Developer Dave Ellis sees a bright future for storytelling in gaming, he said in a Joystiq interview.

“Game writing is only going to get better as time goes on. Players are getting used to good writing, and soon they won’t settle for less,” said Ellis, the 2008 recipient of the WGA award for video game writing.

Ellis is a designer with Vicious Cycle, and his most recent project, Dead Head Fred for the PSP, earned him the Writer’s Guild of America award. He will be the keynote speaker at a Writer’s Guild Foundation workshop on game writing next month.

“Today, we’re looking at a couple of exciting developments. First, story-driven games are becoming more popular. Developers are realizing that writing needs just as much attention as the graphics and other gameplay elements, especially when the story and characters play a key role in the game,” Ellis said.

“Second, technology has reached the point where truly interactive storytelling is emerging. The story can evolve through the gameplay, and it can be affected by the player’s actions — at least to a certain extent.”

Ellis recognized the limitations of current storytelling techniques, which limit the player to established choices even in open world games.

“It would be amazing to create a game where the story truly emerges from actions in the game world, and the characters you meet in that world act like real people,” said Ellis. “But we just aren’t there yet in single-player games.”

Ellis continued, “I think that you can still do some really compelling things with game stories without even incorporating new concepts in terms of game stories. Many think that the idea of presenting a story in cut scenes (non-interactive movies that interrupt gameplay) is something that is holding game writing back. Personally, I don’t agree. I think that you can still present a great — albeit linear — story in this manner.”

In games like BioShock, Ellis observed, “the ability to explore and find new story elements blurred the edges of the linear storyline so well that, as a player, you rarely think about the fact that you’re still following a set path through the game. The story is just so good that you don’t really notice.”

The interview has a lot of interesting and pertinent information from this talented writer, including comments on the innovative adventure game Heavy Rain and his collection of classic arcade cabs.