Sharon Scott begins her blog as the Story Lead for Little Orbit’s Young Justice: Legacy starting with her initial introduction to the project.

SO IT BEGINS…

Animation has always been a big part of my life.

I grew up watching Superfriends (among other cartoons) as a kid, and in my teens, I would purposely wake up an hour early on Saturday morning to catch Thundercats before I headed off for work. My passion for animation eventually led me to a job with Walt Disney Television Animation working on Saturday morning cartoons, and later, into a career in comics and games. So, needless to say, when Little Orbit asked me to join the team for the Young Justice: Legacy game, I was more than eager to jump in.

And “jump in” I did. Game development cycles are difficult at the best of studios, but when you have to add licensor approvals to the schedule (in this case, from WB), it adds pressure to the entire team – and we only had 18 months till the game’s street date.

I hadn’t seen any episodes of Young Justice, but the show was “on my list”, and by this time, Cartoon Network was about to begin re-airing the early episodes. I set my DVR to do the work from week-to-week, and waited for scripts to come in from WB.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Young Justice, more than any cartoon I had seen in a long time, harkened back to the Saturday mornings of my childhood, where stories were taken seriously and didn’t “talk down” to its audience. This was a serious show with serious stories to tell, and it made me proud (and nervous) to be tasked with developing a game storyline that would do the property justice.

The publisher asked for the game storyline to take place somewhere between Season One and Season Two – a “Season 1.5 story” so to speak. I hadn’t made it that far through the scripts yet, but a quick peek at the titles for the Season One ender and the Season Two opener were “Auld Acquaintance” and “New Year’s Day”, so I was initially worried that there wasn’t going to be enough time between the events of those episodes to develop enough story for the game.

Of course, if any of you have seen Season Two by now, you know I was oh-so-wrong. We had years of story to work with.

FIVE YEARS, to be exact.

And what’s more, Greg and Brandon (the show producers) were willing, even eager, to see us tell an equally serious story… in Greg’s words, “a story that mattered”.

That is a rare privilege in licensed games, but it is what I believe will set this game apart from many other licensed games.

I couldn’t be happier to be part of this project, and to do my part to make the world of Young Justice proud.

Until next time…

Sharon