Alex Navarro Assistant Editor

Currently Playing: ESPN NFL Football (Xbox), Mario & Luigi (GBA), Prince of Persia (Xbox) New Year's Resolution: Play less horrible games. Projected Date On Which This Resolution Will Be Broken: January 14, 2004

Tell Me a Story

Despite the fact that the bulk of my gaming time is largely spent playing mindless action games and a seemingly bottomless array of sports games, story-driven titles are something I've always had a deep appreciation for as well. Over the last few years, I've, in fact, started to see my appreciation for games with a good, well-told story increase quite a bit. Why? Well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a semiblanketed statement that will likely inspire some anger in a lot of you: Save for a few shining stars here and there, the quality of writing in games pretty much sucks. Now, before you get all huffy and start plastering me with angry e-mails about how you find the Final Fantasy games to be brilliant pieces of fiction and assert that I clearly am off my damn rocker, hear me out for a second.

Tim Shafer was--and is--one of those rare talents who can make a game fun but at the same time can bring you deeper into his imagined world--in fact, much deeper than you'd ever expect to go, thanks to some brilliantly written stories and characters.

Think about how many games you've played in the last two years that were based around a legitimate plot that went beyond the basic setup of "Aliens! Everywhere! Shoot 'em!" Think about how many of these games legitimately sucked you in with their stories. Not with their gameplay mechanics or pretty graphics, but with character depth, a truly intriguing plot, well-written dialogue, and a satisfying conclusion. OK, yes, not even the movie industry provides this level of quality these days, but when I compare the number of movies I watched in the last couple of years (that managed to captivate me) to these very components (mentioned above) and then compare them against the number of story-based games that have done the same, there's a pretty wide gap between the two. A lot of this falls on the quality of writing (or lack thereof) in games.

Writing is probably one of the most overlooked, and yet absolutely necessary, factors in any form of entertainment. Take movies, once more, for instance. Movies come from screenplays, which are, in turn, created by screenwriters. Generally, directors and actors tend to get the most attention for work on a film, and, obviously, if their craft is done well, they deserve the praise. But a screenplay is the backbone of a film, and without a good one, the project is essentially doomed to fail from the get-go. Same thing goes for a game. Designers tend to get the most credit for a game's success or failure, and in a lot of ways, they also deserve that notoriety. But what about game writers? Are there even game writers to speak of?

If you look at a lot of credits for games, there rarely is ever a definitive credit for a writer. And often when there is, these people also have credits for other pieces of a game's production as well. This is because there aren't a lot of bred-and-born fiction writers working on game design teams. What this often leads to is a lot of assistant producers and otherwise tech-minded folks being given the overwhelming task of writing a game's script. Every once in a while, some of these folks manage to pull something together that works really well, but a lot of times, you get the impression that a game is written by someone who clearly didn't pass eighth grade English class. Does this mean that no one out there has the aspiration to solely devote his or her life to penning video game scripts? Let's dig a little deeper.

Throughout my time playing Drake, I couldn't help but feel like I was playing something that every major comic book publisher in the world had previously rejected.

The game industry, like most areas of the entertainment business, has its superstars. Miyamoto, Kojima, Spector, Shafer--essentially our Coppola, Fellini, Scorsese, and Tarantino--are the multitalented heavy hitters who can weave together equally brilliant pieces of fiction and game design. But designers like this? They're not exactly a dime a dozen. Having that innate ability to write a clever storyline and make a game that's equally as captivating is no easy task. And therein lies another problem. It's incredibly easy for a company that doesn't have a big-time talent, like one of the aforementioned gentlemen, to take someone with little more than a singular good idea--and not necessarily the means to bring it to proper fruition--and still give them a team and a budget based solely on the idea. In fact, sometimes it's not even a good idea, so much as it's just an idea, period. I find myself all too often these days feeling like the game I'm playing is some sort of failed screenplay, graphic novel, comic book, or what have you, that the person who conceptualized the game only decided to make because one way or another, he or she was going to tell the world this crappy story that couldn't be sold otherwise, which essentially relegates the game to little more than a fall-back option.

As much as I am loathe to use this terminology, to be perfectly honest, it's time that developers started "thinking outside the box" when it comes to their games' scripts. I'm not saying that every game that gets made has to put me into some sort of deep, existentialistic state of mind, where I find myself questioning my own being or anything. I mean, hey, games are intended to be fun. But at the same time, if you're a developer and you've got what you think is a golden idea for a basic game design--complete with a story-driven nature--but you don't have the means to write out a captivating story arc and well-thought out characters for it, then put the story in the hands of someone who can. And I don't mean handing the task over to your team's assistant dialogue editor, either. There are obviously plenty of people out there who do know how to make a game's narrative something worthwhile, so maybe it's time for development teams to start branching out and begin finding ways to get these people on a project-to-project basis. With all the talk of maturation and legitimizing of the game industry that's been getting tossed around lately, it seems wholly ludicrous that writing in games is still at the elementary level in which it currently resides. If our industry is really bigger than the film industry, in this day and age, then let's strive to make our stories every bit as captivating and thought-provoking as theirs. Obviously, it has been proven that we can do it, so let's make this a regular habit, shall we?