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WGA Awards Force Unleashed

23 02 2009

The WGA’s (Writers Guild of America) Videogame Writing Award came to a close (back in February 9th). Previously mentioned here, it seems AAA contenders, such as Fallout 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 have succumbed to Star Wars’ power.

The narrative of Force Unleashed takes place between the ending of the movie Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and the beginning of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and has the player don the role of Star Killer, Vader’s secret apprentice. Praised for its story by critics and gamers alike, this 3.5 Star Wars episode provides a lot of backstory to the saga. Congratulations to writers Haden Blackman, Shawn Pitman, John Stafford, and Cameron Suey for their efforts and in succeeding with such canon and sacred material.

Licensed material rarely manages to achieve such heights, especially when concerning storytelling. To be awarded in place of other IPs native to the videogame medium is either a good or a bad thing. There’s the possibility that Star Killer’s tale is in fact the best one or the best told out of all the nominations. Then again, there’s also the alternative we haven’t fully realized the videogame medium’s storytelling potential and for that matter we relate better to a narrative told through tried-and-true methods, like movies and novels.

Nevertheless, gotta’ get me a copy so I can play it.

Source: Gamespot

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Tags: Award, Fallout 3, Force Unleashed, guild, Red Alert 3, Star Wars, Tomb Raider, Videogame, WGA, writers, writing
Categories : English, Games

WGA’s Annual Videogame Writing Award

13 01 2009

For the second time, the Writer’s Guild of America is nominating games for its annual Videogame Writing Award. The most famous, or AAA titles, among those are Fallout 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Sadly though, the selection process requires winners to be members of the Guild. Naturally this reduces drastically the number of contestants and doesn’t account for the majority of games released.

Nevertheless, games are a somewhat recent medium and if the event’s objective is to “encourage storytelling excellence in videogames, improve the status of writers, and foster uniform standards within the gaming industry”; so be it.

As a Bethesda fan and having only played Fallout 3 (at length) from the list, I’ll cross my fingers for it. I’m sure though all of the games contribute to storytelling in their own distinct genre and manner.

Credit goes to the games which did not necessarily come closer to traditional means of storytelling similar to other mediums (like film), but rather found their own voice and method of telling stories.

I would like to see Dead Space and GTA 4 participating as well.

EDIT: Micah Wright commented that actually, the Award rules only require that writers who nominate themselves join the WGA’s sister group, the Videogame Writers Caucus, and don’t need to be members of the Guild per se.

Source: Gamasutra