Striking Writers May Work on Games 124
The ongoing Writer's Guild strike may soon impact even the games industry. While most of the copy writers working on games are not a part of the guild, via Eurogamer comes a Variety article about a possible Hollywood writer's migration to other media. "While the WGA has made no secret that it would like to eventually cover vidgame writing, it hasn't pushed the issue yet and is allowing members to work on games during the strike. 'It has been an interesting shift," says one tenpercenter who focuses on vidgames. "The literary agents are now saying, 'Why don't we get our clients over there during the strike?' even though in the past they thought the money wasn't good enough or the work is too demanding.'"
Re:Is this good or bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are soap opera writers in that crowd, aren't there?
At least they won't work on The Sims The Movie (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not making this up, there really seems to a The Sims movie in the works... If hollywood can screw up game movies with single paragraph plots, what the hell will they do with a game that HAS NO PLOT?
consider some of the top selling games... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or consider games such as halo 3, crysis or the grand theft auto series where the storyline is important. But it is the design of the game that is ultimately more important and provides a framework within which the writers work. In other words, the value-added of a hollywood writer in this case seems limited.
In each of the above examples, I see the involvement of sit-com and action-movie writers as a big negative. The story line in games can be silly at times ... but never as stupid or lame as in the vast majority of tv shows and movies out of hollywood.
Screenwriters vs. Authors (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this good or bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
*cough* Resident Evil Outbreak *cough*
Re:At least they won't work on The Sims The Movie (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is this good or bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
Line them all up Pink Floyd style and let's have all of them shot.
Welcome Writers of "The Office" (Score:4, Insightful)
Won't ever happen (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Guilds, Associations, Unions, etc. (Score:2, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with what is morally "right" or "wrong", nor is there a double standard. This is an inevitable result of people making rational decisions in order to benefit from the laws. Anything that benefits a majority of the people will be voted into law, even if it hurts the minority.
Re:Is this good or bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
It already works that way. If you write bad shows/movies that don't get watched, the show gets canceled and you're out of a job. Shows that don't get watched don't get rerun and don't sell DVDs, so no residuals either. And as reputation-based as the entertainment industry is, if you have a habit writing flops, you'll soon be both out of a job and unable to get hired on a new one.
I fail to see how the guild promotes a large population of deadbeat writers. They work very hard, have next to no job security, and have to continuously apply for new work by submitting outlines and scripts which they may never get paid for having written at all except in the relatively rare case they're hired to write a specific pilot treatment or something.
I know several reasonably successful screenwriters and while each of them consider it their passion and a very fulfilling career, not one of them would call it a cush job. Add that a screenwriter is practically required to live in L.A. (not cheap!) and you'll understand why they all have to keep pretty hefty "rainy day" funds just to keep a roof over their heads.
Re:Guilds, Associations, Unions, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
Please elaborate on this. I'd like to know how you feel the unions see that their members get an unfair shake.
Thats an interesting viewpoint, but I disagree with your description of the situation. Indeed, there are few examples remaining outside of education where the people looking for labor are obligated to work with the unions. And even in that example, I've seen districts that hire substitutes from outside the unions, sometimes to longer than usual time frames.
Furthermore, your statement that it artificially drives up costs is opinionated at best. Union members are often better qualified for their work than those who would do the work for much less, which results in a better value for the money when compared to paying less up front and then having to have the shoddy work of the underqualified fixed later.
I'm not sure where you think that is in effect. The department of labor has a reputation over at least the past 7 years of continually working against the unions. And as I already mentioned, only around 12% of the US labor force is in a union, so I'm not sure how that constitutes a "labor monopoly". Even many of the manufacturing jobs in this country - where unions were previously quite strong - have gone to non-union shops. If you look at http://www.uaw.com/uawmade/auto/2007/index.cfm/ [uaw.com] a list of union made cars from the US and Canada, you'll see that even a many vehicles that claim "made in the USA" are not made by unions. So their labor monopoly really doesn't exist, and doesn't have government protection.
Re:Guilds, Associations, Unions, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)