Writing In Videogames - Princess Peach's Co-Dependency Subtext

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Random Stranger: Nov 27, 2009

Roger Tangerines posted:

What is videogame writing?

The point I'm coming around to is that writing isn't narrowly defined. In a story-based videogame, nearly everything you come across has been written and designed. Take the original Tomb Raider. There's plot, and there's dialogue... and then there's that bit where you first slide down the side of the Sphinx and the camera suddenly draws way back and shows you just how tiny you are in comparison to the level. That wasn't a camera glitch, somebody wrote it with the intent of producing that effect.

So, broadest definition: videogame writing is anything that attempts to convey an idea to the player. It's not just the plot of a game, or the dialogue, or the text logs you find - it's all three and more.

So tell me, why is cinematography in a video game cut scene "writing" while cinematography in a movie not "writing"?

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Random Stranger: Nov 27, 2009

Tendales posted:

Cinematography in a movie absolutely can be writing. An very stylized example, in Sergio Leone's movies, the way a shot is framed often informs the viewer about what the characters are aware of. If there's something standing just off-screen, then Blue Eyes doesn't know it's there, even if realistically he should be able to see it.

Or let's look at Hitchcock. The weird dolly zooms aren't there just to look cool. They're there to represent Scottie's terror. They're characterization, and characterization is writing.

Then the next obvious question is why is that writing and not a photograph or a painting?

Do you see the problem here? That kind of definition renders the concept of "writing" meaningless. It becomes literally anything you want to point to and say, "That's writing." Beethoven's Ninth? The Washington Monument? The crayon drawing of a kindergardner's family? The creators of all of those works wanted to convey something through their art even if it was just "I like big penises". Writing is communication, but communication is not writing and the definition in the OP is "communication".

# ¿ Jul 6, 2014 02:23

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