Variety got the list of nominees for the Writers Guild’s Best Writing in a Videogame 2008 award, and well, I’ll get right to it:
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 (EA). Writer: Haris Orkin. Story Producer: Mical Pedriana.
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! (Mousechief). Writing: Keith Nemitz. Additional Writing: Adrianne Ambrose.
Fallout 3 (Bethesda). Lead Writer: Emil Pagliarulo. Quest Writing: Erik J. Caponi, Brian Chapin, Jon Paul Duvall, Kurt Kuhlmann, Alan Nanes, Bruce Nesmith, and Fred Zeleny. Additional Quest Writing: Nate Ellis, William Killeen, Mark Nelson, and Justin McSweeney.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (LucasArts). Writers: Haden Blackman, Shawn Pitman, John Stafford and Cameron Suey.
Tomb Raider: Underworld (Eidos). Story: Eric Lindstrom and Toby Guard. Screenplay: Eric Lindstrom.
It’s an…interesting list to say the least. There are some things to bear in mind here, though. First, far from every game is written under WGA guidelines by WGA writers. It’s a relatively new medium for the WGA (last year was the first time this award was offered), as story has only recently become a dominating factor in games. While there have been games using deep detailed stories for a couple generations of games now, with the current generation even racing games like Need for Speed have been heavily driven (no pun intended) by their stories. Also, for WGA awards, the first nomination needs to come from the writers, developers, or producers of the game. So, of the few that were WGA based, even fewer moved into the nomination pool.
Digressing, of the nominees I’d say the competition is likely between Fallout 3 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Fallout 3’s sheer scope, offering multiple dialogue paths and personal choices is intimidating. The Force Unleashed, though, told the best acted out Star Wars story since the original trilogy, and did so with an important, in-cannon tale.
[Via]
January 14th, 2009 at 10:58 am
They should just hand the award over to the Red Alert 3 team now and be done with it. Granted, that is the only one of those games I own but I just love the sheer audaciousness of the Soviets going back in time to kill Einstein.