yeah when people are like "what were the writers THINKING" they were probably thinking 'oh god we've been asked to redo this four separate times, half the staff has been cut, the project is over-budget so we need to wrap up this character's storyline in thirty seconds of in-game time' - ThreadSky

ayshaufarah.bsky.social • 92 days ago

yeah when people are like "what were the writers THINKING" they were probably thinking 'oh god we've been asked to redo this four separate times, half the staff has been cut, the project is over-budget so we need to wrap up this character's storyline in thirty seconds of in-game time'

Reposted from Ashley Cooper

Narrative is a glass cannon. It can be powerful and yield huge results, but it's fragile. The more hits it takes, the harder it is for it to be effective.

When I play a game that I don't think has very strong writing, I don't think "these writers are bad", I wonder what they were up against.

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stan-fresh.bsky.social•92 days ago

I used to devour all those behind-the-scenes books about the writing process of the Star Trek shows, & so many subpar episodes were the result of having to go with what they got to keep production on track. Throw out the script and start over? That would bring the whole show to a stop.

sahilbajaj.dev•92 days ago

Posts like this are validating because I experience this firsthand and am like "Surely this is an anomaly, right" when it turns out that it is absolutely not an anomaly!

monkefyre.bsky.social•92 days ago

These ‘new’ notes are what I tried to do the first time around. You cut it … there’s only an hour to the show and now you want backstory dialogue for the Uber driver? … yeah, I know you don’t get that reference because you’re an old white dude suit who hasn’t left suburbia since the 70s… 😉

zakjarvis.bsky.social•92 days ago

I once had lunch with the writers of a game I’d enjoyed pretty well and was reasonably impressed with the writing on.

Turns out the game was basically finished when they were hired to write the story. Their job was literally just making sense of what the devs had already done.

thegammelier.bsky.social•92 days ago

Gears of War?

zakjarvis.bsky.social•92 days ago

Since I'm what I'm saying is a BIT damning with faint praise (though I'm ultimately really impressed with what they did considering), I don't want to provide enough info to guess the game.

ayshaufarah.bsky.social•92 days ago

i appreciate your circumspection

zakjarvis.bsky.social•92 days ago

Having worked on the dark matter of games -- projects that are in development for years and then canceled before anyone outside the team even knows they exist -- I'm very much into being kind to everyone in the industry.

Except CEOs.

ayshaufarah.bsky.social•92 days ago

right on brother

ayshaufarah.bsky.social•92 days ago

yeah, it's super rare that the people who started the game are there when the game is finished. so if my game that came out last year wins any of the awards it was nominated for, nobody who worked on it is still at the studio to accept it

coil.bsky.social•92 days ago

"and level 7, where we had the big reveal/twist monologue, just got shuffled to level 2."

ayshaufarah.bsky.social•92 days ago

"this game seems like it's going to be popular! make it two games instead of one."

ranylt.bsky.social•92 days ago

This. I worked for a creative company once, full of talented photographers, art directors and graphic artists (I was the lone writer). I've seen what untalented, soulless corporate suits do to good ideas.

faithfalkner.com•92 days ago

And that's on top of writing just being HARD

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