Amy Hennig comes across as either impervious to apparent failure or so charmingly resilient to roadblocks that we can’t help but be impressed.

Described by Ben Fritz for the LA Times, Hennig is “In charge of all creative decisions, including writing, casting and design” for Naughty Dog. Big job, but for Naughty Dog’s Amy Hennig, she’s learned how to manage, well, everything.

The line that Hennig walks everyday at Naughty Dog is between keeping the processes of building a video game from inception to finished product collaborative while ensuring a finished game does happen. And considering she pumped out series like Uncharted and Jak and Daxter, she’s doing quite well.

Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series is what USA Network’s Burn Notice is trying to be.  The downfall of Burn Notice is that it is trying to be funny within the genre of action and espionage adventure when it was, at best, satire.  They even hired Bruce Campbell.  That’s like starting off a not-funny joke with, “I have a funny joke for you!”  But I digress.

The Paradigm of Collaboration
One of the major successes of Hennig’s career isn’t an award or an accolade: it’s her ability to overachieve through collaboration. The genesis of her collaborative focus stems from one simple although easily overlooked character trait: the more intelligent and skilled people working on a product, the better the product will be. Translation: no pride (in a good kind of way).

And Hennig creates games with two distinct yet connected goals in mind. The first is to produce a narrative and gameplay experience that engages the player on an emotional level. While all games promote some level of emotional connection, the characters Hennig creates are empathic and subsequently real.  Much unlike your previous boyfriend or girlfriend.  Some games pump out amazing story lines, but if the player isn’t able to dip inside the mind of the protagonist, then the player probably won’t stick around long enough to see the ending to that story.

Hennig, in an article from Next-Gen.biz, states, “You can’t fake authenticity when it comes to creating an original story.” And with Hennig’s ability to surround herself with successful, skillful people, we could ask the question, “Why the hell would she want to fake a story?”

Her second goal is to evolve the industry; push the envelope in certain areas of gameplay to move the product forward. One of the areas where Hennig and her team continually evolve the gaming community is the relationship between the production team and the actual gamer.

“You have to be in on the joke together between [the] medium,” Hennig states in the Next-Gen.biz article. The gamer knows it’s a game, and the production team knows it’s a game, so why not use that as an advantage? I’m sure if she was here to reply, she would just smirk and say, “Exactly.”  Because, you know, she is probably way too classy to respond with the, “That’s what I’m fucking talking about!”

You Tell The Story
Collaboration with co-workers is essential, but the true teamwork takes place between the player and the programmed narrative. Long passed are the linear storytelling days and 8-bit interaction. Decisions in video games, now more than ever, influence the story more than in any other media. Paraphrasing Hennig, films are passive, but games are active.

Just look at 2010′s best: Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption. Each decision made by the player has both moral consequences and narrative value. Turn Commander Shepard into a jackass, and watch him scream the paint off the walls later in the game. Or run around Armadillo with John Marston helping everybody out at every chance, and see how much the town opens up to you. Or just do the opposite and blow everybody the fuck away and watch them flee in terror.

Interactive storytelling is quickly becoming a new fundamental of video game narrative. Take an hour out of your day sometime, sit down, and rip through linear storyline. It feels like the game is trying to tell you that you are too incompetent to tell a good story.  This time, however, much like your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend.

In the LA Times article, Hennig conveys, “Dungeons and Dragons opened up the idea that stories can be told by those who take part in them, a key tenet in video game design.” And let’s remember, Dungeons and Dragons has been out for awhile; a lot longer than interactive storytelling has.

The Kennel
Naughty Dog and Sony, both immediate and parent company respectively, support Hennig to the best of their ability. Hennig recounts, in the Next-Gen.biz article, that both “Sony and Naughty Dog take story, narrative, and integration seriously.” And this is paramount because today’s video games can take up to a couple hundred people from beginning idea to finished product.

“It starts from believing it’s important, then spending the time and money to treat it as important,” relates Hennig in the same article. The process is transparent, not because of a lack of trust, but because progress needs to be mapped out, charted, and logged. Ben Fritz, from the LA Times, quotes Hennig, “This is an industry in which you constantly have to relearn things and almost start over. If you can’t do that, you don’t last.” Considering Uncharted 3 is to be released in November of this year, we’d say she’s outlasting the competition.

Uncharted’s Success
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune garnered IGN’s PS3 Game of the Year for 2007, and was rated in a spectrum from 8.5 (1Up.com) to 9.1 (IGN). Within it’s first eighteen months after release, Uncharted sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide.

The sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, achieved similar success. IGN placed the title in their Best of 2009, and Game Informer doled out the highest score possible: 10/10. Perfect scores were also given by 1Up, Computer and Video Games, EuroGamer, G4, GamePro, and GamesRadar.

Hennig’s Influence
While Hennig’s games push the envelope for what can be done technically and through narrative, it’s her penchant for optimizing her team’s talents through collaboration that set the curve for the industry. As writers, we are intrigued by her articulation of thought and spoken word. As gamers, we are thrilled by her vigilance for evolving game play. As people, we are emotionally connected to her as a real person in an ever-changing scenescape of our own narrative and her ability to tell a story.

Look for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception to hit shelves November 1st, 2011. Check out the website to stay current with all news and updates.