Time goes by quickly, which is why I can't believe it was over a year ago that I discovered an indie game called Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble! It was an early build back then, but I liked it, a lot, championed it a bit here and there, and wrote a review over at PlayThisThing and a blurb in Wired.
Fast forward to today, and I'm really happy for the game's creator, Keith Nemitz, for his nomination in the second annual Writers Guild of America awards for games. It sort of boggles the mind to see a small one-man labor of love up there alongside Goliaths like Fallout 3, Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3.
I'm looking forward to carving out some time to see the latest version of the game, since a lot's likely changed since my first time with it -- congrats, Keith!! Definitely recommend you guys take a look, too.
My Dark Master, Kieron Gillen, actually just did an interview with Keith over at Rock Paper Shotgun wherein he talks about his philosophy on writing in games and the WGAs themselves. Highly recommended!
Also boggling the mind is the fact that Tomb Raider: Underworld is nominated for its writing. You know, I liked Underworld. Quite a lot, actually; by the numbers, more than most other things I reviewed this year. But the story direction and dialogue would have probably been the only thing I didn't like about it. To be frank, it made no kind of reasonable sense, and you're talking to someone who calls MGS4 her Game of 2008.
I'm all in favor of a minimalist Lara. And no, that doesn't mean I'm down with this vague idea that we should "revamp" her as "female-friendly" (what does that even mean?) -- but let's talk about that one tomorrow. What I mean is the story actually made me skip the cutscenes to get to the gameplay (and you know that's not like me).
So how'd it get a nomination? Well, for one thing, writers must belong to the WGA in order to be considered, and I'm told not all that many game writers do, so the choices are limited. If bleh, Underworld's story was at least literate, and the dialogue itself was no worse than stuff you'd hear on popular modern-fantasy TV serials.
I wonder a lot about writing in games, actually -- it's not like you can grab some novelist in on the project and give them carte blanche. Game design is, of course, paramount, and unless you're a tireless indie like Keith, the writer is just one (or a few staffers) among heaps of design types who basically want the writer to act as garnish, not main course. I'll bet it's stressful, and I wonder how many decent writers there are building game stories where the end result is ultimately nothing like they hoped.
21 comments:
I didn't know you actually liked Tomb Raider Underworld, It was one of my favorite games this year, I was just surprised you wouldn't have championed it like you did for Silent Hill Homecoming.
Too bad its filled with colission problems.
I have a feeling a lot of games writers feel under-appreciated.
Wolf_Dog: I didn't mind the collision, I minded the camera stuff. And I only really get behind games if I think that people are really missing something important in their evaluations, or at least that seems to be the pattern for me.
Benjamin: I would never want to do it.
Command and Conquer and Tomb Raider had better not win it, by Jove. I'm all for Dangerous Girls or Force Unleashed.
Tomb Raider: if you write on it I look forward to it, because I for one absolutely hated it.
I thought Underworld was great, but yeah, the story was kind of tripe. As far as writers who are actually good in games, you could probably do worse than look at Valve with Chet Falizeck(?) and Erik Wolpaw. Even something as low on story as Left 4 Dead has oodles of the stuff in the game, both in dialog and on the walls.
Haha, oh come on! I bet you'd be great at it. I think even attempting to bridge the gap between a thoughtful narrative and thrilling gameplay would be an enthralling endeavor.
Poisoned Sponge: I have to agree that Valve is producing the most narratively interesting games I've seen. But, I'm hoping TellTale steps it up with Brutal Legend this year.
Umm Ben, you know Brutal Legend is being made by Double Fine, not TellTale, right? Double Fine are the Psychonauts guys, TellTale are the Strongbad And Sam & Max guys.
Oh wow...the game's creator Nemitz is a Sierra-On-Line veteran from the adventure days. No wonder the guy knows how to write an interactive story.
Poison Sponge:
Oh yeah! Duh. I dunno why TellTale popped into my head. But yeah, DoubleFine's previous narrative excellence combined with Black's exploits sounds like a home run.
I'm curious Leigh if you saw the post on Kotaku about that writer's round table. I found it rather absurd to discover that sometimes writers don't even see the game being created or they might be brought in right before it's finished. I just can't understand the rational behind decisions like that. In case you didn't see it, here's the link to the article.
[Developmag.com]
It seems to me that (from my experience playing games) that Japanese developers, as a whole, are more concerned with story than their western counterparts. I've played far too many games by western developers in which it is clear that the story is an afterthought - just an excuse for the events in the game. Recently they've been getting better at it with games like Mass Effect and BioShock being the best efforts, but it's still sorely lacking.
I'm not sure I agree with you on that one Micheal (and not just because it's set of my Japanophile radar). Mass Effect, for instance, is from a studio with a long, long established history of story driven RPG, whereas there are plenty of Japanese games add story as nothing more than an afterthought (eg: the entire 'classic' nintendo back catalog).
For every Doom there's a Ninja Gaiden (famously described as having a plot consisting of "you're over here, enemies over there, kill them ass").
Closer to the original point. There are some pretty stringent requirements on entry as I recall, eliminating most usual choices. This year is a marked improvement though, last year World in Conflict was the only half decent game around.
Dante, perhaps I was generalizing. I think my reasoning for that comes from two factors, one of which being that I play a lot of JRPGs which are heavily story-driven.
The other reason I thought of that was because I was in a Gamestop the other day looking through some used PS2 games when it hit me how much crap there was on that system (which I guess could be attributed to the system's popularity and developers wanting to cash in - kinda like how the Wii is now).
It's very possible (and probable) that Japanese developers have their share of poorly written/non-existent stories and that stuff doesn't get outside of Japan so I don't see it. It's also possible that my preference in genres keeps me from seeing the bad stuff.
On Poisoned Sponge's comment, I always thought Valve's process for integrating story and games was brilliant. Marc Laidlaw said in an interview once that he believes the story creator should be an integral part of the design team, involved in all aspects of the game's overall design. That makes a ton of sense, considering how much of a role pacing and controlling how the player feels play in telling a good story through a game. It's odd that they were one of the first companies to bring in a novelist to write their games rather than having someone on the dev team do it, yet they seem to have the best integration between design and writing of any company out there.
The thing is that the only nominate writers who are with WGA, and many games don't use writers like that. I think that's why some games like that get nominated.
Perhaps Micheal, JRPGs are heavily story driven, some might say story dragged at times. Then again a lot of western RPGs are story driven, it's a story heavy genre.
I play very few JRPGs myself, mostly because they all seem to have the same story, but quality of writing is a very different thing.
Sadly Valve will never get nominated for this, they don't have credited writers, which the guild insists on.
Not that I think Left For Dead should be there, the writing is a little too sparse for it to qualify. Portal on the other hand...
I´d love to have you come back and write up a few more games for Play This Thing. Maybe they´ll also get writing nominations in the future. Coincidence?
I wonder when we'll ever see a game with writing to match Grim Fandango . . .
Ten years old and still nothing's touched it.
Haha Patrick, I love how you say that like I've tons of time to be had and "write up a few more games."
I wish I could :)
I'm happy a little game was able to get such an award.
thought I had no ideal WGA gave an award for game writers.
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