Uh, the Writers Guild Award game nominees are weird

I put more stock in the Lollipop Guild’s assessment of game writing

The Writers Guild Awards has been giving games writing awards for a number of years now. I’m always confused. Past winners include Dead Head Fred, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Uncharted 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Uncharted 3, and Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation. Only two of those sort of make sense to me.

This year’s nominees, the winner of which will be announced February 1, are:

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
Batman: Arkham Origins
God of War: Ascension
The Last of Us
Lost Planet 3

Perhaps these lists end up odd because of prerequisites for WGA nomination. Potentially nominated writers have to apply to the “WGA Videogame Writers Caucus at the time scripts were submitted,” for example.

Anyways, it’s quite clear only one game in this bizarre list of nominees actually deserves to be praised for its writing.

Lost Planet 3.

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN VIDEOGAME WRITING

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Story by Darby McDevitt, Mustapha Mahrach, Jean Guesdon; Lead Scriptwriter Darby McDevitt; Scriptwriter Jill Murray; AI Scriptwriter Nicholas Grimwood; Scriptwriter Singapore Mark Llabres Hill; Ubisoft

Batman: Arkham Origins, Narrative Director Dooma Wendschuh; Writer & Senior Narrative Designer Ryan Galletta; Writer Corey May; Warner Bros. Interactive

God of War: Ascension, Written by Marianne Krawcyzk; Additional Writing Ariel Lawrence; Sony Computer Entertainment

The Last of Us, Written by Neil Druckmann; Sony Computer Entertainment

Lost Planet 3, Head Writer Richard Gaubert; Writers Orion Walker, Matt Sophos; Capcom