Nicole Martinez & Megan Starks
Explicit content warning
11/18/19 • 79 min
Apologies to all for the slight delay, but the wait has TOTALLY been worth it because today we've got Nicole (Senior Narrative Designer at Crystal Dynamics, and before that a Creative Director on the unreleased The Wolf Among Us: Season 2, and a writer on season 2 of Minecraft: Story Mode, Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman, The Walking Dead: Michonne, Game of Thrones: Season 1, and The Wolf Among Us: Season 1) and Megan (Senior Narrative Designer Team Lead and Senior Writer on the recently-released Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment, and before that she was a Senior Writer on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and Tyranny, and a Senior Game Designer and Content Zone Lead on Wildstar for Carbine Studios) joining us to talk writing/design tests, whether narrative design and game writing should be separate jobs, the hardest things to write and design, writers' rooms, rewriting processes, where they start with constructing branching narratives, what they look for in endings as creators and whether it's different than what they look for as consumers, meaningful choices, storytelling trends they'd like to see more of, NPCs, major influences, and a great deal more!
Our guests on the Internet
Nicole's Twitter.
Megan's Twitter, Website, and check out House of Ash and Brimstone (Gatewalkers Book 1)!
Stuff We Talked About
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter by Laurell K. Hamilton
Sabriel by Garth Nix
More than Quest Givers: Why Good Characters Matter Konsoll 2019 Talk by Molly Maloney and Eric Stirpe
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen
The Twelve Dancing Princesses by the Brothers Grimm
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Our theme music was composed by Isabella Ness, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Apologies to all for the slight delay, but the wait has TOTALLY been worth it because today we've got Nicole (Senior Narrative Designer at Crystal Dynamics, and before that a Creative Director on the unreleased The Wolf Among Us: Season 2, and a writer on season 2 of Minecraft: Story Mode, Guardians of the Galaxy, Batman, The Walking Dead: Michonne, Game of Thrones: Season 1, and The Wolf Among Us: Season 1) and Megan (Senior Narrative Designer Team Lead and Senior Writer on the recently-released Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment, and before that she was a Senior Writer on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and Tyranny, and a Senior Game Designer and Content Zone Lead on Wildstar for Carbine Studios) joining us to talk writing/design tests, whether narrative design and game writing should be separate jobs, the hardest things to write and design, writers' rooms, rewriting processes, where they start with constructing branching narratives, what they look for in endings as creators and whether it's different than what they look for as consumers, meaningful choices, storytelling trends they'd like to see more of, NPCs, major influences, and a great deal more!
Our guests on the Internet
Nicole's Twitter.
Megan's Twitter, Website, and check out House of Ash and Brimstone (Gatewalkers Book 1)!
Stuff We Talked About
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter by Laurell K. Hamilton
Sabriel by Garth Nix
More than Quest Givers: Why Good Characters Matter Konsoll 2019 Talk by Molly Maloney and Eric Stirpe
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen
The Twelve Dancing Princesses by the Brothers Grimm
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Our theme music was composed by Isabella Ness, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Previous Episode
Kelsey Beachum & Olivia Alexander
We've got Kelsey (game writer and narrative designer on Outer Wilds with Mobius Digital, along with Stormland for Insomniac, and wrote the unreleased Tales from the Minus Lab for USC’s Interactive Media & Games Division) and Olivia (script writer and narrative designer at Ubisoft Montreal on Far Cry 5 and Far Cry: New Dawn, and previously a scriptwriter at Ubisoft Quebec on Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and its DLC) in this month to talk about the hardest parts of working with nonlinear storytelling, stress, taking feedback, nonlinear murder mysteries, quantifying values that are hard to quantify, assuming that players are smart, tracking all the permutations in branching narratives, player assumptions when it comes to knowledge of the story and vice versa, letting players pull in information instead of pushing it on them, what makes a good opening and ending, DnD, and more.
Our Guests on the Internet
Olivia's Twitter.
Stuff We Talked About
GDC 2019: Technical Tools for Authoring Branching Dialogue by Carrie Patel and Szymczyk
Overqualified by Joey Comeau
Our theme music was composed by Isabella Ness, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Next Episode
Heli Salomaa & Claire Hummel
We're back again this month with Heli (theatre and performance costume designer, most recently a costume and character designer for Remedy’s Control and the upcoming Crossfire 2. Also worked on Mirages for Kroma Productions, and EGO CURE for Aalto University)and Claire (currently an art director at Valve, previously an artist and associate production designer for Microsoft Studios on a ton of Kinect games, Fable Legends, Sunset Overdrive, Powerstar Golf, and more. Also the production designer for Westworld VR) to talk about why costume design as a specialized role isn’t more common in games, the narrative features of costume design, differences with fashion design, research, building costumes for worlds less-based in reality, the problem of flowing clothes, working with the non-monetary budgets of video games (memory, processing power, etc), not holding back on your first draft, their most important collaborators, iteration, pitching ideas that may be too “out there,” the hardest costume they’ve designed (that they can talk about), knowing when something’s done, how non-costume designers can learn more about costume design, mundane costume design, work/life balance, and how can writers make costume designers’ lives easier.
Our guests on the Internet
Heli’s Website and Artstation.
Stuff We Talked About
The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff
Our theme music was created by Isabella Ness, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
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