I received my first piece of hate mail today and actually find it quite funny. The following is the entirety of the message:
“your game sucks, go **** a goat and don’t make video-game stories ever again! Bad bad bad bad bad writer!”
Obviously, I edited the line to take out the expletive, but I’m sure that if you so wish you’ll work it out.
The subject heading says “So Blonde”, so I’m guessing that the writer was referring to this game. I just can’t understand why, even if they hated it they would be bothered to find out my e-mail address just to send me a vitriolic missive.
It’s nice to know I instill such passion in my fans. 🙂
I’ve yet to get it and play it myself but I am looking forward to it. I am Germany and seen it a number of times but I don’t speak / read enough German (yet) to play it.
Do you know if the German editions have English text / speech available?
Reminds me, I took a photo of a very long row of “So Blonde” in the shop Saturn in Hamburg the week it came out. Keep meaning to send it to you.
It’s not usual for versions to have multiple languages where the release dates are so spread out. The whole grey import business begins to rear its head.
Please do send me the photo, I’d love to see it.
Ahh, thats what I feared. Will have to wait for it to pop out in the UK and order it from Play or something. Or possibly Steam should it appear there.
The problem with games here in Germany is its hard to know if they include English or not. Some boxes state that speech and manual are in German however the rest don’t and I know a few games do have both languages.
There are so many adventure games here that I would love to play but my German isn’t up to it. (Though it is great here that you often get older games free on computer magazines, so I have collected a few adv’s for later consumption)
Will email the photo shortly, about to go looking for your email address.
Well, congratulations on loosing your hate-mail virginity 😉
LOL
Hi. Well let me balance the vitriol with some praise. I just finished reading your book of writing for video games and found it really helpful. Thanks! Just a quick query – the games you’ve listed for playing at the end of the book, what’s the basis for the selection? Is it the quality of the story?
Hi Edwin,
Thanks for the kind words.
Most have an element that’s connected to a good story, strong characters or wonderful dialogue, but a few of them have writing that’s less tangible because it lies in the core ideas behind the game.
For instance, Lego Star Wars has no real dialogue and the story is just a re-imagining of the films’ stories, but there’s a richness there that can only come from someone having written lengthy documents that captured the vision for the game.
Excellent, thanks Steve. I’ve got a copy of Half-life 2 winging it’s way to me. My gaming gland is itching in anticipation.