So the list for the Writer's Guild 2012 Best Game Writing Award nominees has been published. And needless to say it is extremely disappointing.
We have (in no particular order): Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Brink, Batman Arkham City, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, and Mortal Kombat.
Now just to start at the top: no one thinks a Mortal Kombat game deserves a writing award (they even have writers for this?), and while I loved Batman it wasn't breaking any story molds or breaking paradigms (although the ending was a seriously ballsy move for Rocksteady). If Batman should get a writing award it should be for attention to detail (spoiler warning).
Then we come to Brink, wait someone actually played this? It is an online shooter that doesn't even have a Story section on wikipedia (which also says that the average ratings for the game barely made it over a 7 out of 10).
While I haven't played Assassins Creed 2.75 yet, unless they completely break with their previous story conventions and starting giving the player clear, concise answers this shouldn't win simply because instead of engaging the player with actual mysteries and questions the game makes the player confused and ask, "What the fuck was that? Why did I just do this?" (maybe I will have to do this series at some point)
I played most of Uncharted 1 and 2 I haven't gotten around to the newest iteration. Although a friend of mine assures me it is quite good.
But that isn't the issue. Besides Uncharted there isn't one game on here that I could actually hold up as a pillar of story telling in the 2011 gaming year.
Mass Effect 2 (while not my favorite of the series, doesn't get nominated, but Mortal Kombat does?!), Dragon Age 2 (see previous parenthesis), L.A. Noire, Catherine, Limbo, Bastion, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (seriously, how does this not get nominated?). None of them gets a nod. For shame.
Apparently you can only be nominated if you send the Writer's Guild a script. While this is stupid for about 12 different reasons (the biggest being that you don't READ a game, you PLAY it), something needs to change.
Maybe you should, as the Escapist says, write to your favorite developer and tell them that they should send out scripts to the Writer's Guild.
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