progress. Instinct, therefore, must be expunged. It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of human urges: The urge to reproduce.
We should thank our benefactors for giving us respite from this overpowering force. They have thrown a switch and exorcised our demons in a single stroke. They have given us the strength we never could have summoned to overcome this compulsion. They have given us purpose. They have turned our eyes toward the stars.
Let me assure you that the suppressing field will be shut off on the day that we have mastered ourselves... the day we can prove we no longer need it. And that day of transformation, I have it on good authority, is close at hand.
This scene sent chills down my spine. The human race has become a collection of cattle, shoved into the ghettos to be controlled and handled. It was a terrifying portrait of lost humanity; we didn’ t even have the ability to create new life. That chill I felt wasn’ t created by the graphics: the writing did it.
Half-Life 2 is loaded with powerful moments like this, and the writing worked with the technology to make the game a modern classic. Bad writing could have turned the same game into a B-novel of the ripest variety. But the very success of the game points up the weakness of game writing in general, and it begs the question: why don’ t we have more examples of scenes like this? What, exactly, is the problem?
Let’ s take a look at the problem.
words and dialogue would raise the quality of almost every game on the market; even games lauded for being literary, like Hotel Dusk, usually have subpar writing when compared to any other medium.
We’ re so starved for writing that when we’ re thrown a bone with a few scraps on it, we treat it like steak. We need to stop going gaga over games that are simply wordy and start caring more about quality and emotional impact. Do we praise a game because it’ s a step in the right direction or because memorable lines and characters populate its world? Sales chart routinely show games with barely passable writing in the top ten, while games with excellent writing— Beyond Good and Evil, Grim Fandango, System Shock— become critical favorites but rarely make the charts. In fact, from a purely financial perspective, good writing can seem almost detrimental.
Even when the writers try to turn out a quality plot, they often end up with nothing more than a steaming pile of clichés and a few cardboard characters. The reason isn’ t hard to find.
We write what we know. And we are geeks
Ken Levine is designing Bioshock, a game that draws on the work of Ayn Rand for its story and setting. He may be painting in broad strokes here, but his brutal take on game writers has the ring of truth to it.“ Most video game people have read one book and seen one
Why writing isn’ t taken seriously
The number one reason writing isn’ t taken more seriously in gaming is that writing doesn’ t translate into dollars. Top-selling games do fine without good writing or compelling characters. As fans of the art of gaming, though, we’ re concerned with making games better, not just selling more copies. Emphasizing
Bioshock
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