Do you think comic books have better writers than video games?

Do you think comic books have better writers than video games?

Is Alan Moore Jewish?

1/4th Ashkenazi ancestry with a dip of Khazar on the nose.

Yes. The best comic writers know how to leverage the medium to their advantage. Video games are still stuck with "play a bit of the game to unlock the next cut-scene" formula. Of course there are some that deviate from this but they are few and far between.

Yes, but good luck getting people to agree on what 'good writing' involves.

So is he Chinese or Japanese?

Yes for the most part, because writers in videogames are an extra consideration.

What videogames could you say have actually good writing? The only one right now that comes to mind right now is Undertale and The Witcher series.

one of my fave writers is Michael Kirkbride from TES but on the whole, yes.

i think games that can best leverage interactivity to their advantage in the story can reach a higher emotional peak than comic books but that's still few and far between because when you ask the average video game writer to write "something with choice" they give you mass effect 3.

The writing in both of those was shit tho.

Both are shit

Writing in video games needs to be done, for the most part with interactivity in mind, so that it comes almost as an afterthought. The writer needs to create an atmosphere, first and foremost. SWERY is pretty good at this, so is Suda 51. The Fukushima guy that did the writing for MGS 1-3 had some outstanding ideas and notions - but again, it only works well within the whole scope of the work. The interaction and the atmosphere make the words click along.

And there are a lot of snippets of good writing spread across many titles; I still remember "Halls of the Blind" lyrics from Diablo. Chris Avellone has perhaps the most draw out of any non-genre fiction writer, he can make or break kickstarters on his own. His writing was the best thing about Pillars of Eternity (Durance and Grieving Mother were better than most comic characters).

Posting example of writing where the writer is not aware of his chosen medium resulting in a horrific carnage of text.

Another great example of bad comic book writing is Garth Ennis's Unknown Soldier, where the writer is in complete dissonance with the artist resulting in characters going on and on about things that should be apparent from the images. Everywhere there's an exposition, ragged man sitting in the chair, despondent and betrayed needs to go on a tirade about it, not allowing the atmosphere to breathe on its own.

>Posting example of writing where the writer is not aware of his chosen medium resulting in a horrific carnage of text.
Talbot uses the medium well when you look Luther Arkwright as a while.

The fact that comic books are for the most part on the same level as videogames in terms of writing is fucking sad.

People buy capeshit out of brand loyalty or completionism driven by sunk costs. They buy indie comics to push their hipster self-image. They put money into webcomics because they appeal to their kinks. People at least get some kind of entertainment out of videogames, so the shitty writing actually serves a purpose there. It accommodates the gameplay.

I'd say recent entries in the videogame world are making the industry catch up in terms of screenwriting and character development.

It will probably always be behind because gameplay comes first, but considering how comic's quality has been decaying as of late, I'm not so sure about that anymore. There may come a time when videogames become the superior media for narrative.

>le contrarian meme

I wonder if fiction novels and comics are going to die off for good at some point. Fiction today is really awful, as it has always been through the ages with a few exceptions, but now people have an alternative that is way more exciting. Kids bought comics back in the day 'cause they had nothing else to do. It was just like buying collectable stickers or playing with action figures. These things have given way to the new stuff. Books and comics as entertainment are simply not competitive.

But anons, why be better than each other, when comics and vidya can be one and the same?

Yes.

Comic book writers are writers. Video game creators have a skill set that has absolutely nothing to do with writing but they create stories because they have delusions of talent. Obviously there are a few outliers like the Metal Gear dude who cover both bases but on the whole it's just a bunch of programmers who think, "I've seen Star Wars and Aliens like 50 million times bro! I never read a book past high school and barely passed English 101 but I can make a hella epik space war movie! Halo 6 here I come.

Depends. I think the current trend in video games and movies owes its success to clickbait business model verbiage coupled with social media lingo.

Even sitcoms are tweaked like this so it's bound to stick.

Sometimes you don't want to be a participant in a story. Passive storytelling will always have a place

There are quite a few games with writing better than a lot of comics, though there are far more comics with better writing than most games on account of it being a medium that's been around a lot longer and with a much lower barrier of entry.

I think that's a stupid fucking question because the quality of both vary so wildly that it'd be really fucking hard if not impossible to pin down a middle ground for either.

I think video games have reached greater highs and lows in their writing over the past ten years than comics have over the past ten years, but if you compare the writing in most games to any of the classic Big 2 stories or better indie stories, the comics would win hands down.

>video games
>having writing

pick one.

What is this and is there more?

Looks like an IRC session of AD&D Planescape

Both mediums have their ups and downs.

Why not do both?

Transistor was pretty great about getting a lot of the writing in without resorting "now hold up while we tell you shit" moments. You were getting pretty much non-stop characterization while you were doing other things, which was pretty cool.

Figures. Guess I should lurk moar there.

Its dialogue from baldurs gate revamp, a tumblrina got paid to write that and more

Wait, video games have writers? Why would games need writers? That's dumb. It's not like I'm playing them for some kind of story...

Fuck that guy, he told me to drown in hobo piss.

Good written games
Psychonauts
Conkers bad fur day
Bioshock series
Destroy all humans
Beyond good and evil
Most rockstar games notably red dead, warriors and bully
Arkham asylum
I know theres more but all theese games got either good stories or good dialogue

Bioshock wasn't that great with the writing. It was a bit over the top, and I don't know why it tried to make Andrew Ryan's death seem big.

I don't give a shit if Fontaine fucked me over, I still wanted to kill the guy yelling at me about how I was a worthless parasite for hours on end.

>Most Rockstar games

You should have just said "All Rockstar games that aren't GTA", because that series has awful writing, with the possible exception of San Andreas.

I think the are both 2 very different types of media, so it wouldn't be a fair or a good idea to compare them like that,

Videogames have writers?

>The only one right now that comes to mind right now is Undertale and The Witcher series.
>not a mention of god-tier writing: the game

The talk radio stuff is top notch humor.

>most rockstar games

You mean like GTA, where the plot is that guy you worked with betrays you

Like catalina in GTA 3
Or Lance Vance in Vice City
Or Big Smoke in San Andreas
Or whatever his fucking name was in V

I haven't played much of IV cause it didnt appeal to me, but I bet your cousin screws you over at some point

Im playing this and witcher 2 right now. Planescape is amazing and im only 3 hours in. The truth/bluff dialogue mechanic is so simple yet changes the entire dynamic of the conversation

Yes

Gta has top tier comedic dialogue tho

stack up on heals before going to the maze

>I bet your cousin screws you over at some point
He does not but the final bad guy is either a guy you work for who you end up screwing over or the guy you tried to kill near the beginning of the game who you work with later on only for him to inevitably betray you.

Video games writers are just failed Hollywood screenwriters.
"Paramount didn't go for this explosion special effects blockbuster."
"Let's just turn it into a video game!"

At least comic book writers often times wanted to be comic book writers. Who in their right mind would want to write video games?

Collaborative storytellers who work with the strengths of the medium.

Thanks for the heads up

>Video games writers are just failed Hollywood screenwriters.
FOR YOU
O
R

Y
O
U

No problem
You are in for a hell of a ride
Enjoy it

When exactly will Injustice be? I have to go soon

...

GTA IV is actually probably the best written game in the series.

The entire Final Fantasy series is all about the story. There is no game without the story. The later games have come to rely too much on the story actually. FF6 has an amazing story.

It was a big deal because it wasn't your choice. The whole game is a metacommentary on the illusion of choice in games.

Not really. See, video game writing is in its infancy right now.
We have actually no goddamn fucking idea how to properly add story to a game, speaking as someone who worked in the industry. It's basically lot of fucking around and trying different experiemantal shit, until you settle either for "gamemplay, cutscene, gameplay, cutscene" or "all story and lore is optionally locked away in pause menu", or, if you're feeling adventurous, "story is optional collectibles spread around NPCs and audio logs".

The thing is, to have truly good writing, writer and design team would have to be pretty much one and the same - level design, mechanical design, concept art - all would have to serve some sort of unified vision. When really, most videogames just try to wing it, and if we end up with a story that wouldn't feel cringeworthy in a TV B-movie, we call that a success.

Depends on the comic book and the video game you are thinking of.

The Witcher was better than the comics the spawned after the fgame

Oh most definitely.Dont get me wrong, a lot of Sup Forums material is pretty lackluster but videogames writing is the lowest of the low even under WWE's attempts.

The infancy meme is a bit outdated, right now we're getting the game equivalents of what movies in the 30s were.