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EDIT: /!\ BAN REQUEST DENIED /!\ OOP HAS BEEN RESTORED Writing!  It's frequently said and widely accepted that the writing in videogames is not as good as that found in a book, or even a film. This is weird, because writing has been a part of the medium since not long after its inception. The original text adventure - Colossal Cave Adventure - was designed in 1976, and is nothing but writing. Even non-text games of that era show elements of writing, even if that writing is limited to the premise - the Space Invaders are invading! (Spoilers: we lose). So, if the writing in videogames has had the same forty years to improve as the rest of the medium, what's the deal? Why does it still suck? Does it still suck? Can it be as good as a book, or a film? Is it fair to compare these media and say that one is better or worse than the other? There's a lot of room for discussion and opinion here, but in-depth discussions of game writing traditionally don't happen much in the gaming community outside of some specific genres, even though story is an essential component of a huge majority of single-player games. There is, for example, no SA thread specifically dedicated to writing in videogames. What's that? This is one of those? Boy, that's meta. This thread is for discussion of all issues related to game writing. This is a spectacularly wide-ranging topic, so there should be plenty to talk about. However, it's important to note that everyone has a different depth of knowledge about writing, so with this OP I'll try to provide a bit of a primer so that we're all starting on the same springboard. What is videogame writing? This might sound like a stupid question, but it's not. When you hear the word "writing", your mind most likely jumps to one of several concepts. Let's use films as an example. Here are three films notable for good writing: Seven, Inglourious Basterds, and Shaun Of The Dead. All three of these films show evidence of great writing, but it's different in each case. Seven, for example, has an excellent, tightly-written plot which keeps you watching right up until the phenomenal payoff, which sticks with you for a while after the credits have rolled - but the dialogue is often a little stilted. Inglourious Basterds is driven purely by situation, tension and dialogue. It's a slow burn, and the plot actually doesn't really matter all that much, but it's a riveting watch. Shaun Of The Dead's plot and situation are both standard, boring zombie movie fare, but it excels in clever homage, satire, wordplay and witticism. The point I'm coming around to is that writing isn't narrowly defined. In a story-based videogame, nearly everything you come across has been written and designed. Take the original Tomb Raider. There's plot, and there's dialogue... and then there's that bit where you first slide down the side of the Sphinx and the camera suddenly draws way back and shows you just how tiny you are in comparison to the level. That wasn't a camera glitch, somebody wrote it with the intent of producing that effect. So, broadest definition: videogame writing is anything that attempts to convey an idea to the player. It's not just the plot of a game, or the dialogue, or the text logs you find - it's all three and more. Alright, but surely videogame writing is never going to be in the league of, say, a good book, or a movie, or a Japanese comic about sexy witch schoolgirls. This misconception is older than Grandma's toaster and we need to stop saying it, or it might come true. The fact is that we've been saying this about every new form of media since the Egyptians decided to try staining words onto paper instead of hammering them into the wall. When films came onto the scene, people lamented that they were intrinsically less worthwhile than books. For years people thought television was the idiot's opiate, and some still do. People thought that comic books were vulgar and couldn't be used to tell a story worth reading. We've been wrong every time and we're wrong this time. Comparing games to films is like comparing films to books. It's a fool's game. Both films and books can have fantastic writing, but you can't compare them with each other directly because they're a different medium and must use different methods to convey their stories. You've probably heard the phrase "the language of cinema" - the way in which films are shot to convey atmospheres and emotions that wouldn't be possible in, for example, a stage play, or even a book. This language has been developed and improved continuously throughout the history of cinema, and we're still discovering new techniques and storytelling methods. Nowadays, claiming a film couldn't ever be as good as a book would strike many people as a silly comparison - film is a totally different art form. Videogames are the same. They have their own language, which is still being developed. There is stuff that they can do that films and books can't (provide you with a choice! Ask for your opinion! Judge you by your actions!), and there is stuff that films and books can do that videogames usually can't (control pacing! Dictate the opinions of the protagonist! Be the subject of an interesting conversation with your dad!). Writers are still learning how to do things in this medium, and it's only lately that the audience for games with real, worthwhile story is starting to emerge. Now, with the advent of Steam and the indie game, more and more experimentation is being done in this art form. We've already seen major improvements in game storytelling in the past three years. In the next ten, we're going to see this improvement continue, just like it has with every other form of media. And one day we'll get our 2001: A Space Odyssey, our Watchmen, or our Breaking Bad. We're on our way already. OK, I'm convinced by your totally bulletproof argument. But I buy all the most popular videogames, and the stories all suck! Well, yeah, to an extent that's true. At the moment (and this is changing, if slowly), the big games that you've seen advertised on TV are mostly about spectacle, not story (and it's worthwhile to remember that spectacle isn't a bad thing). But recently, good writing has become much more important to media consumers in general - witness the success of True Detective, House Of Cards, and Fargo. This is already starting to bleed over into mainstream videogames, even if for now it's just casting Kevin Spacey in the new CoD. But yeah, at the moment, if you want good stories in games, more often than not you'll have to go looking for them. So, what should I look out for if I want to see some different ways in which games can have good writing? (This section is painfully incomplete because I am but a man. I will add good suggestions to this list as they are suggested and discussed in the thread.) Gone Home - If nothing else, this game certainly provokes a lot of debate. In Gone Home, you explore an empty house which is packed with detail - most everything can be picked up and examined, and further informs the story that you're being told. I like Gone Home, because it's a great example of a storytelling method that only videogames are capable of. Spec Ops: The Line - Another divisive game. Spec Ops starts off like any mediocre shooty war game, and then yanks the rug out from under you a couple of hours in and forces you to rethink things. The Stanley Parable - I'm just gonna stop saying that games are divisive because it seems like every game with a focus on writing splits people right down the middle. The Stanley Parable can be described as a collection of surreal comedic vignettes which explore and send up the mechanics and idiosyncracies of videogames. There's a lot to discover and think about, and behind the jokes the points being made are often pretty clever, even if the vignettes can be a little hit-and-miss. The Last Of Us - A good example of a well-written triple-A game. The Last Of Us is a solid enough action game, but the real draw is the development of the interpersonal relationship between Joel and Ellie, which is continually well-explored and has a powerful payoff. Mass Effect Trilogy - Whether Mass Effect is well-written is very debatable, but it's worth playing because the sheer amount of writing over the course of the three games is impressive, and keeping it reactive and influencable by the player (to whatever extent) is an impressive technical achievement. Alpha Protocol - The plot is your standard Hollywood spy thriller, but anyone who's played Alpha Protocol can tell you just how good the writing is. The whole game is massively reactive and Mike's decisions and attitudes can dramatically affect the outcome of the game. Every major character is well-realised with full backstories that you can discover, read up on, and even exploit. The Walking Dead - Some of the best videogame storytelling ever produced, Telltale's five-part Walking Dead series is the perfect zombie game - one with no shooting at all (well, almost none). Instead, the focus is on survival, decision-making and human relationships. The second season is in progress, and I haven't played it, but the first is almost universally critically acclaimed. Warning: this game will make you feel like poo poo and break your heart. Anything else I can check out? If you'd like to listen to videogame designers talk about writing, you could do worse than to listen to Idle Thumbs. The podcast is focused on general game design rather than specifically writing, but the cast members have worked on games such as The Walking Dead and Gone Home. It's also just a really good podcast about videogames in general. Seems a bit late to abandon this Q&A conceit now. Could you wrap up the OP somehow? Alright, I'm just about done, so now I hand over to everyone else. This thread is for discussion of writing in games, and games with good or bad writing. Basically if you can take the words "games" and "writing" and mash 'em together in a fun-sounding sentence, you can discuss that. That said, this is a topic that tends to incite lovely argument so there need to be a couple of ground rules.
I'll add more to this OP as needed and suggested. Please suggest good links if you know em, or anything important you feel I've missed, or disagree with anything I've written. Otherwise, discuss away! Somebody fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 23:29
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 08:34 |
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Gone Home is extremely poo poo and people should learn what actual good video game writing is, such as E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy or Sanctum 2.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:36
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I looked into my crystal ball to see the future of this thread and it turned black and exploded and there are pieces of glass in my face and in my eyes please call me an ambulance and punish the OP for his transgressions against the aether thanks
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Jul 5, 2014 23:38
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Jul 5, 2014 23:46
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I like games when they are about double damage power ups and not feelings.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:47
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I'm always interested writing that only works because it's a video game. The example I always think of is Nier. Like, the dream sequence segment that plays out as a meta-aware text adventure could only work in a video game. Or the super secret ending, which creates an emotional impact by forcing the player to sacrifice his bajillion hours of completionism. Or another example might be Space Funeral, which is kind of an extended musing on what aesthetics even are, and presents its story in terms of the ugly-but-unique artstyle of the game compared to the pretty-but-generic default art that you usually find in an RPGMaker game.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:49
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Betrayal at Krondor contains more writing than most full length novels: 
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Jul 5, 2014 23:53
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I was honestly hoping that the OP was about Princess Peach's Co-Dependency Subtext.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:55
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The first game with a meaningful story that really impressed me was Grim Fandango. On top of that it was funny as hell. Nier is another game where the story was touching and the dialog was funny when appropriate. Characters talked to each other a lot even outside of cutscenes and this helped to establish and develop relationships between them in a way that felt natural. I'm aware of the subtler things that constitute writing but it's tough to notice/remember those moments, so for now all I can do is list games I thought had good dialog or stories or characters, really: Earthbound, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Katamari Damacy, WarioWare, Killer 7, Persona 4, No More Heroes, Eternal Darkness, Sam & Max, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Link's Awakening, Animal Crossing... Nintendo, even when their plots are trite, are usually very good at scripting memorable moments and imbuing characters with personalities. EDIT: On the more literal side of things, Photopia is one of the best-written games I've ever played, at least based on how it has stuck with me. For such a brief and basic text adventure it would still lose a lot without the involvement of the player. Play it with color. Discount Viscount fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 00:01
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Some of the best video game stories have no words at all. By which I mean Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:14
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stupid normal: Catch 22 is a good book me: actually CoD Black Ops 2 with guest musician Trent Reznor is the best. nice try though.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:19
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Spec Ops: The Line - Dev: "Uhh yeah you are either a monster who kills people or you can shut off and not play the game that you paid 30$ for. Really, you have the choice to not be a monster  "Good writting!
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Jul 6, 2014 00:22
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EA has the best writing Dead Space 2: Unitology is a secretive society fronted via a popular religion Dead Space 3: Unitology is a secretive society front-oh dang Isaac the interplanetary Unitology army just CONQUERED THE ENTIRE PLANET EARTH in like two hours Mass Effect 2: Cerberus is a small group of rich people that push human interests into the limelight Mass Effect 3: Cerberus an army of like ten billion dudes that can take over the equivalent of all of NYC for a while if they wanted to Dragon Age Inquisition ???
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Jul 6, 2014 00:40
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On a more serious note, I like stuff like System Shock 2 or Deus Ex where there's tons of backstory and written logs and whatever to help build a setting, but I still think the most effective stuff in games is stuff like earlier Silent Hill titles or some Demon's Souls where the writing is less there to forward to plot and more to tune you in with the general feel of the game. Like compare Dead Space 1 to Dead Space 3. DS1's writing is very simple stuff, get here and fix this, turn this thing on, whatever, but it's all in service of the atmosphere and works. Compare to the writing in Visceral's other games like Dante's Inferno* or Dead Space 3 where they try to tell you what your emotional reaction has to be for each part of the game instead of just letting it play out. *I still can't believe this game exists.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:43
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I'm not sure bad translation is the same as bad writing.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:53
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Neo Rasa posted:EA has the best writing Ha, coincidentally enough Dead Space 2 was the game that got me thinking about videogame writing earlier this week. I haven't finished the game so I can't really comment on the plot (I expect it's roughly on par with Dead Space 1, which was middling at best but adequate enough for driving the game forward), but I keep picking up text logs and they're all so loving pointless and boring. Audio logs are bad enough but at least you can continue playing while listening to them. But for a text log you're expected to stop dead and read a wall of text about some boring detail about Unitology or some banal prattle about how things were rally nice before the corpse monsters invaded, which has no specific relevance to the plot and which I forget all about as soon as the window closes. It just strikes me as weird that they're in there. By design they have to be unimportant, because the player can miss them. If you're deliberately filling your game with pointless, irrelevant text, why not just stop and do something else? It's not even like there's information in them to help solve puzzles (as yet), because so far as I've played the game doesn't have any, and in any case I never needed any text guidance with DS1's limited puzzles. Why are we still holding this particular thing over from System Shock? There has to be a better way to add background detail to the world than literally just randomly dumping backstory.txt files around the map. They worked in Shock because those two games are all about exploring and searching for resources and things that might help you out, and finding a note was a good thing because it might tell you a keycode or direct you to an ammo cache or something that would help you survive the survival horror. Dead Space 2 doesn't need to do that because it tells you exactly where you're going, all the time, with the map marker that literally shows you exactly where to walk next, in case you get lost in the linear corridors. There's no longer a reason for the text files' existence except to tell instead of show. Roger Tangerines fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 00:57
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Roger Tangerines posted:our Watchmen, or our Breaking Bad. We're on our way already. Haha aim high
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Jul 6, 2014 01:06
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Mordaedil posted:I'm not sure bad translation is the same as bad writing. Blame yourself, or god.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:07
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Can't wait for the discussion on bludoblarrative blissonance. Is it a valid criticism because your happy-go-lucky puckish rogue just murdered fifty guys for next to no reason? Is it bullshit because the gameplay isn't storytelling? Who knows or cares? Still, I'm excited to see actual opinions on one of the most back and forth wishy washy parts of the medium realized and rationalized in here. It'll be interesting no matter what at least. 
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Jul 6, 2014 01:07
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Gone Home: I am a male internet sjw who is all for the LGTB movement, and will prove so, by saying that Gone Home is one of the best video games of all time, over and over
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Jul 6, 2014 01:08
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Liquid Penguins posted:I like games when they are about double damage power ups and not feelings. Hey, video games can inspire lots of feelings. Like the feeling of boner I get when I nail a quad damage railgun multikill  . The games that get critical acclaim for writing are p. much being praised for not being, "John Q. Halo jumped out of his trusty warthog, sighed as he drew his katana, and then killed 400 dudes." Mass effect is in the OPs list as an example of good writing. 
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Jul 6, 2014 01:13
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People who care about stories in videogames enable hacks like David Cage and are therefore awful.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:16
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Ekster posted:People who care about stories in videogames enable hacks like David Cage and are therefore awful. This times a million billion. If I want a movie I'll just watch a loving movie.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:19
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gone home is overrated but i am fully in support of games that make nerds mad
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Jul 6, 2014 01:25
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I don't think you know what good writing is, OP. Still, someone linked me this bunch of words the other day and while I haven't read all of it yet it seems to at least establish a solid ground for talking about these things. Also, obligatory: a thing someone posted:When writing Dragon Age 2 we weren't aiming to make another generic boring fantasy that you expect was written by some old white guy. That kind of writing is just out of touch with most people nowadays. What we really wanted to create was a story that'd be an instant sensation, like the works of Rowling and Meyer. The kinds of stories that bridge all demographics in their appeal.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:29
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People who say video games don't have good writing should give Bioshock Infinite a try 
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Jul 6, 2014 01:30
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Ekster posted:People who care about stories in videogames enable hacks like David Cage and are therefore awful. If you're looking for a medium with no hacks, why not try there are no mediums like that Meow Tse-tung posted:Mass effect is in the OPs list as an example of good writing. Nah, it isn't. It's there to provide an example of scope more than anything. I don't think the writing in Mass Effect is particularly good, but for the most part it's competent, so it's impressive that by the time they got around to ME3 the plot threads all remained broadly coherent and didn't spiral off into some massive incomprehensible clusterfuck, which they easily could have. Those games did a good job of keeping a huge number of possible plot threads under control and keeping them relevant to the main story right up until the ending. The ending ignored all of that poo poo which was a huge disappointment, but up until then it was impressive.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:30
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Roger Tangerines posted:Nah, it isn't. Actually, it is, right there under The Last of Us and above Alpha Protocol.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:32
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I think if your game seeks to have a good story, it should have a not lovely game first so I don't get bored with it.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:33
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I long for the day when the medium as a whole can achieve at least the standards for writing, character personality, and portrayal of emotions found in the average Kirby game. This is not entirely an unserious wish.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:34
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Ekster posted:People who care about stories in videogames enable hacks like David Cage and are therefore awful. He always presents his games as "We're telling an epic story unlike anything you've seen." Nobody wants that. They want an epic game that contains a good story as well. Heavy Rain being treated as anything other then a technically advanced CYOA novel was a joke. Everyone bitches and moans about how they're limited by the need to make the game fun, yet still manage to make really mediocre games with weak stories that barely rise above middle school fanfiction and try to pretend they're revolutionizing the gaming medium. I have more respect for the guy who made Senran Kagura then David Cage; he wanted to make a titty ninja fighting game where clothes fall off and titty ninjas vie for world domination, and did. No sweeping tale of oppression and sacrifice, no emotionally flat character deaths scenes where the game tries to force you to care that some peripheral NPC dies, just blatant anime titty fighting with some plot tying it together, plus shitloads of costumes and accessories to make them wear. Meanwhile in Beyond Two Souls you can watch Ellen Paige shower for some crucially important gameplay/plot reason that makes it somehow 'art'.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:35
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TheFluff posted:I don't think you know what good writing is, OP. oh yeah that's absolutely true, especially with regard to videogames. This is why I started a discussion thread about it. I'm not pretending to be an expert in what is good writing and what isn't. I just think there's room to discuss it in a more useful way than just fellating/making GBS threads on games which do something different, or risky. TheFluff posted:Still, someone linked me this bunch of words the other day and while I haven't read all of it yet it seems to at least establish a solid ground for talking about these things. This is great, thanks for this. I'm going to read the whole thing and add it to the OP. Babyface Mingo posted:Actually, it is, right there under The Last of Us and above Alpha Protocol. please stop making GBS threads up my thread
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Jul 6, 2014 01:38
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David Cage isn't really a fair point of discussion because he's a poor writer. Every single game of his literally feels like he's writing it as it happens and it just gets shittier and shittier as it goes on. Indian Ghost Tornadoes and The Mayan Matrix.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:38
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David Cage isn't really an example of how a focus on writing ruins games, because his writing is pretty much poo poo, too.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:38
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It is true I killed my mentor and yet I am not his murderer.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:41
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Beef Waifu posted:I think if your game seeks to have a good story, it should have a not lovely game first so I don't get bored with it. This.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:42
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If a game does have a good story but lovely gameplay, we can always just make The Dark Id play it for us.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:43
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While I agree with the OP's point that there's nothing inherent to video games as a medium that prevents it from having good writing, the number of actually well written video games seems vanishingly small. I haven't played all of your example games from the OP but the ones I have played (or at least seen played) I all consider poorly written. Mass Effect in particular (I've only played the first game) is pretty offensively bad even if you disregard its failings as a game. As far as sci-fi goes even the kind of poo poo that Baen puts out by the wagonload is less bland.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:44
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planescape: torment was good
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Jul 6, 2014 01:45
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 08:34 |
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I prefer game stories that deal with the player's agency in a meaningful way. One of many reasons I hated FEAR 2 was because nothing I did seemed to have any impact on the game's world, either for better or worse - the state of the two major antagonists at the end of the game was exactly the same as when it had started. Now this isn't exactly "I want to be made to feel like a hero/badass," and honestly I'm also a bit tired of my player characters getting praised for everything they do. But still, give the player a reason to be there if you're going to have story things happening in front of them.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:46
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