(Source: Craig Stern @ Gamasutra.com)
Over the past year or so, there has been a small but growing swell of complaints about the quality of writing in video games. Commenting on the 2008 Writer's Guild Awards for best videogame writing, Paul Hyman posed, "Awards for the best video game writing? Isn't that an oxymoron?" Adam Volk insists that "most interactive titles are written by the kind of hacks you'd find penning Full House fan-fic and scripting color commentary for American Gladiators." The lamentations go on. I even find myself criticizing games writing on occasion.
The impreciseness of the "video games writing is bad" complaint makes it difficult to suggest a solution, however. What is it, exactly, that we think is lacking: is it prose quality, good characterization, character development, good dialog, interesting themes, depth and seriousness of subject matter, or some amalgamation of the above? Nathaniel Edwards complains of a glut of games that are "juvenile, violent, and stupid," by contrast to games that harbor "important narratives." Volk, in turn, focuses on the dearth of snappy dialog, immersive narrative, and non-linear storytelling.
All of these are legitimate criticisms. Many games suffer from dull characters and limp dialog, don't take full advantage of their interactivity in telling a story, and fail to explore interesting, sophisticated themes in anywhere near the depth that they deserve.
But just because many--even most--games have bad writing, does this mean that "video games writing" as a whole is bad? As some have pointed out, the majority of writing in any medium is bound to be underwhelming. Fiction is an obvious example. From the "penny dreadfuls" to dime novels and pulp magazines, fiction has long been dominated by bad writing. The state of fiction today is improved somewhat by virtue of the fact that consumers of fiction are a smaller, more self-selecting group than in past eras, but that still doesn't keep the borderline-illiterate Dan Browns and Stephanie Meyers of the industry from leaping effortlessly onto the rungs of the bestseller lists.
Read the full article at Gamasutra.com.
