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What Writing For Games Is Really Like
Gamasutra is running a transcript of a recent podcast, in which host Tom Kim interviewed the well-respected games scriptwriter Susan O'Connor. She talks about what it was like to write for games as diverse as Star Wars Galaxies, Gears of War, and Bioshock. She and Kim go into what the process of writing for games entails, the increasingly interesting Writer's Game Conference at the Austin Games Conference, the interplay between designer and writer, and what it is like to write for and as a woman in a male-dominated industry. O'Connor comments: "You can look at someone like Ang Lee, who makes these incredibly powerful movies in English set definitely in America, and yet he's not from here and English is not his first language. So I think there's something to be said as a female writer writing male characters. It does take a little bit more work to get inside of their heads, but you do have that luxury of being and outsider and being able to see it with fresh eyes."
...like writing headlines for Slashdot, only harder.
Kind of like editing for Slashdot, except sometimes you have to make sense. Unless you're writing for an FPS.
Swi
What It Editing for Slashdot is Really Like
Get your act together guys...
What It Writing for Games is Really Like
OOF LIKE ARTICLE! It good accurate. Oog graduate summa cum laude from cave in hills. Oog make Oog parents very proud! Oog father disappointed at first, because he want Oog be rock repairman too. But Oog have special calling. Oog study mainly rocks and mixing thing together at cave, with minor in English lit. Oog get job as game developing with Grond and Thunk Incorporated!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
If we could get the gameplay of Oblivion with the storytelling and acting of the Legacy of Kain series, we'll have a game experience so powerful, nobody would be able to play a video game ever again.
Do you REALLY want that?
It's been a long time.
1. Turn on main screen.
2. Decide who all base are belong to.
3. ????
4. Profit!
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
As a guy, that is my justification for playing female characters and dressing them up all nice and pretty, or running around in nothing but underwear...
Posted anonymously for obvious reasons...
True story: My computer didn't have quicktime installed (or had some problem with QT) when I played the first Myst game. So, all the puzzles worked, but none of the story full-motion videos did. I was, of course, none-the-wiser to this and played through the entire game without ever knowing what the heck was going on--I thought that was part of the "mystique." Every time I would encounter one of those books with the movies in it, I just saw a black square, which at the time I had assumed was some kind of puzzle I just hadn't figured out yet. You can only imagine how confused I was when I got the the end of the game and there's a bunch of text regarding all these characters and their conflict which I had apparently been participating in all along.
For what it's worth, though, I still liked the game. What others are saying here is probably true. A good storyline always takes backseat to good gameplay.
-Grym