Assassins and Apocalyptic Wastelands Get Nod for Writers Guild Award

[Daedalus1942]

SIngularity made the list? Really? That's pretty bloody ridicul...

Wait. Did I just see...

The Force Unleashed?!

Really?

Well WGA, there goes your credibility down the toilet. And the membership thing doesn't help matters.

What? Singularity had a better plot than God of War and the Force Unleashed. Why is that so hard to believe? Singularity was actually a pretty solid game.
-Tabs<3-

Uhh... yeah, Singularity did have a better plot then GoW III and Force Unleashed. But they both had awful plots. It's like saying Clash of the Titans (the new one) had a better plot then The Expendables. It's true, sure, but it's still not much of a compliment.

Anyway, the main thing I remember about Singularity's plot is how forgettable it was. It was painfully bland and utterly devoid of interesting characters.

Well, I actually quite enjoyed Singularity. Okay the characters weren't all that interesting. I found the bad guy to be the most interesting, but the overall plot of it wasn't half bad. The sound design was top notch and the scripted sequences weren't too annoying. I also found the ending quite funny (all four them).
-Tabs<3-

 

[Icarion (aka Stockholm)]

SIngularity made the list? Really? That's pretty bloody ridicul...

Wait. Did I just see...

The Force Unleashed?!

Really?

Well WGA, there goes your credibility down the toilet. And the membership thing doesn't help matters.

What? Singularity had a better plot than God of War and the Force Unleashed. Why is that so hard to believe? Singularity was actually a pretty solid game.
-Tabs<3-

Uhh... yeah, Singularity did have a better plot then GoW III and Force Unleashed. But they both had awful plots. It's like saying Clash of the Titans (the new one) had a better plot then The Expendables. It's true, sure, but it's still not much of a compliment.

Anyway, the main thing I remember about Singularity's plot is how forgettable it was. It was painfully bland and utterly devoid of interesting characters.

Regardless, none of them will win. Either AC or FO:NV will take the cake, because they had pretty deep storylines and plots.

 

[Lt. Vinciti]

What.
The.
Fuck.

Red Dead Redemption...

is missing

Also: Force Unleashed 2....really...

That was a cashcow...not written

 

[Talvrae]

Force Unleashed 2 and not Mass Efect 2? i call the bullshit hammer

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Well, really, not that agree or anything, but why do so much people care? It's some award somewhere. Yeah, I don't think any of these deserve to be on the list more than Mass Effect 2 or Heavy Rain, but why is there so much complaining in the thread?

Yeah, it's fairly obvious the people who give the award don't play much games or really know what they're talking about (unless they're just really original, in that case, props to them, but I still disagree).

But, really, it's some award somewhere.

 

[cerebus23]

Umm no mass effect 2, no red deed redemption?

and star wars unleashed 1 won an award and swfu2 is nominated for one this year?

Geee go go writers guild, way to make yourselves look stupid as hell.

 

[Ldude893]

Almost all of these games have been ripped to shreds by Ben Yahtzee, and all of them were made to be cash cows. I probably understand the nomination of Fallout New Vegas, but The Force Unleashed II and Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands?
This is just retarded.

 

[Zetsubou-Sama]

While I can't back up most of these games, Fallout New Vegas was really well written, blowing FO3 out of the water, still RDR and Mass Effect 2 should be in there, altough the latter was kind of disappointing when compared to it's Prequel.

 

[Alade]

Yeah, this list makes me wish these idiots would strike again so that a lot of them can go bankrupt (let's face it, the actually good ones won't) and get off my internet...

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Wait i don't know much about the Writer's Guild. Is it like a group that writers have to join or something, and hence Good games like ME2, RDR and Enslaved aren't on there; because their wrtiers aren't in the guild? Clarification for us hillbilly types please? :3

 

[Irridium]

I love how everyone is freaking out over ME2 not being included. The writers aren't part of the guild, therefore it doesn't get nominated. Simple as that.

However, the Force Unleashed 2's story sucked, but played much better then the original. Which is funny, because the original played like ass but had a great story.

 

[icyneesan]

Why is everyone complaining? If people want they're favorite games on this list (or not crap games on this list) then go complain to your favorite game's writer/s and tell him/her/them to join the Writers Guild

Or I could be wrong, the best writers in the video game industry could be part of the writers guild and the person who picked the entries for this list is 'questionable' to say the least.

Wait i don't know much about the Writer's Guild. Is it like a group that writers have to join or something, and hence Good games like ME2, RDR and Enslaved aren't on there; because their wrtiers aren't in the guild? Clarification for us hillbilly types please? :3

Unfortunately, not every game is eligible for the award, no matter how well written they might be. In order to qualify for this year's awards, the game had to have come out between December 1st 2009 and November 30th 2010, and have a separate writing credit. That writer must also have joined the WGA, or have applied to join, by the time the script was submitted for consideration.

Its like NO ONE read the article, only looked at the list, and just jumped to RAGING

 

[Mr. Omega]

I'm glad to see AC Brotherhood and Singularity (that game was underrated!) getting some love. New Vegas is also a great choice. The others... eh... well...

 

[Falseprophet]

I guess Bioware doesn't have any writters on staff that are part of the WGA.

I'd assume not. BioWare's core writing team doesn't seem to have changed much in the past decade, and there's no point in joining a union if management is treating you decently. Not many other studios respect the writing as much as BioWare, from what I can tell. (A friend of mine has horror stories from his brief writing stint for another major developer.) There's also the fact the WGA probably has no jurisdiction over a Canadian studio anyway.

Because, you know, unions are notoriously kind to non-members.

Some day Drew Karpyshyn's going to be found in a ditch with a quill in his back.

Mark Evanier had a story about the kind of things studio execs try to pull on writers when they don't have WGA oversight (comes from the bottom of this page [http://povonline.com/scrappydays/scrappy03.htm]):

Spoiler: What studio execs try to pull on non-WGA shows

A week or so later, I was in the Hanna-Barbera Xerox Room and I happened to see my script being mass-copied for distribution. I peeked to see if any rewrites had been done since it had left me and there didn't seem to be any. In fact, the script hadn't even been retyped. They were copying the printout I'd handed in, the one from my word processor.

But someone had typed a new title page and instead of saying, "Written by Mark Evanier," it now had my name plus that of another writer in the studio. In fact, the other writer was the son of an executive at the Hanna-Barbera studio.

Three minutes later, title page in hand, I barged into the office of that executive and you can pretty much imagine what I said. He explained that his son had been among the many writers who'd worked on Scrappy Doo before I'd been hired. He felt his son deserved some credit for all the hours he'd put in on the project. I said, "He may have put in many hours but he didn't put them in on this script. I wrote this script and you put his name on my work." The exec apologized and ordered the title pages reprinted...and I had yet another example to cite of how writers get abused when they work on projects not covered by the Writers Guild of America. That kind of thing would never have happened on a WGA show...or if it had, the Guild would have handled it in a jif.

 

[Arrakiv]

BioWare's core writing team doesn't seem to have changed much in the past decade, and there's no point in joining a union if management is treating you decently. Not many other studios respect the writing as much as BioWare, from what I can tell.

Bioware has an actual core writing staff that largely sticks with the studio from game to game. That isn't the case with most studios, where writers are contracted to draft a story on a game-by-game basis. So, it would make sense that they aren't in the WGA, yep.

 

[felixader]

Star Wars? Really? I am REALLY confused.

If Force Unleashed 2 is on there Mass Effect 2 should be there too, This is just the biggest piece of bullshit I have ever been fed.

Yeah, what the hell?

 

[your evil twin]

If you read the article carefully, you'll see that only a few games can be nominated because the game neesd to have writers that are part of the Writers Guild of America. Clearly Mass Effect 2 does not.

It is cool seeing Singularity getting some recognition. While it certainly wasn't a literary masterpiece, it did handle a time travel plotline better than a lot of Hollywood movies and TV shows.

I heard that one of the writers was also someone that worked on the series FlashFoward, and I can believe that, similar issues of temporal weirdness and fighting fate. And while Yahtzee in his Zero Punctuation review criticised the plot twist as being blindingly obvious, he failed to mention there were other plot twists that were pretty damn ingenious. I was grinning during the ending movies.

It would be quite easy to turn the game's plot into a blockbuster sci-fi action movie, without it being obvious that it was based on a videogame, and there aren't many that can say that.

 

[Danpascooch]

I want TFU2 to win solely for the lulz