Westworld: Jonathan Nolan Explains How Video Games Influence HBO Series

When watching the first two fascinating episodes of Westworld, audiences are slowly doled out one tantalizing story thread after another, each about as cryptic as anything else you’d expect from co-creator Jonathan Nolan (screenwriter of The Prestige, Interstellar) and executive producer JJ Abrams (Lost, Super 8). Yet, one of the most curious aspects is the thread carried by Ed Harris as the mysterious Man in Black. Is he really a dark-hatted, badass hombre or a video game nut who just acts tough when the proverbial console is turned on?

It is a fascinating duality—who people are and how they channel their frustrations or fantasies as gamers—that is also unique to the Westworld TV series. Indeed, the fact that this avenue was not even a possible consideration for Michael Crichton’s 1973 movie is one of the several reasons the show became such an enticing opportunity for showrunners Nolan and Lisa Joy (they are a husband-and-wife writing team). It also inevitably came up during the New York Comic Con panel for Westworld, as they were discussing the show to an entire ballroom filled with genre (and likely gaming) enthusiasts. Both even revealed how Grand Theft Auto and BioShock: Infinite were particular influences on the series.

“Yeah, I used to play video games but now we have children, so no more video games for me,” Nolan joked, getting a full laugh from the crowd. “I would play some as research while making this show, because when Crichton first wrote his film, video games literally did not exist. I think [they had] Pong. And of course now, it is in many ways a bigger industry than film or TV. So we did a little research; we played some games before hand—”

At this point, Joy interrupted to offer this amusing insight: “By the way, how happy was my husband to be like, ‘Honey, it’s research. You have to play Red Dead Redemption!’” Nolan quipped back that she is a boring Grand Theft Auto player because she supposedly slows down to obey traffic signs.

And yet, that sincere respect for craft and detail of the world is an element that clearly does inform Westworld, with Harris’ character surmising in the second episode, “You know why this beats the real world? The real world is just chaos; it’s an accident. But here, every details adds up to something.” Similarly, Nolan talked about how gaming culture allows you to explore an evolving relationship between artist and audience.

“I was a big fan of the BioShock video games. You guys remember those? Which I thought were amongst the most literate and thoughtful pieces of entertainment I’ve seen in the last 10 years. Just brilliant. So the director’s commentary with Ken Levine, who’s the designer of those games, talking about the non-player-characters, Elizabeth specifically, in BioShock: Infinite. And in a scene that I think I had just ran through and shot everyone and kept going, he was talking about how much craft went into all the conversations the characters have had, and all their dreams and aspirations. And I thought, ‘Oh, isn’t that tragic? It’s sad. The player just ignores them all, the little bastards.’”

When you view it in this context, Westworld adds another layer in its already dense, serpentine plotting where concepts like the dawn of artificial intelligence and the illusion of free will are constantly being explored. Now, what is also the nature of entertainment in the 21st century, and as we increasingly become an on-demand culture, how can games or other entertainments allow humans to explore their best desires… or their very, very worst? Such is the case with Harris in the first 10 minutes of the Westworld premiere.

It is something to think about when Westworld continues its gunslinging saga on Sundays at 9pm on HBO.