Bioshock Writer Fed Up With Industry

[Pedro The Hutt]

You know, now that I've been thinking about it, I can't help but feel that she's shot her Tomb Raider co-writer, Rhianna Pratchett in the foot, as earlier this year she launched the #1reasontobe campaign to counterbalance #1reasonwhy, so basically listing why it's awesome to be in the games industry (as a woman). So now she basically openly says that Pratchett her campaign is nonsense and that the best thing to do is abandon ship because a creative worker of their calibre will never get the respect they deserve in the industry.


Captcha: Top notch, indeed~

 

[xPixelatedx]

Yes, yes I know, you wish you were making movies instead.
Is what a lot of people suspect of game writers and this:

As she sees it, it's a consequence of the lopsided ratios of technical staff to creative staff in development studios -

kind of confirms it. Personally I think this gen had too much damn story and suffered a great deal (game play and mechanic wise) because of it. I did like Bioshock, but that's basically my limit and it's RARE that I have an actual desire to play a game like that. I'd rather just play something like Contra, Mega Man, or Ghouls'N Ghosts; something that speaks more through what it shows and plays rather then what it says and reads. Please don't misinterpret me, She seems to be a damned good story teller... but I think shes right, games may not be the proper venue for her. I think she, and everyone else, would be happier is she wrote books or scripts.

 

[ninjaRiv]

Gamelay matters more over story but that doesn't mean story has to take a backseat. I've plenty plenty of games where the story is as important as the playing. It's been done, what she's saying can't be done right now. Besides, she should be working on fixing any problems she sees if games are so important to her. To be honest, though, this sounds like somebody venting. I think she'll cool down and realise the sillyness of her statements.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Well good luck to her. I'd love to see some more Bioshock's and Tomb Raider's done with an even stronger focus on story but the games industry does sound like a fucking terrible place to work in.

Like others have said though I bet she would do well with smaller companies, like Double Fine for example. They seem to have a much stronger focus on story telling.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

You know, now that I've been thinking about it, I can't help but feel that she's shot her Tomb Raider co-writer, Rhianna Pratchett in the foot, as earlier this year she launched the #1reasontobe campaign to counterbalance #1reasonwhy, so basically listing why it's awesome to be in the games industry (as a woman). So now she basically openly says that Pratchett her campaign is nonsense and that the best thing to do is abandon ship because a creative worker of their calibre will never get the respect they deserve in the industry.


Captcha: Top notch, indeed~

I don't mean to be rude but I think you missed the point here.

As far as I can remember the #reasontobe thing was about sexual equality and this is about designers equality. Nothing to do with the fact that Susan is female (as far as we know).

 

[AuronFtw]

The phrase "be the change you want to see in the world" comes to mind when I read this article. If she wants to abandon ship and not be a contributor to paving the way for better storytelling in games then good riddance.

That would be logical if she was the queen of the gaming universe. Unfortunately, she's a writer. She can't seriously influence how publishers and devs do their jobs, which is what would be required before the industry gets the point she wants it to be at.

The current companies are all (mostly, if you want to be pedantic and point out indie companies) focused on cranking out Gears of Medal of Battle of Uncharted Angry Dudebros VII, not anything with a touching story - and because all that effort is going into graphics, guns, cutscenes and other fake-depth game aspects, the story always suffers as a result. She's looking for a time when the actual story is what DRIVES the game - the story is what the game is built around, with narrative aspects and even game mechanics lending themselves to the driving plot.

Currently that's really fucking rare. Story is what people fill in the gaps with - particularly in the big name games, it's just a way to bridge all the shooting galleries together. The characters don't develop, they don't bond with each other or even with the player in most cases. Companies never "focus" on the story because they're convinced idiot dudebros make up the entirety of the gaming market, so they don't even bother trying to appeal to anyone with IQ above a dish of soap - and that's what this writer has a problem with. The medium as a whole is suffering because of the dudebro tunnelvision.

Should dudebro games stop being made? Obviously not, they're still a big market. But should games be made ONLY for dudebros? No, that's fucking stupid, and that's the problem she has right now. Until writers get the power to change the direction their entire company goes in with future titles (hint: they never will), it's fucking bonkers to blame her for her desire to "abandon ship."

 

[Woodsey]

"Susan O'Connor knows a thing or two about writing for video games. A games writer for nearly a decade, she's worked on... this year's Tomb Raider."

Heh. Definitely only a thing or two, then.

To be fair though, she's right. I can't actually believe the Tomb Raider guys had the balls to come out and say they'd lowered the number of people you shoot over the course of development. Anyone not looking to simply make the biggest homogenised blend that would appeal to as many people as possible would have focused that game far more on stealth, and reduced the enemy count ten-fold.

Oh for christ sake. They're games, can you really be so dense as to be surprised when the GAMEplay of the GAME take more precedence over story?

And why are we so concerned about being compared to other media? Games have different rules to films and books, and by trying to make games more like them, you cheapen the medium.

If this is the kind of person we have writing games, I'm glad she's gone.

Although I would agree that people's constant looking to other mediums - cinema in particular - cheapens gaming, I think you're rather missing the point the larger point, which is that narrative and gameplay should not be competing forces. One can be subordinate to the other but they shouldn't be excused when they jar, which they often do.

 

[Fappy]

So... She admits she has the skills, but doesn't want to do the work to help make the medium better and wants to apply those skills elsewhere...

Pathetic.

She's under no obligation to sacrifice a potentially happy career to improve the industry for everyone else. If she thinks she'd be happier writing in another medium, more power to her.

It could be she is writing stories for the wrong games too. If she is having a problem trying to justify in the story why the player has to shoot enemies and keep the game moving she could try her hand at point and click adventure games. Personally, I feel some point and click games have some of the best game stories like the Syberia games which I absolutely love.

At the same time though it does sound like she wants games to have better stories but doesn't want to be the one responsible in making the stories better.

I agree. I feel she should probably branch out and look at her options before going cold-turkey. There are a lot of genres out there that are more flexible and accentuate good writing better than action/shooters.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Not all games need a great story, some stories are a means to an end. Why are you shooting enemies? Nuclear bombs. Done. lol. Some games are story based, some are game based.

 

[Mr. Q]

I really wish she would reconsider and find another outlet in the games industry to make storytelling better. Still, I can understand her overall frustration with her job. Unless she was fully in charge of the product from start to finish or part of a collaborative effort that worked together to make a great game instead of cranking out a mediocre game for a quick buck, she's nothing more than a replaceable cog in the massive machine that is AAA gaming. This is just another sad indication that the AAA market, if not the entire industry, is facing a moment where the disgraceful actions within the industry will cost them in the long run. I don't mean to be the guy totting around a sign that says "Repent! The End is Nigh!" but the gaming industry needs to get its shit together and fast if it really wants to survive in the economy and be taken seriously as an art form.

 

[RedmistSM]

Couldn't she try to get work on other things than shooters? I mean, there's lots of games that don't involve any sort of violence at all, or stylizes its action so there's no need to "justify" the murdering of hundreds of grunts, and all of them benefit from a good context.

 

[Jodan]

dont give up
writing a book is one thing but presenting a story in video game format is so much more complex, and if done right can be rewarding, patience is needed, for i doubt that we have seen the full potential. writing was invented long befor cicero and shakspeare. and it took a long time for a dickens of a victor hugo to do their work.
but a video game is more than that the script does have to be goo and it can be very meaningfull. but the coders and the graphical artists and even the voice actors have to work together its not a one man affair. thus briliance is a group affair encompassing all the desisions of the whole team. if the management is stifling now we will get stifled games but we are seeing more and more mature games that are still fun and there will be even more later as the genre evolves.

 

[Lightknight]

Wait, she thinks there should be more writers than technical staff for video games? Most forms of media have only a few writers and then large staff to create the platform for the story they're telling. The bigger the platform, the more staff you need. I can't think of any medium where that ratio is inverse. If you don't have a writer, you don't have a story for the platform to be made for and two many cooks do ruin a soup. Especially where story telling is concerned. In gaming, it requires more hands to create the platform than you'd see in most other industries. Writers are seldom also super savy software developers also. Though that's a convenient skill combination in game development. But you only need one really good writer to tell a fantastic story. You need multiple writers to bounce great ideas and be able to filter an even better story out of it. But you'd almost never need more writers than developers unless the game mechanics were remarkably simple. Perhaps she could offer her services to independent developers who have a smaller technical staff and can't produce as robust a platform for storytelling as the large studios she's worked for can?

Saying that she wants to tell different kinds of stories is entirely apt as a reason to switch mediums. There are some stories that simply do not benefit from viewer interaction like games are all about. An example of the genre or type of story she's interested in telling without giving details would be great. What stories can't be told in gaming? Dear Esther already expanded the industry in a way I hadn't anticipated and there shouldn't be a reason why other stories couldn't also be designed in that kind of way.

I will say that the target market is mostly male, especially on consoles as I've already shown the math for her (only about 18% of console (360 or ps3) gamers were female in 2010). If she wants to tell stories that are more female oriented then there would be an investment wall she'd run into. But a writer of her caliber could change the face of gaming.

 

[Monsterfurby]

There simply is no mainstream medium without a template. Films often drape their stories on a very formulaic structure, successful novels give more freedom, but often have to adhere to genre conventions to be published. And games - well, games need to include gameplay, I'm afraid. That however does not mean that gameplay must be valued higher than story, but only that one has to use both carefully and prudently.

Then again, the notion of prudence is already too complex for most mainstream debates.

 

[HaraDaya]

The new Call of Juarez is an example of where the story works with the gameplay. People tend to exaggerate when telling stories, and therefore the action you're put in is that of an over-the-top, exaggerated tale.

 

[Froggy Slayer]

...depends on the game, really.

Some games, like Bioshock or The Walking Dead are very heavily led by storyline, and there should be a place for good writers in these games. Not every game should be a complex narrative tale, however. Sometimes; well, you just want to shoot shit up. Anyway, some of the best stories in video games are the ones that create themselves. There's a place for both, and I do agree that in a story-driven game the writers should have more creative control.

 

[DaedricDuke]

Not everyone wants to be a trail blazer, if she feels she is held back by this medium and can do better in other mediums then I say I wish her well. Following where your passions lie does not make you a bad person, we don't need to jump on this persons throat for making a career choice. Calm down people.

Right on! Most people seem to have this "f**k her we don't need her" attitude, but we should let her make her own choice if she feels this is where her career needs to go.

 

[Balkan]

The reason why The Walking Dead had such a great effect was that the story was ticking well with the gameplay. Yes, there weren't so many playable sections but that was the beauty of it, the emotional moments weren't followed by regular action sections. Every moment felt special.

 

[disappointed]

Just as a general rule, I think it's best to give the benefit of the doubt on a subject to someone who's been more successful in that area than I have. I'm sure this woman knows what she's talking about. She clearly wants games to tell better stories and I imagine that if there were a practical way for her to do that, she would have taken it. I may think there's an easy way she could be writing better games but I doubt there's anything I can think of that she hasn't already considered.

This is exactly the kind of honest and open discussion we want with game developers and we should be supportive of anyone who sticks their neck out in this way.

 

[A Curious Fellow]

I feel like i can just namedrop Bioware and win this argument, but someone probably already has.