Every year the Writers Guild of America awards a special Outstanding Achievement in Video Game Writing award to the team responsible for the most memorable interactive entertainment script. Which of these five titles will walk away a winner on February 19?
The Writers Guild of America know video games can have good writing. And last year handed out their first video game writing awards. This month, it’s time to hand out their second awards.
The ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike has much greater implications to the world of entertainment than a disappointingly rushed ending to Heroes season 2 and Ellen being forced to play Guitar Hero III to entertain her audience. The results of a survey just released by new-media consultancy company Interpret indicates that large percentages of viewers are abandoning network and cable programming in favour of watching movies and television series on DVDs and yes – playing video games.
The Writer’s Guild of America have announced the nominees for its first ever video game writing awards, and for the most part their choices don’t completely suck. As a matter of fact, two of my favorite games of last year are up for the award – The PC action RPG The Witcher and alternative timeline action RTS World in Conflict. The complete list: – Crash of the Titans,” written by Christopher Mitchell for Sierra Entertainment - “Dead Head Fred,” written by Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan for D3 Publisher - “The Simpsons Game,” with lead writer Matt Selman, written by Tim Long and Matt Warburton, dialogue by Jeff Poliquin for Electronic Arts - “The Witcher,” with lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec, dialogue by Sebastian Stepien, additional dialogue by Marcin Blacha and writers Sande Chen and Anne Toole for Atari - “World in Conflict,” story design by Christofer Emgard, story consultant Larry Bond and script consultant Ed Zuckerman for Sierra Entertainment.
Crash of the Titans? Really? I suppose that just goes to show that your game can have a great story and still be overwhelmingly mediocre.
WGA announces videogame nominees [Variety]
