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So What Happened To All Our Favourite Writers?.

Testownia

Guest
What are you all talking about? Josh Sawyer is currently in the process of developing another game. All is well in the world.
 

purupuru

Learned
Joined
Nov 2, 2019
Messages
414
Why not go though the list. It can't be that long given rpgs generally have shit to serviceable tier writing anyway.
Just because the new batch of American writers are extraordinarily banal and obnoxious doesn't mean the old guys are actually good writers.
 

buffalo bill

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2016
Messages
1,004
obviously it's a global conspiracy by pedophile lizard people who have systematically replaced all good human RPG writers with covert lizard person pedophile agents to bring decline to western civilization
 

Chippy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
6,037
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I've never been able to find any way to contact the writer of Arcanum. I've even made a thread here hoping someone else could help to no avail.
There were even people who thought his name was a pseudonym(it's not)

Somebody needs to find this writer. After BG1, I thought Arcanum set the best tone for any RPG.
 

CanadianCorndog

Learned
Joined
Feb 2, 2021
Messages
147
Good writing doesn't come from a class or from copying other authors. It comes from life, from people, from understanding humanity.

It's not really fair but if you compare the life of Hemmingway to any modern author, let alone any game writer, the difference is quite stark. Modern writers have no life.

I forget who it was but a famous author was invited to a prestigious MFA class. He walked up and told everyone to quit the class and go do something else with their lives. You won't learn to write from other failures. Likewise, all the best game designers didn't study game design, they studied history, philosophy, and mythology. Nowadays even attempting to understand human nature is a thought crime, so everything has become unreadable alien drivel.

When your writing team consists of fat blue-haired problem-glasses slash fiction writers from tumblr, you're gonna have a bad time.

Yup. They don't have a unique point of view because they are just consumers of mass media with opinions. Someone like Bukowski, who spent years and years as a mailman dealing with real people, has always been rare but is now virtually extinct.
 

Pegultagol

Erudite
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
1,183
Location
General Gaming
Good writing doesn't come from a class or from copying other authors. It comes from life, from people, from understanding humanity.

I think Miyazaki also said before retiring in 2013 something to the effect of anime industry being dominated by fanboys who have limited life experiences to draw from.

So perhaps there seem to be a lot more fan service and gratuity in anime nowadays because these 'fanboys' were grown up on consuming these forms of artistry at the exclusion of reality and the writing that attests to it.

As for RPGs on this side of the pond, the writing department has been catered by 'fan fiction' level writing as well but instead of bouncing tits and panty shots, they get SJWs.
 

bandersnatch

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Dec 27, 2020
Messages
118
I think Miyazaki also said before retiring in 2013 something to the effect of anime industry being dominated by fanboys who have limited life experiences to draw from.

I tend to think movies foreshadow what to expect from writers these days in the game industry. Even big properties like Star Wars are written by SJW fanboys with limited life experiences. Good art requires diverse life experiences to draw on. Never trust a love story written by an autistic virgin.
 

Terenty

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 29, 2018
Messages
1,367
I've never been able to find any way to contact the writer of Arcanum. I've even made a thread here hoping someone else could help to no avail.
There were even people who thought his name was a pseudonym(it's not)
I thought it was Boyarsky for some reason. Who did the writing for Fallout 1? Because both F1 and Arcanum had good writing, concise and appropriately witty
 
Unwanted

Sweeper

Unwanted
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
2,394
The best games were designed by 20-something year olds who lived in their mom's basement.
There's a reason why all the best games came out in a short span between 1995 - 2000ish.
It was the time window where the craft was perfected, and before it turned corporate.
It was a time when autists designed shit of their own volition, before the suits got involved.
We will never see such an era again.
 

CanadianCorndog

Learned
Joined
Feb 2, 2021
Messages
147
There's a reason why all the best games came out in a short span between 1995 - 2000ish.
It was the time window where the craft was perfected, and before it turned corporate.
It was a time when autists designed shit of their own volition, before the suits got involved.
We will never see such an era again.

Accurate. Most of the people working on those games were also the audience for those games. They were the fans. There are some indies getting close to that spirit but it's hard to hit that sweet spot.
 
Unwanted

Sweeper

Unwanted
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
2,394
Accurate. Most of the people working on those games were also the audience for those games. They were the fans. There are some indies getting close to that spirit but it's hard to hit that sweet spot.
I haven't played it, but I hear Underrail is pretty good.
 

Ladonna

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Messages
10,637
The best games were designed by 20-something year olds who lived in their mom's basement.
There's a reason why all the best games came out in a short span between 1995 - 2000ish.
It was the time window where the craft was perfected, and before it turned corporate.
It was a time when autists designed shit of their own volition, before the suits got involved.
We will never see such an era again.

The suits were already in the building before then. Read any early to mid 90s gaming publication and you will see CRPG's were a dirty word. All of the major publishers/developers of CRPG's were either dead, on deaths door, or casting off their role playing segments. Turn based systems were especially horrible and "outdated". There was still the odd CRPG release, but any that were not action based were shat upon almost immediately. The only semi major publisher/developer that still soldiered on in the mainstream were Interplay, and that is where virtually all of the late 90s incline came from, nowhere else. As soon as Interplay went down the drain, there was virtually nothing left.

The only two outside of Interplay (both born from Interplay, or Interplays assistance) were Bioware and Troika. Bioware kept on with their same RTWP system, and Troika was railroaded in various ways by the three publishers that accepted their games. One continued declining, and the other died. So much for that.

If you like the style of game, there was Bethesda as well. And Gothic was a nice surprise, but the decline was definitely here.
 

Semiurge

Cipher
Joined
Apr 11, 2020
Messages
6,076
Location
Asp Hole
When your writing team consists of fat blue-haired problem-glasses slash fiction writers from tumblr, you're gonna have a bad time.

I just love it when obviously dysfunctional, deluded individuals in full denial try to dictate to others how they should live and think. They would never accept the authoritarian in themselves that stalks them like a shadow.
 
Joined
Feb 13, 2018
Messages
152
Good writing doesn't come from a class or from copying other authors. It comes from life, from people, from understanding humanity.

I think Miyazaki also said before retiring in 2013 something to the effect of anime industry being dominated by fanboys who have limited life experiences to draw from.

So perhaps there seem to be a lot more fan service and gratuity in anime nowadays because these 'fanboys' were grown up on consuming these forms of artistry at the exclusion of reality and the writing that attests to it.

As for RPGs on this side of the pond, the writing department has been catered by 'fan fiction' level writing as well but instead of bouncing tits and panty shots, they get SJWs.
I remembered when he said that, there were some interesting discussions not only pertaining to anime but to art in general and if we had the ability to spot what is a simulacrum. On my search I came upon an interesting book that further elaborated the state of mind of how Otakus consume Anime. It explains why so much of anime resembles each other (down to the characteristics and personality of each written person) as if it were in an incestuous relationship, it also applies to many of the "art" that we consume today and why everything feels the same. It's a fairly short book, I have the PDF if you're interested in reading it. Otaku: Japan's Social Animals by Hiroki Azuma.
 

HarveyBirdman

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 5, 2019
Messages
1,044
Shakespeare was so abnormal that we still study him 500 years later. How many other good authors have we seen since him? How many get similar treatment? Most people don't follow up great narrative ideas with more great narrative ideas. The great idea factory usually limits its output.

So that's where you're favorite writers are: they put in their time at the factory, and now they're effectively retired. Thank them for their service and look for the next great writer. Hope a Shakespeare appears in our lifetime, which is unlikely.

Good writing doesn't come from a class or from copying other authors. It comes from life, from people, from understanding humanity.

Miyazaki wrote this post.
 

typical user

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 30, 2015
Messages
957
They got hired by corporate shills to get paid fat stacks of cash for small-time work like writing some codex shit or letter scraps for Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 4 or some other crap LARPers and autists only read.
 

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