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."

Comments

From reading these comments

[suso]

I think I know what it is like writing games. If you get one thing wrong on the box, people ignore you completely.

How about tips on

[Travoltus]

getting into the industry of writing for games?

Writers are looked at as the non skilled segment (they're not coders, ergo they aren't important), but all the best games have kick butt writers.

We need more of the better writers, and when we get them, Gears of War, Oblivion, etc. will be the stone age of gaming, instead of contenders for examples of the golden age.

Re:How about tips on

[icegreentea]

good writing is important, for sure, but on the other hand, games like gears of war... you really aren't playing for the sake of awesome writing or story. the entire aim of gow was to have a lot of senseless killing. and chainsaws. being held up in future generations as an example of the golden age all depends on kind of example they're going to be talking about. gow was never going to be held up as an example of exemplary writing. it would be held up as having exactly the kind of writing that a game like gow needs.