The Writer’s Guild of America has named its 2009 videogame-writing award nominees. Just what these nominations are rewarding is unclear. Presumably it’s something like an “outstanding performance in a comedy, miniseries, or musical variety program,” but since the WGA nominations simply list a few broad categories it feels to me more like a polite approval. “Yep,” says the guild, “you wrote a video game there, friend.”
But I’ll come back to that in a second. First, here are the nominees:
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Writer Haris Orkin, Story Producer Mical Pedriana, Electronic Arts
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!, Writing Keith Nemitz, Additional Writing Adrianne Ambrose, Mousechief
Fallout 3, Lead Writer Emil Pagliarulo, Quest Writing Erik J. Caponi, Brian Chapin, Jon Paul Duvall, Kurt Kuhlmann, Alan Nanes, Bruce Nesmith and Fred Zeleny, Additional Quest Writing Nate Ellis, William Killeen, Mark Nelson and Justin McSweeney, Bethesda Softworks
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Writers Haden Blackman, Shawn Pitman, John Stafford and Cameron Suey, LucasArts
Tomb Raider: Underworld, Story Eric Lindstrom and Toby Gard, Screenplay Eric Lindstrom, Eidos Interactive
(This must be stirring news for Eric Lindstrom, who was recently laid off at Crystal Dynamics after (and because of?) the sales numbers came in for Tomb Raider: Underworld, and has been making game-sector headlines lately with forum posts about the game.)
I’ll bet you’ve already got a game in mind that you think should’ve been nominated. There’s a fair chance, though, that it either wasn’t eligible or wasn’t submitted for consideration. This is only the second year the WGA has issued awards for video-game writing, and I imagine a lot of studios aren’t in the practice of submitting their games yet.
What qualified?
The WGA Videogame Writing Award honors the best qualifying script from a videogame published in the previous year. To be eligible for entry, games must have been released between December 1, 2007 and November 30, 2008. Work that was not produced under WGA jurisdiction may have been submitted, but must contain separate writing credit(s). Writers of source material were not eligible for awards consideration. At the time scripts were submitted, the credited game writer(s) must have been or must have applied to become members of the WGA’s Videogame Writers Caucus. [from www.wga.org]
Or, as Variety‘s Ben Fritz explains it:
One caveat is that the nominated writers need to either be WGA members of have recently applied. Although that’s not too big a restriction really, since anyone who wants to be nominated can simply apply and will almost surely get the nod. I suppose the only restriction would be the cost of joining for independent developers with little funds, or those with employers who simply don’t want to pay.
For the record, it costs $2,500 to join the WGA West. I expect a lot of game writers aren’t budgeted for that yet.
The most compelling thing about these nominations to me, though, is that I have no idea what people are voting on. Maybe it’s just about name recognition or roundabout endorsement — something like voting for a project ’cause you heard the game was a bitch to complete and you like some of the folks on staff. Nominations come from the 200-person body of the Guilds’ Videogame Writers Caucus, which presumably has some internal metric for measuring its own appreciation, but how are all the other WGA members going to make up their minds?
Look at the comments reacting to this list at places like the Variety article, above, or over at Kotaku, and you see a lot of criticisms that’re hardly able to lift their arms. What does “it had a decent story” or “it was dumb” mean? When you say “That sucked,” what are you pointing at? When you say a video game has a “great story,” when did you come to that conclusion?
What consideration, if any, should a game like Fallout 3 receive, which requires a considerably larger script than, say, The Force Unleashed? How much is your opinion dependent on dialog? Can mediocre dialog be excused if the overall story is great? How much of that story was circumstance arising from something like, say, a publisher mandate that the game include giant robots (“Kids love giant robots.”) — and is that relevant
I have my own opinions, but since The Force Unleashed is the only game on the list that I’ve played much of yet, I’m more interested in the larger question right now. How would you vote?
[By the way, I’m not on board with videogame as a single word, but the WGA is, so I’ve used it when referring to their list of nominations. Don’t mistake that for tacit approval.]
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that to be nominated, writers need only be members of the videogame caucus, rather than the WGA proper. Getting admitted to the former is considerably easier and less expensive than the latter. I’m actually a member of the caucus, having been admitted based on work I did for a massively multiplayer mobile game that was never released save in beta. Membership in the caucus costs something like $70/year.
I’m not up on current caucus business; I haven’t been to any meetings since leaving L.A. I remember that they were trying to get these awards off the ground back when I was active. I guess it’s a good thing that they have, although, as you demonstrate, there’s plenty of education that needs to be done on every side if they’re ever going to be worth anything.
One of the main motivations—if not the main motivation—for handing out these awards, of course, is to establish an labor-organizing beachhead among game writers.
So, as a member of the caucus, which game would you vote for and why?
So, perversely, I’m pretty sure that being a member of the caucus doesn’t allow me to vote. I’m pretty sure that voting for this award is part of the process by which the other awards the WGA gives out are determined. And all of those, naturally, are voted by the WGA proper.
Assuming that I am or was allowed to vote, I’d have to abstain based on essentially zero knowledge of any of them.
One of the things I discovered over the course of working on exactly this kind of shit, is that what people mean when they say they liked the writing or story in a video game is usually wildly different from person to person, and even from one person, differs from game to game.
Like, someone likes the “story” of Halo. Well, I’m almost certain they don’t mean the actual writing because, what? Nor, really, do they mean the setting, since the setting is almost completely generic. And I say this as a huge Halo fanboy. They mean the plot and moments. Or in Halo’s case, just generic crap they’ve seen a million times executed on well.
A lot of “I love the writing” or “story” comments mean they love the IDEAS in the game. I love the IDEA of being a medieval assassin in Jerusalem. The actual writing and plotting being completely crap.
Often, they just love detail. “I love the writing in Jade Empire!” I don’t think that’s possible. You just love how much of it there was. That was its only virtue. There was a lot of it. Or, they love the tone. The actual writing is crap, but it sure SOUNDS like I imagine a medieval Japanese monk would talk!
Sometimes they really mean the dialog, but this is rare. Which is weird as typically, in fact chronically, video game companies only hire writers TO write dialog. They act as script doctors, basically, with the creative principles of the team (none of whom are storytellers) having already created the setting, plot, and characters and they just need someone to “write it.” Something they don’t particularly value or understand.
If someone says they love the writing in The Incredibles, they probably mean the dialog, the characterization, the setting, and the action/plot. They mean the whole shebang, which is good because that’s what a writer does. Creates all that shit. Not so in video games.
Since I’ve barely played any of the entries, I don’t feel qualified to compare them, but I can mention a specific thing I liked about the writing in The Force Unleashed: The story took twists that I did not expect. Without spoilers, people hurt each other during the cut scenes in ways I didn’t see coming.
Thinking about it now, I have more specific notes on what I liked, which I’ll put in a real post.
In general, though, I’m finding that I seldom praise video games for their writing overall. I don’t think about them that way. What I do, instead, is zoom in and praise this exchange of dialog or that setup for a level or this clever way of framing my objectives. I get specific. Real specific. For better or worse.
Thanks for sounding off on this, Matt.
I think that what Matt’s talking about—consumers’ general lack of knowledge about who does what back behind the creative curtain—is true even for media with a much longer track record and that’s much better understood by society at large.
Lots of people are astoundingly inarticulate about what they like in a given actor’s portrayal of a given character, for example. They often can’t go beyond talking about generally liking the movie star in question. Some people still think the actors make up their own dialog and invent all of the scenes as they go along.
I’m agreeing with you, then: You’ve definitely got to read the tea leaves to figure out what most people really think when they say they liked aspect whatever of such-and-such.