Game Writing and Narrative in the Future - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 173

fiction writing happen at the story outline stage, and these “baked in� errors can be
the hardest to address later on.
Dipping their toes into the shallower end of the game narrative pool are the
majority of developers, who see the value of quality writing in their games but choose
not to invest in full-time (or even part-time) staff members devoted to it. These
studios tend to either handle all writing by assigning in-house game designers or by
hiring freelance writers on a short-term basis.
Freelance Writers
For many people in the game development business, writers are most associated with
dialog writing. Perhaps it is because for the world's dominant forms of storytelling—
movies and television—the writer's main deliverable tends to be a script (which con-
sists largely of dialog). Other elements generated by the writer on the way to de-
livering that script—a high concept, a corkboard full of index cards, an outline, a
treatment, a beat script—are rarely seen by people outside the business. And so the
impression held by the average game developer is that what writers are for is generat-
ing dialog scripts. Not surprisingly, then, the solution for studios unwilling to invest
in staff writers is often to develop the core narrative materials in-house and turn to a
professional freelance writer or writers only when the time comes to generate dialog.
This is often a recipe for mediocrity. Unless the game designers happen to also
be excellent fiction writers or editors, the aforementioned story structure or charac-
terization problems are likely to be permanently embedded in the narrative. The
frustrated freelance writers, brought on board far too late to address these core issues
that they can so plainly see, find themselves in the all-too-familiar position of being
asked to “polish the turd�—to use their dialog-writing skills to add flair and panache
to a fatally flawed work.
Additionally, the choice of writers may be made based on “name� value rather
than actual competency at the very specific skill of writing for games. Movie and
television writers who are struggling to find regular work will sometimes see the
video game business as an excellent place to pick up some extra income while wait-
ing for their sure-to-be-a-blockbuster film script to emerge from Development Hell.
The cosmetic similarities between video games and movies only help to convince
these writers—as well as star-struck game producers looking at a Hollywood writer's
resume—that writing for games is the same as writing for movies or television. Any-
one who has read this topic up to this point should be able to appreciate the folly of
such a notion.
Write Your Own Beginning
In the coming years, people with expertise in fiction writing for video games will
more and more consistently be brought into the development cycle from the very
earliest stages, especially for games that have a strong narrative focus. In some cases,
these experts will be on-staff “narrative designers,� editors, or writers, while others