The Value of Writing in Video Games

Wed, Mar 26, 2008

Recently, a brouhaha erupted over the necessity of writers in the video game industry. Adam Maxwell, a game designer, came out and lambasted the purpose of writers in an opinion article at Gamasutra. In response, Kelly Wand, the writer on one of the games that Maxwell refers to in his column, made a case for the writers in another article at Gamasutra.

Maxwell points out that, fundamentally, writers are not the architects of video games. They do not structure the gameplay, and they do not participate in game mechanics balancing:

A writer might create the characters, and a writer certainly architects the plot of a game’s story, but the work a player actually sees and consumes? That is the work of the designer, even when the writer has written the dialogue, decided the plot, created every character and conceptualized every setting.

The designer, not the writer, is the one who is in charge of what the player sees as he plays the game. And though the plots of video games in general are deficient, a great plot will not necessarily transform a mediocre game into a great game:

When a writer sits down to build a story, they are usually building a plot. Most games certainly have plots, so you might be asking yourself why a writer wouldn’t be useful. After all, an experienced and well-educated writer will know everything there is to building a plot, and games could certainly benefit from better plots, right? I couldn’t agree more, but I’m afraid that it’s something of a leap to go from there to, “the person to architect a game’s plot is a writer.”

While Maxwell goes on to discuss the pros and cons of having a writer on a project, his ultimate conclusion is simply a matter of economics. Simply speaking, a designer can do a writer's job, but a writer can't do a designer's job (generally):

For the same price (sometimes cheaper, I’m sad to say), you can hire a designer who is also an unsung writing hero (they exist in far larger numbers than anyone wants to give the industry credit for) and when the story is done, that same designer can be there to throw his lot into the fire with the rest of the designers and actually make the game fun. He can be re-tasked as needed, and he can be useful at every stage of development.

For those reasons, and maybe even a few more, my money is on the designer over the writer, every time.

Wand responds directly this points, somewhat personally given that she may have been the writer whom he cast under the bus in his op-ed:

Writing, Adam observes, is limited by having to rely on “sequences of events.” As opposed to gameplay?
Adam also appears to frequently conflate design and writing, as if the two were synonymous. Every vocation has its own elite based on excellence of performance, from writing, coding, voice acting and lighting to musical composition, unit balancing and map architecture.

Yet he states unequivocally that he’d rather hire a designer than a writer, since the designer can also write, while the writer will never be a competent designer. Isn’t the reverse then also true? And by that logic, should film studios only hire writers who are also competent cinematographers, actors, and set designers? Would Adam have passed over a talented voice actor who wasn’t also an accomplished programmer?

Wand is arguing in favor of higher quality in general rather than more bang for the studio's buck. Furthermore, she underlines the fact that Maxwell seems ambivalent about the perception of video game writing as juvenile:

But what doesn’t appear to trouble Adam at all is that no one inside or out of the industry takes the writing in games seriously.

And this is an extremely valid point. I don't know of any cinematographers who complain about the existence of writers on movies. Each element is considered a key component to create a whole. The more hats a person wears in project, the more issues arise as they wear each of those hats. If you have to simultaneously fret about the staging of a camera as you worry about the exact lines of the actors or actresses, neither is likely to work out well.

Wand concludes with a point I find extremely apropos:

Supposedly a writer himself, Adam condemns game writing for offering little in the way of nutritive value. What he doesn’t seem to realize that it was never intended as food.

It’s the salt.

The reason this point appeals to me--immensely, I might add--is that it's a writer's point. There are folktales in many different cultures about the necessity of salt. Many of these folktales are framed in the same way. A king asks his three daughters how much they love him. The elder two daughters respond with traditional answers. They love him as much as sugar, for example. The younger daughter responds that she loves her father as much as salt. The king becomes so enraged by this answer that he banishes his daughter. She goes on to marry a prince of some sort, and at her wedding, her father attends without realizing that she is the bride. She instructs the cooks to serve him all of his dishes without salt save for the final one. The king eats the meal but appears displeased until he reaches the final course, which does have salt. The semi-disguised princess then asks her father if he enjoyed all of the courses equally, and when he responds that he loved the final course most of all, she reveals the secret of the meal and the secret of her identity. As an English version concludes:

And the bride's father spoke the loudest of all. "Truly, salt is the sweetest thing in the world," he said, "though, for saying so, I sent my own daughter away from my house, and shall never see her face again."

Then the bride made herself known to her father, and fell on his neck and kissed him.

I'm biased toward writers, and I always will be especially when they sprinkle small grains of knowledge throughout their works. While it is true that not all video games need a writer, many video games would be that much more flavorful with the addition of some focused writing talent.