Opinion: The Case Against Writers In The Games Industry

[Are writers a necessary part of game development? In a striking counter to current industry thinking, game designer Adam Maxwell (Auto Assault) argues that they are not, drawing on his own experiences to state that they are always better replaced with another designer.] There is no doubt in my mind that it was my skills as a writer that opened the door to my becoming a game designer. It was 1997 and a designer from the Warcraft II team had left Blizzard to join another ex-Blizzardite in creating a new studio. They had a 3-game deal with Activision and an idea in mind to create a paradigm breaking RTS game, called Third World, but what they lacked was someone who could write their documents for them. I wasn’t technically hired as a writer, but rather an assistant designer. This would prove to be a decision that I am eternally grateful. Had I been hired simply as a writer that would have been the end for me. You see, that studio imploded very shortly thereafter, but it’s not that implosion that would have doomed me -- as a designer I survived. No, what would have doomed me is the simple, and some would say sad, truth: There is no place for writers in our industry. Writer Vs. Designer? When we discuss of the role of the writer, we have to be clear. There is a huge amount of writing in game design -- and good writers tend to make better designers (all else being equal) -- but being a writer doesn’t automatically make one a game designer. Writers do not dictate the way players interact with the world, nor do they dictate the way the player experiences the content that they themselves may create. These are the responsibilities of the game designer. 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. There’s a critical reason for that, a reason that is perhaps the most compelling fact behind avoiding writers: The work of the writer is inherently linear – the work of the designer is typically not. 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.” Plotting On Games Vs. Films Now, I’m not going to talk about methodology specifically, but a writer expresses the plot by putting together scenes. Scene A leads to scene B, which leads to the climax in scene C and finally to the resolution in scene D. By placing particular scenes in a particular sequence, the writer’s plot is fed to the reader in such a way as to evoke the emotional response desired by the writer. This is why the writer’s work is linear -- the writer’s power depends on the sequence of events. It is why a writer’s work is so powerful, at least in static media. It’s also why Roger Ebert thinks games can never be art. In Ebert’s mind, this inherent authorial control is what makes art of other media. I mention Ebert’s opinion because there is one small grain of truth implied by it: This type of authorial control is not something native to video games. It exists, I don’t deny it, but where it exists it does so because it has been enforced. Special effort has to be made to accommodate it; in the early history of gaming new technologies had to be created to enable it at all, in fact. Video games, abstracted beyond the specifics of any one genre or title, do not require this authorial control to be considered such, do they? Pong is certainly a game, but what about Final Fantasy VII, or Bioshock? Both are certainly games, but there’s something else there, something that makes what are otherwise two mundane examples of gaming stand out. Their stories. Now, one could make a case for the story making those games better, but if you look at the games themselves, You see games hamstrung repeatedly to allow for storytelling mechanics. To many, Final Fantasy VII is reviled as the game that introduced us to interminable cinematics, boring exposition dialog and pointless interruptions to the gameplay. Bioshock’s railroaded experience is such because of the story. I don’t think I’d have played Final Fantasy VII without the story, but Bioshock? Done as a sandbox game, I might still be playing it now. Of course, it would all depend on the implementation, but that’s where designers come in. How Do Writers Help? And that’s something you can never say about a writer. No matter how well written, a story can’t make the game better. It can make the game more memorable, perhaps, but when it comes to playing the game, to interacting with the world presented within, a writer has no real power. To have any effect in that realm of what we do, the writer would essentially have to be a designer or at least have the knowledge, skills and sensibilities of one. So, when I wonder about the place a writer has in our industry, I have to ask myself a simple question: “What does a writer give me?” Good characters, interesting plots and memorable worlds? Evocative emotional experiences, wouldn’t you say? I would, but when I come to that conclusion, I ask the next question: “Is any of that necessary to make a good game?” Sadly, the answer is no. So then I start to wonder about what designers give us. Designers give us puzzles to solve, worlds to explore, new ways to interact and above all, new games to play. Despite my love of the written word and the way I tend to identify myself as a writer, I have to admit that when it comes time to add to the team of a project I’m on, I would rather have another designer than a writer. Writing may have gotten me my first gig in this industry, but it’s my skills as a designer that have kept me in the industry for as long as they have. That I can write certainly makes me better at what I do, but I have to admit that it is, in the parlance of my world, a bonus stat, not a primary one. An extra designer on your team can mean the difference between 8 levels and 12 or between 10 hours of content and 15, or the difference between a 60 and an 80 on Metacritic, and this is true whether your game has a story or not. Designers bring fresh perspectives that could bring with them innovations in your game… but what about writers? How Writers Do Help! Writers are at their best when they can write stories. That means there are whole market segments of our industry where writers are only somewhat useful. Even in a linear single player experience where story is king -- say an old school RPG, writers alone can’t get your game done; you will need designers to implement game play. In other words -- even on a story heavy game, a designer who can also write is more valuable than a writer alone. This is bad for the pro-writer camp because writers are expensive and often in ways that don’t show up on the books. Case in point, as a part of my job on Dirty Harry, I met with our writer once a week to discuss the story, his progress in the script, changes we had made to the game that he had to accommodate. It was a great process that really helped the game, but it was also a 3-4 hour event, once a week. During that time, I was not balancing weapons, implementing core game play systems or overseeing the work of the rest of the team, which was what my job description actually called for. I’m not saying this time was wasted, but it was time where part of the game design was suffering for the sake of the writer. Games get delayed all the time, I suspect that the example I provided above is one of the reasons why. Accommodating writers takes time and money that is often unaccounted for because people don’t realize that it takes extra work to integrate the work of a writer into the game, even at the fundamental planning stage. Mind you, if your game has a story in it, these costs don’t go away if you hire a designer that can write. No, those costs exist either way, but here’s the final nail in the coffin for the writer: What do you do with the writer when the story is done? Do you fire the writer? Do you pay them to sit around in case the story needs to change? Do you only hire writers on a contract basis? All of those questions have answers that can work, but I wonder why you would bother. Conclusion: The Denouement 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. [Adam Maxwell is a designer (and writer!) who has worked on games including Auto Assault and Dirty Harry. This weblog post is adapted from an original posted on his personal blog Dopass.com.]