The voice actor of Kratos in God of War, Christopher Judge, has criticised Amazon after the studio didn’t hire any of the original God of War writers and developers to work on the Prime Video TV adaptation.
This is something that Judge feels has been an issue with video game adaptations for a long time, as he voiced this month on a Fan Expo panel in Boston: "What are you thinking? These guys have been immersed in this world for 20 years. But someone's going to know better?"
Despite fans of the franchise voicing their support for Judge's critique, there are a few reasons why video game writers cannot work on TV or film adaptations of their games, and it’s more complicated than you might think.
The first reason is that TV shows are almost always written by members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), a group that video game writers are not even eligible to join.
And because almost all major studios are contracted to the WGA, when these studios pick up game adaptations, the original game devs cannot be part of the writing team because they aren’t WGA members.
Strict union rules even mean that video game writers are not even able to be in the same writers room as TV writers.
Judge later took to X to say: "I was talking more about our writers and devs.
"I really want them to get the love and respect they deserve. I hope that for all writers and developers of the games that we love. No disrespect to TV and film writers."
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This controversy comes after the WGA in 2019 also scrapped the video game writing category from its awards show.
The reason behind this decision was that there weren’t enough video games that used WGA-unionised writers, and therefore not enough nominees, despite video game writers being required to write for TV or film before they can join the organisation.
So at least if the WGA doesn’t love video game writers, it seems as though Kratos truly does.
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