First of all if you don’t know who the WGA is you’ve been living under a f*#king rock. The WGA is the Writers Guild of America. Those douchebags have been on strike for several months now, and coming from a person that works in the entertainment industry…It Sucks! That aside I just read an article on gamedaily.com about the WGA establishing an award for storytelling excellence in video games, to improve the status of writers, and to begin to encourage uniform standards. These writers also want compensation (their jumping on board the WGA strikes’ train of pain). The gaming industry is now a major player in entertainment, given the fact that the domestic games industry made more money last year than theatrical film distribution. I won’t argue with that, but this is a fight that I think should be segregated to the game industry, and fought on a different day.

I agree that my favorite games are usually FPS games with a kick ass story. My two favorites last year were Bioshock (K2) and Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios). These games were not even nominated for this new WGA award? Yes, you heard me right, not even Halo 3 was nominated. Who the hell is voting on this sh*t? Obviously not people who play and understand gaming. Regardless of this travesty, here’s some excerpts from the gamedaily article:

The award is the brainchild of Micah Wright and Jay Lender, writing partners who have created numerous video games together, including “Shadow Ops: Red Mercury” for Atari and “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” for Warner Bros. Interactive. They believe that the attraction of quality graphics in games is on the wane and that character, dialog, and plot are widely expected to be the next “killer feature” in games.
“Sadly, on the eve of this revolution, the vast majority of game writers currently receive far less in compensation than their film and TV counterparts for similar work,” says Wright. “They receive no minimums, no guaranteed credit, no profit participation, no benefits of any kind, and TV and film writers can look forward to the same as many of them migrate to the games industry. Given the fact that the domestic games industry made more money last year than theatrical film distribution, this may be the next major battlefield for WGA member writers.”
Unfortunately, says Wright, there is little understanding in the public mind — or even the game industry itself — of the unique contribution of writers to the game development process.
“We are most often seen as ‘dialoggers,’ afterthoughts to the process,” he adds. “As evidence of this, game industry awards, which cite writing or story, are handed out exclusively to publishers or to designers; they receive credit in the public mind for our work even when their contribution to story is negligible.”
So the “Best Videogame Writing” award was born, with five nominees in the initial go-’round: “Crash of the Titans” by Christopher Mitchell, “Dead Head Fred” by Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan, “The Simpsons Game” by lead writer Matt Selman and others, “The Witcher” by lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec and others, and “World in Conflict,” by Christofe Emgard and others.

I haven’t even heard of some of these f*#king games! The fact of the matter is that this award doesn’t mean sh*t! If there were more genuine people in the gaming industry associated with the WGA, these games (that were nominated for a WGA) wouldn’t have been nominated. The bottom line is that the WGA will have another war (in the near future) to pry money out of the hands of the well endowed (monetarily) army of the gaming industry. I’m waitin’ for that one… with bated breath!

Here’s a game that needs no story writers (Guitar Hero), and a song from an insane band… Between the Buried and Me. How does this guy keep up?

Technorati Tags: WGA, Writers Guild of America, strike, entertainment industry, video games, gaming industry, player, Bioshock, K2, Gears of War, Epic Games, Microsoft Game Studios, award, Halo 3, Shadow Ops, Red Mercury, Atari, Looney Tunes, Warner Bros, graphics, TV, film, Crash of the Titans, Christopher Mitchell, Dead Head Fred, Dave Ellis, Adam Cogan, The Simpsons, Matt Selman, The Witcher, Artur Ganszyniec, World in Conflict, Christofe Emgard, Guitar Hero, Between the Buried and Me

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 3:18 pm and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.