RJ 17 said:
bjj hero said:
She gets to write stories, diaogue and charecters that thousands of people get to experience and live. Thats what writers do. Not being a keen gamer doesnt mean she settled. If she was designing the combat system etc and hated it then maybe. Even then plenty of programmers and graphic artists work on things that are not their first love. You can still enjoy the process and take pride in the finished work. There must be others that wish there was a skip feature for the game as there is an audience for lets play videos.
Would you feel the same about artist who build worlds and charecters for games, and enjoy doing so, but arent keen on gaming or the genre of the current project?
It's not that she's not good at gaming, her statements indicate that she doesn't like gaming in general. Specifically the fact that, if you want, you can just skip right on through all the character, dialogue, and stories that she worked so hard on writing if you're not interested in them. To contrast that, she wishes there was a "fast forward" button so that you could skip through all the actual gameplay and just go through the story.
This indicates that she'd be much happier writing in a different medium, one where she could be assured that people were enjoying the stories she wrote. I don't know how she ended up in the gaming industry with an attitude of "My least favorite thing about the gaming industry is the games", but to me that says "I settled here because it was a job that could use my talents in writing. Is it ideal? No, but at least I'm writing." That's "settling" my friend, taking a job in a field when you'd clearly be happier in another.
As such, yeah, I'd say the same about a game graphical designer if had the same "The worst thing about the gaming industry is the games" mentality. Not being good at games is fine, not liking the genre you're currently working on is fine. You STILL wanted to be a game world designer though. That's completely different from saying "I wish we could fastforward through the gameplay sections of the game and just get all the story bits." Those are the words of someone who doesn't really like the industry they're in, in general. As such: they settled for it.
Not really.
You'd be surprised how a lot of people have criticized games now a days for simply having battles that are time wasters. If you read the whole interview she stated that she wasn't saying to skip ALL of the gameplay to get to the cutscenes.
She was only referring to battles and bosses that serve absolutely no purpose to the story but to further prolong the game and waste the players time. That's the stuff she was referring to that the player should be allowed to skip. And you would be surprised with how many people can agree to that.
That said, I agree with the person you are talking to.
They hired her to write stories. Not to make videogames. Her sole purpose for working at Bioware, was to add story and context to whatever game they are working on. This doesn't require her to so much as touch anything related to gaming at all.
You can hate playing videogames, but love the characters in them. I have heard of quite a few people who enjoy Mass Effect, but never bothered to play the games, because they can watch all the cutscenes and different scenarios on Youtube. Since they only cared about the story, and can access that through a video website, they have no desire to own the game. In fact, I can even say that was me at some point, before I picked up the first two games on a Steam sale.
Another example is that you can be a concept artists for a videogame company, absolutely LOVE designing, fleshing out, and creating new characters for said game, but have zero interest in actually playing the game.
Take Steven Merchant- the voice of Wheatley in Portal 2 for example. In many interviews he talked about how much he absolutely loved doing voice acting for the character. Even though it was hell for a lot of the times. Yet when they ask him about the game itself, not only did he state that he still doesn't understand the whole hype behind the game.(yet alone what it's really about) but he never even bothered to play the free Portal 2 copy Valve gave him, nor does he care about it in the slightest.
Case in point- Hepler not liking to play videogames, does not affect the quality (or lack thereof) of the story of said games. You can have people who could care less about games make critically acclaimed stories in said games, and people who enjoy writing and playing games, make the most abysmal slosh the world has seen since Twilight.
Did that stop him from being a superb voice actor in the game? No. He even said he would do it again if asked to.
