14 DAY TRIAL // The Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East are announcing that they have four nominations for the Outstanding Achievement in Video Game Writing award, which is set to be offered to a team at the official event that will take place simultaneously in Los Angeles and New York on February 14.
The two organizations have recognized the quality of the story and lines included in:
Alien: Isolation – which was written by Dan Abnett, Dion Lay and Will Porter and was published by SEGA;
Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry – created by a team including lead scriptwriter Jill Murray, scriptwriter Melissa MacCoubrey, with story by Jill Murray, Hugo Giard and Wesley Pincombe, with publishing duties handled by Ubisoft;
Assassin’s Creed: Unity – based on a story by Alexandre Amancio, Sylvain Bernard, Travis Stout, with scriptwriting from Alexandre Amancio, Travis Stout, Russell Lees, Darby McDevitt, Ceri Young and Jeffrey Yohalem, published by Ubisoft;
The Last of Us: Left Behind – written by Neil Druckmann and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.
The announcement adds, “To be eligible for WGA consideration, games must have been released between December 1, 2013 and November 30, 2014, and feature on-screen writing credit(s). Credited videogame writers must have been or must have applied to become members of the WGA Videogame Writers Caucus at the time scripts were submitted.”
The conditions might explain why other titles recognized for their story over last year were not nominated.
Writing is becoming more important for modern video games
As the video game industry evolves, gamers are starting to appreciate solid stories more and developers are trying to come up with new and unique ways of creating and presenting a narrative.
Depending on the genre, teams might try to simply create an interesting premise or will write fictional material which can power an entire long-term franchise.
It will be interesting to see whether Left Behind for The Last of Us can pick up the WGA award based on its emotional strength or if the more complex nature of the Assassin’s Creed franchise will give it an edge.
