Sunday, February 06, 2011

According to The Escapist, Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2 aren't up for Writers Guild of America Awards, 'cause Bioware and Take Two refused to submit scripts. Said WGA President Micah Wright:

Why? We don't know. Maybe they hate unions, or maybe they just hate winning awards, or maybe they have enough statues on their mantle. No way to know. So another game gets what would likely have been their nomination. Are we happy about it? No... but rules are rules and our rules are clear and very fair."

This came up because,

In an interview with GamesIndustry yesterday, Deus Ex: Human Revolution lead writer Mary De Marle said she was "kind of mad" about the WGA game writing awards because of the requirement that nominees must be Guild members. "To tout themselves as, 'This is the award that you want to get if you write in games,' that is not true, because they're not recognizing all the games that exist," she said.

However apparently if you're not a WGA member you can still join the Videogame Writers Caucus for $60 and qualify that way.

(Mary, you will recall, was kind enough to talk to us at our panel last month.)

As videogames move towards fulfilling stories, I hope more companies acknowledge their lead writers. A videogame is a collaborative enterprise, but so is a movie. And no one in the movie industry is diminished by people knowing who wrote what. I don't know, maybe companies are afraid that writers will get too much status and power. But it hasn't happened in the movies yet, so where's the problem?

Labels: guild

10:03 AM

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