Line #20 VideoGame/TheWriterWillDoSomething


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_writer_will_do_something.jpg]]
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3	->''"You want a serious, sober, gray-skied story, but you don’t want to give up your gameplay. And I understand not wanting to give that up — it’s what everyone likes about [=ShatterGate=]. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re asking for something impossible. Don’t you get that? You want to have your cake and eat it too."\
4	Mike sighs. "The cake is a lie."''
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6	''The Writer Will Do Something'' is a work of {{Gamebook}}-style InteractiveFiction written and programmed in Twine by Tom Bissell and Matthew S. Burns that satirizes AAA video game development. You play the lead writer of ''[=ShatterGate=]: Future Perfect'', an massive video game with just one teensy problem: according to the first round of playtests, it is completely terrible in every way. Can you, along with the creative director, lead designers, art director and lead producer, salvage the game and your reputations? Or will you fail catastrophically in the process?
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8	It can be played [[http://mrwasteland.itch.io/twwds here]].
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10	----
11	!!''The Writer Will Do Something'' provides examples of:
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13	* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: At one point you bring up that the higher-ups want the aliens to speak "an Arabic-sounding language."
14	* BayonetYa: The Gunsword.
15	* BeleagueredAssistant: Mallory, the audio producer.
16	* BittersweetEnding: The writer continues in their profession as an indie developer or now promoted to another job in the same franchise they hate.
17	* BoldlyComing: The main character of ''[=ShatterGate=]'', Rix, is an "interplanetary Casanova," and a central mechanic involves sleeping with various alien girlfriends for stat boosts.
18	* ButThouMust: The satire is that the writer ''cannot'' do anything; your choices accomplish almost nothing in the end.
19	* CelebrityVoiceActor: [[invoked]]Erika gets one of these, but he takes off to shoot a film with Creator/WesAnderson.
20	* ContinuityPorn: One of the many, many problems with ''[=ShatterGate=]''. Mike in particular is not a fan.
21	* ControlFreak: Erika. She hates the entire storyline and wants to rewrite it. She also creates gorgeous scenery which is utterly confusing to players as to what they can or cannot do in it.
22	* DarkerAndEdgier: ''Future Perfect'' is supposed to be this. If the game is any indication, it fails miserably.
23	* DevelopmentHell: [[invoked]]Pretty much "Development Hell: The Game."
24	* TheDilbertPrinciple: The PC ends up the lead writer on ''[=ShatterGate=]'' despite ''never playing the previous games'' and, it's implied, not being very good at their job.
25	** Part of the issue being that all of the developers are unenthusiastic about the project and have contradictory as well as vague suggestions.
26	* ExecutiveMeddling: [[invoked]]One of the reasons ''[=ShatterGate=]'' is such a disaster.
27	* FantasyConflictCounterpart: Josh insists on calling the game’s "early, self-consciously studied war-is-bad desert battle — the second major combat encounter — as 'Afghanistan' so indefatigably that a panicked PR flack made him undergo emergency deprogramming right before E3 last year, lest he slip and actually say such a thing out loud to the press.
28	* FunTShirt: Troy's favorite outfit.
29	* GameplayAndStorySegregation: The PC's primary problem with ''Future Perfect'': "'Grittier, tougher, meaner': Nothing else in the game actually supported these aspirations, even though Drew and Josh talked about them all the time. A single glance at the weapons, art, story, and milieu of this game leads any rational person to an inescapable conclusion: This is a willfully, obviously ridiculous world.
30	** One of the game mechanics is decapitating someone with your gunsword and then shooting the head as it flies through the air through bonus EXP.
31	** An attempt to address this leads to ComicallyMissingThePoint as the hero's BoldlyComing with alien women is said to be like James Bond (and thus not very gritty), so "we should make it like Film/{{Skyfall}}."
32	* HighTurnoverRate: You were hired to clean up after the last writer, who was hired to clean up after the last writer, and so on.
33	* ImpossiblyCoolWeapon: ''[=ShatterGate=]'''s signature weapon is the Gunsword, which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
34	* IndieGame: Satirized as brutally as the AAA variety: "''{{Golem}} Girl'', a retro platformer about a Jewish girl made of reanimated skin and her adventures through various levels inspired by Eastern European fairytales. After a tortuous, extended development process, ''Golem Girl'' finally went out to its [Kickstarter] backers. Josh told you once that it sold under a thousand copies."
35	* InMediasRes: The first scrapped opening of ''[=ShatterGate=]'' was this.
36	* MoneyDearBoy: [[invoked]]Josh "cheerfully admits he dreamed up the game to make money."
37	* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Pretty much the point of the game, at least in terms of unhelpful coworkers with unrealistic expectations. It's clear toward the end of the game that the fellow developers ''hate every single thing about the game but their own work'' and would change it all if possible.
38	* OpeningScroll: Josh suggests this for the game's opening, and then defends it by saying ''Franchise/StarWars'' "takes a giant lore SHIT on your ENTIRE FACE."
39	* PlayerAndProtagonistIntegration: The PC keeps harping on whether the player should ''portray'' or ''inhabit'' Rix's character.
40	* PlayTheGameSkipTheStory: [[invoked]]Mike admits he's never watched an in-game {{Cutscene}} from start to finish.
41	* ProfessionalSlacker: Mike "seems chiefly invested in defeating his co-workers in multiplayer matches and Tweeting gnomic in-jokes about the game at his 1,400 followers."
42	* ThisIsReality: The plan to scrap the opening and dialogue immediately falls apart when the audio department head, which wasn't even invited to the meeting, points out that the guy who voices the main character isn't available. As a big movie star, he's doing a movie with Wes Anderson, and won't be available for re-recording. The developers try their usual snark about how a movie star isn't all that important, implying they could just get rid of dialogue entirely, only for her to shut them down with profanity and insults.
43	* SceneryPorn: Josh criticizes Erika for focusing too much on this.
44	* SellOut: Shawn "once told an interviewer that his personal idea of hell would be working for an AAA developer." In one of the endings, he [[spoiler: becomes the new lead designer of the studio]].
45	* ShoutOut: Many, including ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' and ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}''.
46	* SlowPacedBeginning: [[invoked]]Much of the meeting revolves around salvaging the first scene of the game, a six-minute lore-dense cinematic.
47	* SpaceJews: The "Arabic-sounding" aliens.
48	* TakeThat: To AAA development in general; according to [[http://gamerant.com/writing-games-destiny/ some reviewers]] (and the authors' backgrounds), to Creator/{{Bungie}} Studios and ''{{VideoGame/Destiny}}''.
49	* TakeThisJobAndShoveIt: At several points you get the option to do this. [[spoiler: It never works.]]
50	* TutorialFailure: One of the playtesters' main problems is they can't figure out the controls, mostly because designer Shawn thinks tutorials are "a betrayal of the language games are supposed to speak."
51	* UnreadablyFastText: Used at one point during a major decision.
52	* WarWasBeginning: One version of ''[=ShatterGate=]'''s opening.

Context VideoGame / TheWriterWillDoSomething