A Writer is a Game Designer

Daniel Erickson recently talked about game writers at Bioware for an upcoming issue of PC Gamer. He spoke on how it’s possible to turn a game writer into a designer, but not the other way around. I find this not only interesting but applicable, as that’s exactly how I came to be a designer. 

Erickson went on to talk about how the writers at Bioware go through a kind of boot camp before they ever work on a project, learning how to write for a Bioware game with material that will very likely never see the light of day. Good on them. I am a firm believer in most of what you write should be immediately thrown away and if it isn’t, you are either crunched for time or full of yourself. But that’s not what I want to focus on here. 

I want to talk about Erickson’s claim that Bioware’s writers are also designers. Apart from the recent, or not so recent depending on who you ask, trend of calling themselves “Narrative Designers,” game writers have not been considered designers as a whole. But they are. There’s no way they couldn’t be. If the studio has any idea what the word “collaboration” means, their writers are helping the level designers, the sound designers, the systems designers, the gameplay designers, and many other aspects of the game just because the story or theme of the game should touch all of those elements. 

This doesn’t mean that writers are in charge of the design, far from it. All it means is that if the story is taken seriously, writers, or Narrative Designers, need to know a thing or two about design just to interface with the rest of the team making the game. And if they know a thing or two, they have already taken that first step into design. It’s a slippery slope into full fledged spreadsheet jockey from there.

Source: PC Gamer