Tracy Hickman Portfolio

I designed this VR project with Curtis Hickman, the Chief Creative Officer (COO) of The VOID. It was my in-person pitch of the story to Ivan Reitman and the director Paul Feig that helped secure this franchise for our company.

I wrote the script for this experience and every successive draft. The experience premiered at Madame Tussaud’s in New York City and played there commercially for more than twice its contracted run. The experience also won a 2017 award at the VR Awards for Best out of home VR Entertainment.

When the ‘Act One’ video was reshot, I not only rewrote the script but directed Dan Akroyd for the principle photography. That was an unexpected delight!

I was the Writer (often incorrectly attributed) and a VR Designer on this project working closely with the ILM/xLabs team throughout the project.

I rewrote dialogue during the motion-capture shoot with Allan Tudik … even acting as prompter for Allen during the shoot.

I also rewrote dialogue for Diego Luna during the ‘Act One’ filming … thereby able to accommodate his personal style in delivery on set in real time.

This VR experience had a tremendous commercial run in all of the VOID locations — especially in Downtown Disney at Disneyland and Disney Springs at Walt Disney World. The experience also won two Cannes Digital Craft Lions awards in 2018.

I was the primary writer on this difficult project working closely with the ILM/xLabs team and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I pitched a “Haka’ar” storyline to Sony and Dwayne Johnson’s production company in conjunction with their anticipated release of their ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’ film. Having approval, I then was part of the design team creating our most immersive and interactive experience to date, scripting the experience and its dialogue around the design.

Our ‘Act One’ setup video was shot in a Los Angles studio with the delightful actor Rhys Darby reprising his role as Nigel Billingsley, the Jumanji explorer guide. My on-set rewrites included capturing and ‘working in’ many of Rhys’s delightful extemporaneous lines.

This project offered one of those rare experiences where we were able to originate the story for the design, execute it in script and see it completed through to completion while maintaining the vision of its creator.

Curtis Hickman, The VOID Chief Creative Officer, wanted to incorporate a number of elements into a horror experience. I suggested that we use the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 as the setting for a monster horror story. He was very familiar with the setting from ‘The Devil in the White City’ and together we sketched out the story of the experience.

Under his direction and guidance, I then wrote a novella as a meta-companion work to the experience. (Download a copy here.) This literary work contained both clues and story framework for the VR experience — giving deeper meaning to the experience for the guest as well as contextual hints that were useful to navigating the experience successfully.

Dragon’s Bard was conceived, written and published by my wife and me as an experiment in publishing in the modern age using the lessons of the past. Utilizing a ‘subscription model’ patterned after the serialized novels of Charles Dickens, we created an online website where our fans could not only received chapters of the book as it was written — but would also receive a hardback, signed and numbered edition at the end of the process as part of their subscription.

Every aspect of the project — from concept and marketing through the layout and publication of both the e-book and physical book — have been handled by us here in our home. We can and have executed the complete process in the modern age of publishing.

While this is not our best known work — it does show how innovation can lead to entirely new markets in publishing today.

Many of our Dragonlance novels are International and New York Times Best-sellers. It is, perhaps, the single series with which I am most closely identified.

My wife Laura and I originated the concept and the title while we were driving to TSR, Inc. to take a new job there as a game designer. Laura and I had previously originated the concept of weaving narrative story into role playing games with our ‘Nightventure’ series of self published adventures.

What is important here is that this series was developed as a product first rather than a literary work. Dragonlance was initially a game proposal which I presented to TSR, Inc. and became the project creative lead. The adventure game ‘modules’ were being developed along the story line lone before the novels were a consideration.

It is unquestionable that the novels in this series — even with the success of the original products — have outperformed games by a wide margin in terms of financial return.

In the parlance of publishing, this series ‘cleared its advance’ (an unusual event in publishing where the advances paid to the author were earned out through sales, causing additional royalties to be paid above the contract terms). The series is still in print.

We sold this series as a ‘fantasy Spartacus’. I loved the idea that nearly everyone else in this book wants our hero to be the prophesied savior of the world … except the our hero himself.

An example of my novel writing for an established IP. When offered the assignment, I was told I could do whatever I wanted with the character of Batman. I almost immediately realized that my first rule would be to ‘not be the writer who screwed up Batman.’

This lead me on a long and wonderful research journey with Batman down through the years. I soon realized that there were many visions of what Batman was or could or should be. Ultimately, I saw myself as the temporary keeper of a long legacy — and tried to be as authentic as possible while honoring the contributions of all the other creatives who had proceeded me.

I am still very fond of the result … and still smile at the joy I had in writiing dialogue for the Joker and Harley Quinn!

As was typical of companies at the time, TSR, Inc. had hired an outside consulting firm to give them advice on their company product. At the time when I first proposed this series of adventures, there were twelve different types of dragons in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game books … six good and six evil. So, I initially proposed twelve adventures in the sequence. These eventually grew to two more for a total of 14.

Ravenloft was created by Laura and me long before we began working for TSR, Inc. We ran this game every Halloween for our friends for several years before it was published.

The tragic story of the vampire in this setting was not only a unique aspect itself but we added a multi-path narrative structure within the game itself. Utilizing the device of a gypsy fortune teller who read cards to foretell the future — we made her fortunes come true by using the device to set certain plot points in the game itself. These ‘self-fulfilling prophesies’ created a game environment which was dynamic — and the means of allowing playing the game multiple times with ever-changing effects.