INDUSTRY RECOGNIZING “WRITE STUFF”

When it was announced that the very first Game Writers Conference would take place in Austin last October, it took a lot of people by surprise. You mean video games are actually written?

Not so long ago, games weren't written so much as they were constructed -- by programmers and artists.

Now, however, when all next-generation games tend to look and sound terrific, savvy publishers are saying that great writing is a neat way to differentiate your title from the others. 

“For me, writing is like gold,” says David Perry, president of Atari's Shiny Entertainment studio. “It saddens me a lot that many video game companies don't hire triple-A writers and that they use their game designers instead. That's why, when real writers look at video game stories, they kind of roll their eyes. But that's something that I see changing, I really do.”

So does the Writers Guild of America, West. Which is why the WGA formed its New Media Caucus with an eye towards bringing so-called “new media writers” into the Guild. The Caucus is chaired by Bruce Feirstein, author of three James Bond screenplays -- “GoldenEye,” “Tomorrow Never Dies,” and “The World Is Not Enough” -- as well as two 007 video games from Electronic Arts -- “From Russia With Love” and “Everything Or Nothing.”

“Game players are becoming more sophisticated in terms of their expectations,” explains Guild president Patric Verrone. “At the same time, the publishers are making licensing deals, many of which require quality storytelling to be built into the games. As you know, storytelling and character development don't just fall out of the sky; they have to be actually written by creative talent.”

Historically, publishers haven't considered writers as integral to the game-building process, Verrone adds, but that's evolving.

“As content becomes more and more important, publishers are finding that the writers they want aren't just people who can sit at a keyboard and type,” he explains. “They need people with a skill, a craft … and the Caucus' goal is to make sure those two forces -- the publisher and the writer -- meet … as well as to represent the writers and provide contracts that include health insurance, pension benefits, residuals, credit determination, that sort of thing. Currently, game writers, who are mostly freelancers, aren't offered those benefits, mainly because they don't have the collective strength of a union behind them.”

Which is why, Verrone reveals, the WGA is less than two years away from approaching game publishers to work out overall signatory agreements.

“I can't say exactly when,” he adds, “because I don't want to give away strategic planning; the more I talk about it, the more the publishers build up their defenses against it. But I would say that the industry should be on notice that writers want these benefits and this is how they're most likely going to get them. This is absolutely on our radar.”

At Ubisoft, Richard Dansky, the company's lead [Tom] Clancy writer, describes the WGA's initiatives as “part of the evolution of the gamewriter position. It used to be that the designers dashed off whatever they could in their spare time. This is just another step on the road to making gamewriting a profession and something that is recognized as a serious part of the game.”

Indeed, Ubisoft and Microsoft are the two leading publishers that seem to be making the greatest efforts towards improving writing in video games in the opinion of Susan O'Connor, an independent game writer and the founder and chair of the Game Writers Conference. She has written for both companies, and is currently working on two as-yet unannounced next-gen console games for Epic Games.

“It's rare to find full-time staff writers at most publishers and developers because they can't justify keeping them on 12 months of the year; there's just not enough work for them,” O'Connor notes. “But Microsoft and Ubisoft both have writing staffs, they seem to have high standards for the people they hire, and they have great internal resources to support the writers.”

That includes building enough time into production schedules to foster great writing.

Every writer will tell you that their first draft is terrible,” explains O'Connor. “But a lot of publishers use first-draft writing in their games because their schedules don't allow for second or third drafts.”

At Ubisoft, Alexis Nolent, the company's editorial story design director, reports that writing is being built earlier and earlier into the production process: “It used to be that you'd write the dialogue in the three days prior to going into the recording studio mainly because everything else was consider to be more important. Now, in a game like the forthcoming “Splinter Cell 4” [officially known as “Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent”], we had multiple, multiple iterations of the script, and we've been able to test dialogue, hear how it sounds, see how it plays, determine where it needs to be improved, and go back and polish and polish.”

The industry also seems to be recognizing that, while writers who crossover from other media -- particularly movies and TV -- bring much experience to the party, there is a real need for the video games sector to grow its own, to create a new species of writer that's dedicated to gaming.

“We certainly welcome those talented individuals who cross over and work in our medium,” says Matt Whiting, who is in charge of writing as the manager of Microsoft's User Experience Group. “But I liken it to the early days of Hollywood when many playwrights and novelists came west to work in the movies; some were very successful, others weren't. Eventually, Hollywood starting growing its own talent pool and eventually those people became recognized screenwriters. We are absolutely going to see the same thing happen in video games.”

A great example of a respected gamewriter who honed his talents in the industry is Marc Laidlaw, the winner of the 2005 Game Developers Choice Award for best writer for his work on Valve Software's much-praised “Half-Life 2.” Laidlaw, who's been a gamewriter for over 12 years -- almost nine of them at Valve -- says that much of his day is spent brainstorming with other departments -- with artists, with level designers, with programmers -- developing the backstory for the worlds within the game, for the levels that will be built, for the events that will be played out, giving them an internal consistency.

“There's a lot of back and forth,” he says. “I don't just write a script and then someone takes it away and builds a game. I am continually getting input in order to create a big suspension field to hold the gameplay together so that the gamers aren't doing arbitrary tasks, so that they are doing things that seem meaningful.”

He admits that while the spotlight is on the gameplay, there needs to be a dramatic story that moves the play along. “While there's not much narrative in ‘Half-Life 2,' but all the action, all the puzzles you're solving, the combat, the levels you move through, they all need to have an internal logic that makes you feel as if you're part of a much larger experience.”

Laidlaw is convinced that it'll be the writers who grew up playing video games who will have the most to offer the industry. That's because, while there are many similarities between writing for movies and TV and writing for games, gamewriting has its own set of skills that tends to be learned on the job, gamewriters say. For instance, while movie scripts are fairly linear, the direction of a game plot frequently depends on the gamer who, after all, is the one holding the joystick. Therefore, out of necessity, game scripts are lengthy, nonlinear, and with many multiple branches.

“As next-gen consoles allow the reactions of characters to become more and more sophisticated, you need to have more and more lines of script to cover all the possibilities,” explains Ubisoft's Dansky. “The average movie script runs about 30,000 words, the average novel about 100,000. Our scripts have grown from 2,000 words to over 100,000 in some cases. Our ‘Splinter Cell Chaos Theory' was over 100,000 words and Microsoft's ‘Jade Empire' -- another game that is very writing-heavy -- was 340,000 words. I believe the record is ‘Planescape: Torment' with something like 860,000 words of dialogue.”

While leading publishers like Ubisoft and Microsoft continue to invest in gamewriting, skeptics might ask the inevitable questions: Has anyone determined whether great writing sells? Isn't it a known fact that gamers prefer explosions to dialogue?

“I don't know that a gamer is going to go to Best Buy and say that he's looking for a game with great writing,” says Microsoft's Whiting. “But good writing certainly makes good games better and better games great. For instance, to me one of the great things about ‘Halo 2' is the story of the Master Chief and the dark secret of the massive ring-like construct in space. And the same holds true of the story of Joanna Dark which is essential to driving forward the action in ‘Perfect Dark Zero.' ”

Similarly, other gamewriters have their favorites. Susan O'Connor says the reason she completed playing all of “God Of War” was that the writing made it the most emotionally compelling game she's ever played. And “Psychonauts” by Tim Schafer and Erik Wolpaw has a script that's witty, charming, and complimentary to the action, she says.

Ubisoft's Dansky favors Marc Laidlaw's writing in “Half-Life 2,” which, he says, uses superb writing in ways that aren't obvious but make the game a seamless, very appealing experience.

Industry observers frequently criticize video games for their inability to pack the emotional wallop that movies seem to create so effortlessly. Ubisoft's Nolent says this task will become easier as the more powerful engines of the next-gen consoles permit characters to more fully evolve.

“In each game, we here at Ubisoft are trying to build in two or three major emotions that we would like to explore,” he explains. “For instance, in ‘Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter,' the entire game is focused on the swing between being in control and scrambling to react when things get out of control. How does one feel when you're powerless in a situation where you need to be in charge?”

Susan O'Connor predicts that these issues and much more will be discussed in-depth at the next Game Writers Conference which is scheduled to take place this fall. No date or location has yet been determined.

Ubisoft's Nolent believes there are two major steps involved in gamewriting becoming the prestigious job it ought to be.

“The first is for the industry to understand the need for professional writers, that not everybody can sit in front of a computer and come up with a good story and good dialogue,” he says. “It's taken us quite some time but we have completed that step.”

The second step is for publishers to hire those writers and give them the means to make a difference. “That is the step we're in now,” he adds.

“But the answer to when will gamewriting be considered as prestigious as, say, screenwriting is a very relative thing,” observes Ubisoft's Dansky. “Movie buffs may be impressed by the guy who wrote ‘Schindler's List,' but, to a real gamer, if you are the guy who wrote ‘Halo 2,' you're the man. I mean, when 12-year-olds learn that I write videogames, to them I am a god. When I tell them I write the Tom Clancy games, it's like I walk on water.”