Tragedy in crpgs

[Karellen]

It would take a better writer than most of those around in the business - but game studios are hiring dedicated writers now, so surely they could try and hire someone with actual taste rather than Hepler fantasy-fulfillment fan-fiction writers? Anyone who takes the 'formal route' into becoming a professional writer, and studies it at uni etc, should have learnt a variety of genres and be capable of taking tragedy archetypes while still giving the story a hero and the option of a 'good' ending.

Probably not going to happen for decades. Why would even a semi-talented writer with actual training get into the video game business? You could write a literary-quality tragedy and be given sole credit for it and, who knows, maybe win the Pulitzer or something... or you could contribute a literary-quality tragedy story to a game development studio where if you're lucky your name might be in the game's title and if you're unlucky the game will be total shit regardless of your story and then it was all just a giant waste of time.

We're veering off topic, but I think it's worth keeping in mind how different writing for a game is.

The craft of writing is not just making words appear on paper, constructing nice sentences or even coming up with believable dialogue. Generally speaking writers spend a lot of time deliberating about things like characterization, pacing, structure, theme, tone and language, which are the backdrop against which the obvious "good writing" happens.

Now the thing is, you cannot do these things in a game the same way you do in a novel or even a film script. In a game narrative you have to be able to tell the story through the environment, introduce and develop characters through action, interaction and game mechanics, disperse lore and exposition through set pieces and integrate it to the overall experience in a meaningful way. And that's without going to actual nonlinear storytelling and figuring out how to conjure up a coherent, cohesive and thematically interesting narrative from free player action.

I'm reminded of what MCA said about characters in the Iron Tower roundtable; to paraphrase, a character should have a 'hook' that invokes immediate curiousity and express strong opinions so they can act as a sounding board for the player character. You can't create characters for a game narrative the same way you would in a novel, for instance, because the function of characters in a game narrative is different, which is why things that would be obtuse in a novel may be just great in a game. Similarily, there's nothing remotely natural about the dialogue in Torment, but it works really well in the context of the game because it's evocative and contains memorable nuggets of profundity.

There's really no way to separate the "writing" part of the game from actual game design, least of all in an RPG. So there is a lack of good writers in the industry, but you can't solve the problem by bringing in "professional" writers, i.e. people who are good with other media. You'd probably just end up with some clever turns of phrase married to a jumpy, incoherent story and vague characters written by people who have no idea how to properly structure a game narrative and probably don't care all that much, since they'd much rather be writing novels or comics or TV series instead.

tl;dr we're out of luck until we get more people who are not only good writers, but also fully interested and invested in computer games and the possibilities and limitations the medium has when it comes to storytelling.

 

[CorpseZeb]

Yeah, a good "game writer" must have - if not a serious love for a gaming - then at least, be gamer in a more broad sense. Without an own conception, what is a purpose of computer game, he/she will be unable to create something appealing also for others. I mean, without pursuing an own ideals, one can creating only second-hand, marketing oriented games. "Art" (so, tragedy too) is more about "What I want to say" than "What others want to hear".