The Writers Guild of America has revealed its nominees for the best videogame writing of 2008 award, and they span a wide breadth of genres from well-known titles like Fallout 3 and The Force Unleashed to a relative unknown like the quirky indie Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!
The Writers Guild of America, when it wasn’t too busy negotiating the end of a strike last year, seems to have time to play a few games. The ones they thought had the best writing are up for an award, one that, according to Variety, is one of a kind amongst Hollywood award shindigs. The nominees are: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!
A pretty varied selection, to be sure. Fallout 3 obviously gets credit for the absolutely behemoth amount of writing that went into its dozens of quests and NPC conversations, even if some would argue that the writing itself might’ve proven that quality will always triumph quantity. The Force Unleashed, I recall, got more acclaim for its story than its gameplay, with some folks even saying its storyline was the best Star Wars yarn outside of the original flicks. Red Alert 3 looked positively over-the-top in its kitsch, and I guess the game pulled off the trick of being un-ironically ironically hammy – either that or the WGA just enjoyed ogling its babe-filled cast. As for Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!, I think that title alone probably warrants some kind of recognition.
The nominees and winners are chosen by the Writers Guild’s Videogame Writers Caucus. Any writers who were in the Caucus could submit their own games for nomination (this is how Dangerous High School Girls made it in). Of course a game had to be submitted to be eligible, so if you’re seeing a game you think ought to have been recognized, it may very well just not have been submitted for nomination. Where is Gears of War 2, you might wonder. After all, who can forget the best line from all of videogames in 2008?
