Zoe Franznick & Franciska Csongrady
Explicit content warning
04/25/22 • 91 min
It’s time to get MEDIEVAL with our guests Zoe (currently an Associate Narrative Designer at Obsidian Games working on unannounced projects, and she is also the cohost of the Maniculum Podcast) and Franciska (currently the Narrative Lead on Around for Primal Game Studios, and also the Senior Narrative Designer on Ayna: Shattered Truth for Designmatic. And previously she was a Game Writer on Ori and the Will of the Wisps for Moon Studios, as well as a Narrative Designer on their unannounced ARPG)! They join us to talk about ousting J.R.R. Tolkien as the top fantasy writer of all time, untapped medieval stories that people in games should be thinking about, parallels between medievalism and game design, manuscript culture, how you balance between explaining things for players and letting them fill in the blanks themselves, would they rather tell stories with dialogue or without, are there any books or talks or resources they go back to a lot when working on a game, how to give good criticism and best piece of feedback they’ve gotten, how they think of the player’s active role in the story when they’re writing, what sort of imagery do they find most evocative in horror and medieval literature, and MORE! MUCH MORE!
Our Guests on the Internet
Zoe has no twitter, but check out The Maniculum Podcast!
Franciska's Twitch, Twitter, and check out Around!
Stuff We Talked About
Franciska's Undergrad and Postgrad Theses
GOBELINS Youtube Channel
Like Stories of Old Youtube Channel
How to be a Great DM Youtube Channel
Game Maker’s Toolkit Youtube Channel
The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinary Literate by Eugene Ehrlich
Master Lists - The Maniculum Podcast
Our theme music was done by Isabella Ness, and our logo was done by Lily Nishita.
It’s time to get MEDIEVAL with our guests Zoe (currently an Associate Narrative Designer at Obsidian Games working on unannounced projects, and she is also the cohost of the Maniculum Podcast) and Franciska (currently the Narrative Lead on Around for Primal Game Studios, and also the Senior Narrative Designer on Ayna: Shattered Truth for Designmatic. And previously she was a Game Writer on Ori and the Will of the Wisps for Moon Studios, as well as a Narrative Designer on their unannounced ARPG)! They join us to talk about ousting J.R.R. Tolkien as the top fantasy writer of all time, untapped medieval stories that people in games should be thinking about, parallels between medievalism and game design, manuscript culture, how you balance between explaining things for players and letting them fill in the blanks themselves, would they rather tell stories with dialogue or without, are there any books or talks or resources they go back to a lot when working on a game, how to give good criticism and best piece of feedback they’ve gotten, how they think of the player’s active role in the story when they’re writing, what sort of imagery do they find most evocative in horror and medieval literature, and MORE! MUCH MORE!
Our Guests on the Internet
Zoe has no twitter, but check out The Maniculum Podcast!
Franciska's Twitch, Twitter, and check out Around!
Stuff We Talked About
Franciska's Undergrad and Postgrad Theses
GOBELINS Youtube Channel
Like Stories of Old Youtube Channel
How to be a Great DM Youtube Channel
Game Maker’s Toolkit Youtube Channel
The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinary Literate by Eugene Ehrlich
Master Lists - The Maniculum Podcast
Our theme music was done by Isabella Ness, and our logo was done by Lily Nishita.
Previous Episode
Ashley Swidowski & Graham Reznick
We celebrate spooky season all year round here, which is why we've brought back Ashley (Character Art Director at Bad Robot Games, previously Character Art Director at Naughty Dog, Lead Character Concept Artist on The Last of Us Part II, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and a concept artist on The Last of Us: Left Behind) and Graham (Writer, Director, and Sound Designer. Writer on Supermassive Games' Until Dawn, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, Hidden Agenda, The Inpatient, and The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan) to talk all things horror! Together they chat with us about what attracts them to horror, whether horror is a genre or a tool, the sublime of horror, the power of Silent Hill and Resident Evil, cross-pollination between film and TV, video game adaptations, how to pace horror games when players control the pacing, horror games following different rules from other horror media, first-person horror, how horror changes the art-making process, what non-horror games could take from horror games, the calcification of genres, horror games showing too much, dream crews, guilty pleasures, and Pyramid Head.
Our Guests on the Internet
Ashley's Twitter (but don't follow her) and Instagram
Graham's Twitter, Instagram, and check out his sound design work in the upcoming X!
Stuff We Talked About
Blair Witch by Bloober Team
Ashley’s Silent Hill Mondo covers
Our theme music was done by Isabella Ness, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Next Episode
Corey Brotherson & Kelsie Mhoon
Back in the throes of summer, we've got Corey (lead narrative designer at Silver Rain Games, writer and narrative designer on WindRush Tales, editor and social media manager of Butterfly Books, and a journalist, critic and content producer for companies such as PlayStation, Yahoo! and the Eurogamer Network) and Kelsie (narrative designer at Obsidian Entertainment on Outer Worlds 2, narrative lead for Dangers in the Motor Vortex, lead writer for Death Carnival, creator of It Girl, and was also a content designer at Jam City and a writer at Pixelberry Studios) here to talk about writing tests, barriers, common motifs & themes in their writing, games they wish they wrote, unexpected pieces of media that inspired them, games where they felt the most invested in the player characters, silent protagonists, things they wished game narratives delved into more often, character tropes, building characters from scratch, and more!
*The views and opinions expressed by Corey do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Silver Rain Games*
Our Guests on the Internet
Kelsie's Twitter and Linkedin.
Stuff We Talked About
The Activision Blizzard Diversity Space Tool
Our theme music was done by Isabella Ness, and our logo was done by Lily Nishita.
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