Experienced and well regarded writers are also undervalued and don't get the pay they deserve. Look at Bioware. They fired and/or drove away most of the people who wrote Dragon Age and their other classics because the industry doesn't think writing is on the same level as other aspects of development.
Not only that, Bioware thought their writers were an overpriced albatross that were holding their games back by preventing that fundingn from being used for other aspects of development. These companies are unimaginably out of touch.
I don't think these "writers" have ever had actual real-life dialogs with other people. They don't know how people talk or act in real life because all their life has been online.
do you know that Forspoken was written by Amy Henning? the devs were contacted by a consulting firm "blackgirlgaming" or smth like that to help her write a realistic character, but they refused bc they thought that she was competent enough, lol.
A big part of the problem is the director and the actor. Something can work really well on the page, but if you don't have the right actor to perform it or the right director to instruct the actor, good writing on the page doesn't translate to good performance.
I'm a pretty avid writer, and took a class specifically on screenplay writing not too long ago. One of the most important things my teacher taught us was being able to take feedback and criticism from non-writers and your audience. Sure, they may not understand all the technicalities of writing or tell you EXACTLY what the problem is or where it may lie. But they know a good story when they see one and are ultimately the ones getting the feelings you're trying to portray. If you're missing your mark, it’s up to you to figure out why. Not tell the audience why they're wrong.
Exactly. The words "you didn't get it" should never be used by a writer. It's your job to write it in a way they understood. Now there is no accounting for taste, but especially if multiple people bring up the same point, you know you did something wrong.
Correct. What you wrote is also true for businesses in general. The saying ' The customer is always right in matters of taste '. The creator's job in this case is to handle the technical aspects to get to the desired condition to reach the customer's satisfaction.
Well, the quote, "You didn't get it." Can be used by very talented writers. Who may have written a story that was good. Yet, somehow to some, loud mouths, do not understand parts of the story. Because they do not understand context clues or subtly. Sometimes replaying a game and you realizing what X character meant is what the writer wants. Because they got you to play the game AGAIN. Is it a bad excuse? Yeah. Yet, it is a matter of context. Because you don't get something. Does not mean it is bad. Yet, if the voices complaining about the writing all saying the same things. Yeah. Then, there is a problem. Cause 80% of people who complain is a majority voice over the 20% who either did not care or just NPCs. Yet. The industry cares more about that 20% over the 80%. It is wild.
I suggest having a vetted draft reader like an editor someone you trust and knows a bit of writing to much easily point out problems in the story. They give the best feedback and can easily tell what's a deus ex machina or why a certain character doesn't work in the story.
Pretty sure this is what happened here. They hired one writer who was starting the world building and everything. But then got replaced at some point with THREE writers. And since the first one mostly did the world building, everything else they had the freedom to "play around"
@@cinamynj Over all the plot is basically a... lighter version of Drakeguard 3. Frey is like Zero but Frey's morals in the story and in the gameplay (base on her voice lines during combat) are contradicting. Zero's brutality is consistent. Zero's story is trying to kill her five sisters known as the Intoners who saved the world at one point but now are slowly being corrupted by an evil being who is attached to the main character's body. A constant reminder that at some point she has to kill herself after getting rid of her sisters. Frey is the same but it's her aunts, the Tantas, who are also the saviors and leaders of their world, but is slowly being corrupted by an evil being attached to the MC's body. But both details are told, as a twist near the end. (Drakeguard told everyone right at the start) Both are sassy bitches, but Zero does it out of guilt as she's the cause of the current issue while Frey is mostly about self pity. And in terms of the world... I don't hear much of people talking about side quest characters. With this I'm using Drakeguard's side story NieR where it's also a dying world, but there's A LOT of colorful and memorable characters you meet during side quests. and I don't hear much from Forspoken.
As a writer i've been once replaced by a collegue i knew. Because she was more "agreeable" ie she wrote what was asked verbatim although it made no sense and technical aspect was incoherent at best. It was a very small project, inconsequential in theory, but she regretted it because it was so flawed, her name being associated to the project reflected poorly on her. To the point for the following year some people in our industry were trying to hire her thinking she was an activist of some sort and people with experience and knowlege wanted nothing to do with her because they thought she was incompetent. That shit almost forced her in a loop where she would have been destined to mediocrity. But people deciding, the ones with the money tend more and more to think they know how stuff works because they have the money. They don't put up with a writer saying out loud that something is cringe, unproperly balanced or technically incoherent. They want their "vision".
@@TheKiltedGerman more or less. And also it's a non negligeable amount of work to write something for entertainment medias. That kind of stuff takes a shitload of time. They want the praises not the sweat you could say. And a scapegoat.
i went to school for game development and after my formal education plus 2 years of grinding my portfolio and educating myself post grad i quit trying. i couldn't even get AN interview. and now seeing all of these studios and devs create games as vessels to stroke their own egos and grandstand about their garbage work is icing on the cake. this is what happens when you hire people that don't actually care about games
@@s3anb0i40 so you're no longer trying to get into the industry despite all your hard work? Man, I know the industry is terrible rn, but what made you totally give up if you don't mind me asking. Your background sounds pretty good to me for something entry level / internship level, no? Would love hearing more about your situation bc I too am pursuing a game dev degree rn
If you got better ideas and talent than those triple-A hacks, then I say take your chances with something indie, and I'd be happy to check it out instead!😄
@@ckennedy8598 i gave up because despite having multiple internships, winning a small grant with a team from my school, and much networking, nobody even gave me a shot in a single interview. it's blood sucking. luckily i'd been working around plants and outdoors all my life so i pivoted to working for a tree company and it's been lovely. but i stopped because i spent two years of my life chasing the game dev dream tirelessly without a single interview to show for it. eventually you have to just make money. still love to talk to fellow devs tho. and don't let me discourage you lol, i still make stuff with my friends. game dev is awesome
I realized something when watching a cruise line review recently, you could either make concord again, or you could buy the MSC Virtuosa an over 1000 ft ship. Moral of the story is games should never cost as much as they do
Corporate bloat. There are positions at game studios that should not exist. How is it possible that a studio with 1500 "developers" can't make a functional and well written video game? Mismanagement from too many Lead roles. Why do "community managers" exist? They all lie to the "community" and overmoderate. A "community manager" solicits feedback from the "community" but only feedback that they deem positive is acceptable. I have been banned from "communities" for criticizing unfair treatment from biased "community managers." That job should be the first to go, jt is totally unnecessary and they hire the most unprofessional people to do it.
To be fair, in a perfect world where the industry wasn't completely rotten, games with budgets that big would probably be awesome. Just think of your favourite game with 400 million dollars worth of content put into it.
There is enough money in the gaming industry to justify huge budgets, but no amount of money will solve utter incompetence, especially when they put selling the game as second priority over the message.
@@MaIachiBowen One guy... working part as a security guard to pay his rent, developed the open-world game Kenshi over a 10-year period. Great game. It's now sold over 1 million copies on Steam. When one guy can make a game for a tiny fraction of the cost of a AAA title, and sell 2/3rds of what the AAA title did, with 200 fewer employees... and IN THE SAME AMMOUNT OF TIME that the 200 people took to make game, then there is somethong seriously f'ing wrong with the AAA games industry. Imean, wrongvto the point where damn near everyone in management or development at these studious need to all be fired and never hired again. They're just a useless waste of money, like the 80% of Twitter staff who got fired.
Definitely played a role, but it's just part of the cycle. Back in the 80's and 90's there were truly horrific films that took themselves way too seriously. As a response, writers started doing self-aware ironic humor/adding in whacky side characters to add levity to otherwise serious films. At first it was fun and creative. Now it is played out, unoriginal, and has evolved into "erm, that just happened?!" Or "they fly now? They fly now!" Then there are the pieces of media that make fun of the self-aware and ironic writing but still using it (meta-irony) like Deadpool or Rick and Morty. People still make serious and sincere media, but the biggest films (like Marvel and Star Wars) are full of ironic/quirky writing, and the writers of these games are just copying that. In response to this, we'll see a new generation of writers making more sincere film/games that take themselves very seriously.
Avengers didnt make Joss Whedons style just popular. It made it a fucking made it inescapable. Obviously actual witty/snarky type banter can work. But these writers are literally stuck in the late 2000s with the "oh so goofy and random" shit. The people is these people dont have diverse influences. They just regurgitate whats already being regurgitated a million times.
Combination of being out of touch with the current state of playerbases and design by committee where if they do have a talented writer the work has to go through so many wringers on what you can and can't say or do that it just gets washed out into banality.
I think too there's just a natural difficulty in writing for a video game. The constraints are unlike any other medium out there - you have to accommodate player agency, empowerment, class fantasy, power fantasy, "tourist" mentality around environmental setpieces, game mechanics that might shift mid-development - not to mention the fact that many protagonists are basically mass murderers lol.
@TemmieTumpter Very true it does take a particular skill set to write open ended dialog without it seeming hollow or forced to account for the medium and agency.
@@viralgecko Also, I think writing suffers the most when designed by committee because unlike the other parts of production, the investors, producers and others unqualified to write.. still "know" how to write. It's like the "idea guys" talking to engineers about their great ideas thinking they are so smart just by thinking it 😂
The problem with most game studios these days is that they've driven away or fired most of the good writers and devs, who have moved on to make their own studios
Most of them have left the industry entirely. If you're a programmer the video game industry is one of the poorest paid and most underappreciated places you can get a job. If you're a writer you should be going back to school because you're getting replaced by AI.
I think a whole lot of it has to do with how writers are paid. Most are paid poorly so you have a lot of wealthy/out of touch people going into the field and just copying whatever they think is popular or has been selling well, for example marvel dialogue or fortnite graphics. Also I dont think that corporations forcing writers to add "certain elements" to their story helps either, as writers or anybody in an art medium does not like to be told to change their passion project.
@ you could say that about any industry Also they often are underpaid, some of these guys make 50-65k and year and then they have to deal with massive amounts of upper management telling them what to do.
Tbh, as much as i agree with all you said, if you are hired, you pretty much can forget about "passion projects", like, it's an industry, it's a buisiness, that's how creativity that brings in a paycheck works, you gotta compromise a lot, you can't just do what you want because you have a vision, etc If you want no restraint, you go indie, but it's a gamble on either it sells or not and the workload is way heavier
@ but the question is how much do they exactly have to compromise? I understand the concept of having to work with others to build a project (especially when said project is so large) but it feels like the writers and even the designers are all being held back from making something unique and original.
@@youngbouyoub2696 honestly, i think it boils down to having an open work environment where it's encouraged to debate your points in writing the story and make compromises on it without social or corporate consequences, like, leave the ego at the door (both writer and corporate) and make your point and pick the best options while considering all the arguments, and for the love of god stop the crunch and bake your writing properly
Games writer here. Small studios often don't hire writers at all. Larger studios tend to hire game designers with writing experience. Usually level designers or other "content design" specialities. Writing just isn't widely considered to be an isolated specialty in games. That's also why writing usually isn't considered an important voice when changes have fo be made during development. I'd use BL3 as an example because the cuts are so obvious to me, but I don't have confirmation there.
It’s Joss Wheedon writing. That’s how he writes his characters, and it’s not necessarily bad, in buffy and firefly it felt fresh, in the early days of marvel it really worked. He did the first avengers movie and that tone the whole everything is a joke thing has carried on to this day, love and thunder was the zenith of it, characters were busting a gasket wanting to look at wink at the camera. Deadpool, even though it’s a character trait, it’s the same shit, the sort of sarcastic, ironic wise cracking non stop stchick So now they put it in EVERYTHING because they think it’s cool, they want to be funny
The problem is a lot of entertainment consumers want “funny” “exciting” escape from reality characters. A common thing I keep hearing from people when they hate a movie or character is that it was either boring character (because he didn’t do a joke every 5 minutes) or the story made them feel sad. Like my dad who refuses to watch any movie with Tom Hiddleston in it cause he’s the bad guy in Avengers 1.
The difference is that Joss Whedon is *good* at this kind of writing. Whedon used this writing to set tone, build characterization, deliver exposition, foreshadowing, and so much more. This writing is why Buffy and Firefly were so good (aside from all the other people who made those shows great), because it was effective writing that told more story with fewer lines. His lines almost never did just one thing. Other writers simply imitated the form of his writing without understanding the essence, and the result is shallow, hollow, and vapid dialogue that serves no purpose.
The problem is ppl greatly misunderstood Whedon’s style as jokes 24/7. Ask anyone who is fans of his shows and they’ll talk about the drama moments. He used humour so he get lull you into a false sense of security to punch you in the face wit tragedy (and then to help you continue after tragedy) Look at avengers 1 you have what happened with Caulson, the audience and characters cared, it felt impactful. Imitators don’t do that side of it
True, the decision makers in charge of most games don't really know what makes art, particularly writing, good or bad. They hire people who probably have no experience in games. That kind of dialogue might work in a YA novel or cartoon, but not a cutscene
Yes and no, in the perspective of writers it kinda sells books and it's kinda getting popular with the young demographic.thats just my observation I might be wrong. To me those books r junk but I see those books get high praise it's like a trap and it's annoying I never finished it.
That's why I'm working my butt off to become a talented writer. Yea, I'm still working on it years later from when I was a wee lad, aka in elementary school. But look at how I write now compared to my past self. A quality increase
Often times they have people who know about the problems in the story but aren't alowed to speak up. I know someone in the industry who had a friend that worked for Pixar in the Cars 2 movie. They were doing a table read or something and asked everybody for feedback, so this dude just spills the beans and says "I hate Matter, I don't understand why he has all this screen time and I think the movie would benefit if it had less of him". Everyone was silent, untill someone said "Well, we all love Matter here". With a culture like this, where people are not incentivised to give feedback and punished if they do, the production is doomed to fail. Needles to say Cars 2 is widely viewed as the worst Pixar movie.
Mater was kept in that movie cause he sold the most merch from the first one Even the writers of Cars said they hated him as a character and didn’t see him outside on off jokes So this story didn’t happen or they said he made them money so shut up
@HobbiesGamesChillin Yeah, they told the guy to shut up. Why assume the story didn't happen? It's just like you said, they told him to shut up and not mess up the plans
@ who cares about Lasseter None of the writers, story boarders or runners did He sold more toys and it’s why he was in the second one even though it doesn’t make sense for him to be there It’s like boba fett having two lines but being everywhere in Star Wars cause he sold toys and fans liked him
Greece needs to invest in BTC and tell its women to shave. Dated a Greek chick back in high school and her arms were hairier than mine... she was still pretty cute tho
I think the problem is not that studios can’t hire good writers, it’s that studios don’t know what good writing even is. I just watched Helluva Boss. I loved it, it left me with post-show-blues. But then I watched a few video essays criticizing the show. And, man, it had more problems with its writing than my emotional ass cared to notice. So, I’m not always aware of what bad or good writing looks like either.
Paul Dini, writer of Batman: The Animated Series, who was hired to write Batman: Arkham City, talked about how there was no *possibility* he would be hired for the 3rd game, as ALL game companies had switched to using "in-house talent"
I think it’s less so that they can’t hire anyone talented (imo anyone that’s being hired to that big of a job is at the very least pretty damn good at their job), but it’s more about them working with conflicting ideas, directors, producers, CEOs, and the like. Not to mention, that type of writing and dialogue WAS popular in the 2010s, I remember seeing it a lot in within the MCU and a lot of other comedy stuff, but after having that kind of writing infect movies, shows, and games for a decade turned everyone off from it. I’m not saying that the writing is good or anything, but it shows how people’s taste in something can change once it becomes too common.
This. That was a kind of writing that most ppl found cringe at the time but was undeestood by execs as vibing with GenZ. It doesnt. There's also a heck of a lot of stereotyping in tgat scene, being that its a woman of colour of an certain age. Its all marketting checkboxes. Designed to reach/exploit "new" demographics. That Poochie the dog scene from the Simpons where the marketting person spouted BS to tge writers room is still the explanation for this. Another underrated explanation is tech industry types treat writers like absolute crap, so the people they hire are 1) writers who wouldn't get work elsewhere 2) arent writers by training
@@zedatkinszed1216 that kind of writting is incredible popular, if doen right. but its also incredible hard to do it right, much hader than other styles.
@@zedatkinszed1216 No one needs to hire writers with no training. If you round up a few homeless people right outside your office, at least one or two are going to have a degree in English
If anybody wants a good breakdown of what this "style" of writing is that's pervading every form of entertainment we consume now, a video from ShreddedNerd titled, "Millenial Writing" provides a really good breakdown. What I personally drew from that video is that it's a group of city-living young people who have spent most of their lives online who don't interact with anything or anyone outside of their immediate circle of wealthy city-folk graduates. You should give it a look.
That dialogue feels like a Joss Whedon script. Everything after Firefly and The Avengers feels like a Joss Whedon script. Loved it in Firefly, not a fan of it everywhere else. But also... I'd probably say something like that too in her situation.
One thing I notice is that when I notice really bad writing or directing, I look up who did it and im usually not surprised. Its usually someone who doesnt have much experience, and what experience they do have isnt totally applicable. Like they were hired to write a movie but only ever wrote a few episodes for a tv show of a completely different genre. Or they only directed one or two indie films and now theyre on a massive budget blockbuster. Or, as is so often the case, theyve consistently made other, terrible movies/shows/games etc. Its not 100% but its often enough. How some of these folks keep getting work, has gotta just be down to them being really good at shmoosing the right people.
One thing I'll say about writers, good and bad, in the video game industry is you can have a writer write a good or at least balanced story that traverses your vegetation world, your water world, your ice world and your fire world, and all it takes is one guy to go "we don't have the time, delete the ice world." "B-but my stories critical turning point for the main character and/or their party occurs in the ice world!" "You're the writer. I'm sure you'll figure it out." God forbid that team decided to re-include the ice world as DLC. Also without letting that writer know or perhaps not even bringing them back.
I feel its worth noting that it's often studio higher ups that make these kinds of calls and are the ones surprised by the poor results "Oh can you put a bunch of Wheadon-esque dialogue like MCU in there? Cause that sells" And then you have this situation where otherwise halfway decent and even good writers are now forced to write things in a style that isn't their own that they might even hate, I'd throw the hat in too if I was thinking and feeling Game of Thrones in style, tone and dialogue when I signed on but was told, "no, Adventure Time" If it feels derivative and forced, that's most likely because it is
This just makes me more impressed with red dead, god of war, uncharted, tlou, horizon ZD spiderman and the arkham games. Probably missed many more games out. But those games come to mjnd. The writing was tremendous.
Not only that. The industry is a revolving door of "connections". Its the same thing with voice acting. Someone from the dev team knew someone who writes and they hire them. Game flops, that someone from the dev team gets hired to another studio, and repeats the same cycle. It's been a known secret. Not to mention, writing for videogames and use it as a part of the portfolio to become a writer in Hollywood.
i think part of it is that games change alot and even if they get talented writers in early, 80% of script has probably change by release and they don't want to pay or waste time redoing large chunks writing wise, so they just get someone to throw in the most generic linking dialogue they can with the parts that still work. eg a purely inhouse writing team(or leader) who are inputting the whole time is important for this reason (BG3)
it goes beyond being out of touch. Would you trust a writer who plays video games once or twice a month to build a team of talented, capable video game devs? Probably not. So why do we expect game devs (or gaming company execs) to determine what good writing is? And for that matter, "good" writing in video games is incredibly difficult to pin down. Id argue it's still a developing medium. A lot of video game writing conventions are just straightup bad writing in any other medium, because it has to accommodate player agency (and in many cases, some kind of power fantasy or class fantasy). That doesnt make it bad, but it does mean that we literally dont know what constitutes "good" writing yet.
Well because we have to also understand there is no baseline or scale to actually judge “good writing” People will shit on something’s writing and then when they are asked to come up with something better they make something even worse and actually believe that it’s better, that’s why some people love Shakespeare and others think it’s a bunch of hot garbage. Like many art forms it’s an opinion, and so you can’t actually expect people to be able to properly define what is considered “good writing” Now there’s obvious examples like plot holes or just character inconsistencies absolutely, but stuff like dialogue is completely subjective and I don’t really know how your supposed to determine that when everyone has different tastes. Like I love the Pirate of the Caribbean movies and my grandma hates them, I didn’t hate a lot of movies that many others do, I got emotional with games that lots of people said were ass, so I’m not sure how your supposed to tell who’s right or wrong
While I agree with you that writing for games is difficult and how a software dev might not be the best judge of what is "good writing", the problem is most of these modern games have such a bad writing even an untrained person can tell it's bad. There is a major difference between writing something that is generally good, but misses a few points or something that will just make your players cringe the whole way through playing the game. The thing is I would take a crudely written but interesting story over a well written, but cringey self-insert fanfic every time. At the end of the day with video games what matters is not if fellow writers find your writing good, but if the gaming audience finds it good and on that regard a lot of modern games and their writers fail miserably. As for the argument "we don't know what is good yet", that is just not true. We had in the past plenty of games that may not have been writing masterpieces, but were generally accepted as amazing stories by the audience, so we have plenty of examples of good video game story writing it's just that the writers currently writing games actively trying to not do something like that and it shows.
@@TemmieTumpter gaming has also made a bizarre type of writing in the form of a 'Silent Protagonist'. It's absolutely terrible and ruins games for me, pulls me out of any story every 5 seconds.
The people that work at these companies are terrified to speak out of line. They hire a check box, and then when the check box is terrible they have to gaslight themselves into believing the check box they hired is a skilled worker. They know the writers are terrible and the story lines are bad, but they are so worried they are willing to sink a HUGE game so they don’t get any pushback online.
A significant amount of English and creative writing and lit majors these days honestly believe they are gods gift to written language and are better than any writer who has ever come before... And it's because they have been coddled by every single teacher who has ever read their work. Just about 90% of everything written and published today, be it a book, movie, or game, is contemptible trash that would have been laughed out of a publishing house, film studio, or game studio 15 years ago.
Its a bit more complex than that, you've got multiple writers, multiple voice actors, dialogue directors, animators, developers all creating one project, some of the writers might be talented but their ideas for certain sections might not get selected
Keep in mind it is multiple people doing writing in different aspects, while having to modify it for gameplay and levels, while ALSO having to deal with publishers wanting styles that are different from the writer's they hired and their specialties. For Forspoken, it wasn't out of touch writers, it was an out of touch CEO controlling the project. They probably told the team 'make it like the marvel movies' since those are popular, and the team was happy because that's exactly what they did.
How to find actual talented writers 1/find a list of writers 2/chick any previous work they made 3/look up what people think of that writer, do they like their work or not? 4/profit
I can actually answer this too from a practical perspective. Because big companies hire loads of people and don't properly vet their writers, the people applying like any job often lie to get into their position, and the most important reason of course is that yes the people in charge are beyond out of touch with pretty much everyone outside their bubbles.
I thinks part of the problem is that, instead of having one (or a few) writer(s) working on a project they care about with a clear idea of what they want, these AAA game studios are hiring a room full of people who each have their own ideas trying to interpret some vague concept that was handed to them because it sounded good to a bunch of executives who don't play games. So you have the whole "camel is a horse designed by a committee" and on top of that the writers don't really care about the product. They're just after the paycheck and the credit.
Honestly I have a speculative idea that whenever there’s ALOT of money and people riding on the success of their project it can put a crazy amount of pressure on the writers to make a hit story but if the team isn’t confident enough it could cause them to crack and play it safe. That’s part of the reason I respect Cory Barlog for his steady hand on the GOW remake the dude had a vision and STUCK WITH IT and it paid off huge risk but it worked
The issue is that we used to actually have a lot of very talented people writing for games... But this is the end result of a culture that to maintain as much profit as possible will just fire everybody. The problem isn't a "lack of quality" The problem is that a lot of games are being written by people either fresh out of university or still at an early point in their careers and art requires a certain level of life experience that a lot of these people will not have had at twenty-something years of age. This also extends to the as well because it takes a certain level of job security to be able to tell your boss that their ideas for the script are bad, especially if you want to be rehired/retained in layoff season
what's most likely happening is that good and experienced writers get brought on, aren't paid enough, get fired for wanting more pay, and a new inexperienced writer has to come in and pick up the table scraps disconnected from the original vision line must go up etc. etc.
When you throw that kind of money around, expect upper management to be strict on what they expect. With them being strict, chances are quality is going to drop. Which is what happened with most other gaming companies. They forget what brought them to the dance in the first place. Sometimes that isn't the case, but a lot of times it is. They are too focused on the financial profit of what it could be, rather than giving their artists and writers a bit more freedom to explore their options and make something that feels natural.
A good thing to understand is that often times writers come in a lot later into the pipeline than the ground floor. Often a game already has a collection of branches in the production pipeline that writers need to navigate, to say nothing as to the liberty they are given with the story. But I do agree that sometimes the writer just sounds like they're barely capable of typical conversation.
As one of the few who almost got platinum for Forspoken, I can say with confidence that what made the game playable was muting the audio and turning off the subtitles. The magical combat was fun, the collecting small flying cats was fun, upgrading spells was fun, story was not. That said, still wouldn’t recommend this game to other people, because I don’t think advertising a game by saying it’s fine as long as you get rid of all audio content means the game isn’t a good game.
Emil Pagliarulo once went on record saying he doesn't indulge criticism once his work is done, at all. An attitude i once thought uncommon in the industry.
The problem is the writers think they are talented because they were raised in an environment that punishes honest non positive criticism. Personally im disappointed in myself if im not good enough, i don't neee coddling i need honest feedback to improve at something. When your told your current best is always good enough you end up learning to blame other ppl for them not liking your work
I don't know, i haven't played that game nor know anything about the story, but i think what makes a good written game goes far beyond the dialogs or the tone of it. You could even say that it's more of a direction thing, maybe. (Because dialogs can be changed, and the tone is more defined by the "director", as well as a finished product.)
Ita even worse than that, the people hiring think these people are good AND these writers think they are good. This is why authors have beta readers, if these games had that it wouldnt even be in the beta test, those lines would be cut before even character models were done. I think these writer went to school took writing classes and got the job because of that. The problem is being able to create a great story and being able to tell the story effectively, one takes charisma to get people really engaged in the story with all its little details, the other takes creativity to come up with the world
Writers are also inherently inconsistent and video game scripts are thousands of pages long so even the best resumes can crack. And something that long is hard to revise so it's sometimes hard to fix especially if its a pivotal moment, yeah it's hard
I think people underestimate how different it is to write a story for a book compared to a story for a video game. The game leaves only so much room for imagination and you have to somehow tailor gameplay and storytelling together.
Writing was my first passion but I'm going back to school for coding so that I can actually be respected...and maybe sneak some good writing into more games
It's also not about there not being "1 talented writer" often the problem is to many writers. It's hard to make a cohesive story and characters when there are 3 dozen writers trying to make their own story or put their own self insert in.
That one little snippet out of context is rough (even in context it’s rough) but the problem with that project was that they put the player in a situation wheee the character almost has to talk to themselves because there’s no one else for the character to interact with. “Writers” in general aren’t writing that little snippet though. Idk if you just are uneducated on video game writing but they largely write the overarching script and dialogue for those important cutscenes (which is why there’s such a wild Quality upgrade/downgrade scene to scene in forspoken) but no one is paying the writer of Rogue One enough money to write every single piece of dialogue scene to scene. That’s being handled by junior people in the staff and story directors.
The biggest difference is a story by comitee versus a singular vision shared by multiple people. Every writer needs to be on the same page not fighting over which part of their own head canon makes it into the finished game.
you could say this for any form of media ever. imagine how many shit books there are or how many movies have flopped that have huge budgets. videogames themselves are pretty hard compared to other mediums to have a good story cause you have 100 other things needed as well.
Once you get close to "these" people, you'll understand. Every minor skills are considered "talents" to them. That's why whenever a massive layoff happens, the word you'll see from journalists is "I feel sad for these talented people".
its because the 150 million makes them hire based on CVs or optics instead of passion because theyre afraid of wasting it. if youre making a creative product, you dont hire someone with an impressive CV, you hire a nerd who loves the source material/genre more than money. a project without a budget isnt afraid to lose it and will get whoever will do it for the projects sake, the money makes that harder.
Another problem is that most games are voiced now. With pretty life like graphics to boot. Writers need to write dialog like they do for movies for it to not sound... off.
With Forspoken specifically it appears to me they were going for dialog modeled off marvel movies, which at one point was very popular. However audiences have long since soured on that kind of dialogue. Not bad writing but misjudging the audience
It is just sad to see... Single player games allow for much beter story telling and engagement then any book or film is able too if developers just were allowed too... In this perspective i fully agree... We can do beter... We must do beter... We must demand beter
Good and bad are very relative concepts. Decisions were made and when they came together, a few years later, they turned out to be wrong. The game was not greater than the sum of its parts. It is not easy to predict what will be successful in the future, and it is even harder to make it actually happen.
It's funny, people usually can tell a good story, or at least an adequate one, when they see it even if they can't write themselves. You'd think more people would be aware of bad writing. Yet, it's still extremely pervasive in every medium.
I doubt that's the case. I think most of these writers are probably being constrained by focus groups and checklists their producers make them adhere to. When your game costs 150 million, you get so worried that you won't recoup your money, you try to make the most blanketly appealing product you can. And that usually means "trendy" dialogue; dialogue that will offend as few people as possible.
The trick isn't to find good writers - it's to make sure that the guys who are hiring the writers have good taste and hire the right people. It's easy for a head of engineering to hire a developer, because they know how to evaluate developers
Game Studios needs to send atleast 100 different gaming youtubes snippets of game play and start asking questions about everything and take that feedback and pay the youtubers
I think good games are the ones that don’t focus entirely on writing and narrative but focus on gameplay instead. All these narrative driven games mostly just play themselves with QTEs, and more cutscenes and dialogue than actual gameplay or slow walking in corridors between sections
i think what people forget is these writers are probably very talented !! the people who aren’t are the HIGHER UPS, the big wigs or jus managers who think they’re still “down with the kids” which leads to dialogue like forspoken :((( its just a shame the creatives who have the listen to these people are the ones who are blamed
Jupp can confirm that unqualified people are often hiring people, but the people above them are also unqualified and noone know what's good. And those that do, are usually the workers, not the higher ups... which often get to their position through knowing someone, being in "the circle" or 'other' reasons, you know..
Experienced and well regarded writers are also undervalued and don't get the pay they deserve. Look at Bioware. They fired and/or drove away most of the people who wrote Dragon Age and their other classics because the industry doesn't think writing is on the same level as other aspects of development.
Same with Obsidian.
@@bertimusprime7900thing is its their writing that made their games, choices , dialogues
@@bellystraw You should lay the writers as much as the programmers. But you should hire 10 times more programmers than writers.
Not only that, Bioware thought their writers were an overpriced albatross that were holding their games back by preventing that fundingn from being used for other aspects of development.
These companies are unimaginably out of touch.
Conversely, you’ve got Larian and CDPR who still have very good writers.
I don't think these "writers" have ever had actual real-life dialogs with other people. They don't know how people talk or act in real life because all their life has been online.
They’re literally all neurodivergent shut ins that have no idea how people talk lol
I would bet they dont know the difference between dialog and dialogue.
do you know that Forspoken was written by Amy Henning? the devs were contacted by a consulting firm "blackgirlgaming" or smth like that to help her write a realistic character, but they refused bc they thought that she was competent enough, lol.
A big part of the problem is the director and the actor. Something can work really well on the page, but if you don't have the right actor to perform it or the right director to instruct the actor, good writing on the page doesn't translate to good performance.
@@ChaseSchleich isnt she sounds like your typical anime cringe, especially with the devs being Japanese?
I'm a pretty avid writer, and took a class specifically on screenplay writing not too long ago. One of the most important things my teacher taught us was being able to take feedback and criticism from non-writers and your audience. Sure, they may not understand all the technicalities of writing or tell you EXACTLY what the problem is or where it may lie. But they know a good story when they see one and are ultimately the ones getting the feelings you're trying to portray. If you're missing your mark, it’s up to you to figure out why. Not tell the audience why they're wrong.
Exactly. The words "you didn't get it" should never be used by a writer. It's your job to write it in a way they understood. Now there is no accounting for taste, but especially if multiple people bring up the same point, you know you did something wrong.
Correct. What you wrote is also true for businesses in general. The saying ' The customer is always right in matters of taste '. The creator's job in this case is to handle the technical aspects to get to the desired condition to reach the customer's satisfaction.
Well, the quote, "You didn't get it." Can be used by very talented writers. Who may have written a story that was good. Yet, somehow to some, loud mouths, do not understand parts of the story. Because they do not understand context clues or subtly. Sometimes replaying a game and you realizing what X character meant is what the writer wants. Because they got you to play the game AGAIN.
Is it a bad excuse? Yeah. Yet, it is a matter of context. Because you don't get something. Does not mean it is bad. Yet, if the voices complaining about the writing all saying the same things. Yeah. Then, there is a problem. Cause 80% of people who complain is a majority voice over the 20% who either did not care or just NPCs. Yet. The industry cares more about that 20% over the 80%. It is wild.
I suggest having a vetted draft reader like an editor someone you trust and knows a bit of writing to much easily point out problems in the story.
They give the best feedback and can easily tell what's a deus ex machina or why a certain character doesn't work in the story.
It's the idea of: people are very good at detecting when there is a problem, not necessarily what that problem is
also their adamant behavior of refusing to admit their mistake and prefer to blame the audience's 'bad taste' instead
"This is for the modern audience, it wasn't made for you" funniest cope possible
@@drakuro6618 some studios have a "no negativity" policy so criticism is not allowed. So yeah, they don't know how to deal with it.
@@omerhechter5895i have seen the term "toxic positivity" mentioned a lot.. that sums up this behaviour perfectly
@@omerhechter5895Toxic positivity
The customer is always right in matters of taste.
the actual talented writer often get bullied out of the project most of the time
Pretty sure this is what happened here. They hired one writer who was starting the world building and everything. But then got replaced at some point with THREE writers.
And since the first one mostly did the world building, everything else they had the freedom to "play around"
@@usonohoshi6165 the world building is great in Forspoken and the overall plot is too. I guess people didn’t like the dialogue stylings
@@cinamynj Over all the plot is basically a... lighter version of Drakeguard 3. Frey is like Zero but Frey's morals in the story and in the gameplay (base on her voice lines during combat) are contradicting. Zero's brutality is consistent.
Zero's story is trying to kill her five sisters known as the Intoners who saved the world at one point but now are slowly being corrupted by an evil being who is attached to the main character's body. A constant reminder that at some point she has to kill herself after getting rid of her sisters.
Frey is the same but it's her aunts, the Tantas, who are also the saviors and leaders of their world, but is slowly being corrupted by an evil being attached to the MC's body. But both details are told, as a twist near the end. (Drakeguard told everyone right at the start)
Both are sassy bitches, but Zero does it out of guilt as she's the cause of the current issue while Frey is mostly about self pity.
And in terms of the world... I don't hear much of people talking about side quest characters. With this I'm using Drakeguard's side story NieR where it's also a dying world, but there's A LOT of colorful and memorable characters you meet during side quests. and I don't hear much from Forspoken.
As a writer i've been once replaced by a collegue i knew. Because she was more "agreeable" ie she wrote what was asked verbatim although it made no sense and technical aspect was incoherent at best.
It was a very small project, inconsequential in theory, but she regretted it because it was so flawed, her name being associated to the project reflected poorly on her.
To the point for the following year some people in our industry were trying to hire her thinking she was an activist of some sort and people with experience and knowlege wanted nothing to do with her because they thought she was incompetent. That shit almost forced her in a loop where she would have been destined to mediocrity.
But people deciding, the ones with the money tend more and more to think they know how stuff works because they have the money. They don't put up with a writer saying out loud that something is cringe, unproperly balanced or technically incoherent. They want their "vision".
So, the heads in charge want to be the writer, but also have a scapegoat for when it inevitably goes belly up.
@@TheKiltedGerman pretty much
Correct
@@TheKiltedGerman more or less. And also it's a non negligeable amount of work to write something for entertainment medias. That kind of stuff takes a shitload of time.
They want the praises not the sweat you could say.
And a scapegoat.
i went to school for game development and after my formal education plus 2 years of grinding my portfolio and educating myself post grad i quit trying. i couldn't even get AN interview. and now seeing all of these studios and devs create games as vessels to stroke their own egos and grandstand about their garbage work is icing on the cake. this is what happens when you hire people that don't actually care about games
@@s3anb0i40 so you're no longer trying to get into the industry despite all your hard work? Man, I know the industry is terrible rn, but what made you totally give up if you don't mind me asking. Your background sounds pretty good to me for something entry level / internship level, no? Would love hearing more about your situation bc I too am pursuing a game dev degree rn
If you got better ideas and talent than those triple-A hacks, then I say take your chances with something indie, and I'd be happy to check it out instead!😄
@s3anb0i40 I worked with a studio that basically only hired their friends and classmates. I was mind blown
Make your own bud. Hate what's out there and have the knowledge get a team of like minded people don't just give up then they win! Lol good luck!
@@ckennedy8598 i gave up because despite having multiple internships, winning a small grant with a team from my school, and much networking, nobody even gave me a shot in a single interview. it's blood sucking. luckily i'd been working around plants and outdoors all my life so i pivoted to working for a tree company and it's been lovely. but i stopped because i spent two years of my life chasing the game dev dream tirelessly without a single interview to show for it. eventually you have to just make money. still love to talk to fellow devs tho. and don't let me discourage you lol, i still make stuff with my friends. game dev is awesome
I realized something when watching a cruise line review recently, you could either make concord again, or you could buy the MSC Virtuosa an over 1000 ft ship. Moral of the story is games should never cost as much as they do
Corporate bloat. There are positions at game studios that should not exist.
How is it possible that a studio with 1500 "developers" can't make a functional and well written video game? Mismanagement from too many Lead roles.
Why do "community managers" exist? They all lie to the "community" and overmoderate.
A "community manager" solicits feedback from the "community" but only feedback that they deem positive is acceptable. I have been banned from "communities" for criticizing unfair treatment from biased "community managers."
That job should be the first to go, jt is totally unnecessary and they hire the most unprofessional people to do it.
To be fair, in a perfect world where the industry wasn't completely rotten, games with budgets that big would probably be awesome. Just think of your favourite game with 400 million dollars worth of content put into it.
There is enough money in the gaming industry to justify huge budgets, but no amount of money will solve utter incompetence, especially when they put selling the game as second priority over the message.
@@asdadsgsaadasf6043 that’s true, the corporate bloat is real, talented workers like 70k while c-suite executives make millions per year
@@MaIachiBowen One guy... working part as a security guard to pay his rent, developed the open-world game Kenshi over a 10-year period. Great game. It's now sold over 1 million copies on Steam.
When one guy can make a game for a tiny fraction of the cost of a AAA title, and sell 2/3rds of what the AAA title did, with 200 fewer employees... and IN THE SAME AMMOUNT OF TIME that the 200 people took to make game, then there is somethong seriously f'ing wrong with the AAA games industry.
Imean, wrongvto the point where damn near everyone in management or development at these studious need to all be fired and never hired again. They're just a useless waste of money, like the 80% of Twitter staff who got fired.
I blame too the avenger movie that made the style of writing popular
@@eddiegoku3461 What like "marvel humour"?
I'm assuming you mean like a script commercialized to hell and back?
Definitely played a role, but it's just part of the cycle.
Back in the 80's and 90's there were truly horrific films that took themselves way too seriously. As a response, writers started doing self-aware ironic humor/adding in whacky side characters to add levity to otherwise serious films. At first it was fun and creative. Now it is played out, unoriginal, and has evolved into "erm, that just happened?!" Or "they fly now? They fly now!" Then there are the pieces of media that make fun of the self-aware and ironic writing but still using it (meta-irony) like Deadpool or Rick and Morty.
People still make serious and sincere media, but the biggest films (like Marvel and Star Wars) are full of ironic/quirky writing, and the writers of these games are just copying that.
In response to this, we'll see a new generation of writers making more sincere film/games that take themselves very seriously.
Yeah hate every clown wanting to become the next Avenger wannabe. And that god awful out of place Marvel humor. Please spare me
Avengers didnt make Joss Whedons style just popular. It made it a fucking made it inescapable. Obviously actual witty/snarky type banter can work. But these writers are literally stuck in the late 2000s with the "oh so goofy and random" shit. The people is these people dont have diverse influences. They just regurgitate whats already being regurgitated a million times.
Combination of being out of touch with the current state of playerbases and design by committee where if they do have a talented writer the work has to go through so many wringers on what you can and can't say or do that it just gets washed out into banality.
I think too there's just a natural difficulty in writing for a video game. The constraints are unlike any other medium out there - you have to accommodate player agency, empowerment, class fantasy, power fantasy, "tourist" mentality around environmental setpieces, game mechanics that might shift mid-development - not to mention the fact that many protagonists are basically mass murderers lol.
@TemmieTumpter Very true it does take a particular skill set to write open ended dialog without it seeming hollow or forced to account for the medium and agency.
You can also just do, what Nintendo does, and basically just ignore the existence of a story.
@@viralgecko Also, I think writing suffers the most when designed by committee because unlike the other parts of production, the investors, producers and others unqualified to write.. still "know" how to write. It's like the "idea guys" talking to engineers about their great ideas thinking they are so smart just by thinking it 😂
The problem with most game studios these days is that they've driven away or fired most of the good writers and devs, who have moved on to make their own studios
Most of them have left the industry entirely. If you're a programmer the video game industry is one of the poorest paid and most underappreciated places you can get a job. If you're a writer you should be going back to school because you're getting replaced by AI.
The best possible writers you will find writing fanfiction because they pour their heart and soul into it.
@@Devinrekrafted that’s genuinely so true. Especially on AO3. Some of the fanfics on there are honest-to-god works of art. I love it so much 😂
I think a whole lot of it has to do with how writers are paid. Most are paid poorly so you have a lot of wealthy/out of touch people going into the field and just copying whatever they think is popular or has been selling well, for example marvel dialogue or fortnite graphics.
Also I dont think that corporations forcing writers to add "certain elements" to their story helps either, as writers or anybody in an art medium does not like to be told to change their passion project.
Most writers in the industry are not paid poorly
Theyre lazy
@ you could say that about any industry
Also they often are underpaid, some of these guys make 50-65k and year and then they have to deal with massive amounts of upper management telling them what to do.
Tbh, as much as i agree with all you said, if you are hired, you pretty much can forget about "passion projects", like, it's an industry, it's a buisiness, that's how creativity that brings in a paycheck works, you gotta compromise a lot, you can't just do what you want because you have a vision, etc
If you want no restraint, you go indie, but it's a gamble on either it sells or not and the workload is way heavier
@ but the question is how much do they exactly have to compromise?
I understand the concept of having to work with others to build a project (especially when said project is so large) but it feels like the writers and even the designers are all being held back from making something unique and original.
@@youngbouyoub2696 honestly, i think it boils down to having an open work environment where it's encouraged to debate your points in writing the story and make compromises on it without social or corporate consequences, like, leave the ego at the door (both writer and corporate) and make your point and pick the best options while considering all the arguments, and for the love of god stop the crunch and bake your writing properly
Another thing is that even good writers can write mediocre crap, one can give their best, but not every piece is going to be a masterpiece
Games writer here. Small studios often don't hire writers at all. Larger studios tend to hire game designers with writing experience. Usually level designers or other "content design" specialities.
Writing just isn't widely considered to be an isolated specialty in games.
That's also why writing usually isn't considered an important voice when changes have fo be made during development. I'd use BL3 as an example because the cuts are so obvious to me, but I don't have confirmation there.
So they literally went back to how things were in 80's, first half of 90's, but with none of the talent of that time.
It’s Joss Wheedon writing. That’s how he writes his characters, and it’s not necessarily bad, in buffy and firefly it felt fresh, in the early days of marvel it really worked.
He did the first avengers movie and that tone the whole everything is a joke thing has carried on to this day, love and thunder was the zenith of it, characters were busting a gasket wanting to look at wink at the camera.
Deadpool, even though it’s a character trait, it’s the same shit, the sort of sarcastic, ironic wise cracking non stop stchick
So now they put it in EVERYTHING because they think it’s cool, they want to be funny
The problem is a lot of entertainment consumers want “funny” “exciting” escape from reality characters. A common thing I keep hearing from people when they hate a movie or character is that it was either boring character (because he didn’t do a joke every 5 minutes) or the story made them feel sad. Like my dad who refuses to watch any movie with Tom Hiddleston in it cause he’s the bad guy in Avengers 1.
Nah dude, Joss Whedon writing is way better than this.
The problem is that the people trying to copy Joss Whedon are nowhere near as talented as he was.
The difference is that Joss Whedon is *good* at this kind of writing. Whedon used this writing to set tone, build characterization, deliver exposition, foreshadowing, and so much more. This writing is why Buffy and Firefly were so good (aside from all the other people who made those shows great), because it was effective writing that told more story with fewer lines. His lines almost never did just one thing.
Other writers simply imitated the form of his writing without understanding the essence, and the result is shallow, hollow, and vapid dialogue that serves no purpose.
The problem is ppl greatly misunderstood Whedon’s style as jokes 24/7. Ask anyone who is fans of his shows and they’ll talk about the drama moments.
He used humour so he get lull you into a false sense of security to punch you in the face wit tragedy (and then to help you continue after tragedy)
Look at avengers 1 you have what happened with Caulson, the audience and characters cared, it felt impactful. Imitators don’t do that side of it
True, the decision makers in charge of most games don't really know what makes art, particularly writing, good or bad. They hire people who probably have no experience in games. That kind of dialogue might work in a YA novel or cartoon, but not a cutscene
Out of touch writing is the best way to describe this.
Yes and no, in the perspective of writers it kinda sells books and it's kinda getting popular with the young demographic.thats just my observation I might be wrong. To me those books r junk but I see those books get high praise it's like a trap and it's annoying I never finished it.
50yr old execs asking 30yr old developers to make games they think will be played by 10yr olds.
The dialogue in forspoken sounds like a millennial with no life experience wrote it based on Reddit interactions.
That's why I'm working my butt off to become a talented writer. Yea, I'm still working on it years later from when I was a wee lad, aka in elementary school. But look at how I write now compared to my past self. A quality increase
Often times they have people who know about the problems in the story but aren't alowed to speak up. I know someone in the industry who had a friend that worked for Pixar in the Cars 2 movie. They were doing a table read or something and asked everybody for feedback, so this dude just spills the beans and says "I hate Matter, I don't understand why he has all this screen time and I think the movie would benefit if it had less of him". Everyone was silent, untill someone said "Well, we all love Matter here". With a culture like this, where people are not incentivised to give feedback and punished if they do, the production is doomed to fail. Needles to say Cars 2 is widely viewed as the worst Pixar movie.
Mater was kept in that movie cause he sold the most merch from the first one
Even the writers of Cars said they hated him as a character and didn’t see him outside on off jokes
So this story didn’t happen or they said he made them money so shut up
@HobbiesGamesChillin Yeah, they told the guy to shut up. Why assume the story didn't happen? It's just like you said, they told him to shut up and not mess up the plans
@@GoGo-ze1mq cause it didn’t happen
Again no one liked Mater on that team and it was studio execs demanding he be put back in
@@HobbiesGamesChillinYou sound so confident you might as well have voiced McQueen, impressive. And I'm pretty sure Lasseter loved Mater
@ who cares about Lasseter
None of the writers, story boarders or runners did
He sold more toys and it’s why he was in the second one even though it doesn’t make sense for him to be there
It’s like boba fett having two lines but being everywhere in Star Wars cause he sold toys and fans liked him
Greece mentioned ❗❗❗❗❗ WTF IS A STABLE ECONOMY ⁉️ 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
It's spelled Grease
Greece needs to invest in BTC and tell its women to shave. Dated a Greek chick back in high school and her arms were hairier than mine... she was still pretty cute tho
@@xrphoenix7194
For the country?
No tf it isn't.
I think the problem is not that studios can’t hire good writers, it’s that studios don’t know what good writing even is.
I just watched Helluva Boss. I loved it, it left me with post-show-blues. But then I watched a few video essays criticizing the show. And, man, it had more problems with its writing than my emotional ass cared to notice.
So, I’m not always aware of what bad or good writing looks like either.
Paul Dini, writer of Batman: The Animated Series, who was hired to write Batman: Arkham City, talked about how there was no *possibility* he would be hired for the 3rd game, as ALL game companies had switched to using "in-house talent"
I think it’s less so that they can’t hire anyone talented (imo anyone that’s being hired to that big of a job is at the very least pretty damn good at their job), but it’s more about them working with conflicting ideas, directors, producers, CEOs, and the like.
Not to mention, that type of writing and dialogue WAS popular in the 2010s, I remember seeing it a lot in within the MCU and a lot of other comedy stuff, but after having that kind of writing infect movies, shows, and games for a decade turned everyone off from it.
I’m not saying that the writing is good or anything, but it shows how people’s taste in something can change once it becomes too common.
This. That was a kind of writing that most ppl found cringe at the time but was undeestood by execs as vibing with GenZ. It doesnt. There's also a heck of a lot of stereotyping in tgat scene, being that its a woman of colour of an certain age. Its all marketting checkboxes. Designed to reach/exploit "new" demographics.
That Poochie the dog scene from the Simpons where the marketting person spouted BS to tge writers room is still the explanation for this.
Another underrated explanation is tech industry types treat writers like absolute crap, so the people they hire are 1) writers who wouldn't get work elsewhere 2) arent writers by training
@@zedatkinszed1216 that kind of writting is incredible popular, if doen right.
but its also incredible hard to do it right, much hader than other styles.
@@zedatkinszed1216 No one needs to hire writers with no training. If you round up a few homeless people right outside your office, at least one or two are going to have a degree in English
@paulie-g spoken like a real techbro
If anybody wants a good breakdown of what this "style" of writing is that's pervading every form of entertainment we consume now, a video from ShreddedNerd titled, "Millenial Writing" provides a really good breakdown.
What I personally drew from that video is that it's a group of city-living young people who have spent most of their lives online who don't interact with anything or anyone outside of their immediate circle of wealthy city-folk graduates. You should give it a look.
What I heard is that most studios dont care. They usually give some guidelines and that's it.
That dialogue feels like a Joss Whedon script. Everything after Firefly and The Avengers feels like a Joss Whedon script. Loved it in Firefly, not a fan of it everywhere else.
But also... I'd probably say something like that too in her situation.
One thing I notice is that when I notice really bad writing or directing, I look up who did it and im usually not surprised. Its usually someone who doesnt have much experience, and what experience they do have isnt totally applicable. Like they were hired to write a movie but only ever wrote a few episodes for a tv show of a completely different genre. Or they only directed one or two indie films and now theyre on a massive budget blockbuster. Or, as is so often the case, theyve consistently made other, terrible movies/shows/games etc. Its not 100% but its often enough. How some of these folks keep getting work, has gotta just be down to them being really good at shmoosing the right people.
One thing I'll say about writers, good and bad, in the video game industry is you can have a writer write a good or at least balanced story that traverses your vegetation world, your water world, your ice world and your fire world, and all it takes is one guy to go "we don't have the time, delete the ice world."
"B-but my stories critical turning point for the main character and/or their party occurs in the ice world!"
"You're the writer. I'm sure you'll figure it out."
God forbid that team decided to re-include the ice world as DLC. Also without letting that writer know or perhaps not even bringing them back.
I feel its worth noting that it's often studio higher ups that make these kinds of calls and are the ones surprised by the poor results
"Oh can you put a bunch of Wheadon-esque dialogue like MCU in there? Cause that sells"
And then you have this situation where otherwise halfway decent and even good writers are now forced to write things in a style that isn't their own that they might even hate, I'd throw the hat in too if I was thinking and feeling Game of Thrones in style, tone and dialogue when I signed on but was told, "no, Adventure Time"
If it feels derivative and forced, that's most likely because it is
Companies should hire from the litrpg scene. There are some really really good writers and they are already writing games like.
This just makes me more impressed with red dead, god of war, uncharted, tlou, horizon ZD spiderman and the arkham games. Probably missed many more games out. But those games come to mjnd. The writing was tremendous.
Not only that. The industry is a revolving door of "connections". Its the same thing with voice acting. Someone from the dev team knew someone who writes and they hire them. Game flops, that someone from the dev team gets hired to another studio, and repeats the same cycle.
It's been a known secret. Not to mention, writing for videogames and use it as a part of the portfolio to become a writer in Hollywood.
Wow, good summary. I really enjoy these short videos. Please keep making them.
i think part of it is that games change alot and even if they get talented writers in early, 80% of script has probably change by release and they don't want to pay or waste time redoing large chunks writing wise, so they just get someone to throw in the most generic linking dialogue they can with the parts that still work.
eg a purely inhouse writing team(or leader) who are inputting the whole time is important for this reason (BG3)
it goes beyond being out of touch. Would you trust a writer who plays video games once or twice a month to build a team of talented, capable video game devs? Probably not. So why do we expect game devs (or gaming company execs) to determine what good writing is?
And for that matter, "good" writing in video games is incredibly difficult to pin down. Id argue it's still a developing medium. A lot of video game writing conventions are just straightup bad writing in any other medium, because it has to accommodate player agency (and in many cases, some kind of power fantasy or class fantasy). That doesnt make it bad, but it does mean that we literally dont know what constitutes "good" writing yet.
Well because we have to also understand there is no baseline or scale to actually judge “good writing”
People will shit on something’s writing and then when they are asked to come up with something better they make something even worse and actually believe that it’s better, that’s why some people love Shakespeare and others think it’s a bunch of hot garbage. Like many art forms it’s an opinion, and so you can’t actually expect people to be able to properly define what is considered “good writing”
Now there’s obvious examples like plot holes or just character inconsistencies absolutely, but stuff like dialogue is completely subjective and I don’t really know how your supposed to determine that when everyone has different tastes.
Like I love the Pirate of the Caribbean movies and my grandma hates them, I didn’t hate a lot of movies that many others do, I got emotional with games that lots of people said were ass, so I’m not sure how your supposed to tell who’s right or wrong
While I agree with you that writing for games is difficult and how a software dev might not be the best judge of what is "good writing", the problem is most of these modern games have such a bad writing even an untrained person can tell it's bad. There is a major difference between writing something that is generally good, but misses a few points or something that will just make your players cringe the whole way through playing the game.
The thing is I would take a crudely written but interesting story over a well written, but cringey self-insert fanfic every time. At the end of the day with video games what matters is not if fellow writers find your writing good, but if the gaming audience finds it good and on that regard a lot of modern games and their writers fail miserably.
As for the argument "we don't know what is good yet", that is just not true. We had in the past plenty of games that may not have been writing masterpieces, but were generally accepted as amazing stories by the audience, so we have plenty of examples of good video game story writing it's just that the writers currently writing games actively trying to not do something like that and it shows.
@@TemmieTumpter gaming has also made a bizarre type of writing in the form of a 'Silent Protagonist'. It's absolutely terrible and ruins games for me, pulls me out of any story every 5 seconds.
The issue with writing is that you cannot pin it down, because if you do, it becomes too formulaic, so it's now bad again.
That's an excuse. The people in charge either have bad taste, or don't care enough to get quality people. It's really that simple.
The people that work at these companies are terrified to speak out of line. They hire a check box, and then when the check box is terrible they have to gaslight themselves into believing the check box they hired is a skilled worker. They know the writers are terrible and the story lines are bad, but they are so worried they are willing to sink a HUGE game so they don’t get any pushback online.
A significant amount of English and creative writing and lit majors these days honestly believe they are gods gift to written language and are better than any writer who has ever come before... And it's because they have been coddled by every single teacher who has ever read their work. Just about 90% of everything written and published today, be it a book, movie, or game, is contemptible trash that would have been laughed out of a publishing house, film studio, or game studio 15 years ago.
You can't sneak fable music in the background and not expect me to catch it. Based background music
Its a bit more complex than that, you've got multiple writers, multiple voice actors, dialogue directors, animators, developers all creating one project, some of the writers might be talented but their ideas for certain sections might not get selected
Keep in mind it is multiple people doing writing in different aspects, while having to modify it for gameplay and levels, while ALSO having to deal with publishers wanting styles that are different from the writer's they hired and their specialties. For Forspoken, it wasn't out of touch writers, it was an out of touch CEO controlling the project. They probably told the team 'make it like the marvel movies' since those are popular, and the team was happy because that's exactly what they did.
You do not know what youre talking about
@@TOAOM123 ok
How to find actual talented writers
1/find a list of writers
2/chick any previous work they made
3/look up what people think of that writer, do they like their work or not?
4/profit
I can actually answer this too from a practical perspective. Because big companies hire loads of people and don't properly vet their writers, the people applying like any job often lie to get into their position, and the most important reason of course is that yes the people in charge are beyond out of touch with pretty much everyone outside their bubbles.
I thinks part of the problem is that, instead of having one (or a few) writer(s) working on a project they care about with a clear idea of what they want, these AAA game studios are hiring a room full of people who each have their own ideas trying to interpret some vague concept that was handed to them because it sounded good to a bunch of executives who don't play games.
So you have the whole "camel is a horse designed by a committee" and on top of that the writers don't really care about the product. They're just after the paycheck and the credit.
Honestly I have a speculative idea that whenever there’s ALOT of money and people riding on the success of their project it can put a crazy amount of pressure on the writers to make a hit story but if the team isn’t confident enough it could cause them to crack and play it safe. That’s part of the reason I respect Cory Barlog for his steady hand on the GOW remake the dude had a vision and STUCK WITH IT and it paid off huge risk but it worked
Yeah, that's what happens when you talk to people only via Twitter.
The issue is that we used to actually have a lot of very talented people writing for games... But this is the end result of a culture that to maintain as much profit as possible will just fire everybody.
The problem isn't a "lack of quality" The problem is that a lot of games are being written by people either fresh out of university or still at an early point in their careers and art requires a certain level of life experience that a lot of these people will not have had at twenty-something years of age.
This also extends to the as well because it takes a certain level of job security to be able to tell your boss that their ideas for the script are bad, especially if you want to be rehired/retained in layoff season
Hey the Forspoken reaction video is how i found your channel! So at least I'm grateful to that game for that
what's most likely happening is that good and experienced writers get brought on, aren't paid enough, get fired for wanting more pay, and a new inexperienced writer has to come in and pick up the table scraps disconnected from the original vision
line must go up etc. etc.
When you throw that kind of money around, expect upper management to be strict on what they expect. With them being strict, chances are quality is going to drop. Which is what happened with most other gaming companies. They forget what brought them to the dance in the first place.
Sometimes that isn't the case, but a lot of times it is. They are too focused on the financial profit of what it could be, rather than giving their artists and writers a bit more freedom to explore their options and make something that feels natural.
Love the Fable background music
Oneyplays did a partial playthrough of Forspoken. They described the game VERY accurately.
A good thing to understand is that often times writers come in a lot later into the pipeline than the ground floor. Often a game already has a collection of branches in the production pipeline that writers need to navigate, to say nothing as to the liberty they are given with the story. But I do agree that sometimes the writer just sounds like they're barely capable of typical conversation.
I was actually thinking this exact same question. How is it possible for 150million bazingas to not hire a single talented writer. Unbelievable
As one of the few who almost got platinum for Forspoken, I can say with confidence that what made the game playable was muting the audio and turning off the subtitles. The magical combat was fun, the collecting small flying cats was fun, upgrading spells was fun, story was not.
That said, still wouldn’t recommend this game to other people, because I don’t think advertising a game by saying it’s fine as long as you get rid of all audio content means the game isn’t a good game.
Emil Pagliarulo once went on record saying he doesn't indulge criticism once his work is done, at all. An attitude i once thought uncommon in the industry.
I work at Warner Brothers and its the exact same. They thought the Velma writers were amazing
Also studio meddling with the story so the game “will sell better” and it always just ends up worse
The problem is the writers think they are talented because they were raised in an environment that punishes honest non positive criticism.
Personally im disappointed in myself if im not good enough, i don't neee coddling i need honest feedback to improve at something.
When your told your current best is always good enough you end up learning to blame other ppl for them not liking your work
How much of it is writing vs directing or voice acting?
They got high off of their own supply 😂😂
I don't know, i haven't played that game nor know anything about the story, but i think what makes a good written game goes far beyond the dialogs or the tone of it. You could even say that it's more of a direction thing, maybe. (Because dialogs can be changed, and the tone is more defined by the "director", as well as a finished product.)
Ita even worse than that, the people hiring think these people are good AND these writers think they are good.
This is why authors have beta readers, if these games had that it wouldnt even be in the beta test, those lines would be cut before even character models were done.
I think these writer went to school took writing classes and got the job because of that. The problem is being able to create a great story and being able to tell the story effectively, one takes charisma to get people really engaged in the story with all its little details, the other takes creativity to come up with the world
I like your glasses could you tell me the name and brand. Thanks
10 minutes after that scene is when I decided I had enough of that game.
Writers are also inherently inconsistent and video game scripts are thousands of pages long so even the best resumes can crack. And something that long is hard to revise so it's sometimes hard to fix especially if its a pivotal moment, yeah it's hard
That Forespoken dialogue is the entirety of SSKTJ’s dialogue.
I think people underestimate how different it is to write a story for a book compared to a story for a video game. The game leaves only so much room for imagination and you have to somehow tailor gameplay and storytelling together.
Writing was my first passion but I'm going back to school for coding so that I can actually be respected...and maybe sneak some good writing into more games
It's also not about there not being "1 talented writer" often the problem is to many writers. It's hard to make a cohesive story and characters when there are 3 dozen writers trying to make their own story or put their own self insert in.
Troons is why
That one little snippet out of context is rough (even in context it’s rough) but the problem with that project was that they put the player in a situation wheee the character almost has to talk to themselves because there’s no one else for the character to interact with.
“Writers” in general aren’t writing that little snippet though. Idk if you just are uneducated on video game writing but they largely write the overarching script and dialogue for those important cutscenes (which is why there’s such a wild Quality upgrade/downgrade scene to scene in forspoken) but no one is paying the writer of Rogue One enough money to write every single piece of dialogue scene to scene. That’s being handled by junior people in the staff and story directors.
Cheers for the Feast. Don't forget to do the quest battle.
The biggest difference is a story by comitee versus a singular vision shared by multiple people. Every writer needs to be on the same page not fighting over which part of their own head canon makes it into the finished game.
you could say this for any form of media ever. imagine how many shit books there are or how many movies have flopped that have huge budgets. videogames themselves are pretty hard compared to other mediums to have a good story cause you have 100 other things needed as well.
Once you get close to "these" people, you'll understand. Every minor skills are considered "talents" to them. That's why whenever a massive layoff happens, the word you'll see from journalists is "I feel sad for these talented people".
its because the 150 million makes them hire based on CVs or optics instead of passion because theyre afraid of wasting it. if youre making a creative product, you dont hire someone with an impressive CV, you hire a nerd who loves the source material/genre more than money.
a project without a budget isnt afraid to lose it and will get whoever will do it for the projects sake, the money makes that harder.
Same problem with movies & TV shows.
Writing trumps everything. A good script then casting & direction.
Thats how people in their social circles speak lol
Another problem is that most games are voiced now. With pretty life like graphics to boot. Writers need to write dialog like they do for movies for it to not sound... off.
The problem is that the game director is usually a programmer by heart, but if you want a story oriented game, you need a movie director
Game directors are usually non-technical. Trust me, no programmer in game dev is low IQ enough to OK this
With Forspoken specifically it appears to me they were going for dialog modeled off marvel movies, which at one point was very popular. However audiences have long since soured on that kind of dialogue. Not bad writing but misjudging the audience
It is just sad to see... Single player games allow for much beter story telling and engagement then any book or film is able too if developers just were allowed too... In this perspective i fully agree... We can do beter... We must do beter... We must demand beter
Good and bad are very relative concepts. Decisions were made and when they came together, a few years later, they turned out to be wrong. The game was not greater than the sum of its parts. It is not easy to predict what will be successful in the future, and it is even harder to make it actually happen.
It's funny, people usually can tell a good story, or at least an adequate one, when they see it even if they can't write themselves. You'd think more people would be aware of bad writing. Yet, it's still extremely pervasive in every medium.
Man cherish that comment. Dude superchated you from one of the lowest GDP countries in the EU. Might have been his salary for the week there.
Naa most of the people who superchat are rich kids
I doubt that's the case. I think most of these writers are probably being constrained by focus groups and checklists their producers make them adhere to. When your game costs 150 million, you get so worried that you won't recoup your money, you try to make the most blanketly appealing product you can. And that usually means "trendy" dialogue; dialogue that will offend as few people as possible.
The really thaught they had Deadpool level quipiness 😂
This is why you need a quality assurance team
When your head rider says he won't write lore "because people play with lore like paper airplanes" then you have a crappy head writer
I don't know this game but just hearing the dialogue it sounds like a marvel movie
The trick isn't to find good writers - it's to make sure that the guys who are hiring the writers have good taste and hire the right people.
It's easy for a head of engineering to hire a developer, because they know how to evaluate developers
Game Studios needs to send atleast 100 different gaming youtubes snippets of game play and start asking questions about everything and take that feedback and pay the youtubers
“NYC subways smell like urine” says the guy who licked 1 yard of subway floor. Josh probably doesn’t even remember doing that
I think good games are the ones that don’t focus entirely on writing and narrative but focus on gameplay instead. All these narrative driven games mostly just play themselves with QTEs, and more cutscenes and dialogue than actual gameplay or slow walking in corridors between sections
i think what people forget is these writers are probably very talented !! the people who aren’t are the HIGHER UPS, the big wigs or jus managers who think they’re still “down with the kids” which leads to dialogue like forspoken :((( its just a shame the creatives who have the listen to these people are the ones who are blamed
The "writers" friend circle are people from Friends and HIMYM 😂
Jupp can confirm that unqualified people are often hiring people, but the people above them are also unqualified and noone know what's good. And those that do, are usually the workers, not the higher ups... which often get to their position through knowing someone, being in "the circle" or 'other' reasons, you know..
me when the narwhal bacons at midnight, amirite? epic!