By Alec Meer on September 19th, 2011 at 10:30 am.
The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain – a rather different entity to the US Writers’ Guild – last week announced its nominees for assorted mediums’ most lauded writers. Included are the obscure likes of ‘television’, ‘theatre’, ‘books’ and ‘radio’, but fortunately Best Videogame keeps things relevant to our little corner of the internet. This is a prize given only to UK writers, so who do we think got a nod? Some clever people, that’s who.
Here we go:
Brink – Ed Stern
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West – Alex Garland and Tameem Antoniades
The Curfew – Kieron Gillen
I know two of those men! Well, who can truly be said to know The Gillen? Hearty congratulations and all the best of terribly British luck to both him and the lovely Mr Stern from Splash Damage. And to the other two, of course, though I don’t know them personally and their reportedly splendid game didn’t come out on PC, so I shall remain proudly biased (if conflicted) in this matter.
We’ll find out who won on November 16.
19/09/2011 at 10:31 CMaster says:
“Best Videogame keeps things contemporary”
Only if they give the award to an FPS writer.
19/09/2011 at 14:32 Hodge says:
Nicely played.
19/09/2011 at 10:40 Jazz42 says:
Brink had a story?
19/09/2011 at 10:51 HexagonalBolts says:
Yes, I made a similar ‘eh?’ noise.
19/09/2011 at 11:21 Carra says:
Now you shoot this person. Then you shoot that person. And then, you shoot another person. And then…
19/09/2011 at 11:32 AndrewC says:
Brink is full of writing.
19/09/2011 at 11:32 JackShandy says:
To be fair, it was a very sensitive treatment of the subject matter. I’ll never shoot a man in the same way again.
19/09/2011 at 10:47 TheApologist says:
She writes! She acts! Is there nothing that Karen Gillan can’t do?
19/09/2011 at 11:04 sinister agent says:
COMMIT.
Oooogh.
19/09/2011 at 10:53 Riztro says:
Yes, but what are they eating?
19/09/2011 at 10:57 Brumisator says:
I’m sorry, I haven’t played brink, and have never even heard of the other two games.
19/09/2011 at 11:03 Fede says:
Check the links in the article :)
And The Curefew is free!
19/09/2011 at 11:31 AndrewC says:
I have never heard of the Brumisator.
19/09/2011 at 11:52 bill says:
You should read RockPaperShotgun, it has interesting stories about games:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/the-curfew/
19/09/2011 at 11:06 sinister agent says:
Let’s face it, all these “books” and “theatre” gubbins are just primitive, obsolete forms of videogames.
19/09/2011 at 11:19 JackShandy says:
“Well, who can truly be said to know The Gillen?”
The Shadow knows!
19/09/2011 at 12:10 bill says:
Oh, what you do to me
No one knows
19/09/2011 at 14:00 OrangyTang says:
The sun is shining?
19/09/2011 at 12:31 acidtestportfolio says:
well, the story was clearly the best part about brink
but i am not sure i’d nominate it for any awards
(brink was a turd with safety edges)
19/09/2011 at 12:38 LuNatic says:
Writer? I would think translator would be more accurate for Enslaved.
19/09/2011 at 12:45 Kieron Gillen says:
Are you making a “Shakespeare wasn’t a writer” argument?
KG
19/09/2011 at 13:35 Gundato says:
I think he is referencing how it is based off of folk tales and what not?
And to that, I say: So what?
19/09/2011 at 15:09 cjlr says:
I’m pretty sure the original didn’t include robots.
19/09/2011 at 15:46 DrGonzo says:
It is Monkey. Except Monkey was better!
19/09/2011 at 21:23 siegarettes says:
Having actually read Monkey, I can safely say that pretty much none of what was in the original fable made it into Enslaved.
That said, both are fantastic in their own aspects.
19/09/2011 at 23:20 Squishpoke says:
But Shakespeare was a terrible writer…
20/09/2011 at 16:27 sinister agent says:
Doesn’t really matter, as most of the plays were written by Kevin Bacon anyway. That’s why he’s never in films anymore.
19/09/2011 at 13:17 Snesso says:
Just tried playing The Curfew. Its pretty nice.
19/09/2011 at 14:54 Lugg says:
I always loved Alex Garland’s writing – he’s the one who wrote The Beach (the novel on which that horrible Leonardo DiCaprio movie was based), and apparently found other mediums more to his liking – he wrote the scripts to 28 Days Later and Sunshine, among others. Good stuff!
19/09/2011 at 16:00 quijote3000 says:
Mmmmm, is the Curfew still working? I started playing, but after the boy asked me , right in the beginning, if I knew about computers, the game would pause, and it wouldn’t work
19/09/2011 at 19:21 Piratepete says:
I’d love to get into writing stories for games but wouldn’t have a clue how to go about it.
However is any interested gamers want to have a look at my horror stuff, please have a look at the link
http://bit.ly/9XRMfY
This isn’t spam so here is the full link and I would appreciate it if I came off
(He says on the off chance a developer spots it and goes “ooh he’s quite good”)
19/09/2011 at 21:34 Thants says:
Your comment would look less like spam if you didn’t use that weird URL-shortener.
19/09/2011 at 22:11 Piratepete says:
Ok. I’ve tried several times now to post the full link and prove its not spam and now I can’t edit or post at all.
Typical
Can I now post the full link?
I’d appreciate it if a mod could take me off the spam list as
1. I’m actually using English
2. I actually answered the post and didn’t mention penis enlargements or viagra
3. I use the bitly link to track clicks that’s all.
http://www.talesofworldwarz.com/stories/tag/pete-bevan/
19/09/2011 at 22:27 Piratepete says:
blah blah blah nothing will post now so I can’t prove my innocence. Condemened before trial like some weird kafkaesque nightmare.
The pink to contact you doesn’t work so I can#t even prove its not spam Franz Kafka would be proud.
19/09/2011 at 22:31 Piratepete says:
oh bloody typical
19/09/2011 at 22:34 Piratepete says:
I’ll try the full link again
http://www.talesofworldwarz.com/stories/tag/pete-bevan/
19/09/2011 at 22:35 Piratepete says:
See not spam. How peculiar. Now I’m just talking to myself:)
19/09/2011 at 23:41 TJ says:
Best of luck to these excellent people! My resounding memory of the awards night when I was nominated was the round of confused chuckles as all the lofty drama was interrupted by a video of a poorly-animated Penumbra zombie lurching at the camera ;-)
Seriously though, that the WGGB bothers to qualify games in the same breath as all those other mediums is a real important statement.
20/09/2011 at 18:34 Tams80 says:
Break a leg.