When I look at today's modern game narratives, I see a lot that fall under these categories :
1) AAA visually epic, linear stories with a single narrative or main quests with sidequests,
2) Indie's that excel at unique level design with simple, sometimes sophisticated, or short and sweet stories
Many of these are hugely successful, and some are only played by a few. Many also lack certain quality levels of dialogue, pacing, screenwriting, and character design and development. What I want to understand, and push myself as an aspiring game writer, is what elements of game writing should writers focus on improving? What things that have not been successful before can become successful today? Can we mix and mash genres and styles of writing to create entirely unique games, or do we focus on one or two genres and push those?
As for me, I want to start out pushing whats possible with linear stories, but semi open level design for exploration. Or linear stories, but with deep, intelligent screenwriting. Something that feels like an interactive movie, but not so strictly linear that you can't explore a world much. What should we push to advance the art of interactive storytelling?
I think there's probably a lot to be learned from Visual Novels and Interactive Fiction, where story is the main focus and writers usually take a more central role than in many 'traditional' games.
Interested to read what you have to say, writing often seems to get a bit less attention than other areas.