Writer’s Guild of America Video Game Award Finalists Announced

Without (much) further ado, we present the nominees...

The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) annually awards one standout game released within the year for its refined narrative. For the past five years the WGA has presented such an award and today they have released this year's batch of nominees.

To be eligible, games must have been released between December 1, 2010 and November 30, 2011. Credited writers for that game must also have either applied or have been accepted into the WGA Video Game Writers' Caucus prior to the point when their scripts were submitted.

The short list of finalists for this year’s award are:

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, written by Alexandre Amanicio, Jean Guesdon, Corey May, Darby McDevitt; multiplayer written by Stephane Blais, Richard Farrese, Jeffrey Yohalem; lead script writer Darby McDevitt; associate script writers Richard Farrese, Nicholas Grimwood, Core May, Jeffrey Yohalem; Greek and Turkish dialogue writers Vincenzo Beretta; Ubisoft
Batman: Arkham City, narrative designer Paul Crocker; written by Paul Dini, Paul Crocker and Sefton Hill; Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Brink, lead writer Edward “Bongoboy” Stern; Bethesda Softworks
Mortal Kombat, written by John Vogel, Brian Chard, Dominic Cianciolo, Alexander Barrentine, Jon Greenberg; Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, written by Amy Hennig; Sony Computer Entertainment

The 2012 WGA award winners will be announced on February 19, 2012 across two simultaneous ceremonies: one for each of the eastern and western representatives in New York City and Los Angeles respectively.

#Awards #Nominees #Writing #Story #Narrative #Surprise

Our Take

Jesse Miller Staff Writer

01/12/2012 at 02:44 PM

I want to pre-empt those that would wonder why Brink and Mortal Kombat have been nominated and why something like L.A. Noire wasn't. I had the pleasure of speaking with a representative of the WGA Video Game Nominee committee last year when Red Dead Redemption was missing from the nominee list. Of course we all wondered how that could possibly happen, but I was told that in order to be nominated a script has to be submitted by the publisher to the comittee for review. If the game is not submitted it can't possibly be nominated and apparently Rockstar and Take 2 refuse to submit their work to the comittee even though each major publisher is explicitely solicited for nomination submissions.

So I'm guessing that Rockstar did the same thing with L.A. Noire that they did with Red Dead Redemption and as a result some games with lesser writing (the field had to be really thin for Mortal Kombat to get a nod) were nominated instead.