Back in the day, Hooksexup had a motto: Good writing is sexy. In the past ten years, as Hooksexup’s grown out of its spunky, firebrand early days and into its current incarnation as a mature, established purveyor of cultural commentary, the motto has disappeared from the magazine. But it lives on in everything we do. Good writing being sexy is a belief we cannot shake, a universal truth that colors all of our endeavors, and it’s at the heart of 61 Frames Per Second.
Painful as it is to say, good writing is still rare in games. Dialogue, expository text, all writing really, takes a backseat to the creation of every other asset in a game. Hell, in some cases, I’ve seen promotional materials better written than the game they’re humping (I’m looking at you Metroid Prime 3. Suburban Commando called, it wants its dialogue back.) That’s why Susan O’Connor is sexy. Recently named one of the most important women in games, the fact of the matter is that O’Connor is one of the most important people working in games, period. She is quickly becoming one of the first truly recognizable writers in gaming thanks to her work on Gears of War, among others. What’s impressive about O’Connor and her writing isn’t her blockbuster pedigree though. It’s her ability to infuse rather tired settings and character types with legitimate humanity. Her work on Bioshock is peerless. When I finally got around to playing Bioshock, I was disappointed by its mechanics; for a game about choice, you rarely have to make difficult decisions about how you play it. But I played through, start to finish, just to hear what every character had to say, to listen to the sad survivors of Rapture tell their stories on decayed tape recorders. Good writing is sexy, great writing is sexier, and Susan O’Connor is the sexiest.
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