One wouldn't expect to find good literature in video games. But if Santa Fe native Jeffrey Yohalem, 26, has anything to do with it, more writers would get into writing story lines for video games, much like he has.

Yohalem, who graduated as valedictorian from Santa Fe High School in 2002, was recently nominated for two prestigious writing awards for his work on Assassin's Creed II, a popular video game. One award, the Writer's Guild Award, his group was passed up for; but they're still hoping for the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts). The group of writers, designers and producers, including Yohalem, will find out if they receive that award on March 18.

"The BAFTA is the British equivalent of the Academy Awards," Yohalem explained in a recent phone interview from Montreal, Canada, where he is employed with French video-game company, Ubisoft. "It's just great to be nominated."

Yohalem wrote part of the game, but his talents extend to the production side of the game.

"Unlike a lot of writers in the video-game industry, I'm involved in the creation of the game, not just putting stuff on top of it," Yohalem explained. "Writing is treated as dressing on top of game play, which I think is not what the future of the industry is. The future, as far as entertainment goes, is more having a story being told as more of an integral role to the game itself."

Yohalem noted there are two types of video games: those where there is a clear winner and loser (such as football games), and the ones he likes to refer to as "an experience."

"The rules are not clearly defined," he explained. "There is no clear winner or loser. The player is just being surprised by the things that happen throughout the course of the experience."

Assassin's Creed II is this kind of experience, he said. It is the story of an assassin organization in the Italian Renaissance that protects the freedom of their government from people who want to control the population in order to keep things in perfect order. As an added layer, an assassin comes from the future (2012) to the Renaissance and lives as his ancestor, who was part of this ancient order.

"It's science fiction on top of historical fiction — a blending of two genres," Yohalem said. He said he draws on all the different subjects he studied at Yale, where he graduated cum laude in 2006 with a degree in English literature. During his college years, he also interned at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he got to meet celebrities like Lewis Black, Jon Stewart and even Stephen Colbert.

Yohalem eventually got into the video-game industry because he simply loved games.

"I played games my whole life, and I always wanted to write for them because I thought they were the cutting edge — that's where meaningful entertainment is going," Yohalem said. He said a game called Prince of Persia was one that he was particularly taken with. That very game will soon come out as a movie starring Jake Gyllenhal.

When he was a senior in college, the school's newspaper gave him the opportunity to attend E3, a huge video-game convention, where he networked with a producer from Ubisoft — a connection that eventually led to a job offer.

Yohalem's goals for the future include having video games become as popular an entertainment medium as film and television.

"You hope video games can become as emotionally deep as movies," Yohalem said. "It's great to be able to reach such a wide range of people. All these people play games ... in another medium such as film, there are a lot of great films that are restricted to a certain type of person and education level ... but I think games really give one of the broadest opportunities to make a difference in the minds of people."

Contact Ana Maria Trujillo at 986-3084 or atrujillo@sfnewmexican.com.