An interesting bit of drama over an opinion piece at Gamasutra has game writers up in arms, hoping to prove the pen is mightier than…the pen!
I’m have mixed feelings about this. The article’s writer states that “…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.” And still later, he continues, “…you can hire a designer who is also an unsung writing hero…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.”
With EverQuest II, I was a game designer who wrote. In my current team, I’m still a game designer by title, but am considered one of the writers. My title didn’t change, but the perception of what I do is different now.
At GDC last year, I met someone from BioWare, a game company that actually has staff positions for writers. After we chatted for a bit, we exchanged business cards. These conferences leave one awash in business cards! Before we parted ways, I caught him scribbling on my card. This is a useful technique (although not always proper etiquette) to help you remember the person who handed you one of the three hundred cards you’ll receive over the course of the event.
“Making a note that I’m an idiot?” I joked.
“No, that you’re a writer,” he replied.
That was the first time someone had ever called me a writer in public, so this anecdote is very near and dear to my heart.
What the Gamasutra article does for me is make me think about myself more as a writer and not as a designer, because writing is my primary function. However, I’m not “just” a writer. I’d like to think that things I design are making a game “fun,” too, even if my contributions are more about the words than the programs.
As a game designer, I sit before my Access database, creating fields of attributes that will later affect certain aspects within our game. It’s still writing, yet it has a lot more to do with plain data than with prose or poetry.
I turn around and see the designer with whom I share an office creating levels in a program I don’t understand. Lines radiate all over the place in several different boxes and windows. I have absolutely no idea how he can tell what he’s doing.
When I think of game designers, that’s what I imagine them doing: building spaces, creating things from the art library and putting them into position so that the coding lies seamless beneath everything. But my bit of design is also as important. I, too, am creating a layer of game world that will (hopefully) tie in effortlessly with the rest of the work done by other designers.
And yet, I think of myself as a writer. My job is to explain what happens within our game; to describe locations yet to be created by our artists; to create the illusion of a world in which a player can lose herself; to bring depth and emotion to game play mechanics.
I decorate our world with roses. And bullet points.
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