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Striking Writers May Work on Games
The ongoing Writer's Guild strike may soon impact even the games industry. While most of the copy writers working on games are not a part of the guild, via Eurogamer comes a Variety article about a possible Hollywood writer's migration to other media. "While the WGA has made no secret that it would like to eventually cover vidgame writing, it hasn't pushed the issue yet and is allowing members to work on games during the strike. 'It has been an interesting shift," says one tenpercenter who focuses on vidgames. "The literary agents are now saying, 'Why don't we get our clients over there during the strike?' even though in the past they thought the money wasn't good enough or the work is too demanding.'"
I'm not sure whether I should rejoice that more games will be getting competent writers, or weep that gaming is going to be degraded to sitcom quality.
Games that require laugh tracks.
Honestly though, most of my favorite works in gaming have involved professional writers really taking the time to craft a great work of fiction in a game (especially Planescape: Torment.)
Ryan Fenton
I am not making this up, there really seems to a The Sims movie in the works... If hollywood can screw up game movies with single paragraph plots, what the hell will they do with a game that HAS NO PLOT?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Or consider games such as halo 3, crysis or the grand theft auto series where the storyline is important. But it is the design of the game that is ultimately more important and provides a framework within which the writers work. In other words, the value-added of a hollywood writer in this case seems limited.
In each of the above examples, I see the involvement of sit-com and action-movie writers as a big negative. The story line in games can be silly at times ... but never as stupid or lame as in the vast majority of tv shows and movies out of hollywood.
I'd rather have authors write the storylines to video games. Screenwriters specialize in storylines that are constrained by time, authors specialize in storylines that are, well, good.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
<elitist crap>
<broad general dismissal>
Sorry, my own writers are on strike, but I see everyone else is busy mad-libbing their own attitudes toward their hate of all things sitcoms and reality tv as if that's all there ever was out there. You think you're gaining some kind of "cred" with your oh-so-jaded attitudes?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I for one welcome the writers for "The Office" to come help write the storyline for a game. That show is great and that kind of humor could transfer well into a game with a little work.
Why are so many people acting as if Hollywood writers are good? Go to your local bookstore and buy some of those compilations of the year's best science fiction short stories. Read the stories. I think these upcoming authors would form a far more valuable talent pool. If you look at some of the older compilations you will notice some short stories that have become movies and the true value of the typical Hollywood writer becomes painfully apparent.
Southern California? Having lived there, I can tell you unionization had very little to do with not having brick houses. California doesn't have brick houses because they fall down in earthquakes.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
This one's easy. Either you have above average resources (money, etc) or below average resources. If you have below average, you benefit from socialism (including unions), whereas if you have above average, socialism tends to hurt you. It turns out that a majority of people in any group tends to have below average resources. This majority is easily able to use their votes to make their desired socialism legal. These businesses you mention don't have enough votes to make price fixing legal.
This has nothing to do with what is morally "right" or "wrong", nor is there a double standard. This is an inevitable result of people making rational decisions in order to benefit from the laws. Anything that benefits a majority of the people will be voted into law, even if it hurts the minority.
Frankly, that statement just doesn't hold water. Neither the individual part, nor the fix wages part have much grounding in reality.
First of all, the union isn't about the individual. Its about the union, hence the name union. The union is concerned with seeing that all of its members get a fair shake. There is no individual action within a union, for better or for worse. The union instead goes by something like the strength in numbers principle, using the collective strength of its members together.
But equally wrong is your statement about fixing wages. The union isn't trying to fix wages - that would be communism. The union is just trying to ensure that the wage floor is adequate for full time work. In the example you were complaining about regarding the teachers union, the union wants to ensure that full time teachers make an adequate salary when they start. They don't restrict the maximum that their members can earn (how would they retain members if they did?) - they just want to ensure that their members all have livable wages.
It is also worth pointing out that countries who are doing better economically than the US (their numbers growing every day) tend to actually have higher rates of union membership than we do. For example, Canadian union membership is around 30% nationally, as opposed to around 12% in the US. But yet their dollar is worth more than ours, and their life expectancy exceeds ours. Oh, and their educational system is often more highly regarded than ours.
So you are free to hate the unions if you wish, but please, check your facts before you blame the world on them.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Please elaborate on this. I'd like to know how you feel the unions see that their members get an unfair shake.
However, when labor suppliers (unions) are able to collude on wages and labor demanders (employers) are not, that creates a situation that disproportionately favors the suppliers, artificially driving up costs (wages).
Thats an interesting viewpoint, but I disagree with your description of the situation. Indeed, there are few examples remaining outside of education where the people looking for labor are obligated to work with the unions. And even in that example, I've seen districts that hire substitutes from outside the unions, sometimes to longer than usual time frames.
Furthermore, your statement that it artificially drives up costs is opinionated at best. Union members are often better qualified for their work than those who would do the work for much less, which results in a better value for the money when compared to paying less up front and then having to have the shoddy work of the underqualified fixed later.
They have a government-protected right to not only set minimum wages for their members, but also to create an effective labor monopoly.
I'm not sure where you think that is in effect. The department of labor has a reputation over at least the past 7 years of continually working against the unions. And as I already mentioned, only around 12% of the US labor force is in a union, so I'm not sure how that constitutes a "labor monopoly". Even many of the manufacturing jobs in this country - where unions were previously quite strong - have gone to non-union shops. If you look at http://www.uaw.com/uawmade/auto/2007/index.cfm/ a list of union made cars from the US and Canada, you'll see that even a many vehicles that claim "made in the USA" are not made by unions. So their labor monopoly really doesn't exist, and doesn't have government protection.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
price is still decided by the market, the employees vote on the employers proposal and decide to accept the offer if is is sufficient. the purpose of unions is to balance out the fact that the employer ALWAYS wins a war of attrition. the plant can shut down or run at reduced capacity with scabs and still make money, since the employees who are missing aren't getting paid. the employees OTOH don't have their bills go down since they aren't working, it's also much easier to select a temporary replacement employee than it is to find a company willing to hire you "just long enough for to negotiate with my real job for a raise"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The writers aren't likely to see any work on video game projects. The game industry is like most others in that you are generally paid for a job, not paid residuals. Also writing is a lesser part of a game than it is of a movie. In a movie, the whole plot has to be provided. In a game, the player themselves provides a lot of it, the game is more of a framework. Some kinds of games often need very little writing at all. Civ 4 would be a good example. There is technical writing in terms of documentation, but there is no story that needs to be written.
Also, since game companies already have a successful business model, they are quite likely to have a "take it to leave it" kind of attitude. The WGA can't "strike" against them since they aren't needed.
My guess is that most will find that game writing just won't give them the kind of pay scale they want, and probably won't end up taking a job.