Blog
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Nobody Came Here To Watch You Know Things
It’s 20XX and I’m settling into a folding chair at GDC, buzzing with the kind of excitement that only makes sense if you understand what it took to get there. This was my first time at the conference after nearly eight years in the industry. A few colleagues and I had pooled resources and were…
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Narrative Structure Is a Budget Decision (Part 3)
If you’ve read Parts 1 and 2, you now have a vocabulary for the distinct structures that tend to get lumped together under “branching narrative.” This is the part where I tell you how I actually use that vocabulary — and why the most important conversation about narrative structure usually happens in a budget meeting,…
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Stop Calling Everything a Branching Narrative: A Field Guide (Part 2)
If you haven’t read Part 1, the short version is this: “branching narrative” means different things to different people, and that ambiguity causes real problems when you’re trying to design, write, or budget a game. The goal of this series is to give you a shared vocabulary that actually holds up in a production meeting.…
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What Do You Even Mean By Branching Narrative?
There’s a conversation I’ve had more times than I can count, and it usually starts the same way. Someone — a writer, a designer, sometimes an executive — says they want a “branching narrative” for their game. Everyone in the room nods. Everyone thinks they understand what that means. And then, about three meetings later,…
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You Feel Nothing: The Problem with Second Person Storytelling in Games
There’s a book I used to keep on my desk in the office. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. Every time someone came to me with a design concept that had a particular problem baked into it, I’d hand them the book, tell them to read the first chapter, and let them figure out…
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Less Is More: A Framework for Game VO That Players Actually Listen To
There’s a version of this post that starts with a rant about Claptrap. We’ll get there. But first, a principle. Good game VO — the kind that actually lands, the kind players remember years later — isn’t really a writing problem. It’s an attention problem. And attention, it turns out, is one of the most…
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From Playing to Watching: How Let’s Plays Changed What It Means to Be a Gamer
There’s something I’ve been turning over in my mind lately, and I think it’s worth putting into words. Here’s my hot take: the rise of Let’s Play videos and live streaming has fundamentally shifted what the gaming community is. Not just in size, but in its very nature. And I’m not sure we talk about…
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Criticism
“If you’re not your own worst critic, you’re probably not very good.” This is a quote I’ve been telling people for years, though in all honesty it’s always been more of a reminder to myself than anything else. I started saying it when I was in school, surrounded by creative people for the first time,…
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The 7 Principles of Illusion (And How They Apply to Narrative Design)
A magician’s job and a narrative designer’s job are more similar than you might think. Both are in the business of making people invest in something that isn’t entirely real. Both rely on attention, assumption, and a carefully constructed experience to pull it off. And both, when they’re working at their best, leave the audience…
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There’s A Knock At The Door
Imagine you’re sitting in your home, doing something casual, not using much effort or thought. Then there’s a knock at the door. Who’s knocking?What do you do?How does it make you feel? Your immediate answer might be something like — I don’t know, who is it? — and that’s a completely reasonable response to such…
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