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Breaking Into Games Writing?
An anonymous reader writes "One of the biggest complaints I hear from 'discerning' gamers is how few and far between well-written games are. Titles like Mass Effect and the Black Isle series just appear far too rarely. Writing and storyboarding are aspects of the industry that have always appealed to me — I'm an enthusiastic hobby gamer with a real passion for well-developed games. But there's very little guidance out there on getting exposure as a writer in this world. I'm interested in working in the field, freelance/part time initially as I break in, then with an eye to professional employ after a time. My questions to you are: How can I get involved in writing for the game industry? Are there any game startups out there with good design but weak story that could use writing help from a college graduate? How do the big guys get people to write for them — am I just going to the wrong booths at the job fairs? What kind of degrees or relevant experience in the field are they looking for? Should I just put on my Planescape t-shirt and stand outside in the rain?"
Bioware has repeatedly had contests where they've asked the community to open up the NWN toolset, write some dialogue and send it to them. The proof is in the pudding.
And it should be noted that writing typical fiction or exposition is different from writing threaded dialogue in a game, hence that is why they ask people to submit basic mods made in their toolset.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
And the people who do have good writing and aren't an RPG often outsource their writing to one of the many many many companies in LA which have staff writers for TV and Film.
A few programs on Cartoon network for instance farm out their screenplays to script doctoring companies.
If you want to write for games you probably will be working for a multi-purpose writing agency.
Watch moderators waste their points on your post
In case you haven't figured it out yet, Anonymous Cowards always post at 0. Since a post can only go down to -1, only one point is required to squish your post. And plenty of people are now getting 10 points in a single round of moderation, which makes it even easier.
But thanks for playing!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You are right the Writer's Guild hasn't touched the games industry. Having shipped multiple titles with shitty dialogue (both written and spoken), dialogue just isn't a priority. Hell, I'd wish we'd just cut half the dialogue most of the time. We're making games here people, not a fucking book or movie. Somewhere along the way games got hi-jacked with all this narative bullshit.
You know what the first mod for Wow was? Fast Quest Text, which became so popular that Blizzard made it that option officially supported. Most gamers (or us game devs) just don't care about dialogue, so your premise that dialogue is half-assed is correct.
From the above it would seem, I'm against dialogue. I'm not. I'm just of the philosophy "Less is More". One reason GTA 3 worked so well, is that there was NO spoken dialogue. That was brilliant.
I think part of the problem is that it's just too hard too tell the difference between crappy dialogue, and average dialogue. And more importantly, it just takes too long, and too much money for GOOD dialogue, when in the end it just doesn't matter unless you're going to make me sit through some lame cutscene I can't skip. I imagine comedian writers for TV sitcoms must struggle to come up with something fresh all the time, but in most games, dialogue just isn't that important to gameplay -- it is a secondary effect.
The orginal submitter is in for a tough sell.
As a writer and designer currently in the game industry, let me show you my pokemons.
I started off writing and designing pen-and-paper role-playing games, and writing a column for RPG.net. This helped me build a portfolio and greatly expanded my contact list. When the time came to enter the video game industry as a writer, those samples and references helped me get in.
In my spare time I did as much writing and design as possible, in whatever areas I could get my hands on: news writing, graphic design, web design, and the creation of a fake fast-food franchise run by ninja named Ninja Burger ( http://www.ninjaburger.com/ ). Again, when the time came to get into video games, all that experience helped immensely. Design is design; writing is writing. The more you do of each, the better you get at it. I wrote about games, I designed games... I even co-wrote and co-designed a MUD ( http://www.iconoclast.org/ ), but my time spent designing church bulletins, editing news columns, writing copy for a comic book catalog and doing technical writing all helped me learn not just the ropes, but all the knots as well.
In the end, breaking in for me came down to being in the right place at the right time. A friend of mine worked for a game company, and she got me the interview, but at that point it was up to me to close the deal, and my portfolio, references and samples were what did that.
In short, you can't wait by the stream for the ship to come in. You need to build your own raft, and when the ship sails by, you need to paddle yourself out to it.
Get ready by reading some books on game writing and design. I've reviewed a bunch of them for Slashdot over the years:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/25/0046222
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/31/1445235
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/05/1420215
http://books.slashdot.org/books/06/02/27/1445214.shtml
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/18/149246
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/09/0527214
Here's my experience:
A year before Bioshock shipped, I applied for a QA position at Irrational Boston. After five years of unemployment, I still have no idea why they hired me, but I wasn't about to argue. Fast-forward three months in QA, some game balance analysis writeups I'd done caught Ken Levine's eye and gave him the impression I was quasi-literate. For my part, I simply didn't have the heart to correct him.
A month later I was working fulltime on script proofing, then editing, story structure, helping direct voiceover recording sessions, and finally voiceover production (take selection & compositing).
So, some tips:
1) Get a QA position at a development studio where you are actually working hand in hand with the developers. Do NOT get a QA position at a publisher's degenerate nerd stockyard - busing tables or suicide would be preferable to that.
2) Get your foot in the door any way you can, no matter how low or menial you have to start, and once you're inside show them what you're capable of. Without pissing off your manager.
This is a young industry, there's a lot of movement potential if you've got the chops. Get out there and amaze people.
--Ryvar