Writing for Video Games

A book loaded with practical tips for writers looking to get into the industry, with bonus insight for non-writers.

Author Steve Ince’s claim to game writing fame was Revolution’s Beneath a Steel Sky. It harks back to a day when the adventure genre was still in its prime, and story was a crucial element to a successful game. These days, as Ince himself points out in Writing for Video Games, a game can get along just fine, and even be a massively profitable endeavour, with a main protagonist that doesn’t utter a single word.

So what place does a writer have in an industry where the value of a good story has diminished so significantly? Ince attempts to answer this question with his vast amount of practical knowledge.

The book assumes the reader is a qualified or at least semi-talented writer with an eye for getting a job in the gaming industry, and not the other way round. As such it goes into detail early on, explaining the different genres, including shooters and MMOs, and their creative requirements. There’s also a treatise on the gaming industry itself, and is enlightening even for the seasoned player.

A large focus of the book is the internal machinations of game production, and the demands it places on a writer. For example, a basic shooter may only require a few weeks of work on the writer’s behalf for the basic story, while a full-blown RPG could have the writer coming back time and again to rewrite dialogue to match the flow of the game.

Ince throughout the book emphasises the use of interactive fiction and we get the impression this is his preference. He even goes as far as to say Half-Life 2 is not the best example of good story exposition, as the player neither takes part in dialogue, or is required to pay attention to it, lessening its importance.

More proof of the book’s aim at the less gaming-educated audience comes with the description of scripting systems, such as those used in Neverwinter Nights and SCUMM. Ince provides a simplistic guide to these sorts of systems, however we wouldn’t call it a dependable resource. Most games use their own, custom scripting system and while Writing for Video Games deals with the essentials it won’t prepare the hardcore writer for the intricacies of individual engines. Not that it could, but this is something that should be kept in mind if you’re looking to read further, or decide to memorise the syntax of the example script at the back of the book.

Towards the end, Ince talks about getting into the industry, marketing your skills, and the legalities of intellectual property. This is definitely an insightful section and it’s good to see Ince has covered what might have easily been an overlooked or neglected topic.

Overall, Writing for Video Games is a solid introduction for a writer to the world of game design. While gamers won’t gain a great deal from the first half of the book, those without a technical or management bent will reap rewards as they progress to the middle and end of the book. There’s also an index, which is always handy.