Since 2019, SFWA has been the proud home of a Nebula Award for Game Writing. This dynamic category spans board and other tabletop games, right up to videogame masterpieces. We still have room to grow in our celebration of tabletop productions, but the work that comes out of our videogame universes is stunning, and ranges from indie up to massive team productions.
This year’s winner of the Nebula for Game Writing is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, by lead writers Jennifer Svedberg-Yen and Guillaume Broche. While the game is visually breathtaking, it draws heavily (pun intended!) from a story perhaps like none you’ve ever seen before.
Imagine a world where, every year, a Paintress awakens to paint her cursed number upon her monolith, and everyone older than that age simply disappears. This is a haunting reality for our core characters, who have dedicated their lives to trying to improve their Belle Époque France-inspired society through city planning and engineering. Now, an expedition of people in their final year venture forth to halt this force of chaos who has brought such hardship to their community, and sown hopelessness among their youth.
The power of such storytelling lies in its potent analogies. We too live in a world where we do the best we can, where we can, and still feel helpless in the face of forces beyond our control. Playing this richly narrative game may not suddenly fix our own, real-world problems, but it lends language and hope to the similar work so many of us are doing in the world to which we belong. Join the journey today, and see for yourself!