Please hire a professional writer to rewrite the events

[Big J Money]

I love well-written text events in games. Three example 4X games specifically with good events are Old World, Endless Legend, and Endless Space.

But, there are far more games out there with mediocre or even bad writing. Video game designers typically are not good writers. Sadly, and I know this from personal experience, on-staff writers for video game companies are sometimes amateur writers who are not very good either. There have only been a couple of examples of the game's events so far, but what we've seen is very mediocre. It's so bland and boring that I just can't bring myself to read them, I'm just going to pick my attribute point and move on.

I hope that 2K / Firaxis will please consider hiring a professional fiction writer who is interested in the idea of coming up with the events for this game. It can be so much better. I hope dearly that they don't put the narrator through having to read these dreadfully uninspired paragraphs.

There is of course the chance that we've only seen placeholder text, but knowing my video gaming history, I think it's likely to not be placeholder. Anyway, if they're going to add so much text to the game, please set a high bar for it, not such a low one like game companies often do.

 

[Gori the Grey]

They did! I don't know how I can track it back down, but it was posted here, about two months ago or so, I think.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I prefer my event text to be terse. Humankind and Crusader Kings II&III have this problem: the stories are interesting only the first few times you read them, after that they're just walls of text

 

[Big J Money]

That's true of anything though. With Civ's techs I listen to the them first time, and skip them every other time afterward (unless I haven't played in a while). And those are extremely short. The only issue with long text would be if you're forced to read through it to gather the important gameplay information. But for these events, you can tell what you're getting straight from the icons on the buttons, so reading is completely optional.

Edit: But I guess the better point is that good quality writing doesn't have to mean long, it can still be brief.

 

[Dale]

I love well-written text events in games. Three example 4X games specifically with good events are Old World, Endless Legend, and Endless Space.

But, there are far more games out there with mediocre or even bad writing. Video game designers typically are not good writers. Sadly, and I know this from personal experience, on-staff writers for video game companies are sometimes amateur writers who are not very good either. There have only been a couple of examples of the game's events so far, but what we've seen is very mediocre. It's so bland and boring that I just can't bring myself to read them, I'm just going to pick my attribute point and move on.

I hope that 2K / Firaxis will please consider hiring a professional fiction writer who is interested in the idea of coming up with the events for this game. It can be so much better. I hope dearly that they don't put the narrator through having to read these dreadfully uninspired paragraphs.

There is of course the chance that we've only seen placeholder text, but knowing my video gaming history, I think it's likely to not be placeholder. Anyway, if they're going to add so much text to the game, please set a high bar for it, not such a low one like game companies often do.

I hear Sweet Baby Inc are professional writers, they should hire them.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

We’ve got a team of writers, which I’m also on. I haven’t written fiction, but I have 2 books and about 30 articles, not including short pieces for Harper’s and published in the Atlantic.

 

[thecrazyscot]

The events are actually just @Andrew Johnson [FXS]'s books line by line. After about 1000 hrs you will have read both of his books. There's a meta-quest across all games that depends upon paying close attention to these events - if you make the wrong choice when the final stage unlocks all leaders are irreversibly changed to various personas of Ramkhamhaeng.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Cat Manning is the hire I was thinking of in post #2.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Cat is fantastic; I’m a fan.

 

[Glassmage]

I thought they have 2 PhDs on the narrative team. Better put them to work

 

[Takfloyd]

I am fairly confident that Civ VII won't repeat Civ VI's mistake of having amateurish writing. They got a lot of flak for that.

But it shouldn't be fiction writers in charge, it should be history professionals, which as far as I understand is exactly how it will be. This isn't a fantasy story. I think the writing SHOULD be somewhat dry and informative. Just make sure it's accurate. Civ VI messed it up right from the first moment by having the intro suggest dinosaurs existed in the stone age, and it only got worse from there.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Cat is fantastic; I’m a fan.

Yeah, you do have a thing for cats over there.

Civ VI messed it up right from the first moment by having the intro suggest dinosaurs existed in the stone age, and it only got worse from there.

"Great beasts of the Stonge Age" doesn't necessarily imply dinosaurs.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

"Great beasts of the Stonge Age" doesn't necessarily imply dinosaurs.

When you're a small band of tribes with Stone Age weapons, most beasts look great to you

 

[Zaarin]

Civ VI messed it up right from the first moment by having the intro suggest dinosaurs existed in the stone age, and it only got worse from there.

It didn't suggest there were dinosaurs in the stone age (as @Alexander's Hetaroi suggested, "great bests of the Stone Age" probably refers to Pleistocene megafauna like mammoths, mastodons, North American camels, cave bears, etc.), but it did imply humans had stone tools before walking upright.

 

[Big J Money]

But it shouldn't be fiction writers in charge, it should be history professionals, which as far as I understand is exactly how it will be. This isn't a fantasy story.

I didn't say fantasy, I said fiction. Fiction means to invent a story that didn't actually take place. The event text in-game that I'm referring to are fictional situations, not historical ones. There is a genre of fiction called historical fiction, which is what's being discussed here. That's not even debatable, we're referring to fiction.

Fiction writers are expert story tellers by trade (which ones are actually good is of course a matter of opinion), but video game designers and historians are typically not. There can be exceptions of course. The History That Doesn't Suck podcast features a host who also happens to be a great story teller. However, even he is only responsible for the telling part. He doesn't have to invent the events because they're actual history. My hope is that the quality of the fiction will be strong, meaning not just well written, but also creative and interesting.

 

[bbbt]

The events are actually just @Andrew Johnson [FXS]'s books line by line. After about 1000 hrs you will have read both of his books. There's a meta-quest across all games that depends upon paying close attention to these events - if you make the wrong choice when the final stage unlocks all leaders are irreversibly changed to various personas of Ramkhamhaeng.

Honestly, some sort of event system that required you delving into the civilpedia to unravel I might actually enjoy. I remember King of Dragon Pass where you basically had to read all their mythology to get through the religious ceremony ptions.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

There's an art to academic writing, which is to bring the emotional reality of a situation home while remaining true to all the other rigors of the discipline (citation, theoretical contribution, accuracy, etc). Games writing is its own challenge - to both convey a sense of place as well as information (and to show its relevance) in a small enough chunk that the player will actually read and engage. Imagine - trying to get you to 1) feel something, 2) understand a place and time, and 3) engage with game systems all in three or four lines! It is fun - I write best when I'm placed under restrictions, and I hope that you like the writing here.

I don't want to go into the specifics of who the team is (3 PhDs, not 2!) until more information is out there, and I don't really want to talk about other people on the team without their permission, but we're a group with a wide body of experience, and each of us contributes to the project in many different ways.

I ALSO want to warn against specific recommendations. We can't really take up specific fan suggestions, and I try to kind of block them out! (Games writing is pretty much the opposite of academic writing in this regard; I'll gladly share what I'm writing academically, but have to be much more close-mouthed when it comes to games. Also, like 10 million people read my games work and about 10 read my academic work).

 

[SeelingCat]

Related to writing, but unrelated to the events - I noticed that tech quotes don't appear to have the author/speaker/source attributions anymore, which feels a bit odd.

I wonder if that was a deliberate choice - or something that's still in progress perhaps?

 

[Haig]

Inside source told me about multi-quest missions in the game, for example one where Gilgamesh hasn't returned a book into a library, and he has to avoid all disctricts with libraries for 10 turns.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Quotes will be attributed; that's a problem with WIP text.