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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2325 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 1, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I think it's descoping/rescoping that is to blame.

"Hey, writer, write me a story for a 40-hour game"

"Hey, writer, we can't include the Fortress of Foo in the game on time, replace it with something else stat. Remember, the lines have already been recorded, so be creative"

"Hey, writer, the actress that voiced Baria has been cancelled, we need you to remove her from the story. Remember, the lines have already been recorded, so be creative. What do you mean you can't do it, are you a writer or not?"

No self-respecting writer will stick around for this kind of treatment.

What amazes me more than Ubisoft is Bethesda Game Studios. The former forces its studios to crank out new games like Model T's, the latter has total control over its schedule and total creative control and still manages to release games with terrible, atrocious writing.

Remember, the lines have already been recorded, so be creative

This is one of the reasons that I will die on the hill of partial-voiced, Infinity-Engine style. The flexibility to change things, and the freedom for modders, is just wondeful.

Yes, very much so. I don't think games should be fully voice acted, as a rule. In fact I think no voice acting at all is perfectly acceptable.

Streamers are much more likely to play the game if it is fully voiced.

Meh, who cares? Good games will find an audience, no matter whether streamers play it or not.

People that make them care. Yes, exemplary games will find an audience, but merely good games might struggle to sell enough copies without additional exposure.

They shouldn't care. It's not important.

Yeah, I believe it.

Certain studios like Bethesda or Square Enix get a lot of heat for their poor writing, but across the board we don't see any great stories in AAA games anymore. Great stories require holistic coordination, which is the antithesis of modern game/film design where keeping everybody on the same page is by itself a kind of superhuman feat.

What amazes me more than Ubisoft is Bethesda Game Studios. The former forces its studios to crank out new games like Model T's, the latter has total control over its schedule and total creative control and still manages to release games with terrible, atrocious writing.

See, Bethesda doesn’t surprise me anywhere near as much. They’ve made a lot of money, Howard has complete creative control, and they have a bunch of older guys with no real writing skills who have been grandfathered in over the last thirty years as ‘quest designers’ and so on who are really bad at dialogue but who aren’t going to be fired as long as their games are making enough money for Zenimax/Microsoft not to shut them down.

Ubisoft is more of an actual business concern. They open and close studios all the time, Yves Guillemot is unlikely to be personally acquainted, let alone friends with, his senior writers.

No self-respecting writer will stick around for this kind of treatment.

I would say many, many writers would stick around for that kind of treatment if they're getting paid. Whether they're self-respecting or whether the best writers are self-respecting is of course another issue.

I would say many, many writers would stick around for that kind of treatment if they're getting paid.

Not just that. Many will stick around to have a line on their resumes. The writing industry, especially in game development, is all about who you know, and staying at a company to make connections will yield valuable opportunities in the future.

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