“Computer Games Have Words, Too”
This is the telling title of an article by Greg M. Smith in the new issue of Game Studies. It’s amazing how much people don’t think of computer games as a textual medium — as something that people called writers are involved in creating.
This has come up recently because I’m teaching electronic writing next semester. In connection with this a number of people have asked me something like, “Is it possible to make a living as an electronic writer?” My answer is, “Of course.” Electronic poets subsist the way print poets do (day jobs, teaching, grants, readings for the well-known) and electronic writers in popular genres can make a quite healthy income. They say, “Popular electronic writing?” And I say, “Yes: computer games.” Sometimes they understand what I mean immediately, but more often I have to talk about things like our SIGGRAPH 2003 panel where James Leach discussed the tens of thousands of lines of human-authored dialogue that went into making Black & White the experience it is.
Of course, despite my spin on the situation, it’s also worth noting that the Game Studies article names a director, character designer, and producer for the game on which it focuses (Final Fantasy VII) — but not a writer. (Unfortunately, it also mis-spells Hironobu Sakaguchi’s name.) And, well, it’s also the case that the dialogue in FF7 isn’t usually held up as a shining example of the writer’s craft (but then, neither is that in many popular entertainments).
I think the most valuable contribution of Smith’s article for electronic writers will be its discussion of writing problems particular to RPG-style games, such as the “requirement of using very terse dialogue lines to reveal complicated backstory” with relatively little requirement for text to move the plot forward (which happens through the gameplay). Smith discusses the use of “[m]eetings, informants, news reports, discussing information already known by the characters, terms of address, embedding history in character attitudes and using outsiders to prompt questions” in FF7 and how these both follow and diverge from standard practices in writing for film and television.