Peter Boychuk

Peter Boychuk is an Adjunct Professor at UBC’s School of Creative Writing where he currently teaches Writing for Video Games. He is also the Narrative Designer at Archiact Interactive, and was the lead writer on MARVEL’s Dimension of Heroes (Disney), Freediver: Triton Down, and Evasion. He was a writer on Dead Rising 4 (Capcom) as well as several indie titles.
He also works extensively as a playwright. His plays include Jesus Freak (Pacific Theatre), Fritters in Kandahar (Lunchbox Theatre), L’Élection (Théâtre la Seizième), Shelter from the Storm (Touchstone Theatre/PTC/Firehall Arts Centre), Fortunate Son (Vancouver & Victoria Fringe Festivals), and Afterglow (published in the anthology Two Hands Clapping by Signature Editions). He holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria, where he has taught as a sessional instructor

Sort options

Working as a Game Writer (edX)

Learn what it takes to work as a video game writer: from resumes to writing tests to contracts and NDAs. What is it like to work as a video game writer? How do you even apply for game writing jobs? Is it true that you might have to take [...]

Interactive Narrative (edX)

Learn how to use player choice and interactivity to create compelling game experiences. The primary difference between video games and other art forms is interactivity. Players embody the characters in a game; instead of watching the protagonist make choices, they actively make choices for the player [...]

Worldbuilding for Video Games (edX)

Learn the fundamentals of building video game worlds, from a writer’s perspective. A game’s setting is second in importance only to the game’s player character - and some say it’s more important. Game designers must create a compelling new world that players will want to explore and inhabit for [...]

Writing Video Game Scenes and Dialogue (edX)

Learn the fundamentals of writing cinematics, cutscenes, and in-game dialogue. Increasingly, game designers are realizing that cutscenes, cinematics and character interactions through dialogue are not just breaks from gameplay, or ways of providing exposition. They are integral to the player’s experience of a game. Talking is action. Dialogue is [...]

Writing Video Game Characters (edX)

Learn how to make effective, memorable video game characters, from protagonists and antagonists to NPCs. You might spend two hours with a character in a movie, but you can spend hundreds of hours interacting with the player character, antagonists and all the non-player characters (NPCs) in a video game. [...]

Video Game Writing Essentials (edX)

Learn the essentials of writing for video games, from how games are developed and what game writers do, to the ways game stories differ from other kinds of stories. Writing for video games is truly a new frontier, a place where writers and game designers are still learning, innovating [...]