The Writing in Video Games is Absolutely Abysmal

Well it is. I can't help but see it, I think on at least some level you know it, and now Lost producer and lead writer Damon Lindeloff has the guts to bluntly say it. Bravo, I say. Here he is reacting to video game TV and movie tie-ins in an article suggesting video games hastened the demise of the writer's guild strike.

We have that Lost game coming out soon, and having taken a closer look at how that industry works, I fear the Lost franchise will be spoiled to the point where we?ll have to take it off the air. Loose ends and all. I am truly amazed at how our creative products can be ruined by interactive media. The writing in video games is absolutely abysmal. *

(Brace for a rant.)

(Okay. Buckled up and ready?)

Now when I wholeheartedly agree with Lindeloff that video game writing is largely in the un-flushed toilet, I'm not talking about Mario. I don't mean Donkey Kong Country, or Geometry Wars. People don't play Pac-Man for the epic dotty intrigue or Smash TV for its shallow mockery of entertainment TV. This isn't an indictment of video games in general or the places where good writing's managed to peek through in spite of the considerable odds stacked against it. The majority of video games (casual, played online, mostly by women) in fact don't have plots or need protagonists or involve much engagement with story-driven text at all.

But that's not what Lindeloff's talking about.

I think it's safe to say he's referring to cinematic games. Games which, by definition, "have qualities characteristic of motion pictures." Games where the story inseparably informs the gameplay. Games that borrow wholesale (or at least attempt to, amateurishly) from TV and movies at both the formal theoretical and technical-fictive levels. Games with lengthy intros, cutscenes with elaborate motion capture mechanics, or all those blurb-tastic "dozens of hours of voice acting!" Games whose inceptive stages look an awful lot like the ones that birth your average TV show or film. Exhaustive storyboards. Green-screens. Writers in rooms or chat sessions or on conference calls collaboratively hashing out scripts or last minute script changes.

Not to excuse movies and TV shows. They have their ample percentage of crap writing too, and Lindeloff needs to do a little looking in the mirror (on behalf of his medium, anyway) before throwing stones. Lost has its own share of crappy episodes, and Lindeloff knows it.

But compared to video games? Not even in the same league, and don't even attempt an equivalency argument (it just makes us look stupid). Well, not unless your idea of good writing includes stuff like R.A. Salvatore and Rhonda Byrne, in which case that may explain a lot of the problem. There's a reason those two won't be winning any storytelling awards, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of literary elitism Stephen King so eloquently trashed in his 2003 National Book Awards acceptance speech.

Which, you could argue, actually makes the point by roundabout: Game writing has the opposite problem of the one King was tackling during that important and wise speech. Game writing is way too easy on itself. And so are we -- too easy on chop-shop digital scribes and translators -- as gamers.

Maybe that's because we don't play movies, we watch them. We don't button-mash books, we read them. And so you can make a very reasonable argument about games being games first and good stories second (or tenth, or ten-hundredth). Hey, it's a valid point.

But here's a better one.

Is it okay that a speeding bus can jump a 50 foot gap in a freeway without incline in 1994's Speed? That dragons breed quicker than rabbits to conquer the planet practically overnight in 2002's Reign of Fire? That horizontally released bombs would drop, inertialess, straight down in 2001's Pearl Harbor? That Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum could use an everyday Apple Powerbook to upload a deadly virus into an alien mothership and ignite one of the most risible deus ex machinas in the history of popcorn cinema?

If there's one thing gamers expect in games, it's consistency. Consistency in visual aesthetics, controls, level design, etc. The only place we jump the shark? Consistency in game writing, where I gather cutscenes and other expository moments are viewed by the story-squeamish among us as a chore easily mitigated by tapping the START button.

If we expect a game to look good, if we expect a game to handle well, if we expect it to sound brilliant and run fluidly and meet all these crucial technical thresholds that sound like obsessive geekery to non-gamers, why are we accepting or even misguidedly defending aphorisms like "Suspicion is the precipice of enlightenment!" in incredibly pretty but hysterically badly written (or translated) games like Devil May Cry 4 for the PlayStation 3?

Think about it. Remember I'm not indicting puzzle games or (most) platformers or whatever you want to identify as "doesn't involve storytelling as an axial game element." I'm only targeting games that bring this on themselves by mimicking other mediums badly when there's absolutely no reason they shouldn't be transcending them.

Incidentally, if anyone has Lindeloff's number, ring him up and tell him to play BioShock before closing the door on video games completely. There's an utterly anomalous (if still flawed) game that at the very least has its compass calibrated in the right direction.

I hate hacking on my hobby, but I'm not going to shill for it either. We can continue to be blithe and juvenile and just crack jokes about storytelling in games...or we can get serious about it. The choice is yours.

* Of course the quote's a parody (see original link here). And thank you Mirror Universe Lindeloff for saying what Actual Reality Damon Lindeloff wouldn't.

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