About Will Smith on Games' Writing

So, if you've read Will Smith's top 10 games of the year, you know that he has some opinion on the writing in video games. If you haven't, here is what he said:

This is the year that I started really paying attention to dialog in games, and most of it is pretty bad. Even in games likeMass Effect 3, which successfully build complex, interesting worlds, the things that come out of characters’ mouths are frequently laughable. Just as I was ready to flip on subtitles once and for all, along came The Walking Dead.

I don't know if I agree with Mr. Will Smith here. I mean, yes, many games have really bad writing/stories, but saying that the dialogue is "frequently laughable"? I don't see it.

Yes, there is bad dialogue here and there in every game, but is it really that bad? I watch a lot of TV Shows and movies and play a lot of video games, too. I would say the writing in many of them (Those that actually care about their story, and don't use it as a mean to kill every single thing) are comparable, if not even with movies/TV Shows.

What do you guys think?

I think "frequently laughable" is dead accurate for the vast majority of game writing. I haven't played ME3, but "frequently laughable" can certainly be applied to some of the dialogue in ME2 -- and most every other game ever.

Regarding TV and movie writing, a lot of that is terrible too. Laughable even. There is good writing in all types of media, but it definitely seems far more rare in video games. It's getting better all the time though.

With very few and rare exceptions, game dialogue is pretty fucking laughable!

I don't know man, which shows are you thinking about where the writing is as bad as in video games?

@Kerned said:

I think "frequently laughable" is dead accurate for the vast majority of game writing. I haven't played ME3, but "frequently laughable" can certainly be applied to some of the dialogue in ME2 -- and most every other game ever.

I think "some" is more accurate. I think it's the way games are made, too. Games are huge compared to movies/TV Shows, and involve a lot more than just the story. While the most important thing for TV Shows/Movies is the story/writing, it is not for video games. If you read what writers have to say about stories in video games, it seems like a very hard thing to get right because of how they are made. Of course, there is also the issues of A team/B team of writers.

I'll use the most recent game I finished as an example. Max Payne 3 for the most part is very well written. However, there were some lines in Max's monologue that made me go, "what?"

It's been improving gradually with time, especially in this generation. Yes, there are a lot of games that have consistent "laughable" dialogue. But the games that respect their own story, I think, are past the point of "laughably bad"

He reads an awful lot - much of is sci-fi. In comparison even decent game plotting and dialog is poor.

It is hard to get right, even when they employ decent writers it tends to fall flat. A favourite author of mine wrote Crysis 2 and the plot in that game is terrible.

We're in a weird middle phase where stories and characters are ambitious, but oftentimes things that are said from characters, characterization and plot devices still leave me rolling my eyes and is either super cheesy or nonsensical.

I don't care what the Fresh Prince has to say about games, go make Independence Day 2 and lets see how serious the dialogue in that movie is.

My problem with dialog in some/most video games is that it often don't sound like anything real people would say. Every sentence comes out as a carefully prepared punchline derived (sometimes poorly) from high concept TV or movies. It's wooden and boring, and sometimes laughable.

I agree with Mr. Smith, and will go one step further - let's not pretend that The Walking Dead doesn't have bad writing in it. It does, and plenty of it, much like the AMC show. And I still maintain that while the characters in TWD might be the most characterised of 2012, that doesn't necessarily make them the best. Everyone aside from Lee and Clem is fairly flat; I still think Kenny is a fairly weak character. And despite this, TWD is still the best written and best executed narrative in a game in 2012. Just goes to show how far games have to go if we are really going to start judging their stories and writing against other media where the writing is much more pivotal to the experience.

Often a lot of the best actual writing in games is not dialogue, but rather the codex pages and extra information that games like RPGs include to flesh out their world. The Witcher and its sequel have some of the best examples of this, and of course there's all those books in the Elder Scrolls games, but my favourites are probably BioWare games, especially Dragon Age: Origins. Another good recent example is Dishonored; some of the back-story and info you find in the world is well written and interesting - the words coming out of the characters mouths? Not so much. It's not laughably terrible, it's just flat - really flat.

This isn't only a problem with games; the vast majority of major TV shows and "populist" films are not very well written either.

Will Smith is full of shit.

Well the guy reads a lot of books. If were comparing writing of games to that of writers that write novels for a living then yeah sure. I don't think its "embarrassing" or "laughably" bad but games do need to evolve and they will I mean games are still in their infancy compare to film and other media.

@TheHT said:

Will Smith is full of shit.

Ha ! Ha ! Made me think of this

So fucking terrible, and the canned animation doesn't make it better. That's video games, unfortunately.

@Demoskinos said:

Well the guy reads a lot of books. If were comparing writing of games to that of writers that write novels for a living then yeah sure. I don't think its "embarrassing" or "laughably" bad but games do need to evolve and they will I mean games are still in their infancy compare to film and other media.

Yeah, I like Tested and Will, but from listening to their podcast every week, it seems like there's no middle ground with him. Everything's either the best or the worst.

Is Sturgeon's Law applicable in this scenario?

I'd say I agree with him, but he's using the wrong example. Dialogue and character interactions are basically the only things people at BioWare know how to write. Their plots are full of cop-outs and holes, reusing the same old devices and instances where the script is either extremely shallow (the ME3 Extended Cut) or filled with unfortunate implications (Leviathan) after you give it some thought. Still, they've pretty much mastered the Whedon-influenced style of character interaction and writing, even if ME3's got bogged down by their insistence on pandering to the base by riding every meme that ME2 created into the ground (calibration jokes, for fuck's sake).

And yeah, the romance bits suck, but they always did.

@Daiphyer said:

I'll use the most recent game I finished as an example. Max Payne 3 for the most part is very well written. However, there were some lines in Max's monologue that made me go, "what?"

Considering the fact that his internal thoughts are supposed to be a pastiche of the stereotypical private eye monologue, I'd say your reaction makes a lot of sense. I was a bit wary of the product, but when he compares himself to a "dime store angel of death" in the beginning, I knew I was at home.

@Video_Game_King said:

Is Sturgeon's Law applicable in this scenario?

Yes, but you need to bump the percentage up a few notches.

Almost all video game writing is kinda bad, and it gets to be pretty atrocious more often than in any other medium. But then, video games are pretty new and are also probably the most complex storytelling medium to create, so getting a hold of just how to tell a story in a game still seems like something developers are doing.

This isn't to say that there haven't been well-written moments in games, but they are few and far between. And we can take solace in the fact that no popular current game has writing as bad as the TV show "Once Upon a Time". Besides, video games still have the actual game part that can make them great with or without the story.

@TooWalrus said:

@Demoskinos said:

Well the guy reads a lot of books. If were comparing writing of games to that of writers that write novels for a living then yeah sure. I don't think its "embarrassing" or "laughably" bad but games do need to evolve and they will I mean games are still in their infancy compare to film and other media.

Yeah, I like Tested and Will, but from listening to their podcast every week, it seems like there's no middle ground with him. Everything's either the best or the worst.

You aren't wrong. I like Tested but they do tend to be very polarizing on many things.

@believer258 said:

Besides, video games still have the actual game part that can make them great with or without the story.

That may very well be the problem, though: they're still viewed largely as games instead of stories to be told. Such language feels strange in the presence of, say, ICO. How's the language of fun gonna enter that?

I guess Mr Smith did not read the script for his kid's movie Karate Kid. Also Hancock, I am Legend, Wild West. yeah they have stunning stories. Just goes to show you " Parent's Just Don't Understand"

Game acting and writing is graded on a pretty extreme curve.

Will is right, the majority of games writing is terrible by standards of other media, especially literature.

What world are we in where it isn't?

Mass Effect 3 has its fair share of pretty terrible writing. And yeah I'm sure you watch plenty of tv shows and movies, but how about some examples man? If you're gonna bring up a counter argument to somebody you have to support it with something.

I mean sure, mass effect 3 and the walking dead have a bunch of characters. But do they ever interact in an organic way like they do in The Wire? That's what will smith is talking about.

Will is 100% accurate. 

@Doctorchimp said:

What world are we in where it isn't?

Mass Effect 3 has its fair share of pretty terrible writing. And yeah I'm sure you watch plenty of tv shows and movies, but how about some examples man? If you're gonna bring up a counter argument to somebody you have to support it with something.

I mean sure, mass effect 3 and the walking dead have a bunch of characters. But do they ever interact in an organic way like they do in The Wire? That's what will smith is talking about.

This is what I had to add:

I think "some" is more accurate. I think it's the way games are made, too. Games are huge compared to movies/TV Shows, and involve a lot more than just the story. While the most important thing for TV Shows/Movies is the story/writing, it is not for video games. If you read what writers have to say about stories in video games, it seems like a very hard thing to get right because of how they are made. Of course, there is also the issues of A team/B team of writers.
I'll use the most recent game I finished as an example. Max Payne 3 for the most part is very well written. However, there were some lines in Max's monologue that made me go, "what?"
It's been improving gradually with time, especially in this generation. Yes, there are a lot of games that have consistent "laughable" dialogue. But the games that respect their own story, I think, are past the point of "laughably bad"

I've been watching a lot of Breaking Bad recently. Is that a show that you would consider has bad writing?

And how much of is it dialogue, and not just animation and delivery? Would the interactions in Mass Effect be better if they were more organic but with the same lines?

Edit: I, too, agree with those who said that Will Smith has no middle-ground.

@Daiphyer: The last season of Breaking Bad had a lot of bad writing, was too rushed and they seemed to have the perfect plan for every situation without fail, was easily the weakest season.

@Daiphyer: yeah that's exactly what I'm talking about. You say you watch shows, but I mean like what? And yes Breaking Bad is a fun show, but no the writing isnt top notch. The show is fun and the characters are absurd. Even then, I can't think of a game that had your main character go through an Arc like Walter white and sell it so well.

And yes rockstar is pretty good but man on fire was still better

@Video_Game_King said:

@believer258 said:

Besides, video games still have the actual game part that can make them great with or without the story.

That may very well be the problem, though: they're still viewed largely as games instead of stories to be told. Such language feels strange in the presence of, say, ICO. How's the language of fun gonna enter that?

I don't think that's the problem. If it is the problem, then it is one that I don't necessarily want solved because, in most cases, it isn't story that I go to a video game for. I can read and watch movies, I'll go to those for story. But I think there's plenty of room for both games like Just Cause 2, which are built almost completely on their gameplay and mechanics, and The Walking Dead, which is built pretty much on story and gameplay takes quite a backseat.

As for fun, I think we've kind of gotten to a point where we're realizing that "fun" doesn't necessarily need to be the end goal of a video game. Spec Ops the Line has never been described as "fun" from what I know, for instance, and I really think that games can broaden to encompass a wide gamut of emotions beyond things as shallow as "dumb fun". I just don't want the idea that a game made of dumb fun can't be great in the process, which is what I sometimes see when the subject of story vs gameplay comes up.

@Doctorchimp said:

do they ever interact in an organic way like they do in The Wire? That's what will smith is talking about.

That's right, man. Even with world class writing and sick voice acting, the delivery is still crippled by the medium, especially in these conversation heavy games like TWD or Mass Effect, where canned animations is the order of the day. You can get closer to the real deal with hard work and motion capture, like in Uncharted 2, but it's still way far off. Then you can do like L.A. Noire with more realistic faces, but the character interactions are never there because actors are not in the same room. There will always be a filter, which means we will never be able to see McNulty and Bunk in a game.

@believer258 said:

But I think there's plenty of room for both games like Just Cause 2, which are built almost completely on their gameplay and mechanics, and The Walking Dead, which is built pretty much on story and gameplay takes quite a backseat.

I just don't want the idea that a game made of dumb fun can't be great in the process, which is what I sometimes see when the subject of story vs gameplay comes up.

Definitely to both of these. We just need to be aware of what "greatness" we're talking about, if that makes any sense whatsoever. (Also, I think the point I was trying to make is that the term "video game" is biased toward one specific type of greatness that not all games demonstrate.)

If you think video game writing is anything above passable you need to expand your horizons.

Most movies have dogshit writing, but they're an accepted and established medium of writing, so they're not scrutinized like video games are. There isn't a question of whether or not there is matured writing in movies, so it doesn't matter if most of it is dogshit; everyone accepts their maturity as a fact. But people question whether or not video games as a medium can have good writing, so all of them are scrutinized.

Most everything has laughably bad writing. Most books do, most movies do, most games do, most graphic novels do, most whatever do. Using that as a barometer is pretty laughable.

Dialog in video games is particularly difficult because of the nature of the medium. Much of interpersonal expression relies on body and facial movements, vocal delivery, timing, and both parties responding organically. Given the state of voice acting in video games, the nature of voice acting itself, and the limited animation budget companies have to work with, a well written bit of dialog can seem laughable. How quotable does the show Firefly seem? And yet all of the lines I recall as being particularly memorable would be throwaway pieces of lame, flat humour in a video game.

All anyone remembers about mediums is the quality work that comes out of them; the rest falls away. Why are we so certain there is a higher percentage of quality in other genres than in games, as has been said in this thread? Did you even see all of the movies that came out last year? How about all movies ever? The fact is none of that matters. Mordin Solus is as memorable a character to me as Hans Landa or Malcolm Reynolds.

And all that aside, it's easy to snark. 100% of the dialog in Star Trek: TNG is laughable. I love the shit out of that show and I love the writing exactly how it is.

Will Smith has obviously never played Borderlands 2.

I think some of the dialogue in video games is pretty terrible but the majority of it is middling. I think that's what makes really good dialogue really stand out when it does make an appearance.

Yeah, but everything is prone to having a few lines of awkwardness, it's a pretty hard thing to avoid while having to contextualize, create exposition, and layer subtext. Written things come out a lot differently spoken.
 
That being said, I really thought The Walking Dead had some pretty terrible dialogue. I remember thinking the beginning of episode three, before it got good outside the van, had some pretty awkward and poorly paced lines. And Chuck pulling out that bullshit "for whom the bell tolls" quote? For shame Gary Whitta.

yeah i love me3 cus i'm invested in the characters and story, but the mass effect games always felt awkward in many of the conversations

@RHYMESCHEME23 said:

Will Smith has obviously never played Borderlands 2.

Borderlands 2 does nothing but prove Smith's point. Game is a fine example of poor writing in video games.

"Good writers serve their stories; bad writers serve their own agendas." -Michael Tierno Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters

I just happened to be reading this book when I saw this thread. I think this quote goes to the central problem in writing for games. Namely, that the writer has to serve the player's agenda rather than the game's story. It's not a coincidence that what people feel is the best example of games writing ever, ie. The Walking Dead, only gives the illusion of player agency because events still unfold the same way at certain points. This allowed the writers to serve the story for the most part but at the expense of some interactivity.

Video Game writing & storytelling still has a long ways to go before it actually gets anywhere near the level of appreciation alot of people tend to give some games. "frequently laughable" might be a bit much, but he's certainly not wrong.

Who is games?

@TheHT said:

Will Smith is full of shit.

That isn't even the best example of bad writing / voice acting from Deus Ex.

"JC, a bomb!"

"A bomb!"

Those who know will know what I'm talking about.

Most things have terrible dialogue, not just video games.

@Bourbon_Warrior:

Uh, sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm pretty sure the Will Smith everyone is talking about is not the black actor, who starred in "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" show, and a bunch of other great movies.

No, this is a game critic (and reporter) on the Web Site Tested. He just happens to have the same name as somebody else.

A lot of movies and TV shows have great writing, but I can probably count on one hand the number of games with consistently great writing. The problem, though, comes less from the talent in the game industry but more from what they're writing about. Almost every single game, if translated into a movie, would be an action movie, and having to force in a certain amount of action and explosions to a scene makes it difficult to have time for set-ups or genuine character interaction. The Walking Dead has great writing, both because of its writers, but also because of the situation: it's a lot easier to have meaningful dialogue when that is what the game is almost entirely based on. Games are, in a lot of ways, far too focused on gameplay than story. Developers think of setpieces first, and then why they would be there, not the other way around. As games become more homogenized in graphics and gameplay, hopefully we'll see a larger focus on making the player think than making them blow stuff up or cut things in two.

@Cretaceous_Bob said:

Most movies have dogshit writing, but they're an accepted and established medium of writing, so they're not scrutinized like video games are. There isn't a question of whether or not there is matured writing in movies, so it doesn't matter if most of it is dogshit; everyone accepts their maturity as a fact. But people question whether or not video games as a medium can have good writing, so all of them are scrutinized.

Most everything has laughably bad writing. Most books do, most movies do, most games do, most graphic novels do, most whatever do. Using that as a barometer is pretty laughable.

Dialog in video games is particularly difficult because of the nature of the medium. Much of interpersonal expression relies on body and facial movements, vocal delivery, timing, and both parties responding organically. Given the state of voice acting in video games, the nature of voice acting itself, and the limited animation budget companies have to work with, a well written bit of dialog can seem laughable. How quotable does the show Firefly seem? And yet all of the lines I recall as being particularly memorable would be throwaway pieces of lame, flat humour in a video game.

All anyone remembers about mediums is the quality work that comes out of them; the rest falls away. Why are we so certain there is a higher percentage of quality in other genres than in games, as has been said in this thread? Did you even see all of the movies that came out last year? How about all movies ever? The fact is none of that matters. Mordin Solus is as memorable a character to me as Hans Landa or Malcolm Reynolds.

And all that aside, it's easy to snark. 100% of the dialog in Star Trek: TNG is laughable. I love the shit out of that show and I love the writing exactly how it is.

I'm more or less on your side on this one. Sure good game writing is a somewhat rare thing and great writing even rarer but most game writing where the characters or story aren't the focus are either just forgettable or passable. I love it when a game has really good writing but I don't know if it's me, the medium itself, or both, but I care more about a successfully executed character and world which are better served by a good plot and more so good writing. However if the writing is merely okay or good is some spots but the character and world it has you live in is still amazing, who cares.

I think writing is one metric among many to potentially pick apart and point to why any one person felt the characterization or the plot didn't work but that's all that it's worth. But if the characters and world still work and aren't being detracted by the serviceable or functional writing, then that's completely okay. I feel like the default shouldn't be "laughably bad" but "forgettable" and it's a matter of appreciating a game that can effectively use writing it help out it's story and characters.

Goddamnit TNG is great.

Yeah video game dialogue is usually pretty terrible in a way that only games can be. Lines that would be cheesy even in a Michael Bay movie get away just fine in games, and that kinda sucks.

I think he is pretty spot on. There are very few games out there that have consistent quality of writing, a lot of games have a mix of good/bad writing, while most I would say is really shitty.

Even at its best, writing and dialogue in games tend to have to be prefaced with "... for a video game". As gamers, we are so starved for quality writing and dialogue that we will take the smallest piece of kibble and regard it as an enormous feast. We'll blow things out of proportion and treat something that is merely passable (if that) in any other medium as if it is the most exceptional piece of work, ever. Not because it is -- but because everything surrounding it is of such poor quality.

There are a couple of exceptions, but they're truly rare.

I used to get shit for this opinion, but in the past few months, I've finally heard other people (mostly game journalists and a few developers) actually state it. Perhaps the tide is turning and gamers no longer feel they have to be so defensive about their recreation and we can start to admit that we have a long fucking way to go.