In the gaming industry, the work of screenwriters is underestimated, says David Gaider, the author of the Dragon Age and Baldur’s Gate scripts. Even BioWare, which achieved success thanks to well-written characters and stories, eventually began to consider expensive scripts a burden.
According to Heider, many people mistakenly think that writing scripts is easy, because everyone is able to “compose sentences”. This attitude can be seen among people who are going to become screenwriters themselves. They think that since they don’t know how to draw, program and don’t have any other “real skills” for game development, then working as a screenwriter is the only thing left for them.
BioWare did not immediately treat the screenwriters as something not too important, says Geider. At first, the studio publicly talked about the importance of its writers, but after a while it began to “quietly hate” them. The management wanted less resources to be spent on the scripts, and seemed to believe that an interesting plot could appear “at the wave of a magic wand.”
In conclusion, Geider added that it is not enough for companies to simply declare that they like good scenarios. They should also support the writers and adequately pay for their work.