Mark Barrett, writer-designer extraordinaire and good friend, has written a new essay. (Sadly, due to the structure of his site, it is not possible to link directly to it. The essay in question, "The Producers", may no longer be up at the top when you click this. Scroll down, or look in the archives.)

Mark talks about our industry's failure to let people with storytelling experience actually handle the storytelling in games, despite the demonstrably positive effects this can bring, and how producers are both part of the problem, and, potentially, part of the solution. I recommend you read it.

The problem he describes is not limited to writers. It still applies to game designers, and, in a certain way, to all game developers. It is still too common to have game designers be in a situation where they are not able to do what they can and should do, or to have game designers who are not able to do what should be done. On a larger scale, in today's industry it is, sadly, still too rare to have the chance to work on an interesting title that gets shipped.