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BioWare Hiring Writers by Contest
AsiNisiMasa writes "GamaSutra reports: BioWare Announces Writing Contest For Industry Jobs. For all of you with some modding experience with the hopes of breaking into the gaming industry, here is your chance. For you less confident modders, there is still hope. From BioWare's official contest page: 'When hiring writers, BioWare looks only at your writing; not the areas, not the special scripting, and not the combat. We evaluate only the characters, the dialogue, the plot, the non-linear structure, and the flow and pace of the story.'"
And now you'll be rewarded with an underpaid job, long tedious hours, endless revisions and the knowlege that you're working for a company that once upon a time produced quality products!
And you also get a genuine signed copy of Knights of the Old Republic, worth $33.
Hold your head up high, kid.
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So do you think BioWare is motivated by trying to recruit someone, or is this mainly an exercise in promoting their games?
Given the popularity of working in the games industry and the coverage this would get, I'd imagine it's more the latter rather than the former.
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Don't forget - you also get to relocate to balmy Edmonton, Alberta.
I hope more developers have contests like this, or like the Unreal one. Gives more incentive to make mods.
I am a huge fan of Bioware and their games, the BG, NN, and NWN series are all breathtaking; It's things like this that remind me why I have so much respect them. Bioware have always sold games with virtually no eye-candy, just perfectly narrated stories with near-infinite replay value. It's really cool of them to turn to their fans for inspiration.
On a less optimistic note, I just hope they aren't doing this because they are running out of ideas and their company is sinking...
Oh, and you'll also get this t-shirt... signed by the guy who used to have your job!
... Me..."
He, uh, left for some reason.
Hey, wait a minute. He wrote something on the back. It says:
"Kill
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Enough with Star Wars, World War II, Vietnam, and other existing franchises. It's been done to death.
How about writing a good old school style fantasy RPG with an original storyline? If you MUST, do another Forgotten Realms game, but invent some new characters instead of copying Baldur's Gate.
Of course, an RPG set in the TRON universe would also be new and different... I don't think anyone has tried to do anything but action games in that setting before. (I liked Tron2.0, but it wasn't an RPG.)
(And I realize I just asked for a couple of holy grails, but oh well...)
I've done a number of modules for NWN (Shadowlords, Dreamcatcher, Demon) and am currently working on a NWN2 campaign. I think I'm going to end up taking one of our sidequests and tweaking it slightly to fit the rules.
There's a few tricky parts:
That being said, I think we may have a side quest with an interesting premise. I think the competition will be pretty stiff, but it should be a fun exercise.
I would never acknowledge and participate in such a degrading method of showing my abilities.
Duly noted, Mr. Coward.
"I would never acknowledge and participate in such a degrading method of showing my abilities."
Proving your abilities by answering a challenge not unlike one you would recieve at the job you'd apply for is degrading?
"Derp de derp."
I guess the monkey house at the local zoo didn't have any great Shakesperian writers.
And my "Xena Meets the Vampire LeStat" anthology!
You have exactly two months to make a module in NWN.
I attempted to build a remake of the original Bard's Tale with Neverwinter Nights, and came along pretty far with it. I even had a great and nearly perfect recreation of Skara Brea.
The problem was that as the project grew in size and become more complex the Aurora toolset became slower and slower, esspecially when laying down some of my scripted "zones".
I think the reason I gave up on my Bard's Tale recreation was because I became frustrated with the increasing slowness of Aurora as the project grew, and because I quickly realized how tedius it was trying to put together a worth "recreation" rather than doing something original.
Still, it's a decent toolset and this contest is an incentive for me to begin work on a new project. 60 days might be enough to put together something really slick if you weren't trying to build something too large.
(As an aside, I don't suppose anybody would be interested in taking over that NWN recreation, would they? The Skara Brae related maps alone might be fun for someone to play around with if they were old Bard's Tale fans...)
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Just trying to be pedantic---this is, after all, an article on writing....
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From the submission agreement (emphasis mine):So, they can copy your ideas and not reimburse you in any way, as long as they claim that their development was independent from your submission.
I'm not saying they would, but they could.
That being said, I'm still going to submit something. ^_^ And you all should too. Competition is pressure, and pressure makes diamonds.
Don't put advice in your sig.
So basically, you're saying that you're jealous that you don't get to make the decision on who gets chosen? Nice try. If you're really interested in improving the writing and story telling, here's a suggestion.
1) Make mod.
2) Distribute mod and gather feedback from players.
3) Sell mod. Profit!
Alternatively, if you're just interested in voting:
1) Download existing mod.
2) Send email to modder.
Hey, it's one less step. See how easy that was? Now go forth and create/vote.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
What happens in the method discussed, the two parties, i.e. employer and applicant do not have the same status.
There is no equality as in 'I got something, you are interested, lets discuss'.
The problem here is that they don't know you have something they're interested in. They want to see your work first.
Any idiot can say he can do something. I like companies that only hire people who can actually do it.