WGA awards snubbed

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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We covered the odd nature of the Writer's Guild Awards when we posted on the nominees, and now if you want a bigger picture on why these awards mean nothing, Variety explains.<blockquote>A number of the year’s best-reviewed and bestselling titles weren’t even submitted to the WGA. The companies behind games including “Grand Theft Auto IV,” “Dead Space,” “Call of Duty: World at War,” “Mirror’s Edge,” “Far Cry 2,” “Lost: Via Domus” and “No More Heroes” all confirmed to Daily Variety that they didn’t send a copy of their script and didn’t have credited writers join the guild’s videogame writers caucus -- the two rules for eligibility.

Some of the year’s top games, such as Valve’s “Left 4 Dead,” were also ineligible because they didn’t have a specific “written by” credit.

Companies wouldn’t comment on their reasons, but many industry insiders blame politics. Vidgame publishers don’t want to support the guild in its effort to represent videogame writers (and even, potentially, developers as well). The WGA has only an optional contract for its members who work on games. SAG and AFTRA do have contracts with some vidgame makers but have failed to win residuals for their members (SAG’s last contract expired Dec. 31 and has yet to be renegotiated).</blockquote>Essentially, no one is competing, and Fallout 3 will win.
 
must be easy to write a masterpiece when you have most of it written for you already.

one of the things that actually piss me off about Fallout 3 is how Beth seem to get credit for creating the world and backstory, with all characters, factions and themes that come with it.
 
aenemic said:
must be easy to write a masterpiece when you have most of it written for you already.
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writing something as bad as fallout 3's story when you have a masterpiece written for you already, that is teh hard stuff. that's what they're awarded for.

also, what's that about publishers not wanting videogame writers and developers to be represented by this WGA? why? what's the problem?
 
I was gonna post how I think they should leave videogames out of this, but then I realized maybe it's not that bad...

usually games aren't exactly well written these days, maybe making more noise about who actually does the writing might bring something good.
 
wow thanks, i didnt know this WGA was involved in the hollywood strike, i thought WGA was some kind of writers club that all they did was awarding eachother. i didnt know it works like a syndicate of sorts. now it makes sense.

it also explains to some extent why the writers that work in most companies aren't quite professional, and neither is their writing.
 
Well to an extent a Writer's guild makes sense, because actors, while important, wdould be able to act without them, yet they are paid considerably less. But like most unions and guilds it pretty corrupted or at least has strayed largely from their original purpose.
 
zag said:
wow thanks, i didnt know this WGA was involved in the hollywood strike, i thought WGA was some kind of writers club that all they did was awarding eachother. i didnt know it works like a syndicate of sorts. now it makes sense.

it also explains to some extent why the writers that work in most companies aren't quite professional, and neither is their writing.
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There is only oneWriter's Guild of America, and it is severely dictatorial. Kind of strange, if you think about it: It's basically a monopoly (for movies and TV, anyway) which started because Thomas Edison was trying to get a monopoly over "his" moving picture camera and the companies that were starting to make very early movies in New York. Some folks moved out to L.A. because nobody was really out there ('bout the time that Mullholland and others made the aqueduct) in order to avoid that dictatorial control...and within a few decades had essentially created a monopoly anyway. Hmph.

Though most of what the WGA does *is* "award each other." Goodness knows, most of what they do *isn't* making interesting or unique plots- as we can see with most of this last year's movie fare- and it's only going to get worse, since the big studios are shuttering a whole bunch of their 'indie' sub-studios. The chances of getting interesting stories, or discovering, say, the new Johnny Depp, is far less likely without the mid-to-small sized studios (say what you will about naming an arm of a big studio 'independent,' the biggies *did* mostly keep their hands off the little studios.)

Anyway... yeah... the WGA's issues involved Internet residuals- which actually kinda makes sense. Even though they were being kind of whiny about it. I mean, there are people who do, you know, ACTUAL work, whose income is not keeping pace with expenses, and these folks are talking about Internet residuals... Regardless, it's pretty easy to understand why video game writers don't want to deal with these people without a contract.
 
I ask my self what a game released today with the quality of Planescape or Fallout 1 would score.
 
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