We heard recently that you Tom Sniegoski had scripted the Buffy console game�

Tom and I are still in the process of writing the dialogue for the Buffy video game for the Microsoft X-Box which is really cool. The one hint that I�ve been giving - even if I don�t know if Fox is going to yell at me or not - is that you do get to see the return of a major Buffy villain.

Is this like a fresh take on the game, because there was a lot of talk about it a while back, before everything went quiet for months?

Well, we�ve only been brought in over the last few months, so I don�t know what was done before and how it may have changed.

When I got the story outline, there were a couple of things we knew you couldn�t do unless you explain them, because that doesn�t work in the Buffyverse.

You can�t have that vampire behave this way because vampires don�t do that, so you have to say why that particular vampire is capable of doing that. So, that was kind of interesting. It�s just been funny and working with Tom is always a blast. The more I work with him, the less I�m able to figure out who wrote what.

Most of the crazy lines - the nonsensical lines - are his, but not all. Once upon a time, they would all have been his, but he�s been influencing me I think. He�s so funny and so there are some hysterical scenes that turn on one line in the dialogue.

Is it tricky to script a computer game? Are you guiding people to a certain conclusion or are you having to write for many possible outcomes?

The game has a great deal of both combat scenes and static scenes - which are called cut scenes in the jargon of the industry - and so we�ve actually done all the cut scenes. They�re like scenes from the show.