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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?"
Now I do database programming. Better hours, better money. I use that money and free time to tinker with games.
Writing for games definitely seems to be the one place a lot of developers are willing to half-ass completely. They don't seem to realize how ONE semi-competent writer could basically go through and make every line at least better than cringe-worthy.
Valve seems to get this. Look at Left 4 Dead, a game with a two word story (ZOMBIES! RUN!), and how much they actually focused on dialogue and characterization for these four random survivors. Portal, too. They hired a long time industry writer specifically for that game. They get it. A little good writing goes a long way.
The problem, I think, is how little it takes to go that extra distance. Games are not novels, not most of them anyway. The fact that it only takes one good writer to work over a story for entertainment value and consistency means that, for most games, the writer's market is microscopic.
However, I think one potential way to get involved in this aspect of the industry might be MMO quest design. MMOs generally rely on massive amounts of inordinately boring quests made interesting only by the addition of a few paragraphs of clever description. Here there's at least a demand for written content that will last beyond the game's first six hours. Bioware and Blizzard both had some promising quest-design job offerings in the past, although the postings usually vanish before I can read them.
Just get used to the idea of never really owning your material. That's one of the big hitches that I see with writing in the gaming industry. Once you write it, it's no longer yours. With films, there's the script, which someone owns and gets royalties on. With network series, I'm not exactly sure who owns what, but the writers are at least entitled to royalties when their work is used. As the Writer's Guild fought for recently.
I'm pretty sure the Writer's Guild hasn't touched the games industry. My understanding is that, with games, you don't own the writing unless your work existed before the game did and they pay you to use it, which is rare enough to be excluded to most non-bestselling authors.
Writing is an art, and with any art-form there are huge numbers of highly talented people willing to do it for free.
And probably larger numbers who are shit and also want to do it for free.
Ergo, it's not a question of payment, it's a question of the games companies sifting through a lot of writers to find good cheap ones (because I'd bet a lot of money there are many of these out there).
Azural - instrumentals
The problem is not the writers, it's the structure in which they work. Games make part of the story unpredictable, through the player's choices. That's actually not such a problem; letting the player choose what to say and do just means more writing. The problem is when the player can choose who to talk to and who comes with him.
Game writers don't know which conversations will happen, when they'll happen, or which characters will be there when it does. NPCs that travel with the player can't say much because their lines have to be optional, and the player can't say much without it feeling forced. The people the player meets can say all they want, but they can only say it to the player, who is almost certainly a stranger to them. The result is a long series of monologues directed at the player, most of which will be skipped or skimmed. That sucks, even if the monologues themselves are top notch.
I got multiple job offers after writing Dreamcatcher, including Bioware. Valve also encourages people to develop mods, and have hired many of the more successful people.
That being said, being published in other areas can help as well, though I still feel that writing for games is a very different skill set than typical writing.
Unless he wants to work in the field of porn videogames, which also suffers from a lack of quality writing.
Actually, you'd be surprised: In Japan, the genre of "interactive erotic novel" is vast and surprisingly high quality; many of the stories being good enough to be popular even when the "interactive" and "erotic" parts get stripped out for TV or other media~
(Though I will concede that I have yet to see an original english language game that didn't suck :( )
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Wow, would Strunk & White teach me how to write like a pedantic jerk too?
Lets think what literature/creative writing would be like if all authors followed The Elements of Style as closely as you do.
Ulysses: Leopold Bloom goes to a funeral and then goes home to piss on his shrubbery.
Moby-Dick: Ahab seeks revenge against a white whale and is rather unsuccessful.
Lolita: A guy named Humbert Humbert really likes having sex with little girls.
Man, my versions are better because they are more concise; who needs adjectives? I wish all those authors were still alive so I could correct their bloated prose.
There IS however Sam'n'max. Not Dickens but a long way toward being Pratchett.
And I still think Planescape Torment actually had some literary quality. Feel free to disagree.
Then buy a photocopier.
Then buy one of those automatic card shuffling machines.
Next, photocopy the cliche book and use the shuffling machine to introduce "originality" to your creations.
Seriously, WTF? What writing is there for games that isn't complete (literary, not computer-y) hackery? You're not exactly competing with Dickens. You're not even competing with Dick.
Is the wrong answer.
Yes, 'computer games' (I personally prefer 'interactive fiction', but that may be pretentious) is a young artform. Yes, we're still struggling to learn how to create compelling interactive narratives. But unless you have an ambition not merely to compete with Dickens and Shakespeare, but to equal them don't even bother trying. The market for games is hard enough to break into anyway - there's no market at all for badly written games.
Correction.
There's no market at all for game writing.
The most popular games out there: Deer Hunter, Guitar Hero, Flash-based puzzle games, Texas Hold 'Em sims for phones, the latest FPS... Pretty much no "writing" required at all.
The closest you will get is writing "quests" for MMO games, and the demands there are shockingly light as well.
Most people play computer games for the action (and/or to socialize with each other), not for the storytelling. If they want a story, they will turn to a story-telling medium, such as film or books.
There are probably more people wanting to "write for video games" than there are people who want to play the games such people would write.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Pratchett's writing only works in book form (maybe movie too, haven't seen those), have you ever played Discworld 2? Loooooooooooooong narrator sequences, loooooooooooooong dialogues, ...
Sure, it's funny but in a game it just starts to drag on quickly once you get a five minute response to every dialog option you pick. At some point the player just wants to get things done, the art of humour is to make the jokes while getting stuff done.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.