Game Writing?

It's a very hap-hazard thing. Most of my friends work in the games industry and they've never mentioned the need for a writer at any of their companies. And these are big companies; Rockstar, Realtime Worlds, Capcom etc. I only ever saw one vacancy advertised for a writer and that was with a games company in Illinois about a year ago. Looked like a great job but not something practical for me to apply for.

A friend at Rockstar told me that the Manhunt series of games came about because one of its employees had the idea and they thought it was good enough to develop. I suspect, because games companies are like movie studios these days, they'll probably have projects lined up years in advance; especially if they have a deal with a publisher.

I think the best thing to do would be to submit your resume to the HR department of games companies you like, stating you'd like to be considered for writing work if they ever need it. Also, keep checking the vacancy websites that are specifically for games and games companies to see if anything comes up.

writing is generally the province of the design department; many designers do the writing themselves, or have a junior associate that crafts the language to adhere to their vision. sometimes they contract writers to come in, get a brain dump and work in conjunction with the design department to flesh out dialogue and other text.

i have worked both as an on-staff writer and as a contract writer for game companies, in addition to being a contributing writer while officially the producer of a game.

unlike film, where the seed and the execution of an idea can be generated in the vacuum of a writer's imagination, games are (almost without exception) the result of creation-by-committee, so in terms of landing a job writing games, it's advisable to bring other skills to the table in order to gain access to the inner circle of design.

i know with the mmo we just shipped we had:

phase 1: designers wrote
phase 2: i wrote
phase 3: outside contractors wrote
phase 4: in-house designer hired specifically for all writing once it was live and moving forward from there.

I know that Bioware once had an open call for game script writers. The people who usually landed this type of job had previous experience as level designers, or qa, or playtesters, or design itself.

clockwork said:

And these are big companies; Rockstar..

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Huh oh, Clockwork! Did you say Rockstar? Ok, dish; know any inside info on the plans for the next GTA?

haha.. Sorry, I had to. I love GTA.

Along this topic, I always wondered what the process of writing a script for a game was like. I think that would definitely be an interesting process.

Back to the original question at hand, though; I heard of a company who produced an MMO (free ware stuff, I think) just by recruiting random writers after having a sort of a contest. They ended up giving them full time employment, at least until the company went under or whatever happened to them.

I'm a bit of a gamer, so the game's creative process intrigues me, as well.

Well, he was very tight-lipped all throughout the game's production because it would have been his ass if he'd said anything - not that I have anyone to tell. I knew about the downloadable expansion pack for the 360 which I believe is common knowledge now anyway but I don't know if the content of that pack has been officially announced yet.

I have no idea what's next in the works for them unfortunately. I know they've been working on getting the pc version ready so I assume they'll be tied up in that for a while, especially if the same expansion pack is made available for pc. It'll certainly be a few years before another GTA comes out, if at all though based on the financial success of this one, I'm sure it's a possibility.

JJM,

I’ve had some amount of exposure to the gaming industry and here are a few of my opinions.

One major difference between film making and game development is that in films your audience remains passive, whereas in games they are able to interact. This single fact alters the process of game development radically from that of film making.

Your knowledge of screenwriting is not going to be of much use to you since the process of game development employs a different set of parameters. Nor, is your command of the English language a criteria, since games contain minimal dialogue and are usually translated into several languages.

What is important is the creation of an exciting, playable concept and it is here that you can extract maximum mileage from your creative juices. Afterwards it will be necessary for you to utilize a completely different set of skills to bring the game concept into production for the following reason.

You cannot “write” a game concept as in writing a screenplay and hand it over to a director to make the film. You have to make a “visual” presentation of the idea. Some time ago I submitted a game idea to Playfirst one of the few game development companies and publisher that accepts game concepts from freelancers. Shown below is one single slide from a Powerpoint Presentation containing 30 such slides that was sent to Playfirst.

I conjured up the concept, designed the different levels, set the scoring system, used Maya to construct the play area and the different elements in it, drew all the characters by hand, used Photoshop to create the user interface and finally put the whole thing together. As you can see it took intense work and several different unrelated skills to put the whole thing together.

I am not trying to sound pessimistic, nor am trying to deter you from achieving your goals, just trying to give you a glimpse of the ground realities in the gaming industry.

If you think this is way beyond your capabilities, then please stick to screenwriting. If, on the other hand you have the drive to learn all these skills and employ them to present your concept then go for it.

Unlike the film world with large studios, where having the right contacts determines the fate of your screenplay rather than the quality of your work, the gaming industry is dominated by small players who will happily welcome a newcomer. There are no celebrities to beg and plead with to be part of your project. No million Dollar ad budgets. Just you and that fine idea of yours.

If as a writer you think you can dream up a killer concept, I strongly suggest you arrange some Angel Capital, set up a small team and get cracking on the idea. The dividends from one good game can be unthinkably large. Popcap released a casual game called Bejeweled, which I could have developed here in India for under $ 10,000 in 3-4 months and in a few years time it went on to collect a Billion Dollars ! Such is what success can reward you with in the gaming industry.

Reliable sources tell me that even the roads in the gaming industry are paved with gold !

All the best.

Raghu.

Hm, interesting Raghu. That's a neat looking game, reminds me of The Sims. I love me some Sims2. ^_^

Also very interesting about the downloadable content, Clockwork. I didn't know about that. I still haven't even gotten around to playing GTA4 online, though I really really want to. I just can't seem to find the time to drag all my stuff into the other room and hook up to the intranetz.

This is a good thread, I've always been curious about game production. I don't think I could ever get into it, though at one point I wanted to. I used to do a lot of visual art and sketches and stuff. I had a few original characters that I wanted to base a comic book around. Seems I lost interest/patience for drawing once I got into music, and then from there I ended up with screenwriting. It sounds tedious, though. I think I'll definitely stick with film scripts!

If you're interested in game writing: www.gamedevmap.com is a great resource.

Having been through the interview process for a couple of companies, it's a tough gig to get.

yes it is.

whistlelock said:

If you're interested in game writing: www.gamedevmap.com is a great resource.

Having been through the interview process for a couple of companies, it's a tough gig to get.

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And if you DO get it, you'd better check your ego at the door. You will almost never see things as you wrote them in a game .as others said, it's like writing by committee. Countless people will stretch and bend everything you write. A lot of people think "I'll write a script for a game and it will turn out like I wrote it." Wrong. Unless you're the team leader, odds are everything you write will be chopped up and moved around as the upper echelon see fit.

And even the people on top often get forced to change things, even at companies like BioWare, since they are at the will of Electronic Arts. At the end of the day, smile and be glad that SOMETHING you wrote made it into a game. It's like anything else, you can't expect to be a lead scenario designer right out of the gate.

Yeah, that was some feedback i got from the lead writer at bioware- he thought it would be too hard for me to mimic the official voice and subliminate my own writing voices.

Which, on one hand is nice to hear that I have a strong set of voices it is depressing to think that I don't have enough talent to mimic someone else's voice.

gophergrrrl said:

Along this topic, I always wondered what the process of writing a script for a game was like. I think that would definitely be an interesting process.

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I found it really unpleasant!

I was freelance contracted to write a game several years ago for a startup. I did get paid for the work I did but the company fell apart (not even in a bad way, before we could finish the game most of the developers got picked off into super lucrative jobs). But I didn't enjoy the experience. As noted, you can kind of end up writing a story tree. And the biggest issue is that programmers are not creative. And it's like banging your head against a wall sometimes. Also, they want to program stuff that's cool or new. Or they don't want to deal with certain graphical problem elements. There's lots of little issues.

We also did a lot of it in stages. Like I'd have to write one part of the game while they'd be programming that one part, change things as things got changed. Then ramp up another part of the game when that got going. It was a lot to get your head around.

They definitely do hire people sometimes to write games, but it's usually because of a previous track record. Grant Morrison, the comic book writer, wrote the Battlestar Galactica game for instance.

great post, and quite accurate.

the iterative process is not to be understated. it makes the notorious rewrite process in film seem positively spontaneous by comparison.

in short, it's hard goddamn work.

Yeah, and it's also worth noting that I had worked as a programmer for several years. So I understood what they were doing and it was still confusing. Which is probably why the designers write in house some of the time. So I'd recommend taking some classes in game design/programming if you want to look more attractive to game companies.

USC has a new Graduate degree in interactive media and I know that several of last year's graduates were picked straight from graduation into work at the top game companies. I think at least one guy's thesis game even got bought to get made. They don't just do games, they do interactive everything. They have a class on motion capture that is guest taught by Robert Zemeckis. Might be something to think about if that's really what you want to do.

dclary said:

I know that Bioware once had an open call for game script writers. The people who usually landed this type of job had previous experience as level designers, or qa, or playtesters, or design itself.

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Yeah they still have this open for writers. I was reading about one of the writers for the new Star Wars MMO that's how he got in. Here if you're interested.

https://jobs.ea.com/jobs/jobposting.aspx?refresh=1&postid=a0z50000000HA7E