Writer's Guild of America announces nominations for new "Best Video Game Story" award
 

From Ars Technica:

Links to other articles in the quote.

Anyway, it's interesting that WGA is finally giving a nod out to video games as a medium for storytelling, and it'll (hopefully) be more legitimate than the lolspikeVGA. Their choices are a little odd, though. No Bioshock, for example?

What do you all think? Like the choices, or hate them? Should we even HAVE an award for best video game story?

lol whoops forgot to link the source. :eagletear:

Please don't tell me its this game.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Titans_Wii.PNG

How the hell did this game win?

Where is Heavenly Sword? It may have been a short and semi-simplistic game. But it's presentation, writing and character was some of the best in the industry in my opinion. (MGS1 would be the #1 best, but of course didn't come out this year)

How the hell is a Simpsons game on there? I mean what the Christ.

The Witcher should win. Its voice acting is pretty sloppy at points, but the storyline is pretty solid (since it is largely and faithfully based on a book series). But I find it odd that they're incorporating The Witcher (not a US game) in to this. It was made by a Polish company =O Anyhow, World in Conflict was alright. I stopped playing since I got stomped in an enemy blitz early on that seemed impossible to deal with, but the story seemed solid. The gameplay got stale though (I hear).

But this is failure. It's much like the video game music awards in which that Elder Scrolls dude wins everything (Jeremy Seoule?...)

Can we not turn this into a giant "my game deserves to be on that list cause it's awesome" circle jerk? Can we not do that? Can we all just calmly and rationally agree that the egregious oversight that is Madden 08 not being on that list is laughable and move on from there? Can we do that?

I can understand Heavenly Sword not being there because it was produced in Japan. The intent of these awards seems to be to try to legitimize writers so the WGA can get them unionized.

This is NOT the place to discuss whether that should happen, but I'm reasonably sure that they deliberately picked games with a small group of writers that were produced in America.

For instance, BioWare is Canadian, and the writing for The Witcher was assumedly done at Atari (the publisher)'s studios.

Dammit, World in Conflict was made in Sweden, though. :( It was published by Sierra, though, so... maybe the translation was written here?

Mo0 actually hit the nail on the head when he said the WGA wants to get them unionized. They've been after that for at least two years now. I remember getting a newsletter with that in it when I was in 2nd year.

Actually Ninja Theory who makes Heavenly Sword are in Cambridge UK, not Japan. I'm not upset or anything, I'm just saying.

Anyways, things can't turn out much worse then the Spike TV briber's awards... what a cluster fuck that was... *sigh*

Considering how unconventional story telling can be in video games, I really need to read into the criteria that the WGA have for judging a "game story." Because I'm certain that games that rely more on visuals and player imagination are obviously not going to meet the criteria. And really, if that's the case, it's just another way to sub-manage my interests and that's easy come, easy go.

P.S.
Where the fuck is Portal. The oversight of this alone diminishes their credability.

@Rotorblade
True, but under what redneck criteria does Crash come out as being "good writing"?

Cant believe there are only a whopping five nominees of mediocre trash.

I have to say that I am shocked that HALO 3 didnt make this list given all the ultimate hype that it did.

Is it bad that I've never even heard of any of those games?

Look, ok. Clearly no one here wants to come out and say it. So I will.

At it's very best, video game writing is still hardly really writing, isn't it. There, I said it. Feel free to flame away, you hungry, hungry video game nerds. But it's the truth. This is something you will have to eventually come to terms with.

If you haven't heard of The Simpsons then yes.

And if you haven't heard of The Witcher and Dead Head Fred, then you're missing out on a couple of REALLY good games. (Though The Witcher can make you want to kill yourself on a few occasions)

@Denicalis
You can't tell me what to do. Now if you don't mind I'm going to go back and play Devil May Cry 2. (best writing of ALL TIME :rock: "Here's your crown. *BANG*" )

Other than the voice telling you stuff before each level, I cant really call a whole lot of writing or a phenominal story in Portal, if these nominees were for overall gameplay then we would all have a right to bitch.

Joe was just an average ball... *slow motion cut of Joe waving goodbye at the train station* "I love you moOOOomm..." looking for a direction in life... *cut to Joe in the rain, breathing heavily, looking down towards the ground. Suddenly a giant boot slams into him sending him sailing into the sky* He found one! *Some old mouldy Blink 182 song starts playing*

Join Joe and the no hope team on their hilariously laugh out loud funnaaay adventure to put their little town on the map!

*Cut to John Madden eating some ribs, sauce all over his face* "Haha whoa! You guys don't know what you've gotten yourselves into!"

MADDEN 08

Directed, written, filmed, by Uwe Boll. Madden is a registered trademark of Madden. Presented by EA Sports. It's in the game.

Well-said! Its the fact that if/when Witcher wins, people will pick up the title that nobody has heard of and play a great game.

Then maybe they'll patch The Witcher so that you get to play the game more then you have to wait for it to load. Oh man, that would be soo cool.

Maybe you could get a PC worth something, but that would be too logical. And anyway, aren't these people on strike?

smh, and it was such a good point, too.

-----

Games are not art. That said, this really doesn't mean much in the scope of things, considering that the WGA really missed the boat on a lot of games with great writing. Planescape: Torment comes to mind.

Again, games are a versatile medium, so we get our "stories" in various ways. A lot of games choose to focus solely on the game and leave their stories in the background, usually with guides or manual excerpts. Tiamat's Street Fighter story FAQ is a good example of how a decent story with really good character relationships will remain untold over the course of several games... or more accurately, for the entirety of a series.

Slayer X: Why bother being irritated? I really wouldn't worry about having not heard of Crash or even the quality. Because, truth be told, does an accolade about writing really matter to you in a video game? Think of how many games fail to even match Tetris and then think about how much reading comprehension you need to have once you're actually playing it. In the scope of things, this isn't going to change games... especially considering America isn't the only country pushing out video games.

Unless you fag out over RPGs for the story and story alone. I think it is safe to say, if you really have an interest, it'd be worth it to know their criteria.

The title of this THREAD excited me. The titles of the GAMES did not. the selection is not exactly what I would call a 'great video game story', especially SImpsons. If those games are on there, why not add in the ever-contradicting, ever-confusing, Smackdown Vs Raw 2008? Or for REAL candidates, perhaps one or both of the Phoenix Wright games released?

Exactly - they have nothing to do but play games all day. Plus, it's the one award show they could do that wouldn't step over the TV/Movie boundary they're at odds with. If Mo0's right about the union thing, they're pretty clever, too. I wonder... If they were drafted into WGA, would that include translators and localizers too, or just writers of English scripts?

Yes, games are first and foremost entertainment, but not necessarily written entertainment. Aside from game design, a game doesn't have to offer any sort of creativity or artistic merit to be enjoyed. Tetris is still a classic because of how it played, and how it looked wasn't a result of the programmer being "artsy", that was just how well the graphics could be at the time. Sure, pixel art is starting to be seen as an art form, but older games are only retroactively included at best.

Good story helps, though, that's for sure, and plenty of games make for really awesome stories, but I don't think we'll be seeing a novelization of FFVII taught in English lit twenty years from now. It's not even that the writing's bad or the plot's convoluted, but the big difference between stuff like Moby Dick and Final Fantasy is that with Moby you can get a sense of the writer's intention to make a story that gives an outline of the human condition, complete with metaphore, fanciful line structure, and mental imagery open to the individual's intrperetation, while FF uses plot comprised of a half-dozen lines of text proportionate to the text box size to segue together a series of minigames. Do we still enjoy it anyway? You betcha! We may not be learning much aside from what elements hurt Tonberries more, but it accomplished it's goal of making the game fun. Game writing is fine as long as you never hold it to the standard of anything outside the genre, which just has another goal in mind for the story.

..And I totally haven't played any of the games on this list. If Crash of the Titans is anything like the last few Crash games, it's probably kinda funny at least, but what kind of writing could it have given all we know about the whole Crash mythos? They must've made up a whole lot of backstory or re-wrote the thing from scratch or something.

The logic seems kind of twisted there to me, Nall. What games would make for great stories? Especially when we build setting and characters and what not around the games?

It's really surprising that Bioshock isn't in that list, considering it's a western game with a story that beats the hell out of the listed titles there.

It really limits it down if you're only centralizing on games which are non-Japanese.

You must be joking. If you even browse the internet you must have at some point seen that there was a Simpsons game made.

No Mass Effect? No Bioshock? No Call of Duty 4 (The story seems worth a nomination at least)? ...NO ACE COMBAT 6?!

Whoever picked some of these needs to get beat down with an ugly stick.

If anything but The Witcher wins, the judges were flying incredibly high. Also, AC6's story is hilariously bad and I'm a member of AC Weeks.

Has no-one but Slayer X played Dead Head Fred? Gosh, the writing in that is priceless.

Well, I imagine a game like God of War or some other heavily character-based game could win. Alternatively, as someone mentioned above, a Phoenix Wright game would be equally good for the quality of it's dialog.

And I imagine the WGA is trying to unionize the video game writers so that they'll gain even more power in a steadily growing field of entertainment.

That 'Crash of the Titans' got a nominations and none of the ones I mentioned (Who wins isn't that big of a deal) did not is what I'm more upset about.

AC6's story isn't the greatest, but its certainly better then Crash's.

It's not about quality though, it's about trying to woo over some game writers in this massive union. The WGA would want nothing more than to be able to tie up even MORE entertainment than it's currently able to. Considering many people said "Well, fuck it, I'm gonna go play WoW/Halo/Mario" instead of giving half a shit that boring as fuck Leno is on repeat for a month and a half, they want to be able to get as good a bargaining position as possible. It's an easier battle for them if they tie up as many entertainment channels as they can get their dirty mitts on. This has nothing to do with recognizing a damn thing. It's dirty politics.

Edit: On a side note, some of you people need to realize the difference between quality writing and a good story. One can EASILY exist without the other, and vice versa.

I should specify I meant "What kind of games/genres?" I guess I wanted it to be a rhetorical question but I messed up. I believe that anything can sound good on paper, especially when we just mention titles that have established stories. Pong is a game, would that make a good story? That's what I'm getting at. Not everything is an RPG, moreover RPGs don't necessarily need to have the content of a book in order to meet the genre criteria. I think people seem to be missing the point that story is still supplemental to a game being fun or even having a decent set of surrounding events. Even though it's been implicitly stated otherwise, story is supplementary, the posts I see elsewhere are quite the contrary.

Okay, I see what you're saying. I didn't mean that a game *should* exist without a story, I'm just saying that not all games require a plot to be enjoyable. Music games for instances, or puzzlers. The ones that do have a story (as in, a fully written narrative complete with dialogue, direction, and plot structure) are all the better for it, since it gives the player a directive for what they're doing, and better involves them in the events going on on-screen.

"Why am I lining up these Tetris blocks again?"

"Because if you don't, the dark TetLord will use them to forge the great TetFortress, which will lead to the great Tet... Offensive that will surely destroy the whole of Blocktopia."

"Oh that guy is going down!"

And no, not all games could necessarily make good stories, at least not without some embellishment. Some, though, with pre-established characters and setting could make for exciting or interesting fairy tales if nothing else. That's why we enjoy them as game stories, they accomplish the same goal of the games themselves by giving us feelings of excitement and get our adrenaline and emotions pumping as they both build toward a mutual climax. They could absolutely work as genuine stories, and be considered just as prolific of a medium of expression, RPGs or any text-based game especially, but I'm just saying that the standards have to be different given the way they're portrayed on-screen. Are the games listed here considered good stories game-wise or universally? Or even both? I can't really say because I haven't played them, but they have to at least be entertaining to have been considered, and that's the heart of storytelling anyway.

Maybe, but could this turn out to be a good thing later on? Would more public recognition for games and especially game writers hurt or help gaming as a whole? I'm just asking because I'm not sure myself.

I think games should be whatever they need to be. With or without story, a game can still be fun. It's just that if you have a bad story in a game, that's unfortunate. If your game outright sucks and has a great story... you still have a shitty game.

Better for it? Well... I disagree. What does the story have to do with how the game is played, in the end? They are separate things. Story can add to the experience, but I just don't see how that correlates to the actual gameplay at hand. Unless it's an RPG that relies on dialogue trees and decisions based off that.

Just because a game has a story doesn't make it better. It all depends on how it's implemented, so why would we put so much weight on it? Seems like a conflict of interest.

Telling someone they're playing a game and lining out the rules of that game, the objectives, is just as clear as putting a story behind it. If anything, "story" can cloud objectives. The idea of giving story to a game where the objectives are transparent to the player, like it could make it clearer what to do, just doesn't make sense:

Line up geometric shapes in full lines to make them disappear and score points.

Eat the dots in the level, larger dots in the corners let you eat the ghosts that are trying to eliminate you and give you a higher score.

Shoot things and don't touch them in the process.

What more do you need to know? A story can turn all that into an escape, but why would one need a story to give you the basic rules of the game? I imagine we'd want our instructions to be as clear and concise as possible.

Again, I agree that it could make a game better in certain instances and genres, but not in every single instance or facet of a game and it certainly isn't a requirement.

Just because they have the same goal, doesn't make them the same thing. The objective in a game is still different from the objective of a story. They're two different things. Yes, games can have a story crafted around and tailored to them, but have you only been around players who play for story? Some of us just want to play a video game.

Exposition can be long forgotten in certain titles. I can't tell you how many times I would like to skip the cinema scenes in Gradius V. There are times where a game outshines its story. Yes, I like Street Fighter's story... but it certainly gets in the way when I just want to hammer someone in Alpha 3.

Story is a shoe that just isn't always going to fit. You can say you could tailor it to a game... but it isn't always required and it isn't always needed and it doesn't always help the game.

I'm curious, how do you feel this kind of recognition would help "games?" What exactly do games need help with in this regard?

Bitches be hatin' on Crash for no reason. It's a good game!

Cortex shows up. Crash beats Cortex. PANCAKES. A++ any story that includes pancakes is award winning indeed.

While I have nothing against unions as a whole, but the reasoning for this whole thing is extremely transparent. The WGA is doing nothing but looking out for themselves here, it has nothing to do with bettering anything. If, by some fluke, game writing gains a tad bit more respect from other fields, then great. But this certainly isn't the point, and it's more than likely not going to accomplish a God damn thing.

I'm completely on board with you, a game doesn't need a story. I didn't mean to say they absolutely needed them to be enjoyable, that's just silly. Sorry if my post came off like that, I just meant that stories (good ones, anyway) can help games the same way innovative or solid gameplay can, or the way good music can liven up even a dull moment during a particular scene. It's another factor, certainly, and a game is only ever going to be as strong as its weakest component, story or otherwise.

Beating on someone is just what Street Fighter is all about, and the series certainly didn't get popular because of its lore or writing, but the story is there for people who want it. If you want to skip cutscenes, that's fine, I do to after I've played through it about fifty times, and I think we can both totally agree that un-skipabe cutscenes and movies are just a bad feature all around. In Street Fighter's case, the story is never forced on you, so good or bad it's still very negligable either way. It's a prime example of a game that doesn't need any story whatsoever. I doubt many people could tell you Cammy's connection to Bison or Rose off the top of their head anyway. Come tournament time, it's just not a factor.

I was just wondering whether the increased public awareness of game writing as a celebrated medium would affect game design in the future. The game industry isn't in any sort of danger at all, I just wanted to know how, if in any way, these sort of accolades would improve it. Would more writers be attracted to work with games instead of, say, movies or books? Would this equate to larger funds for game developers with larger writing divisions? Stuff like that.

Yeah, you're right, recognition isn't really the point, but If there is an upside to this, I'm just trying to find it, even if it's an indirect result.

There are games where it is forced on you, just wanted to present that. Assassin's Creed, 2 choice moments in Gradius V. The fighting game community does know about these story connections you brought up. They just also happen to make a distinction between the game and their fandom.



A really good comparison came up when I watched Bioshock and Halo 3's respective making of features. A lot of writing is done via contribution, I don't think I've seen anyone solely contribute writing to the creation of a game. Because, again, story is supplemental and is often times built around a game. Thief 2's scenarios were crafted first and then its story was developed based off it. I really don't think writing awards are going to net much of anything for the game overall, at least if a game isn't pushed for its writing.

Rotor, do you think a game like Phoenix Wright is completely dependent upon the quality of its writing? Stop being such a whiny bitch about just story and think about all the ways writing can be important. I mean, the story of History of the World Part I is ridiculous, but it's the quality of the writing that makes it a classic movie.

Also, would your panties in as big of a bunch of there was some sort of award given by some ridiculous group of movie CG people for best graphics in a game?

First of all, thanks for propping my post, Rotor, that was very mature of you.

There probably won't be any major changes, I know Spike TV's awards show did very little on the state of the game industry, and are usually lauded by the very community they're supposed to appeal to, so we might not see any effects from this at all, aside from maybe a very small boost in sales for the games nominated. At any rate, a few more people in the general public were reminded that some games do in fact go through a writing process, so that's something at least. It just always seems to be news when games are treated the same as other media like TV and movies, even though their presence has only grown in the past several years.

u mad?

I think writing is a big part for visual novels, yes. Exception, not the rule.

Conversely, how about you list all the ways writing could be important to games? Universally to all types of games. Because I can't really think of too many and that seems to be the issue at hand here, I don't have a problem with accolades, but it's already been pointed out that this all seems pretty opportunistic. I mean, great point about movies... but different medium, chief. I realize that "writing" and "story" can be separate, especially given how most people love the plot of Final Fantasy VI but I would also realize that it isn't exactly Shakespeare.

But that's why I was wondering what the criteria was. Again, the award says "Best Video Game Story" by the Writer's Guild of America. How else am I suppose to infer it, especially when I've admitted I don't quite know everything about what they're going off of.

Well, considering the only one who seems upset here is, well, you... I don't think I really have any grounds to answer. I'm wondering how writing helps games universally, the awards themselves? You're telling me Skills didn't quite spell out to you what was fishy about this?

If anything, the idea that "Game Writing" is special and different from any other kind of writing is pretty stupid to me. But... hey, whatever.

It was a good post, a lot of what you've said I've agreed with.



My thoughts on this have always been that we shouldn't be wondering how we're going to be taken "more seriously" in this activity. We play video games, I really think we shouldn't worry about the perceptions of people who don't. We all know, through experience, the types of things games are capable of projecting and executing. It's truly a versatile medium.

I feel we have nothing to prove to people who haven't taken the time to discover the medium for themselves, and that pandering to them (not to say you were implying that) only hurts the developers and the people concerned about their craft.

How did we make the jump to comic books here?

Writing isn't important to all types of games. In the same way that special effects aren't important to all kinds of movies. That doesn't mean it isn't an integral part of the industry or something people should write off as ancillary to the experience.

If you hit the actual WGA webpage you'd see it's titled "VIDEOGAME WRITING NOMINEES" under the category of "PROMOTION WRITING AND GRAPHIC ART NOMINEES."

What do you mean by universally? As in, video games as a form of mass media competing against books, movies, and tv? Or is it meant as how does good writing help each individual game stand out against each other within the context of video gaming?

http://www.gamingforce.org/forums/vi...tml#post568401

Guess I must have missed it where I mentioned it two posts before him.

Well, it is different. Just as the way writing in every different medium is different. I mean, I wouldn't expect a poet to be a top notch sit-com writer, so why shouldn't game writers be seen as their own sub-niche category of authors? They need to be able to get their message across in far less space than they'd ever have in a novel, movie, or tv show. Sadly most of the writing in video games is on the level of poor fanfiction (and the inability of Japanese to use any sort of symbolism or subtlety) hurts the overall experience for a lot of games out there.

Ok, so I initially just looked up the criteria on the WGA site. Here, I'll post them for your viewing pleasure.

This told me jack shit. So I called a buddy of mine who's a "member of good standing" in the WGA and votes on their film awards. I basically grilled him for a little more information on the criteria, and he said there was none. There's a pool of people who vote on it, and they're given no outline beyond the scoring scale. Read the script of the game, separate from the game itself, and rate it as stated above.

Also, he told me the reason the games nominated were the final ones offered. Almost no games were nominated. Most of the studios didn't bother, because I doubt they want their writers unionised, given that as it stands, they can treat them like, well... how pretty much everyone in the game industry is treated.

And most of the outsiders in the industry couldn't be bothered to go through the hoops of getting something recognised. If there was ever a decent set of awards for the gaming industry, then maybe people would bother.

Yeah, I imagine this was one of the larger issues for people as well.

Like several of us said earlier. It's the WGA trying to drum up support for their guild during the strike. But don't tell them I said so.

We didn't. That's what the Japanese classify a game like Phoenix Wright as.

I'll be saying it later, but I think I view writing in this case as story... and I'd wager that might not be what what you mean when you use the term.

If it IS, I think you've got it twisted. If you strip away all the art, all the story, and all the voice acting and everything else that isn't the objective. The game itself remains. You don't need a story to create an FPS. It's nice. You don't need a story to create an RPG, though it's nice to have. You don't need a story for a puzzle game, a fighting game, a shooting game.

No game absolutely needs a story unless it's designed to have story as critical, unless it plays it into the fold. That would still make it an optional ingredient to designers. Story is supplemental to video games. Writing, scripting events... it all depends on how you want to use it. Writing -- or as I think I understand it at the moment, story -- can enrich the experience, but you can still have a video game without it.

Caught Deni's post just now. Thanks, by the way.

I mean, all these game genres, right? How can writing help enrich the core of a fighting game? 2 Players fighting each other, that is. Or an FPS? How can writing factor into surviving a first person shooter or changing the mechanics of a puzzle game. I've always seen that the artist and the technical designers on game projects always clash, because art and game design have fundamentally different goals in mind. That said, I want to know how all games could benefit from the act of writing... but I think "writing" has turned into a euphemism for story, though that's where the topic began in a way.

I think it is safe to say that video games are all universally different, because barring same genre, similar elements, no game is played the same way. That said, no 2 games in different genres would need the same things, so I find it hard that just one element can completely enrich a game. Granted basic writing factors in the same way math probably would in game creation. You still need to dream up scenarios, script, all that fun stuff that goes into the infrastructure of a game.



That makes two of us? Or just me, doh.


I agree and disagree. The latter part of your post... yeah, definitely. As for the former, writing is writing, to me. Certain mediums don't always need the same things that others do, but it bothers me in the same way you can say a game has good "Gameplay", but you'd look like an ass if you said a movie had good "moviewatch" or a book had good "bookread."

I think that narrows it down to a personal problem until I can argue otherwise... and I don't think I can at the moment.