The importance of writing

It was recently announced that God of War writer Marianne Krawczyk will be lending her talents to the upcoming game Shank.  I thought the God of War games were above-average in the video game narrative department and Shank looks like a well-done update to one of my favorite games, Metal Slug.  However, instead of making me anticipate the game even more, the news has left me perplexed.  Why?  Because this game was announced last year and has already been previewed by game reviewers.  The game is done and now it's time to get a writer on board.  As a writer, this strikes me as odd.

As a writer who plays video games, however, it strikes me as typical.  Most video games are "written" after they're completed.  Writers are usually brought on board to write dialogue and exposition.  Only people who don't understand what writers do would think this is an acceptable use of writing talent. 

To my knowledge, film was the most recent medium that thought it could get along all right without writers.  Of course, that was many years ago, during its advent, when directors would drive actors out to the countryside and make up a story based on whatever was around ("Here's a barn, so let's say you're the farmer and you're his wife.  Oh, and here's a shovel, so let's start with you digging something.").  Films varied in terms of how much planning went into them back in those years, but for the most part you wouldn't be able to find anything resembling a script floating around anywhere.  The only writers you'd find hanging around were the guys who wrote the dialogue cards.  Sound familiar?

It's important to remember that this method of filming was quite sufficient as long as film was considered a second-rate form of expression, the technology driving it being far more impressive than the works themselves.  People didn't mind poorly thought-out plots or terrible acting because they didn't expect anything better.  If you wanted to get a good story, read a book; if you want good acting (with sound, even), go to the theater.

In the present day, we know that we no longer have to engage in such trade-offs.  We can demand more of films than its original audiences thought possible.  While color and sound are often given credit for bringing the cinema into the realm of respectability, films were widely accepted as valid forms of expression by the 1920's, well before these inventions were mainstream.  The innovation that preceded them was the screenplay.

It could be argued that other mediums don't require writing--painting certainly doesn't, and certain forms of music don't have a writing process.  Even some films and TV shows don't use a script, relying in improv performances to tell the story.  We'll deal with improv later, but first, let's address the painting issue.

Painting doesn't require writing because painting is a form of writing itself, or the other way round.  Writing a book also doesn't require a script--the book is the script.  This changes when you want to create a work of art (or entertainment, if you like) that is acting out a story.  At that point, you need to have a story before you can start acting it out, which is exactly what most games don't do.  They start acting out the story and then close to the end of development, they try to figure out what they were acting out the whole time.  Even moderately creative people can come up with a decent story to connect all the dots, but they will never create a picture that's as good as someone drawing a picture without being constrained to only use semi-randomly placed dots.

Others may find improv to be a more appropriate comparison to video games, as the story is not dictating what the player does.  Unfortunately (for the argument, at least), that's not true.  Games do constrain what players do, and none are worse violators of player freedom than narrative-centric gated games.  For improv to work, the performers need as little constraint as possible.  But video game developers run into a problem when they lift constraints--most players are not good at improv.  They will not receive the rich experience that rivals cinema, the goal of most AAA developers.  Remember that the reason Christopher Guest movies even get off the ground is because of the talented actors who have had years and years of experience doing improv.  Everyone else is going to need a writer.

I get the feeling that most video game developers start their creative process thinking, "What would I like to do in a video game?"  This is a natural thing to do, and I think most people who wanted to write a movie for the first time would think to themselves, "What would I like to see in a movie?"  Most people often think of great premises for a movie--often involving terrorists or zombies--and think that the work is almost over.  This is the birth of bad scripts.  This is the mindset of amateurs.  A great writer will rarely start the process by saying, "What would I like to see in a movie, or read in a book, or do in a video game?"  And if she did, she would know that 99% of the work in front of her.

How does this change the end product?  A game is a set of rules, and everything--including the story--must follow the rules for it to be great.  If a story demands a character be weak for the drama to happen, but the game has given that character a lot of power, something is going to have to change or "ludonarrative dissonance" will be the result.  As the game has probably already been in development for years, it's not difficult to figure out who's going to buckle in this dilemma.  This means that even a writer who knows what is necessary to make the story work will have hands tied when it comes to implementing it. 

But imagine if the writer came up with a "story" before the rules.  A "pre-rules story."  At that point, you could create the rules around that story, and even if the rules seemed unconventional or unbalanced, you could be confident that they would work as long as the story works.  Suddenly you have the freedom to create a game that actually does have a great story without sacrificing the game experience, because they grew up organically together, instead of one being thrown over the other at the last minute.

And even more importantly, programmers cost more per hour than writers  Do the math.  Have the writers work on the game for two years before the programmers come on board instead of the other way around and maybe we can stop pretending that there's ever been a game worth $60.