The Writer's Pulse

I don’t play Everquest II anymore (it used to be my MMO of choice, but that’s a whole other story), but it looks like things in Norrath are about to get a little more interesting. Or at least a bit more cultured.

An upcoming game update will implement a feature that allows players to write and distribute their own books within the game world:

Essentially the process is simple: nip to your local crafter and buy a blank book. Once you start writing, that book becomes tied to you the author. According to Rothgar [an Everquest II developer], there’s no limit to pages but there is to words. – Everquest II lets you become an in-game author

Commenters at Massively point out that this is not the first instance of user-created, in-game books, as they’ve also appeared in Ultima Online and There, but any step towards improving immersion and giving players a chance to be creative is definitely a good thing.

I’m glad video games are starting to get the respect they deserve.

I mean, sure, some are just mindless button-mashers. And yeah, they can be violent. They get a bad rap, though, and as an avid gamer myself I’m glad to finally see that they’re at least reaching into the same realm of acceptance as movies and literature.

Take the recent Writers Guild of America awards, for example. They awarded Star Wars: Unleashed for best writing in video games in 2008.

The fact that anyone is actually considering the writing of any video game for a legitimate award is a good thing. Many deserve it, and hopefully someday video games will be seen as the artistic medium which I think it is (or can be, depending on the developers).

This is only the second Video Game Writing award that the guild has granted (the first being Dead Head Fred, which in my opinion is a strange choice for best writing of 2007, but I digress). Fallout 3, which is a personal favorite of mine, also made the list of nominees.