Do you view artists as members of the team or someone you hire to make the game concept art done by the game designer look pretty? Weren''t artists an intergral part of game design process? I never heard artist complain about getting their images used improperly or cut by the game designer for time constraints. Artist are just hired help to make things look really good. Will seperating the writers from the designers and therefore the design process do the same. Yep. If all the little groups go off and talk amongst themselves, who is the most powerful group in the game? The game designers.

Game designers usually start with a rough story in their mind to begin the design process off of, the futher along the initial design, the more details are sorted out until the design reaches a point where production is ready to begin. If the writer isn''t involved in the outset, this is where he starts - the same place artists do, after the design ends and production begins. At that point, the design is solid and just needs the writer to smooth over the current story to make the final product palletable to the masses.

If writers want to wander off and pout because their story was downsized by a designer due to time limits, this is going to happen. They will be brought in after or at the tail end of the design process to make a design work with no say from beginning to end of the design.

Apparently the idea to start a ''Game Writers'' (most innapropriate - it should be ''Game Story Writers'') mixed with the idea of involving the writer from the beginning to the end of the design process and not ''you, designer, go set in your corner and do your thing,'' and ''you, writer, go set in your corner and do your thing.''

Game designers write the game design document, which has the back story and the front story included in the document, or at least rough drafts stories. If the ''writers'' don''t want to be involved the so be it, but no whining when your favorite part of the story gets cut due to time constraints. That and don''t whine when you don''t get hired to ''write'' games since most of the story is done and that liberal art guy gets hired on to smooth it over.

If a writer isn''t involved in the design process, who needs them? The story is done by then, and just needs to be smoothed over by some liberal arts guy who can spell.

Whirlwind, man, I don't think that anyone is suggesting that the people involved in crafting the characters, and storylines of games should be segregated from the "game designers".

Games now are the result of a TEAM making them, the game designers need to know what everyone on the team does, from sound to programming to Scripting.. it just makes it easier to contain the pertinent threads in the other orum where they won't get lost.

You do know that the Writers are now being hired and used as integral parts of game design teams. For instance the Half-Life team employed a novel writer (Marc Laidlaw??? - I think?), and Deus Ex had Sheldon Pacotti to do all the dialogue (and there is A LOT of dialogue), as well as incorporate all the dialogue trees using a simple scripting language (and obviously to help with the plot).

Squaresoft even hired a psychologist for Final Fantasy 7 / 8.

Edited by - Ketchaval on September 21, 2000 4:36:37 PM

(Because the Santa never gets used)

Um, Whirlwind, I think we''re both on the same page here.

I think writers should be integrally involved. But there are a lot of people who don''t think that there should be any (full-time, professional) writers AT ALL. They think that writing is either completely unimportant, or something that doesn''t really require skill or training. They figure "anyone can add a story onto the game once the ''important stuff'' (graphics, swanky 3D engine, etc.) is done".

To me, the writing forum is a recognition that writing is a craft, just like everything else. There are people who write professionally, and there is training that can make you better at it. A programmer (or game designer) can''t just sit down and churn out great, original writing without training, any more than I could sit down and write a scripting engine without knowing my chosen programming language. One of the complaints I hear all the time about computer games is that they''re just the same thing, over and over. First person shooters, for example, are all pretty much the same thing. Different colors, different engine effects, but still, they''re all a guy with a gun. The ones that feel unique do so because of the writing and setting.

So, why not have a forum to work on the CRAFT of writing? It''s NOT an attempt to separate writers from the process of design, any more than the graphics forum is an uprising by artists, or the music forum is a revolt by - well, you get the idea.

I hope.

- gollumgollum

some people still seem to think that design and writing are the same, or that design and programming are the same. No, design, writing, coding, art, music, etc... are all different and require different skills and talents. Because of small budgets often design and writing were combined in the past but that''s because they couldn''t afford to hire a writer and they attempted to have a designer or artist fill in. Or sometimes they couldn''t even afford a designer so they had a programmer or artist fill in. Ideally though you have a seperate person/department for each type of job, that way you are able to recruit specialists (quality programmers, designers, artists, writers, etc...) Also if the story has to be changed that''s just like the art or code having to be changed. Sometimes it happens, but good planning goes a long way. So yeah, anyway writing is a distinct field.

How has this turned into such a big discussion, to be quite frank it''s ridiculous.

The separate forums do not mean that people in the games industry are separated, Urr how stupid is it to think that.

Art and code have their own forums, does that mean artists and programmers don''t talk to each other and designers don''t talk to either of them on a project....of course it doesn''t.

Surely the purpose of the forum is the same as having separate folders on your PC. It''s just so you can access information that relates to a set-subject or sub-subject. Game design and Game writing are inextricably linked to one another but different all the same, hence the new forum.

All this talk of who holds the power in development is a load of crap. Power over development depends on company structure and politics (or is that brownnosing HeHe). It''s got nothing to do with the separation of roles, and not necessarily job titles.

If i''m the secretary at, i don''t know....er.. Crazy Mad Games and and I bring the MD nice coffee every morning, he might be mad enough to allow me to overule the producer on the latest title, because he''s mad, and I because I brown nosed him...hell games development can be like that.

I used to work for an MD who used to overrule the lead coder in the employment of coders when he came from a marketing background!!!!!

Also Gamedev have decided to creating a new forum so what? For **sake I love this site, but it doesn''t shape the workings of what is a global multi million dollar industry.

You ask the question do you see artists as part of the team?

Anybody who doesn''t see artists as part of the team has no buisiness in this industry. That said artists do what they do best, create art that stays withing the context of the games vision.

They generally do not get involved in game design (i know there is no definitive structure so, if you are an artist out there and are thinking about having a go at that last statement, then don''t , I am saying "generally").

Can I say you seem to have lost the plot with the quote below.


By seperating the two, you become another flunky for the game designer. Imagine it, ''HEY! Here is a great design for a game, go get me a couple of story writers and some artists to make it look pretty.'' Yes, let the writers have their own area, and we''ll ignore them even more as they pound away at our design driven story.
We the designers will treat them as non-contributors and make them rewrite the story 100 times since the writer ''added crap'' and that isn''t what we told him to do.


First of all, while you need the buy-in of all the people working on the game, that is to say everybody has to understand and be behind the vision, you cannot have decision by commitee. Somebody has to have final say on all project matters otherwise you have chaos.

Secondly, although as I have already pointed out, positions of power are defined by company structure and politics, generally it is the producer of a game who makes final decisions, not the game designers, as is the responsibility of hiring staff.

Thirdly, can I point out that it is not in anybody''s interest to work as separately and at odds with each other as you suggest.
Whoever was in charge would know that working in such away would hinder the project and increase the risk of its faliure to meet its deadline/expectations.

Who would want to risk their job in such a way?

Also even if the work came together in the end, the resulting turnover in staff by working in such a way would be terrible for the company in question.

Game design begins with an idea for a story unless you just want to write a game that involves killing a lot of things for no real reason other than for the sake of killing. I can''t see a clear cut difference between design and story except for one exception I just mentioned. The only reason to bring in a writing crew is to smooth over the story and write dialog for inclusion in the game design document.