Its sad, but true. There are those people who long to lose themselves in the histories of ancient fantasy worlds, and those who just want to punch dragons. You may have done your best to pen what the publisher described as a thrilling interactive experience, but a good chunk of your audience will hold the perfectly legitimate viewpoint that theyve sat down to play a game, not to read a book. It can be a bitter pill to swallow fair enough, not everyones going to like what youve written, but if you were working in film or TV you could at least assume your audience had a mild interest in your work and were willing to give you a chance to impress them. Write for a game and a percentage of your audience starts out as actively hostile towards your efforts to tell a story; youll have an uphill battle just convincing them to listen. People often make the argument that games dont need stories at all, and that the most effective ones are told without words. Yet to be a successful game writer, to win over the player and craft a story that deepens their connection to the game, asks far more of you than turning in a script. Youll need to find a way to work closely with the game team to help build worlds; everything from the history of the landscape to the way a character dresses can be touched by the writer to help tell a story using more than just dialogue. Times are changing - notable authors like Rhianna Pratchett are talking openly how to write games as games, and their efforts are slowly coming to be appreciated by teams and players alike. Dedicated game writers working as part of teams are, finally, becoming the rule rather than the exception. Writing for games is still difficult, and youll be working in the dark a lot, but at least you wont be working alone.
