The fact that video game writing isn't respected right now is causing more problems than it would if it were respected. Now, people don't understand why you have to have such gratuitous violence in a game. As it gets more respected, people will have a better understanding of the art form.

I think he got it backwards.

He explains his point in the very next paragraph:

“Movies and TV and books have become so structured in the way they have to approach things. Not working in that environment gives us enormous freedom. I'd rather keep the freedom and not have the respect.”

Developers, artists, writers and everyone in between all have OUR respect. The target audience. The gamers. The people who matter. The people who, at the end of the day, keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Our respect, our attention and our opinions are the only ones that anyone making a game should care about.

Keep the freedom indeed!

He's probably referring to the business side of the process of making the game, not the creative side. Although one does affect the other.

I don't know. Two paragraphs isn't a lot to go on.

His point is, it's fun for the writers to still be able to shape their approach to the whole thing, and there is new ideas to be explored around every corner.
When making Farcry 2, for example, not to say that it had a great story or anything, the developer had a team for "Narrative Design" which tried to make the storyline flexible to what the player did and how he advanced. That's highly intruiging as a concept, is it not? Especially for sandbox games.
When Level Designer of Thief 3's 'the cradle' went on to do Bioshocks 'Fort Frolic'-level, he worked with Ken Levine and the art guys to flesh it out as they went, refining the writing and visuals.
If something like that (communication) doesn't happen then maybe the writing, or art, or design, or gameplay gets dislocated from the whole thing and doesn't match the rest of the direction of the game anymore. And there is no formula yet for how this should happen in development, because everyone still makes it up as they go.
Warren Spector, for instance, lamented that games don't even have a language yet. He said designers from different developers can't even really talk to each other properly because most words in game development have differing meanings from place to place. That's how much of an infant this whole thing is, and forcing it to grow up would be wrong.

What I don't quite understand is your point in using this to go mental on the ESRB, this reads like one of Jims posts where he uses some kind of vaguely related story to rant about how games are presented in the media. There is a much more interesting discussion to be had here than whine about how some institution who tell consumers what game is good for who doesn't give an interesting game proper respect. I say fuck 'em.

I think you have to understand that he's speaking from the perspective of a writer.
Writers don't care about censorship, they aren't involved in production past a certain point.

And he's not talking about the freedom to create the story he wants to create. He's talking about the freedom to present it however he likes, and to tell it in whatever interactive way he likes.
This is something no longer possible for tv and film writing, as you are expected to present a script with a certain layout, in a specific font and with a certain number of pages, and if your script does not conform to this then it isn't even read.

As soon as game writing becomes a 'respected' [read: mainstream] medium, someone will create a format for game writing to follow, and the creativity will be stifled.

Consider the following analogy: If game writing is a planet, today's writers are the pioneers. They are mapping the world, traveling to unknown places and finding out exactly what the rules are. It's not necessarily comfortable for those of us who are along for the ride, and many games are lost at sea, but it's still EXCITING and VITAL for the writers.

All Dan Houser is saying is that he'd rather be free to explore in his own way, and if that means risking scurvy and death by pirate then so be it. At least there's no health and safety regulations.

Calvinball?

The Warren Spector-thing was more of an example for how the whole process is not in a defintive shape, it doesn't have any special relation to the topic of writing specifically when his job is more like bringing this as one of many elements in the mix.
He meant it like, when he talks to lead designers from other companies, or their art lead talks to an other companies art lead, theres misunderstandings, not inside a team.

But yeah, if some postmortems are anything to go by, for some games a little anarchy worked out ok =) Some classics are great because of some sheer dumb luck involved. See Deus Ex which then was followed up to by the infamous Deus Ex 2 which while being a decent and interesting shooter was rubbish as a "Deus Ex-Game", although the developer thought they would just make it better with what they learned from the mistakes(or what they thought were mistakes anyway) they made in original Deus Ex, and didn't realize they took much of the old charms out.

I think he may be talking about how a Movie Script can be green-lit on the whim of some fat exec who insists on putting Will Smith into it.

The majority of Video Games aspire to Summer Blockbuster level of intelligence and suspension of belief at best, whilst only a few try and push the medium forward.

The last thing we need is games being cancelled because they didn't feature Mario, Sonic, Master Chief.

“Movies and TV and books have become so structured in the way they have to approach things. Not working in that environment gives us enormous freedom. I'd rather keep the freedom and not have the respect.”

That's what he's talking about.

I guess I interpreted his words a bit differently than you guys. To me it sounds like he simply wants to continue writing for video games without worrying about any serious criticism of his work. And who can blame him? No one wants their work torn to shreds by critics.

I can see his point. He feels like a video game writing pioneer who is going to sculpt game writing into something dynamic and unpredictable.

Saying comic books were better after Maus won a Pulitzer is like saying rap music was better after DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince won a Grammy. It might be true, but it doesn't actually mean anything.