David Gaider on Being Lead Writer

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something from David Gaider’s personal Tumblr blog, but considering his latest post goes in detail on his duties as a lead writer at BioWare, I thought it was worth covering. Here’s an excerpt:

First thing you’d need to understand is that there’s no single definition in the game industry as to what a (Lead Writer) is or does, or indeed even what a writer does at one company to the next. Some companies bring in writers after the rest of the game is designed, often on contract, to add a story and dialogue. Others have writers who also wear other hats, as level designers or even programmers. Only a few have full-time writers who only write, and who participate in the game’s design from the get-go though that number does appear to be growing.

Second thing you’d need to understand is that the position at BioWare has changed over time. Back in the days of Baldur’s Gate 2, there was no such thing as a (Lead Writer) all creative decisions and management were handled by the Lead Designer. As the team sizes grew, it became too much work for the Lead Designer to manage the entire design team directly so some of the work began to be off-loaded to (sub-leads). At first the Lead Writer was just the sub-lead responsible for keeping an eye on the overall narrative, making sure it flowed throughout the game and alerting the Lead Designer if something needed to change. Over time, more responsibilities were off-loaded to the sub-leads, until the Lead Designer became a position that is as much co-ordination of his sub-leads as it is creative leadership.

Make sense? No? Okay, let me strip it down a bit. At the top of the chain is the Project Director (Mark Darrah, in the case of Dragon Age). He co-ordinates his senior leads: Lead Designer, Lead Artist, and Lead Programmer primarily. Those senior leads in turn co-ordinate their sub-leads for Design that’s Writing, Cinematic Design, Level Design, Combat, and Systems Design.

Those further up the chain provide direction to those further down the chain. Those further down the chain provide info on their particular specialty to those further up. So the Lead Designer will provide me, the Lead Writer, overall direction. I, in turn, will tell him what Writing needs and what we’d like to do. and he’ll take that into account along with what all his other sub-leads are asking for and make decisions as to who gets priority. Naturally he does this while getting direction from the Project Director above him, who is making decisions while consulting with his other senior leads.

It sounds very neat, though it’s really not. It’s messy. We sub-leads work together very closely, and are constantly trying to work out between ourselves what we need from each other. Sometimes there are conflicts our Lead Designer needs to make a call on. Sometimes our Lead Designer comes along with a direction change, which could be his own idea or something that’s come down to him from above. Either way, the sub-lead’s job is to implement that change to the best of our ability. Or to push back, if we think the change won’t work or implementing it would require things we don’t currently have. Often that means compromises. It always means meetings meetings, meetings, and more meetings.

So the short of it is that, no, I don’t have final say on the plot of a game. The Writing team would be the first group to suggest what that plot might be, and we’d do that having received direction from above, but that proposal is going to go up the chain and then come back down with changes and is going to need to incorporate desires from other parts of the team.

So if someone pictures being Lead Writer as a scriptwriter or the person who dictates what the creative vision might be then, no, that’s not the case. Not at BioWare, anyhow. I as Lead Writer have a lot of influence over the game’s story, sure, and the more something is entirely a Writing thing and doesn’t involve any other departments, the more I will have say over it, but ultimately I am a coordinator for the writers under me and an arbiter of how my writers are going to work together. Without me, the writers would be going in many creative directions so I keep them on task, and am the point of contact for everyone else who needs something from us. I am also the guy who sticks up for Writing’s interests (which ultimately boils down to (the interests of the story and the setting)) when it comes into conflict with other departments.