WORDS DON'T COME EASY

There's a fundamental disconnect going on in the games industry right now; it's a yawning gap that only a few people have been forward-thinking enough to bridge. On one side there's the assembled might of games developers and on the other are a bunch of dogged folks clutching at their laptops and wondering they can make the jump - writers. Now, for the sake of clarity I'm going to repeat something all of us have heard before; games are getting more sophisticated, more like film and television, with storylines that are deeper, better, stronger, smarter... And yet, if you cast an eye over the top hits in the marketplace you'll be hard pressed to find more than one or two titles that have had the benefit of a writer's touch.

Quite rightly, the developers ask themselves "What do we need writers for? What good can they do us?" And the writers shake their heads and reply "If you knew those answers, you'd know why you need us." It's hard to open a good relationship with someone when you start by pointing out their flaws, but truth be told, developers haven't caught on to the fact that most of them can't write their way out of a paper bag. For years, producers have invented the storylines and plots for their titles and never felt the need to use a writer - but as games develop in complexity and continue to approach the sophistication of TV and film narratives, the dearth of good scripts in games is getting more and more obvious. I'm not going to suggest that the next Doom or RTS should be a PC Shakespeare, but surely we can do better than yet another take on "You killed my brother, prepare to die!" plotlines?

Titles like Max Payne and Deus Ex are often held up as champions of story-driven games - but are they really? While both are cool titles with kick-ass play value, the dialogue is leaden, the kind of speech that belongs in a straight-to-video action movie starring Billy Blanks and Don 'The Dragon' Wilson. There's a writer's adage that says "show, don't tell", and that's exactly why Half-Life, with it's dynamic story told through a minimal amount of verbiage and lack of conventional cut-scenes, is possibly one of the best written games ever; but it's a rare gem among a bunch of cubic zirconia. Poor writing plagues a huge percentage of current titles. It's true that a game can stand or fall on the quality of the gameplay, plotline and dialogue be damned; but it's also true that a well-written script can make an average game good and a good game superlative. You only have to examine titles with fairly basic mechanics like the early Monkey Island adventures to see how a sparkling script adds magic to gameplay. A good plotline and a good script will always enrich a game, and a writer is not just an addition that sounds cool in a marketing meeting.

There's a chorus of developers out there now saying, "Hey, I know what good writing is. I can tell if something is good or bad. Why do I need a writer?" Maybe that's true - but consider this; in constructing a game, developers hire trained programmers are to program it, trained artists to create art for it, trained musicians to compose music for it, but then rely on someone with little or no formal writing skills to create plot and dialogue. In 2002, the TAPS group (who promote new writers in film and TV) held a seminar that addressed the prospect of games writing, and along the way uncovered a few places where writers and developers were missing each other's points. Most games designers harbour a secret desire to be film directors - as many an elaborate and over-long cut-scene will attest to - and there's a animosity implicit in the idea that a writer might come in and take over a project that has been theirs from the start; but experience has taught me that once these two breeds of creative come together, the sum of their talents can create a high-quality product. At TAPS I talked to speakers Piers Blofeld of Turning Point, a script development agency for games; Neil Jones-Cubley of developer IG Ltd; and to James Leach, staff writer at Lionhead Studios. I asked them what message they would like to give to the games industry about writers and they each gave an identical reply - learn what a writer can offer you, and understand that by using them you can improve the quality of your product.

Events like the TAPS seminar are a step in the right direction, but there's still a way to go before the chasm closes. I am a professional writer with novels, television scripts and more than a million words of journalism to my credit. I've worked on scripts for PC and console games. I know how much work goes into the development of a title and I know just how simple it is to do it without resorting to clichés and dialogue that sinks like lead; but still I'm told that there is little call for skills like mine, only to play the latest title hot from the top ten and be stunned at how much the story stinks. Even a twitch-game piece of thumb-candy can be kicked up a notch with a good plotline, and the word 'script' in connection with a game doesn't need to mean 'slow and non-interactive'.

Developers are fond of saying that games are just as valid an art-form as books, television or cinema, but that will never be true unless there is a good story beneath all the bleeding-edge graphics and multi-player options. Plot is not something that should be tacked on like an afterthought - it is an integral part of good entertainment, whatever the medium.

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