Sylus: You think my friend can't beat you up in 3 seconds flat?
Soldier 1: Many people have tried to tell me this before, but it never works.
Sylus: You sure about that?
Soldier 2: We'll need to see your pass.
Sylus: Oh, I think I'll "pass" on your offer. Alex, if you wouldn't mind.
Alex: Fine. *jams pass into soldier 1's throat*
Soldier 2: ?!
Sylus: Access Denied!! *slams soldier 2 into his plasma 4 12-gauge double photon recharge gun*
Sylus: Time to find the golden egg, Alex!
Alex: Fine. *removes pass from soldier 1's throat* *opens door*

"Best Non-Interactive Videogame Cut-scene Writing Award"? Likely. Still, let's take a "half full glass" kind of view and think: they're acknowledging videogame (script-)writing as a form of writing. That's not bad, per se. Even if they screw it badly in execution, there will still be the opportunity for an improvement next time. Maybe.

I think I know what you're getting at. That a player's actions should produce the dialogue, and that it shouldn't be pre-rendered? Like (here's a simple example) say the player jumps into a hallway where the ceiling is about to fall, a character would jump forward and pull him back or scream "Watch out!"?

But you're talking about advancing the story...like when the girl pulls back the boy from the deathly hallway, he realises that she does care or whatever (again, simple example). Am I right or am I missing out on something?

Harlan Ellison won a Hugo for Star Trek's The City on the Edge of Forever when his original screenplay was apparently un-filmable, so it's not exactly a new problem.

Exactly.  I bet the people who voted for him saw the damn episode, which is my point.  Is the Academy Award(tm) for best screenplay voted on by people who never saw the movie, but only read the script.  Highly unlikely.

Im confused. :S You mean the non-playable scenes should be seen, or should the script be part of the gameplay? I am so confused.

Me too.

I think he means the playable part (look at the re-naming of the award).

But I wonder ... I mean gamers will usually just screw around. If they survive the encounter with the dragon, and the heroine runs up to them (this is all gameplay) and says "You did it!," a good chunk of the gaming population will slash at her. Hmm. It's an interesting thought Ron, but the design has to be smart enough so that the player will always do what the designer wants him to, like in (your words) Call of Duty or something.

It's worth thinking about. On a simple level I guess it works fine, like the "Watch-out idea," but it might collapse on an epic level, unless done exceptionally well, and just the first time the gamer plays.

Lol we lived in the same house you moron, you could have just told me that. :/ Speaking of which, call me, I've hardly seen ya since you moved-out.

I'm no writer.. But I think I would have a hard time appreciating the awesome Vernon monologue in Psychonauts, if I were to just read about it rather than playing it..:P

Having said.. I really haven't seen good writing in video games come to think of it.. But personally if I were to pick out one, I'd say the localization team for INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS (Paper Mario, Advance Wars) does an amazing job. :)

lol its like judging a pie contest by having someone describing you how the pie tastes like

Wow, this award is weird.  As a videogame writer, the cut scenes are such a SMALL part of what we write.

I'll have to look into this.

pJ

GOD I so agree with this post. And yes, writing in games sucks a$$ from a straw most of the time.

I live in France and I can confirm that Nintendo are very careful about who translate their games, here too the localizations for the Paper Mario series are HILARIOUS and very well done (but so are all Nintendo games translations here). The localization in Super Paper Mario is excellent and the translator managed to adapt some stuff to french pop-culture very well. There's even a reference to the old Megadrive french commercials! (which bended my mind just to think of it:))

With that judgement, I believe you'll have Dreamfall as the winner. Amazing story, but all you do in the game is run and talk to people, and where to run and who to talk to is always pretty obvious.

From the last savegame, to the end, there are 20 minutes of cutscense and all the playing you get is running forward for like 7 secs.

Amazing movie, sadly not such a good GA.

Good luck on that anyway, it would be great if you recieved a prize, whatever it is.

Maybe it would cheer you up into doing MI V? (hint hint) lol, j/k

Btw, why do you say writing videogames is such a blowoff? I wanna do that for living. I dream of taking The Dig to the next level.

I'm a scripter. I'm going to send them my code. :D

I wonder how they would judge something like Façade. I once got the chance to ask Michael Mateas, one of the creators of the interactive drama, if they had any writers on board, and he said that it was pretty difficult for writers to understand what they were doing, so he and Andrew Stern ended up writing it all after some failed tries with writers. So how do you turn in something that is mostly unstructured that relies on code to be understood, then? Also, it could be debated whether this interactive thing can be called a Video Game.

Having said, now I'm actually curious how people in the video game industry hire their video game writers?

Do they just look for people with experience from Hollywood? I mean sooner or later they will know that it's quite different compared to films.. Well VERY different! :(

Ron:

Game Writing awards suffer from a number of problems, but one of them is that no-one is in a position to review all the relevant material. With commercial games running at 40 hours or so and sometimes longer, and requiring high game literacy to play, who are you going to find with both the time and the skills to review all the submissions?

While I agree that assessing the scripts is not going to be a fair evaluation (I think about my RPGs and adventure games and wonder who on a panel would be able to interpret such a script!), it is at least plausible. I don't believe the WGA could attempt anything else.

And compare other writing awards. The Game Developer's Choice award devolves into rewarding already successful games, because people vote for the games they love and do not really assess the narrative content at all.

I don't have a solution - if I did, I would push it through the Game Writers SIG - but I do recognise that there is a problem.

One thing that I would like to see added, though, is a Game Writing award for games developed on a budget of less than $100,000 (or some similar criteria).

Anyway, enough rambling. :)

Best wishes!

Games have writing?

Hi, all.  I'm a video game writer.  I started in 1991. I have a bunch of published titles.  I have in fact done 3 titles for Ron's former company.  I'm a member of the WGA.  I'm on the New Media Caucus steering committee.  And I have been intimately involved along with a group of others in this process of getting an award for video game writers.  So let me say just a few things: 1) I absolutely agree with Ron et al that the "script" language is unfortunate.  Many of us have lobbied to have the word "script" changed to "document," but since the WGA is a WRITERS organization, the word is staying as script.  HOWEVER, if you can get beyond semantics, which understandably we as writers sometimes have a hard time doing, but it IS possible, the purpose of the award is to give some recognition for the extraordinary talent that goes in to game writing, and to bring us into the same sphere (in my opinion) as other professional screenplay writers.  Because let's face it, what we write is dramatic, comedic, non-linear, and always bigger in size and scope than any screenplay of any movie, tv show, or documentary.  It's valid, and creative, and we are all for inclusion in these prestigious awards.  We all know that there are people out there who are very talented exceptional, extraordinary writers who deserve credit for their efforts.  We, or at least I, want to see this happen.  The post prior to mine says it all..."Games have writing?" Exactly.  We need to show that this part of the Entertainment Industry, and yes, games are entertainment, is valid and worth recognition.  We want to help each other get that recognition.  We want to help further the professionalism of game writers.  I, for one, think this is a good thing.  Having been involved in the meetings to go from that blank piece of paper to the final criteria for what constitutes a game, a submission, game writing, and an award for it all, I can only assure you that, yes, we are coming from a good place on this.  I  have 16 years of expeirece in the industry, and my colleagues likewise have significant experience, so from the inception of this award, you and your interests are in good hands.  Getting an award to happen in the first place is somethign akin to hearding cats, and two groups of them at that.  First we have the New Media Caucus, which consists of passionate writers (perhaps thats an oxymoron) in which we all discuss, debate, sort through, and work out the issues involved around such an important precedent-setting initiative; and the other is the guild, which has to maintain some sense of semblance with this, making sure the "Writers Guild" is actually offering a "writers award" that is of the same caliber as the rest of their awards.  So give us some credit - we are all good people who are trying to do some good work on behalf of our industry and other game writers.  I for one am thrilled to see this kind of recognition for game writers, which is why I voluntereed my time, and have spent a considerable amount of it, along with my colleagues, to make sure this award happens.  Games have writing?  You're damn straight.  And thanks to the efforts of many of your colleagues, whom you don't even know, who have put in INCREDIBLE amounts of time and effort on all of our behalf, writers are actually going to be recognized for the fact that they've done some amazing work with their incredible talent.  I, for one, say that's a good thing, even if it's shy of perfect.

First of all, I want to make it perfectly clear that I greatly respect GOOD game writing and have no problem with your chosen profession; however, I find that most game writing appears to be purely an exercise in completing a fill-in-the-blank cliche template. Now, I'm not completely unaware of the difference between writing and world creation, for lack of a better term, but they're not mutually exclusive either. I'm defintely a cynic at heart, and I have grow very tired of the lone hero who single-handedly saves the world stories. I much prefer the stuff that Ron, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman are known for. Stuff that shows a great deal of imagination, interesting characterization, and so on and so forth. This was principally the context for the "games have writing?" comment.

The other thing that caught my attention was the writer's guild membership requirement. Why does this strike me as more of a marketing ploy than a true celebration of good game writing?

P.S. I'm not a writer of any sort, nor do I claim to be. Hell, I'm not even an english major.

I've never written a game, but I suspect that writing one would be a similar process to writing programs using XP techniques: get something down, see if it works, modify it, iterate until complete, so the script/document/whatever would only be a starting point.

However, surely, if your starting point is a classy, well written document which shows some geniune originality you must have a better chance of ending up with a classy, well written game which shows some originality?

One of my favorite pieces of game writing of all time:

"You lose"

- Street Fighter 2

@Deborah, for a professional writer, maybe you could use more of that "line break" thing so you can be read by others more easily:))

Line breaks?

Awe, come on.

Then you wouldn't have anything to complain about! ;)

Yeah, you have to play the game to really appreciate the story and writing, as some events in-game lead up to the right moments in the writing that can only be truly appreciated if you knew what was going on. Really good game writing should be integrated really well in-game for maximum greatness.

Are there games with stories that are good to read all by themselves? I don't think so, and if so, such games would be very few.

More than that, such games wouldn't be very fun.  They'd be movies, with the downside that you'd have to get up and click periodically to advance them.

Which is where the objection really comes from.  To truly honor the writing in video games requires that you appreciate the medium.  That starts when you appreciate interactivity, and with it non-linearity.  The mark of truly great writing will always be that it gracefully handles whatever order of events the user chooses.

I suppose it's a start, though.  Hopefully they'll at least allow multiple scripts to be submitted, as many games allow multiple mutually-exclusive paths (in particular, I'm thinking of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis).  Then later, when a game comes along that would need hundreds of scripts to be properly judged, they'll realize they need to rework things.

I don't want to comment, I just want to test my Gravatar.

Former Irrational's Ken  Levine who has only recently finally received the acclaim he deserved would totally aprove of everything said here. Favourite quotes: "Trust me, it's a lot harder to do what we did in Bioshock than to do a 20-minute cutscene. I could write that stuff all day long." "Cutcene's are a coward's way out" and "And I've got a message for game writers who put in unskippable cut-scenes: I hate you. You suck. Go write a graphic novel and leave us gamers alone. My goal as a writer is for the player to want to see the cutscenes. Earn your audience. Forcing people to sit through your glorified fanfic is the gaming equivalent of date rape."

I like that guy.

Before I read this topic and its posts I was thinking to myself "Paper Mario reminds me a lot of Monkey Island" (I've been playing it lately on the VC). I was then surprised to read posts about Paper Mario because it is completely unlike Monkey Island in terms of gameplay. I think what makes me relate Paper Mario to Monkey Island is the numerous possible outcomes from your actions. It makes the games seem much less linear and you have much more freedom. This in turn makes the environment seem richer. I guess what I'm trying to say is these are the reasons why I love MI and PM so much, because of the script writing and the choices you get to make. An example of one of these branching choices is in MI1 where you can catapult a rock onto your ship which later determines whether Carla, Otis and Meathook meet up with you again. It isn't crucial to the story but makes it all the more interesting.

I´m comming right away SILVIA!!

I´m comming right away SILVIA!!!

Any chance the title of this post is a reference to Nickelodeon's old "Rocko's Modern Life"?

Well, you know, a guy can dream.

Holy crap, the link you provided to the WGA is giving me a 500 error in ASP.net, and they have DEBUG MODE turned on on their server.  I can read their source code!

Whoa, that's pretty bad.

I just run in to your blog. I read your post about Monkey Island Music Day.
Is this possible that this day is in two more days?

Just wanted to say that these hollywood types who want in on gaming obviously don't realise that games aren't just "interactive movies". However that is what they all seem to think, and it's obvious that this is what this award ceremony is based around.

but Ron, the same can be said about films. a film is not just the script it's filmed by, it's the whole experience. video games and movies are much alike in this field. now, were talking about the Writers Guild of America, which focuses on the script, and you of all pepole should be aware that a good script is a main part at making a good game, and thus should be recognized. what the Writers Guild of America do is giving legitimacy for video games as a medium for art, they can't give award for the whole game nor can they give an award for a good movie, but as far as they can, they give. besides, it's a good thing they see through the plotless games they make nowdays... maybe it's just what the industrey needs to see that the script are as important as the gameplay, if not more.

Yes, but my main point here is that you have to play the game, you can't just look at a script.  Is the Academy Award for best writer given by people that never watched the movie and only read the script?  Nope.  So why should games be different.

Also, what does the script for a game look like?  The scripts for my games are a huge mess of dialog strung together by lines, arrows and conditional node notation.  If I submitted my "script" to the WGA, they wouldn't even know how to begin to understand it, which brings me back to my other point.

The only scripts that will win are the boring linear ones that tend to look like movies scripts.  These are NOT examples of interactive writing and should not be given awards.

Let me say that again...a non-interactive cut-scene should not be given an award for best game writing.   Game writing is about interaction and how the writer manages to weave it all together.  Please explain how a "script" is going to convey that?  It can't. Playing the game can.

I'm sorry, but if they can't even take the time to play our games and understand our art form, then I have no need for their award.

"I'm sorry, but if they can't even take the time to play our games and understand our art form, then I have no need for their award."

Right on!

Now I may be very cynical, but I saw on a gaming news site that MS made 300 million in the first week of selling Halo 3.  Two days later I saw this announcement from the WGA.  Now it's most likely coincidence (I'm pretty sure), but part of me wondered if someone thought, "There's serious money in them game thingies."

Not to nitpick...but Halo 3 made $300M.  Microsoft did not make $300M.  Retail takes a big chunk of that money.

That'll teach me to read the news reports properly.  :)

I really agree with a lot of this.

I don't mind cinematic styles of storytelling in games - it can work. But the main problem is that films do that better.

Games have an opportunity to tell stories in ways that other media can't, and I think the words: 'Videogames are interactive and fluid, the story flows and moves based on what the player is doing, and a good videogame writer knows this and can craft strange little snippets of dialog, that when woven back together based on player interaction just work like gangbusters. This is an art. It is the true art of game writing. This is what needs to be awarded, and to do that, you need to play the game.'

The recent best example of this that I can think of is Valve's excellent Portal.

Couldn't the WGA (or a writer, for that matter) offer up a script in the form of a "Choose your Own Adventure" novel to substitute the interactive choices? It's not a traditional script, but it would be a much more accurate way of showing gaming dialogue, not to mention a better way of showing the writer's prowess, creativity, and foresight for the possible choices of a gamer.