Bioware Writing Contest

[DigiWiz]

Spotted on nwvault.ign.com:

BioWare is holding one of the most exciting contests in our history. Anyone who has dreamed of writing professionally will find this a unique opportunity to get their work noticed by the right people. We are looking for exceptionally talented writers to help develop our award-winning roleplaying games.

BioWare's Director of Design James Ohlen and Assistant Director of Design Kevin Barrett have agreed to make the process of submitting work as easy as possible for writers looking to work for BioWare.
Details at BioWare.com (http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/2005_11_30_WritingContest/index.html)

[Evil Avatar]

Seems like a pretty limited way to find good writers. They are looking for people who are writers (or want to be writers) who also know the Neverwinter Nights toolset. I know a ton of good writers, some professionals who might even be interested in working at Bioware, but I don't know any of them who would be wiling to learn the NWN toolset to submit a writing sample.

[Heretic Machine]

Well take a look at the requirments Evil... 4x4 tiles, a maximum of one player character and three NPC's. That's one tile for each to stand on. No skill use, no combat. 3500 word limit, including setting.

[Deadend]

The amount of learning you need to do to use the toolset is not that much. Simply learning to create a dialog tree with multiple characters. I figure that if they are going to hire someone from this, they would at least hope the person would learn the toolset enough to do so.

I may give this a shot, I'd love to be able to quit my job and drop out of school to go work as a writer on games... I doubt I would win, but having a dialoge based module seems fun.

[Morrolan]

4x4 does not mean one for each character. First off, 4 times 4 is 16. But mostly, a 4x4 area in the NWN toolset is about a medium sized area. The numbers don't refer to individual texture tiles.

I think it's pretty cool. As is said in the release, ONLY writing will be evaluated, not combat or areas or anything else. That may be true of the judges, but frankly I don't trust the community to pick the 8 based on those guidelines. I think they'll pick the ones with the best production values. Ah well.

This *IS* pretty cool, though. It's interesting that they are not saying that they WILL hire any of the 8. Very smart, on their part.

I wonder how much 3500 words really is, when it's translated into a game level, where all that's really in text is dialogue and the very occasional exposition.

[gsmith]

Seems like a pretty limited way to find good writers. They are looking for people who are writers (or want to be writers) who also know the Neverwinter Nights toolset. I know a ton of good writers, some professionals who might even be interested in working at Bioware, but I don't know any of them who would be wiling to learn the NWN toolset to submit a writing sample.

A lot of writers are also role-players (including myself) because both things are forms of storytelling. This generally applies more to tabletop roleplaying rather than console / PC gaming, because in the latter formats the story is being more told at you than by you. I think with this contest format BioWare is trying to target just those very people: people who love the art of storytelling and understand roleplaying as a medium for it.

[DigiWiz]

Seems like a pretty limited way to find good writers. They are looking for people who are writers (or want to be writers) who also know the Neverwinter Nights toolset. I know a ton of good writers, some professionals who might even be interested in working at Bioware, but I don't know any of them who would be wiling to learn the NWN toolset to submit a writing sample.

I would guess they are looking for writers that can write in the particular way required for games, look at the restrictions they are posting.

The NWN tools are relatively easy to use but they force you to write in a way that is usable in a game environment.

I remember a post of one of their developers saying that they had some great writers apply in the past that could write awesome novel style content but never got their head wrapped around the way that games present content to the player and failed miserably in writing stuff that was actually usable in a game. By requring the NWN Dialog system they probably filter those people out right away.


think it's pretty cool. As is said in the release, ONLY writing will be evaluated, not combat or areas or anything else. That may be true of the judges, but frankly I don't trust the community to pick the 8 based on those guidelines. I think they'll pick the ones with the best production values. Ah well.

The problem is probably that the final judges won't have time to read every single module, given their positions:


http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/462/462113p4.html

James Ohlen, Unsung Hero Award

The Director of Writing and Design at BioWare, James Ohlen was the Lead Designer of Baldur's Gate, Co-Lead Designer of Neverwinter Nights, and most recently, Lead Designer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Despite this undeniably outstanding list of credits, his name remains far less familiar to many gamers than those of numerous other developers whose accomplishments pale in comparison. With his latest project being our Game of the Year, he is an especially appropriate selection at this time.


His Mobygames rapsheet (http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,6525/) is pretty impressive



http://www.vfs.com/adv_board.php?id=14

Kevin Barrett

Kevin is a 20-year veteran of the adventure and electronic games industries. As a designer and developer of pen & paper RPGs, gamebooks, boardgames, card games, tabletop miniatures games and video games, Kevin has a broad understanding of game culture and an empathy for the player's experience. Kevin also has a background in team building and game project management. He has lectured on the subjects of game design and the business of the video games industry at several Canadian colleges

[protojack]

I wonder what the odds are on someone submitting a story using The Elemenstor Saga (http://elothtes.pbwiki.com/) already.

[PIPBoy3000]

The Elemenstor Saga? Good humor is difficult to write, so those that manage to pull it off well might be rewarded. Of course, I suspect they're looking for something original.

I'm half tempted to submit a subquest from the campaign (http://adamandjamie.com/da/) I'm working on. The catch is that the subquest I'm thinking of doesn't fit the structure of the contest very well. Ideally you'd want to see something self-contained that tells a good story in itself.

Still, I'd do anything for a Bioware wool cap. It's cold this winter . . .

[Spigot]

Still, I'd do anything for a Bioware wool cap. It's cold this winter . . .

They're called toques, damn it!

Anyway, with all the writers on this site I'm sure a couple of them will submit something.

3500 words is about the average length of Kelegacy's posts, isn't it? :)

[amusedtoe]

Since they don't care about how the actual module is, just the story bits, that's not that hard to learn in the toolset. Makes sense too since they're looking for people that can write for games, not people who can write long winded epics that would never be able to translate to a game world. I'm not too worried about them judging much based on the criteria they're saying they won't use since they're hiring you to be part of a team and to fill one specific part. Now if it comes down to two people whose writing is equally great I wouldn't be surprised if the slightly slicker module pushed that person over the edge. The writers are the ones whose work is always done first so if they can chip in on another area of the project that would probablybe viewed positively.

These are the times where I really wish I put my time into my working on my writing. :p

[Serapth]

3500 words is about the average length of Kelegacy's posts, isn't it? :)

Yeah, but I doubt they would appreciate the "Hire me or Ill skull fuck your mothers corpse!" that he would no doubt put in somewhere.

[amusedtoe]

Yeah, but I doubt they would appreciate the "Hire me or Ill skull fuck your mothers corpse!" that he would no doubt put in somewhere.

What, that's not a medieval saying?

[Kelegacy]

Yeah, but I doubt they would appreciate the "Hire me or Ill skull fuck your mothers corpse!" that he would no doubt put in somewhere.
Excuse me, I'm much more civil than that. Usually.

[OUX]

Excuse me, I'm much more civil than that. Usually.

No you'll just call her back the next day ;)