The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has decided to cut its Video Game Writing Award for next year. It had been present ever since it was first introduced in 2008.
The news comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which was able to get a statement from a Writers Guild of America representative.
There won’t be a Videogame Writing Award in 2020. However, the category will be reinstated when there is a critical mass of video games covered by the WGA in order to provide a meaningful award selection process.
The issue here is that 'covered by the WGA' means only games made by writers that are part of the WGA Video Game Writers Caucus can be considered, which is after all the reason behind Red Dead Redemption 2 not even getting a nomination last year. Additionally, to be a member of the WGA and be eligible for the award you had to pay a $100 fee, which didn't sit right with many developers.
In February 2019, the Writers Guild of America announced that Sony Santa Monica had won the yearly Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing award with God of War, beating Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Telltale’s Batman: The Enemy Within (Episode 5 – Same Stitch) and Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.
It looks like that will remain the last WGA Video Game Writing Award for some time. Other recent winners in this console generation were Guerrilla Games with Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017, Naughty Dog with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End in 2016, and Crystal Dynamics with Rise of the Tomb Raider in 2015.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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