Bioshock Writer Fed Up With Industry

[go-10]

she needs to play more indie games
needless to say her writting skills are by far the best in the industry so... lead by example anyone?

 

[CityofTreez]

As long as we have people saying that story doesn't matter, or that "If you want a story, go read a book!" we'll never have good writing and story. The problem is that most devs don't care about story, or it's such an afterthought that it's drivel. Heck, her game, Far Cry 2 is a good example of a game with a horrid story. Games get made with a premise, to only get a half assed story shoved in with a set of rules, not the other way around.

Games over the past decade have become more involved in story telling, but we still have a long way to go. When you have the stories of Deus Ex or Half-Life as the pinnacle, well.... that's not good.

Gameplay is important, but it's not always the most important thing when it comes to game. TWD is a basic point and click, but I'd best almost every person played it for the story rather than loving the PAC genre.

 

[thanatos388]

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.

You think writers have a lot more control over a games development than they actually do don't you. Writers having a meaningful impact on a game is a rarity and are usually an afterthought put in at the last minute to give the game a purpose to have the player bother, like how porn needs to have a "story" to justify the sex many games just have an "story" put in to justify and give some shallow meaning to the fighting. While there is a lot more effort being put into it games and stories are still too separate in the product itself. Having the cut scenes happen like a movie only the fighting be taken over by the player and since there needs to be more game play than cut-scenes there is a LOT of fighting.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

We already have an example of an amazing story in video-games... MGS. That game series gets so overlooked just because it has tons of cut scenes, but you know what, it has much more gameplay than other examples of great stories in videos games such as TWD, To the Moon.

MGS's story might be a bit convoluted at times, but if you actually pay attention everything makes sense and it made some amazing points about why we play video-games, war and the life of a soldier way before Spec Ops came along and took all the credit for exploring those themes first. Put MGS1 into movie form and you lose all of the funny CODEC conversations, the easter eggs, the tense gameplay and more.

When sneaking into Shadow Moses for the first time, fighting the Boss and walking through the Microwave Corridor I felt so much more emotionally engaged than I would have been if they were movies. Now compare that to To the Moon, did any of you really feel enganged by the gameplay, or the story? It was the story, it was the same for me and it's the same for pretty much everyone else.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I don't know if I agree with her statement that the games industry is dominated by "technical" people. Beyond the programming staff, every other person who develops the game is in a creative field. Given that programmers represent only a tiny fraction of the manpower on any modern AAA game, to assert that they alone have the power is foolish. Programmers build systems and nothing more. Given the creative staff includes the designer, it seems that blaming the technical side for a disconnect between systems and presentation is foolish. That is, fundamentally, a key role of designer after all.

 

[Chemical Alia]

There's nothing wrong with leaving the industry to pursue opportunities that will let you use your skills in a more satisfying way, that's why so many people go into the game industry in the first place and I can relate to that sentiment. I loved the story of Bioshock, but I only got like half way through the new Tomb Raider because I felt that the way the story was told through the gameplay experience was boring, and after the ninth time I had to go "rescue someone" who ended up dying anyway just to get me to another area of the map, I just lost interest and gave up. It felt like the narrative was shoehorned into this gameplay without much care for the pacing. The excitement of wondering what's going to happen next is my biggest motivator for continuing a game, and if that's not there, then the gameplay itself better be amaaazing.

I'm no game designer, but it's my opinion that games work the best when the story and the gameplay complement each other and have a natural pacing. If the story is written with the gameplay in mind and not in a vacuum, it's going to feel more natural. I'm not saying that you must be a gamer to write for games, but it probably helps and you should at least strive to be aware of this and not fight it. That's why The Walking Dead was so fun, and never once did I feel like the shooting was out of place or contrived in Gears of War.

 

[Jennacide]

But hasn't she disproved her own point in that her game-writing skills are well... pretty damn good? Lead the pack! Show everyone else how it's done. "Good for us" may not be "good enough for you", but when you're offering the best, you can only lead by example.

I think the point she's trying to make is that there are still parts of the story where your hands are tied as a writer. In Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite, she had to come up with villian factions for the protagonists to be shooting at constantly. That wouldn't neccesarily be something she wanted to come up with, and yet had to, because the gameplay mandated it.

In my personal opinion, part of her troubles are more about being in the blockbuster AAA games sector. Indie games are way better known now for having interesting stories, and the gameplay being wrapped around the story being told, instead of the other way around used by AAA games. Not all indie games of course, but I'd say more indie games are recognized for good story these days than AAA games are, or ever have been.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

A plum is as good enough to a hungry man as any other type of fruit could be, but when a man wishes to eat a plum there is no fruit more perfect for the role than a plum. If she what she really want is to find new different and original ways of preparing a plum (Read as: Games) for other people to eat then I've got her back, but if all she wants to do is prepare plums as some other type of fruit (Read as: books, movies or television) then the sooner she is gone the better.

 

[Virgilthepagan]

I can see where she's coming from here. As a writer it must be frustrating to do work on a project like Far Cry 2 or Tomb Raider. Every time you build a solid character arc, you have to find room to justify the town's worth of people the gamer will end up murdering over the course of the game. In Jack's case for Bioshock it made perfect sense, but that doesn't always mesh perfectly.

Maybe she could look into working on fewer action games? The genre itself might be part of the problem here.