My Favourite Game

The star of the silver screen on his role in evolving the FMV genre, TV shows as RPGs – and the Hearthstone ladder grind

Logan Marshall-Green talks Hearthstone and TV as RPG

Logan Marshall-Green is an actor and director known for starring in The O.C. and 24, as well as starring in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and horror-thriller The Invitation. Here, still buzzing from his first videogame acting role in Sam Barlow’s Telling Lies, he talks all things games.

What’s your earliest memory of games? My first introduction to videogames was Berzerk on Atari – I remember the insane sound that happened when you touched the walls. And I remember where I was when I first saw Nintendo: down in the basement of Pat Shelton’s house with all of his brothers and sisters, all surrounding this box in this dark basement. And just the silence and the desperation to be next in holding these wired controllers! It had a huge effect on me. Most who know me know that I’m never far from a game.

So you still find time for games now?

I was just trying to finish my last ladder climb in Hearthstone with my Tempo Mage right before you called [laughs], but no big deal! So I keep it close, and it’s something I have allowed myself to clear my head. And it’s a social endeavour nowadays. I certainly have had, and been around, squads that smoke mid-lane. It is something that allows me escape, allows me to play roles I love. I’ve always loved RPGs:

I used to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons when I was young. I love pretending I’m someone else – this is why I’m an actor. And videogames are an essential medium in storytelling, and they’re affecting all the others – music, film, TV, and even comics. I can’t tell any more what comes first. If there’s ever an RPG out there it’s a TV series – as the seasons go on, you rise in levels as a character [laughs], you gain flaws and attributes, and the way you move your character through the world determines how people view them.

Telling Lies was a great fit, then. How did you become involved?

Annapurna reached out to my team, and asked if I’d be interested in reading for a game. Of course, I said “Sure, what’s the game?” and they said it was by Sam Barlow who made Her Story – which I’d heard about, but hadn’t played. So here I was with a 250-page script in front of me. And you can’t do that in one sitting, but within the first few scenes, I knew that this was good writing. So I started to play Her Story on my phone while I was reading on my computer, and I kind of did both at the same time: read a little bit, played a little bit, read a little bit, for about three hours, because Her Story totally consumed me. I stopped and called my team and said, “I want to meet Sam.” I knew in my head I wanted to do this project having not even finished it, understanding that this was going to be a new way of telling a story. I’m someone who is drawn to that.

Was there any hesitation? FMV games have historically had a bad rap.

I was aware of the negative associations, to be honest. And I knew that I wanted to squash them. Before Her Story, I don’t think FMV has really been given a chance by great actors, great storytellers, designers or developers. Certainly Her Story started that, and I thought Telling Lies was going to do something even grander in scope. So it wasn’t so much that it felt like something that needed saving: it was a party I wanted to be a part of, because Sam had already started it with the first one. I knew it was going to be a huge task, [shooting] 250 pages in 25 days… The point is, it scared the shit out of me, and I knew I wanted to do it.

So what’s your all-time favourite game?

Wow… Well, no, it’s not

WOW, although if you’d asked me in 2005 it would have been! The game I’ve played most is

GoldenEye, but the most important game of my life was actually Moto GP 2.

I actually happened to be pretty good at it – at one point, I was number one in North America on Xbox. But it was the first game where I entered social lobbies for racing, and met new people who didn’t speak my language, but spoke enough English. I didn’t know anyone [in real life] who wanted to play, but I knew a whole community online in Japan, Korea, North America and Europe, and we would get on and race. There was no toxicity, just the pure love of it. I just happened to be good at it for some weird reason, and people pushed me to be better. Now the lobby’s no longer there, but I have a lot of fond memories of that game.

“Videogames are an essential medium in storytelling, and they’re affecting all the others”

BLIZZARD WORLD Marshall-Green is a fan of Blizzard games: “With WOW, I went down that k-hole for years, so [ Hearthstone] is a great pocket companion piece. I love the mental acuity it demands, especially if you’re playing higher up on the ladder, which is what I’m trying to do. I can pick it up, put it down, have a relationship with it. That hope that I might hit Legend this season keeps it fresh.” He also played support in a“pretty good semiamateur Overwatch crew”, but ended up having to take a break: “It has such highs when your team is clicking, and everyone’s in their roles – boy, though, does it have those lows. The Overwatch aggro is something very few can understand!”

Marshall-Green “couldn’t disagree more with those who equate violence with games. Kids are amazing at digesting narrative, they know what’s real and what’s not”