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

From Ars Technica:

Quote:

We've written about the Writer's Guild of America new award for game writing, and we think it's a step forward for the industry when the often overlooked writers get more recognition. Now the WGA has announced the nominees for this year's award, and the list is varied:

• CRASH OF THE TITANS, Written by Christopher Mitchell, Sierra Entertainment
• DEAD HEAD FRED, Written by Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan, D3 Publisher
• THE SIMPSONS GAME, Lead Writer Matt Selman, Written by Tim Long and Matt Warburton, Dialogue by Jeff Poliquin, Electronic Arts
• THE WITCHER, Lead Story Designer Artur Ganszyniec, Dialogue Sebastian Stepien, Additional Dialogue Marcin Blacha, Writers Sande Chen and Anne Toole, Atari
• WORLD IN CONFLICT, Story Design Christofer Emgard, Story Consultant Larry Bond, Script Consultant Ed Zuckerman, Sierra Entertainment

It would have been interesting to see Mass Effect on there, and I'm not going to annoy people who are tired of hearing about Portal by saying that The Orange Box as a whole deserved a nod (but I just did). Dead Head Fred is a solid choice, but Crash of the Titans? Really?
I'm sure you can pick nits over the choices, but I enjoy the fact that there is an award at all. Besides, the less television there is, the better gaming will do. Win, win.

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Quote:

Crash of the Titans

Please don't tell me its this game.



How the hell did this game win?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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)

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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?...)

How ya doing, buddy?

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 was speaking idiomatically.

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?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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*

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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"?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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

Most amazing jew boots

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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 "Here's your crown. *BANG*" )

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Slayer X

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

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.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Denicalis

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?

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Gechmir

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

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

Most amazing jew boots

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

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

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.

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Lukage

And anyway, aren't these people on strike?

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?

Originally Posted by Rotorblade

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.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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?

FELIPE NO

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by sprouticus

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

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

Jam it back in, in the dark.