Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
I think what would save games the most is creative directors and producers who have genuinely interesting stories to tell and care a great deal about bringing an imaginative vision to life. We have plenty of games that get the job done anyway without them, I don't think games should try to pretend to be better by hiring storywriters, that only makes a more bloated budget.
Pursuant to this, I think the best way to help would be to integrate story and character as an integral part of the game, indeed fundamental (In the literal sense of the game not being able to exist without it). The story should be decided before a single piece of code is written and the game should be built to accomodate it. In reality, folks make a game and shoehorn a plot into it because it's pretty rare that a company will just say, for instance, "a bunch of people are having a fight, enjoy your Tekken guys" or "Here are some guns and monkeys, you can figure the rest out". We're in this weird sort of place where story is considered necessary* in almost all circumstances, whilst being regarded as a burdensome afterthought a lot of the time.

So I don't really think the problem is storywriters or their absence, in fact I think it's a very good idea to bring in people who know how to write a story, but the story needs to be approached by someone who is a gamer as much as they are a writer - someone who understands the medium, genre, conventions, etc. - but regardless of who is involved it should either be a central and fundamental part of the design which directly informs the rest of the game, or it should just be said that the story is unecessary and here's some quirky characters beating each other up.

* I've got a feeling that this arose as a response to the charges in the 90s that games were gratuitous murder simulators, and thus a story-based justification for your heinous acts became necessary.