• Snot Flickerman
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    23 days ago

    You know what they call bad writers?

    Hacks.

    So… this tracks.

    Seriously, good writing doesn’t happen with “lifehacks,” that’s how you get worthless shit like Max Landis writing Bright. (Don’t you love white people trying to write about racism… without writing about racism? Just plop in any old fantasy race and it works, right? Right!?)

    I recall almost two decades ago I got into it with a woman who was going to school at Digipen, and she told me what Digipen taught students about writing a game.

    She said the point was to create the most everyman main character, so you could have the most customers identify with them, and be able to sell more units.

    Which I basically said “They’re teaching you the worst writing techniques possible. Literature students would faint at this idea.”

    She didn’t care, she claimed this was “good writing.”

    No wonder so many games have such dogshit writing if this is how we’re teaching game writers to write for fucks sake. Pick up a god damned book and get thoughtful, people.

    Like seriously, let’s get game adaptations of weird, interesting books like Steppenwolf or Naked Lunch.