I can judge. Just e-mail me when you're ready.

Quote:Original post by ahw
The problem I see with "writing a story" for a game is that this might probably end up more as a Game Design contest rather than a writing contest...
Especially in the way you describe it here, it just sounds to me like a "get a great idea for a game and write about it for 3000 words".
It's not exactly the same as writing, is it?

Maybe writing something more like "write your story about a given game" contest.
Say, write a short story (3000 words max) based in the San Andreas game.

Actually I want to vote against this. Designing the story for a game IS game writing, as is writing the script and even the advertising copy for the game, but writing a short story is NOT game writing for the simple reason that short stories aren't a building block of games.

I agree with sunandshadow that the idea of game writing competition is to create a piece of game writing and fan fiction.

There seems to be some interest in this idea so why don't we run the first competition this weekend? We will keep it informal this time to see how it works out. If it’s a success we can always have a formal competition next time.
The start time will be 12:01pm BST Friday September 9th and the end date will be 12:01pm BST Monday September 12th. I'll create a thread with the rules and theme then.

Deyja has volunteered to be a judge so that will make the judges Deyja and me.

Unless anyone has any objection.

Just to add to the confusion [wink] if we're going informal another voting option would be that only people who enter the contest may vote, and they can't vote on their own, only everyone else's.

Well, I appreciate your point of view Sunny, but I still think it would be easier to get interest in a "write your little story about X". I dunno, I think it demands more writing skills to write a story than to write about a game.
And if isn't exactly game writing but more fan fiction, who cares really, as long as we are writing some good stuff? :)
Maybe it's just me misunderstanding what it is, exactly you guys propose to write?
Feels to me like technical writing, more than anything.

I mean, I have some write ups I did years ago describing a full campaign for an imaginary RTS, but honestly I don't see the artistic interest, precisely because it wouldn't be of much use if it weren't technical enough. I suppose it's a challenge, in a way.

PC Gamer (at least UK) have a cool little writing competition going on that I think is a great example of what we could do. The one I have here (well, at home) was about writing a story about a WWII type of game, I forget the exact theme. Anyway, the winner wrote an imaginary text based adventure game sequence, which was rather amusing to read. Good fun all around.

Writing a game is actually much more similar to writing a screenplay than writing a short story. You don't just sit down and write the script from start to finish, you first come up with a concept, outline the major plot points, describe the major characters and worldbuilding, then write the actual dialogue and stage directions for the storyboarder, and finally come up with a logline and synopsis to pitch the script.

Is writing a plot outline (for example) technical writing? I wouldn't say so, although it is kind of a grey area. The reason I would say it isn't is because there isn't an existing body of data for you to organize and theorize about like in technical writing; instead you are making the plot, the character info, the worldbuilding, etc. up out of thin air. Whether it's technical writing or not, you have to write this sort of thing as part of the game development process, and generally game writers enjoy doing so, although everyone has some part they will consider difficult and annoying.

If you were writing a novel you could conceivably get away with just throwing words at a page and then beating the thing into shape afterwards, but in the game industry the writer generally has to create several concepts, pitch them to the boss, further develop the one(s) he/she picks, make changes he/she demands, incorporate input from other teammembers, create materials describing the story for the design doc and webpage, write the actual script, rewrite stage direction to work with animation limitations, write dirsctions for the voice actors (if any), and write advertising copy for the finished game. So theoretically any of those things is a legitimate type of gamewriting and something we could ask people to do for a contest. But fanfiction and any sort of prose story, while fun, are largely irrelevant to the process of creating a game.

The subject of the contest should depend on what the contest is intended to accomplish. If we just want to get lots of people talking about writing for games, asking people to submit 500-1,000 word game concepts, as many as they wanted, would probably be best. OTOH if we want to help improve the generally lousy quality of game plots we ought to ask people to submit the plot outline for a whole game. Or again, if we are trying to hone people's dialogue skills it would probably be best to give them the plot outline of the first scene of a game and have them write the script for it. Or we could even have a series of contests and do all of these things, using the winning 2-3 concepts as prompts for the plot outline, then the winning 2-3 plot outlines as prompts for the scene of script.

I agree with sunandshadow's explanation of what game writing is and also felt I should add to it by saying that the game writer may in fact have very little control over the design and content of the game. For instance the producer or project manager might come to you and say we are making a game about robot cowboys hunting dinosaurs in post apocalyptic future. It will be FPS, with the man character being a human who crashed on the planet. It will also have 7 levels and 10 different weapons. We plan to include desert, jungle, and ruined city environments and the last level will take place on alien spaceship. I want see a plot outline and back story on my desk by the end of the week.

As for the subject and purpose of the contest I agree it would be ideal to run several rounds that focus on different aspect of game writing, and carrying on from where the winning entry left off.

For rounds how do the following sound:
Round 1 – Introduction – write a 3000 word introduction to a game based on a given concept. (The introduction can come in any form you choose but generally it consists of the narrative or scene that takes place before the player start playing.)

Round 2 – Plot sketch – write a 1-3 page plot sketch for the rest of game based on winning introduction from round 1 it should consist of brief descriptions of the important events and scenes, and should have at least 3 exciting incidents.

Round 3 – Scene Script – write a 3000 word script for a given scene from the winning entry from round 2, the beginning and end of the scene will be provided and the entries should explain what happened in between using either a film or theatre style script.

Round 4 – Climax and Dénouement - Write a 4000 word entry describing the games climax and Denouement based on the winner from round 2.

Cheers SunAndShadow.
So what are we trying to achieve, then :)

Also, and again, that's just me, but I think narrowing the field by giving a specific subject would be useful, if only because it's easier to judge (Again, it depends what criteria you want to judge), and because personally I love to stretch the limits imposed by such an artificial limitation.
Say for example, if we chose San Andreas as a subject/theme (yes, I love that game), a "pedestrian" approach would be to scenarise a session of gameplay, whereas something original would be, I dunno, write about the joy of spending an hour pimping your ride only to have it destroyed by a speeding police car as you leave the garage.

Anyway, I think my point is to make this contest a bit narrow, rather than just "ok, let's write 3000 words in two days", as I feel it might inspire more people to participate (well, me at least ;) )

TechnoGoth - What concept would you start from, and how is an introduction different from another scene's script? Also, 3,000 words is a pretty big amount - that's a whole 12 page chapter of novel, or significantly more pages of script, or 3 standard essaies. Would judges be able to read this amount for several writers?

Ahw - Yeah, I agree that specific is good. But specific to a certain game, such as San Andreas, would be bad because I bet at least half of us haven't played it. Also, if this is going to be an informal contest with voting by participants, setting strict judging guidelines isn't necessary. What I would really like to see is lots of people posting and providing constructive criticism on each other's writing, since that is what this forum is for (besides discussing writing theory and technique). I will be happy with anything that accomplishes that. Although personally, coming up with concepts, creating characters, and designing worldbuilding are my favorite parts of game writing and the sort of contest I would be most likely to submit an entry to. [wink]