It makes so much sense for the crowd to fund the creator, rather than a publisher who takes on the risk and exerts creative control over your product. Using the right online platform, you can turn your entire consumer base into a focus group that tells you exactly what they want, and even pays for it in advance.
We're returning to a model of creative production based on Renaissance "patronage," but with that patronage distributed throughout the population of individuals who will actually be using the product you produce. There is huge potential here if we can find the right kind of online platform (I do think we need to go beyond Kickstarter's model in the long term).
You gotta include the footnote to that last one. It is golden:
"(7) One study, for example, found that children who had just finishedplaying violent video games were more likely to fill in the blank letter in “explo_e” with a “d” (so that it reads “explode”) than with an “r” (“explore”). App. 496, 506 (internal quotation marks omitted). The prevention of this phenomenon, which might have been anticipated with common sense, is not a compelling state interest."
Old Man Murray will be returned to "notability" and reinstated, aided by a coincidental influx of reference articles referring to Old Man Murray being deleted.
See, the system works!
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.
You know, you have a point. As much as I'd personally like to get a job writing quests, as much respect as I have for the unique story telling potential games have, I stopped reading quest descriptions in WoW sometime during the Burning Crusade.
I made it sound like the successful companies know the value of good writing, but, in actuality, it might just be that the successful companies are the only ones with the cash to throw around for luxuries like good writing. Like a little cherry on top of their game-cake.
Doesn't mean I would give up on the sub-industry, though. GTA III DID have spoken dialogue, just not by the main character. It was funny, it was gruesome (especially the radio jingles). It fit the game. The mute main character was kind of a Zelda style move it seemed, where you would "supply your own personality." But, you know, they threw that out the window with Vice and all the following games, and I think it lead to a much stronger experience.
You don't think Planescape required any of that to write? I thought its style was incredibly specific to the game design field: very complex dialogue trees that tied multiple factors from the game world in while incorporating choices with actual ramifications. It may not have been succint in every aspect, but I would not call it a long winded novel.
Or are you saying that those things are the examples from the past we've moved on from? Because they sound pretty important.
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.
. . . by enabling the spread of MST3K with no further VHS deterioration. It's frightening for me to think that there are episodes out there I would never be able to see except for that one guy who held onto his VHS copy. Some of the early episodes only played ONCE. Plus, there are all the episodes they can't ever market again thanks to angry rights-holders. What an abused series it was . . .
I use Steam and I actually sometimes look at the store tab with the intent to buy something, because it's easy. Lots of good independent games, and allows me to install on other computers with no major fuss (cept for Bioshock, curse you EA). The games are almost always cheaper too.
I used the older version of Impulse (Stardock Central) and it seemed to work well enough, although the selection of games is low quality compared to Steam.
And I know they rated Direct2Drive pretty high, but even they note:
"You can't patch D2D games with downloadable patches; they require their own special patch procedure."
If Direct2Drive has to rework every patch for every game they've ever offered to work with their locked down version, you have to wonder if some patches might get "delayed" or games wholly abandoned eventually... I seem to remember this coming up in one of my decisions to get a D2D or boxed version of a popular game in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes so much sense for the crowd to fund the creator, rather than a publisher who takes on the risk and exerts creative control over your product. Using the right online platform, you can turn your entire consumer base into a focus group that tells you exactly what they want, and even pays for it in advance.
We're returning to a model of creative production based on Renaissance "patronage," but with that patronage distributed throughout the population of individuals who will actually be using the product you produce. There is huge potential here if we can find the right kind of online platform (I do think we need to go beyond Kickstarter's model in the long term).
Old Man Murray will be returned to "notability" and reinstated, aided by a coincidental influx of reference articles referring to Old Man Murray being deleted. See, the system works!
"The dog's meat, have you seen it?"
-The Deadly Bees
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.
You know, you have a point. As much as I'd personally like to get a job writing quests, as much respect as I have for the unique story telling potential games have, I stopped reading quest descriptions in WoW sometime during the Burning Crusade.
I made it sound like the successful companies know the value of good writing, but, in actuality, it might just be that the successful companies are the only ones with the cash to throw around for luxuries like good writing. Like a little cherry on top of their game-cake.
Doesn't mean I would give up on the sub-industry, though. GTA III DID have spoken dialogue, just not by the main character. It was funny, it was gruesome (especially the radio jingles). It fit the game. The mute main character was kind of a Zelda style move it seemed, where you would "supply your own personality." But, you know, they threw that out the window with Vice and all the following games, and I think it lead to a much stronger experience.
You don't think Planescape required any of that to write? I thought its style was incredibly specific to the game design field: very complex dialogue trees that tied multiple factors from the game world in while incorporating choices with actual ramifications. It may not have been succint in every aspect, but I would not call it a long winded novel.
Or are you saying that those things are the examples from the past we've moved on from? Because they sound pretty important.
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.
. . . by enabling the spread of MST3K with no further VHS deterioration. It's frightening for me to think that there are episodes out there I would never be able to see except for that one guy who held onto his VHS copy. Some of the early episodes only played ONCE. Plus, there are all the episodes they can't ever market again thanks to angry rights-holders. What an abused series it was . . .
I use Steam and I actually sometimes look at the store tab with the intent to buy something, because it's easy. Lots of good independent games, and allows me to install on other computers with no major fuss (cept for Bioshock, curse you EA). The games are almost always cheaper too.
I used the older version of Impulse (Stardock Central) and it seemed to work well enough, although the selection of games is low quality compared to Steam.
And I know they rated Direct2Drive pretty high, but even they note:
"You can't patch D2D games with downloadable patches; they require their own special patch procedure."
If Direct2Drive has to rework every patch for every game they've ever offered to work with their locked down version, you have to wonder if some patches might get "delayed" or games wholly abandoned eventually... I seem to remember this coming up in one of my decisions to get a D2D or boxed version of a popular game in the past.