Blog - A Line About War

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Over the holidays this winter I stumbled randomly upon the DVD set of season 1 of Jericho, and got very wrapped up in the show (What can I say? I love me some post-apocalyptic fare, which likely explains my obsession with the Fallout RPG series...)
In any case, the show is on my mind once again, because season two premieres tonight. Huzzah!

For those not familiar with the show, it follows a small town in Kansas through nuclear attacks on the United States and the resulting aftermath.
How am I getting to the topic of games from this?
In one episode from season 1 (I don't exactly remember which episode exactly it was, but I'm going to take a wild guess and say maybe number 5?) there was a scene in which some of the characters were playing the card game War.
This scene began with a terrible line that was something along the lines of: "I hate War. Nobody ever wins."

Now, two things strike me about this line that are relevant to game development:

1.) It's an interesting example in pop culture of an abstract game system expressing an idea. Even though the card game never claims to be a terribly realistic simulation of warfare, the characters in the show have made the observation that the game nonetheless (by accident or by design) expresses messages on the nature of war.

2.) The line is awful because it's an example of on-the-nose writing.
If you are ever given the task of writing dialogue for games (or any media, really), then please for the love of God know what writing on-the-nose means and then avoid doing it at all costs.

Labels: expression, writing