Telltale Games has launched a contest that could see your words immortalized in the final episode of the five-part Tales of Monkey Island adventure game serial. Fans have between now and August 10th to submit short line about how Guybrush done them wrong at the Game Designer for a Day contest page. Entries are then voted for by fans, with the top vote getter each week eligible to win the grand prize - infamy! The winning entry will have their line voiced by Telltale talent, and score a game writing credit in the process.

Looking at the page right now, the top entry this week is "He sunk my battleship!", so I'd say there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Man, are game writers lazy this month or what?

When an interviewer for the UK Telegraph asks Houser if it will be long before video game writers are afforded the same respect as TV and film writers enjoy, Dan neatly explains that he'd rather not have it.

“I hope it's long,” he says. “It's really fun at the moment because we're not in any Academy and the medium's not codified. There's no accepted way of doing anything so that give us enormous pleasure because we can make it up as we go along. Movies and TV and books have become so structured in the way they have to approach things. Not working in that environment gives us enormous freedom. I'd rather keep the freedom and not have the respect.”

The man makes a very good point. Though video games are gaining popularity every day, they still don't have to deal with the rigid standards enforced for films and television shows in most countries. The multiple layers of scrutiny that those mediums undergo are something that the game industry has thankfully avoided so far.

Note that I said so far. This would be a good place for a little dramatic incidental music.

Dan Houser interview: Rockstar Games's writer for GTA 4 and The Lost And Damned [Telegraph via Games Industry]

Over at Gamers With Jobs, Julian Murdoch looks at the craft of writing about games — and how being a gaming journalist has improved his relationship with games. While I've found writing about games has significantly cut into my time I can spend playing games — and there's a difference between playing for pleasure and playing for pay — I'll agree with many of Murdoch's thoughts in regards to going into situations with a new perspective, one that is frequently quite positive:

This self-conscious focus on both the game and the gamer is an unadulterated good. Playing games now brings a joy of personal intellectual exploration, in addition to the joys of escapism, mastery and conquest. There is no doubt in my mind that my enjoyment of BioShock was substantially magnified because I went into the game thinking, not just passively waiting to experience. How it was made? Who made it? Where the threads were that I could pull on, and discover how much fabric was really there?

Writing about games has taken me from the role of dreamer into the world of the lucid dreamer. Where once I woke from moments of seeming glory, grasping at the fading fragrance of what was right there just a moment ago, now I emerge from a game startled and awake, reaching for the pad of paper, struggling to synthesize the experience in a new form – a form hardened by an edge of language.

I have the problem that I find that intellectual, questioning part of me off — I approach all media with a certain critical eye, and it's hard to ever just sit and enjoy something just for what it is. Still, being able to approach games with a certain lucidity is a good thing, as are the overlaps between my 'academic' life and my 'gaming' life. My relationship with games has certainly changed since I started writing about them, but it's not always doom and gloom — making a living (or partial living) off of something doesn't have to kill the joy of it.

Pinning Butterflies [Gamers With Jobs via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Game names corrected by spell check [GamesRadar]

Whether it's the development of the story or the additions of the new characters, there'll be a lot more for everybody to enjoy out of the whole story experience.

Gears 2 story will be "much better" - Tsunoda [Eurogamer]

If you want people to follow your plot, it has to be really f****** stupid. What are you doing in Bioshock? Act 1: Find the something and do something. But, the something goes somewhere. So, Act 2: You go somewhere and do something.

... as a part of my job on Dirty Harry, I met with our writer once a week to discuss the story, his progress in the script, changes we had made to the game that he had to accommodate. It was a great process that really helped the game, but it was also a 3-4 hour event, once a week.

During that time, I was not balancing weapons, implementing core game play systems or overseeing the work of the rest of the team, which was what my job description actually called for.

Maybe it's just me, but my jobs frequently have me doing things that aren't in the job description, yet I'm expected to do them anyways. I have to say the argument that 'plenty of designers can do double duty as writers!' is lost on me, since I agree with the commenter who noted that a lot of people out there think they can write, but their skills are somewhat lacking. Clearly not all games need writers, and clearly not all writers are suited for game writing - but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The Case Against Writers In The Games Industry [GameSetWatch]

I joke with people a lot that writing films and writing video games are very similar, except the video game people are nicer. I don't want to talk bad about anyone I've worked with in film, but in video games, it felt like I was part of the team.

And it's always felt like the writer was part of the team a little bit more .... They feel like your skillset is important, and that they expect that you have a different skillset than them, so that whatever you're saying deserves at least sort of a cursory glance or a cursory consideration.

That was also really refreshing, you know? I'm used to someone saying, "Write this. Here is what I want." And I just happen to do that, period, end of story. In this situation, it was really nice to say, "Hey, I have a suggestion," and someone actually listens.

It's a quick and interesting read and worth the time if you're interested in the nitty gritty of story design and how the writing fits into game design more broadly.

Musson Talks Writing For Movie-Based Games [Gamasutra]

For instance, the title alone tells us that "videogame" is but one word, undeterred by my Firefox spell checker that always, annoyingly, underlines that "mistake." I've paged through the guide, and it definitely has some useful rules that will add a spray of Febreze to our otherwise dogshit writing.

The Videogame Style Guide [via gamelife]

From Gears of War to Bioshock, writer Susan O'Connor has penned big titles. She founded the Game Writers Conference back in 2005 so that game writers can put their heads together and exchange ideas about their work and the industry. While it seems that producers and designers often end up as the title's face, game writing is on the verge of coming into its own. Compared to movie writing, game writing has infinitely more variables. Hence the challenge. O'Connor explains:

It's tough. You're trying to craft a story for the player. He's the star. It's about him. But who the hell is he? How is he going to act? How is he going to play this game? How many times is he going to repeat this level? Imagine creating a gorgeous, emotionally complex scene, only to have the player suffer through it ten times because he can't get past this one level. Then imagine how much the player has learned to hate the story.

It's only a matter of time before English majors start wanting to write games instead of short stories. Brian Ashcraft

Game Writing [Ars Technica]

The Museum of Television & Radio is holding a neat little talk next week in Beverly Hills about the importance of writing in video games.

Video Games: The Writers Speak will tackle the growing need of good writing in video games and how it has been driven by the industry's surge in popularity.

On hand to talk about the subject will be four guys who made the jump, temporarily, from television writing to video game writing:

Kirker Butler, Writer, Family Guy series and Family Guy Video Game!
Steve Callaghan, Coexecutive Producer, Writer, Family Guy series and Family Guy Video Game!
Duppy Demetrius, Writer, 24 series and 24: The Game
D. C. Fontana, Writer, Star Trek series and Star Trek: Legacy for X-Box 360 & Star Trek: Tactical Assault for PSP

Tickets are $10 if you use the code VGMTR at the link. Brian Crecente

Video Games: The Writers Speak [Tickets]

Are you looking to land a sweet job writing for a video game related website? Do you constantly send in unsolicited writing submissions to your favorite blogs that no one really has time to look through? Your time is now, my friend. The fine people over at FiringSquad have announced The FiringSquad Editors Challenge, a contest sponsored by Intel that lets you put your writing skills to the test against other hopefuls for the chance at contracts to write or produce multimedia for their website. It's an elimination tournament that pits your writing against another challenger in a multi-round elimination contest.

FiringSquad is a site that focuses on PC games and hardware, so you must be able to somehow write 20 bazillion pages on a video card that people will skip so they can read the last paragraph for a quick summary, yet still make it compelling in case someone is really bored at work and has nothing else to read.

Hit the jump for the full details on the challenge. Sounds like an excellent opportunity to break into the field of journalism while clearing out our inboxes for a couple of months. Good luck! Michael Fahey

FiringSquad and Intel Announce First Ever Editors Challenge

Sponsored by Intel, Contest offers $3,500 in prizes and a writing contract with FiringSquad valued at over $15,000.

Santa Monica, CA, February 4th 2007-Top gaming website FiringSquad.com announced today what the first ever writing contest for a technology or video game website. The FiringSquad Editors Challenge, sponsored by the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, invites all aspiring video game and IT journalists the opportunity to show off their writing chops and win cash, prizes, and ultimately an opportunity to break into the field of journalism.

Starting on February 7th and ending April 30th, the FiringSquad Editors Challenge will pit competing writers against each other in a multi-round single elimination contest. Judging the contestants will be the job of the FiringSquad editorial staff and the millions of FiringSquad readers who will rate each article based on content and quality.

The grand finalist for the will take home valuable hardware including the Intel Core2 Duo Extreme Processor, $1,500 cash and a writing contract with FiringSquad worth at least $10,000.

The first runner up will receive valuable hardware including the Intel Core2 Duo Extreme Processor and $500 cash.

In addition to seeking the best talent as journalists, and to showcase the capabilities of the FiringSquad Multimedia Blogging system, prizes will be awarded for the best multimedia productions. First place will receive $1,000 cash, and second place will receive $500 cash.

Contest will test writing and video production skills

Using FiringSquads unique multimedia blogging system - mblog - contestants will prepare reviews

There will be two separate contests for written and video content, and contestants can write about any piece of hardware or game they feel like. Four Intel Core2 Extreme CPUs will be given away to the 4 semi finalists to test and review. The grand prize winner as chosen by FiringSquad editorial staff wins a $10,000 writing contract for FiringSquad, plus $1500 cash and an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor. The top video production will win $1000 and a $5000 video production contract, plus an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor. The runners up both receive $500 and an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor. "The FiringSquad Intel Editor's Challenge is an unbelievable opportunity for individuals to make a difference," said Dan Turner, President of FiringSquad. "We're asking PC gaming enthusiasts to tell the world what they think."

Contest to Showcase FiringSquad's new online Social Networking capabilities

At the heart of the contest are the new social networking features which enable users to create their own content and interact with other users: the FiringSquad Matrix. Users will post their articles and videos using the Media Blogging capabilities of the Matrix. Compared with other blogging services or social networking sites, the FiringSquad Matrix is the first social network for gaming and technology enthusiasts. It fully connects FiringSquad readers to each other through the editorial content of FiringSquad, as well as reader's own created and shared content.

The contest is open to any and all comers. The panel of judges are FiringSquad senior editors Alan Dang, Jakub Wojnarowicz, Brandon Bell and John Callahan. To enter, or for more information, go to www.firingsquad.com

—-

But the way to get my attention isn't through a resume or a bunch of clips, not that I mind getting those. The way to attract my attention as a writer is to write your own blog. That's how Gawker found me.

I was minding my business writing on my personal blog, RedAssedBaboon, when someone from Gawker contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying out for a job as Kotaku's editor.

The point is they found me, not the other way around. That's how I came to hire several of our writers. I love reading Wonderland and Geek on Stun and eventually convinced Alice and Mike to come work for Gawker.

I'm not saying not to let me know about your blog, but if you are serious about getting a job as a game writer the best thing you can do is write and write and write. Once you're at a point where you feel like you are doing the stuff you're proud of, drop me a line, or anyone else you want to write for, and include a link to your blog. That's your resume and job experience and it's really all you need if you have the chops. Brian Crecente

And finally an industry insider comes out and flat-out says what Crecente, Ashcraft, Eliza, McWhertor and I have known for years: video game writing doesn't pay.

And because video game writing doesn't pay, I'll just cut and paste! Says David McKenna, the scribe behind the films Blow and American History X, on his experience writing the new Scarface games:

"It really is a lot of work, and the pay isn't that great," McKenna said. "I think they would have to give me a bit more of an incentive to do another video game project. I know they're on really tight budgets for video games. I think that if they come to the realization that they can hire good writers to create video games, in the long run it will help sell more copies. You get what you pay for, unless writers and actors make sacrifices like we did on this game. But they're not going to be making sacrifices too many times, trust me."

But the rest of the article casts Scarface: The Game in a pretty good light, and it's interesting to hear a screenwriter talk with such enthusiasm about games, even if the pay is peanuts. Florian Eckhardt

"Scarface" writer wary of video game adaptations [Reuters]

Gamasutra reports from the Austin Games Conference on the remarks of Editorial Story Design Director for Ubisoft, Alexis Nolent. Nolent reports that he hears two things consistently from many hardcore gamers: that they hate storyline being thrust upon them in games and will do anything to skip cutscenes and exposition, and secondly that the plot and writing always suck anyway.

Nolent, smart man that he is, believes the two issues to be closely related. He predicts the death of the cutscene and the rise of the game writer.

His advice to writers was to think of their job as generating lots of good ideas. They can't afford to hang on to any one idea, especially if that idea gets in the way of gameplay or other constraints of the game. A good game writer needs to be humble. When one of their ideas gets dropped or changed, they need to have a thick skin and move on, coming up with another good idea.

Nolent says the ideal working situation for great narrative design is to have the writer "embedded" in the development team full-time. A writer in the trenches can keep an eye on story, defending it when necessary. With everyone creating together, problems can be solved immediately.

This is particularly relevant based on the comments I saw in the last "game writing is important" post I made, which I believe was yesterday. Someone mentioned that cutscenes were on the rise, which I believe is patently untrue. I think we can look forward to a golden age of art and execution in this generation of games, where tedium and clumsiness are viciously attacked. Eliza Gauger

The Death of Cinematics [Gamasutra]

This article pleases me immensely. Official acknowledgement from the professionals that yes, voice acting is an extremely important part of the game experience, and that it is only becoming moreso as the industry blooms:

"There's an expectation by the gamer that the writing and the voice acting will be as professional if not better than what they're used to on TV, and so we need to constantly improve, make the dialogue snappier, make it more natural, and use top-notch voice actors to say it," Laidlaw says. "And I think gamers are recognizing that we're doing that and they're impressed by it; you read it on the online forums all the time. The one thing we can't forget is that if a character is going to look realistic, we can't make him sound like we hired someone's cousin Timmy to play the part."

There has never been a time when I did not loathe poor voice acting, so it comes as a vast relief to hear that the days of teeth-gritting embarrassment caused by the wooden intonations of 10th-grade dialogue by Kevin the QA temp in the role of the spacefaring supervillain are finally at an end. Eliza Gauger

More here [GameDaily]

Typos aside (we're above proofreading), we do a pretty darn good job. For instance, GameDaily's Chris Buffa takes supposed professional game journalists at IGN to task for multiple writing offenses in his op-ed piece "How to Become a Better Videogame Journalist". Here's one such jab:

For example, check out this sentence, taken from a recently-published article about Capcom's Dead Rising:
"After all, who doesn't enjoy running over 50 zombies with a lawnmower? Nobody. Except communists."
Wow Mr. Journalist! Way to keep up with 1980s humor!

Now, what I'd have done there is made a witty allusion to a similar scene from Night of the Creeps by cinematic auteur Fred Dekker, eliciting chirps of laughter from the schlock-horror/Kotaku reader fan base cross-section. See? We clearly don't need the help.

But if you don't think your game writing is up to snuff, do yourself a favor: read this editorial. It has tons of tips and tricks on how to unlock the elite journalist within. Hell, with enough practice and dedication, combined with less time fan-ficking Final Fantasy X-3 erotica, you might actually turn this little hobby into a "career". Michael McWhertor

How to Become a Better Videogame Journalist (thanks, Ben!)

After the tremendous success of the brain games in Japan, Nintendo has decided to experiment with some even stranger "games."

The trifecta of non-gaming goodness teach you to cook, write kanji and have fun on vacation.

Shaberu! Ds Oryouri Nabi is loaded with a bunch of recipies and instructions on how to make the meals. The coolest part is that you can tell it to change pages without having to fiddle with buttons.

DS Bimoji Training is a straight up writing tutor.

Tabi No Sashi Kaiwachou DS is a sort of point and say travel guide. It basically allows you to point to a picture to have the DS say it in the proper language for you. It comes with Thai, Chinese, Korean, English and German languages.

DS Brain Game Explosion [Gamebrink]

MTV Games has an interesting story up about Nate Bihldorff, a writer at Nintendo America and the man behind the scripts for some 30 games dating back to the late 90s.

Bihldorff, who has an English degree from the University of Pennslyvania, is the man who penned the script for Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. He cites a variety of influences for his writing including Gabriel García Márquez, Elmore Leonard and Lonesome Dove. I can see the Márquez, heck I can even see the influence of Jorge Luis Borges, but Lonesome Dove?

The story's an interesting look at the process of writing and tuning a game script, and it touches on the issue of the game industry's general lack of famous quotes. I mean besides the kind you use to mock developers and the industry as a whole with like, All Your Bases Are Belong to Us.

I think the reason for this is twofold. First, the dialogue in some game scripts is just painfully wooden. Take, for instance, this line from Partners in Time:

"You will save her, won't you. I assure you she is not in another castle."

Who talks that way?

The other issue, I think, is that people aren't really focused on dialogue. That isn't to say that something catchy won't stick, but a gamer's focus isn't 100 percent on what he or she is seeing and hearing, it's also focusing on what the gamer is doing.

Gamers Wonder if Nintendo Will Serve More Mustard of Doom [MTV]