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?"

Comments

Bioware

[Enderandrew]

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.

Re:Bioware

[whiplashx]

They have in the past, yes. (Current employee talking)

First buy a book of sci fi cliches.

[Junior J. Junior III]

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.

Re:First buy a book of sci fi cliches.

[philspear]

You're not exactly competing with Dickens. You're not even competing with Dick.

Unless he wants to work in the field of porn videogames, which also suffers from a lack of quality writing.

Re:First buy a book of sci fi cliches.

[shish]

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 :( )

Re:First buy a book of sci fi cliches.

[sesshomaru]

The ability to write a competant Space Opera is not "photocopy the cliche book and use the shuffling machine to introduce "originality" to your creations."

Lot's of games are ruined by a poor sense of aesthetics, even if they are technically competant. Portal wouldn't have been Portal with out a well written GladOS, even if the puzzles were exactly the same. System Shock wouldn't have it's current reputation if the story had been a neglected after thought.

One thing about me is I've read a lot of Dickens, a lot. Great writer. However, he was also writing popular, sentimental stuff for the masses. In fact, the format he was publishing in was the 19th century equivalent of the TV soap opera.

People miss that fact constantly. Most of the people who we think of as great writers these days were writing for the masses and popular acclaim, not for ivory tower intellectuals. When people disdain "popular" trash, and like some modern literature that only appeals to a very small segment of the population, they are just being snobs. A lot of the popular stuff is poor quality, but so is a lot of the elitist stuff.

They don't

[FunkSoulBrother]

I don't think the issue is so much that games companies can't find good writers, it's more they won't pay for it. So you get some designer/coder throwing shit together at the last minute.

Re:They don't

[im_thatoneguy]

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.

Re:They don't

[Neon Aardvark]

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).

It's a Job

[liquiddark]

You get a job with a game company the same way you get any other job:

First, you find companies that actually do what you're trying to get into doing. Don't apply to companies that aren't using writers for their games if you want to be a writer for games.

Second, you put together your portfolio. In the case of games, you'll want to have some dynamic media - sketched storyboards (art shouldn't matter too much, so keep it simple), play or movie scripts, and/or, ideally, game mods that have your name in the writer: line.

Third, you have to work hard, get lucky, make friends, and generally be very nice to people who often deserve it but sometimes do not.

Re:It's a Job

[Ryvar]

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

Re:It's a Job

[Barkmullz]

A year before Bioshock shipped...

This must be some new designation for numbering years that I was not previously aware of.

gaming is how i got my start

[JeanBaptiste]

Now I do database programming. Better hours, better money. I use that money and free time to tinker with games.

DANGER

[Sigvatr]

Whatever you do, DO NOT join up with some "game design" course. They are a complete was of time and money. You will learn how to make a script for Spongebob Squarepants, not Bioshock.

I wish I knew.

[Thrull]

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.

Re:I wish I knew.

[UnknownSoldier]

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.

Hey dumbass

[damn_registrars]

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!

Re-write the following dialog in English

[syousef]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us#Game_transcript

Re:No

[Etrias]

Desire and drive will get you further than talent. That is a fact. If this guy has the desire to do this, who are you to say he can't...or shouldn't.

More power to him, I say.

Speaking from experience...

[Aeonite]

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

Job offers came to me that way as well.

[PIPBoy3000]

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.