currently, she is working on her own novel about “home, love, and confronting failure in modern Beijing.”

I know you have dabbled with a lot of different kinds of writing genres throughout your career. How did you get into the gaming industry, and more specifically, writing for We Are OFK: Pop. Love. Panic!?

I actually don't know a ton about the games industry at the moment. I grew up playing like the Marios, the Spiros, the Kirbys, all those, you know? I've always had an interest in interactive things, but also animation and adorable art. In terms of my entry into the games world now, and specifically the Pop. Love. Panic!, that was actually completely random.

I was working in TV on “Fresh Off the Boat,” the ABC show, and I got this email from Mikayla Foote (Producer/Band Management for We Are OFK: Pop. Love. Panic!; She/Her). She had liked my Twitter and asked me, “Do you want to meet with our director, Teddy Dief (Director/Writer/OFK Vocals/Voice of Luca for We Are OFK: Pop. Love. Panic!; They/Them).” I had never even considered writing for video games before, and I felt like I didn’t know where to begin, but I was super interested. I met Teddy, and we really hit it off. They said, “Do you want to come on board?” and we just sort of began working on this game. It sort of just came to me. I didn’t go looking, but then it found me. It was the greatest experience, and I wish to do it again, and again, and again.

What’s it like writing for games compared to your past writing in articles, personal essays, television, and the like? Do you think your varied writing in the past helped you write for We Are OFK: Pop. Love. Panic!?

Fortunately for me, I felt like this game is about as similar to television as a game can be, so it was actually very easy for me to jump right in and start writing. It made logical sense to me to write the script like I would a screenplay. A lot of the interactivity came later where we did like a interactivity pass (choice-driven moments in the game) with voice and texting. That part was super fun and challenging, because it was really hard for me to come up with one line, but now I had to come up with three other lines. It was a really good challenge to stretch me.

I especially love this project because I feel like it allowed me to be so myself in the themes that it talks about: friendship, creating art, and struggling as an artist. Also, the tone is a little funny, because it’s kinda like organic conversations that you would have with your friends. I wouldn’t describe it as comedy, but it's just sort of very real life. There’s even moments of drama and emotion that you would expect from real life that is sort of what I seek tonally and thematically in the writing that I do. I like writing comedy, but I think the Pop. Love. Panic! tone, more of a dramedy, is something that comes most naturally to me. I've been writing a novel for the last many years, and it's not tonally super similar, but it does cover similar themes and also does have that kind of dramedy sensibility like moments of levity and humor that come organically. I didn't feel like I was doing something totally different than what I had done before when I was writing the video game. The process of it and the team was all new and exciting and different, but I think in terms of the actual writing, it felt very natural and familiar.

Sometimes you are working on a job where you don’t have any creative control, but on the other side of that spectrum, it’s a whole different process when I write my novel; you don’t have any parameters, and you’re just in a vacuum coming up with your own ideas. I’ve been on both ends, but Pop. Love. Panic! was the perfect middle ground where I had the freedom and the ability to be creative, but I also had all these parameters like characters and the story was pretty much set in the terms of where Teddy wanted everyone to get to by the end. It was more their backstories and “how do we get there?” that we had to determine. The aesthetic and personality traits were already set which made my job so much easier.

What was your writing process for a virtual band’s origin story like?

Teddy and I wrote the whole thing, just the two of us, and it was a lot of us hanging out and talking about it. Teddy would pass the script to me, and I would pass it back. Teddy gave me so much freedom with it. I feel like I had a lot more creative control and freedom to write whatever I wanted, and then later on, Teddy could scale back or say, “Oh, we had to cut the scene because we couldn’t make the whole set for it.” I wrote without any choices at first then we went back and put in a bunch. It made sense to me for my screenwriting brain. It was a two-step process where the narrative was set beforehand then we had to go through and actually select where there are places as options for choices. It was fun for me to go through and dig for that then to actually come up with those other options. That was another challenge.

I think in terms of the virtual band, I feel like Teddy can speak more to the specifics of the band and the writing that went to that. My involvement was mostly with the actual scripts which in those terms, I think it wasn't specifically different [than other scriptwriting] because it was a virtual band. Our process was organized, but very chill. Teddy had such a clear vision for what they wanted, which really made all of this very easy for me. We knew where we wanted to go. It was rare when we didn’t agree on something, but Teddy had the decision-making ability to say “this is the direction I want to go,” and I would follow. Teddy would always do the first pass of the script which made it easier for me, because I saw where all the signposts had to go, and I understood the story. We would just pass it back and forth, talk about it, and then finally get a script that we're both happy with.

What advice would you give women and femme people looking to become game or entertainment writers?

My advice for any aspiring artist is [to ask yourself] “what is the story that only you can tell?” It’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, but for a chill version of that question, “what is something that sets [you] apart in terms of style, themes, or even the type of writing you do?” then go and make it yourself. It does suck that for every single person to get a job these days, you have to fully make your own empire first before you get hired in like the most basic of entry level positions. I hate that this is the advice that I have to give.

I'm also in a weird place in my career too, where I am feeling [this] kind of momentum that you could keep going, but the minute you kind of relinquish some momentum, you're kind of back at the beginning. No matter at any point of your journey, you're always gonna need to have something that you return to. My book has been the thing that has really carried me throughout the last few years, [because] I am working on the thing I am passionate about.

Is there anything else about the game and entertainment industry that you wish to highlight?

I definitely wanna work on another game again for sure. As an artist or as a writer, things can be very fluid. I consider myself as always working in tv, but also—in a way—working in games at the same time. I feel like advice on a practical level besides building your own body of work and brand is also setting achievable goals for yourself.

I think I got so lucky with this game, because I got to work with such a healthy, amazing group of people. Everyone realizes that it’s the people that you work with that is the most important part. This game could’ve been about literally any topic and I would've had fun doing it because of the people that I worked with. I’ve heard a lot that the games industry is not like that; I hope that the games industry can get better and also the entertainment industry in general in terms of just allowing kind good people to be at the upper echelons of it.

Thank you so much Claire for sharing your knowledge with us! You can find Claire on Twitter @clairejiacries, Instagram @clurtheflaneur, and on her website at https://clairejia.com/. You can play We Are OFK: Pop. Love. Panic! on Steam right now!

Cover Picture by Robin Alexander