Plunge into Storytelling: Transitioning into Narrative Design from Other Disciplines

[Music] all right my fellow hiring managers a new job application has just come in let's see what we have word nerd alert okay a longtime gamer picks up new software quickly no coding skills not great bachelor of fine arts a game artist then in creative writing that sounds marketable okay uh another degree awesome uh history i'm just fending off the job offers with a bat here huh any advanced degrees no okay uh hobbies hell's bells just uh look at this mess um this is a parent's worst nightmare isn't it this is like honey the kid is never moving out of the basement um and if you had not guessed by now this is my skill set uh i never imagined that i

could not just use my love of storytelling in my job but actually have it be the main reason i get paid in real human monies and everything uh mind you my career path to where i am now was deeply weird and inefficient i essentially hurled myself off the careers of my career's diving board blindfolded i somehow ended up in the water instead of braining myself on the pool's edge but i wish that a decade ago someone had given me the talk i'm about to give you it would have cut eyeholes into that blindfold and that's the first vital step towards becoming a superhero the tldr about me i've been in the industry since 2006. i've worked on a bunch of games in a bunch of genres and i've been on both sides of the hiring desk more than a few times i convinced my current company to create a position for me and yes obviously i go by khan professionally because if you have that last name why wouldn't you exactly when i tell someone in the industry what i do the most common question i'm asked is oh

how do you get into narrative design which is usually immediately followed by and what exit did you do exactly so i'll briefly cover what narrative design is and what it isn't and which skills you might already have that would help you become one even without any narrative experience as with all game dev getting your foot in the door is the hardest part but if you know how to find relevant jobs at home or abroad you can stack the deck in your favor to get them or even convince a studio to create the job you want so i hope you'll walk a day knowing that you can take the plunge and successfully transition into narrative design from another discipline by making your existing expertise into your unique selling point and that if you love storytelling you can get paid to do it two quick housekeeping notes before we move on i talk fast i cycle through slides quickly and i don't want you to have to hover with your phone uh ready to go at all times so i have marked any vaguely useful reference slides with a camera icon on the top right

these are probably text heavy slides i'm likely not going to be reading them all off so take a pic read them later or check them out on jdc vault after this um and the other thing is i've had atrocious tech issues so uh some animations may be a little funky please bear with me so what is it it is mysterious and misunderstood um last year i met an executive i said hi i'm khan i'm the senior narrative designer and he immediately replied yeah that's not a real thing you're going to have to get used to explaining what it is and being a champion for it in your project as well as as a discipline as a whole narrative departments tend to be very small if they exist at all big companies might have both writers and narrative designers on staff but many only hire freelance writers when necessary and otherwise rely on game designers to do their own writing the main difference between it and writing is this a game writer's primary

responsibility is to promote the story that is told in the scripts they write their job is to choose the cleanest clearest highest quality words they can assemble and give them to other devs to put them into the game a narrative designer writes as well but our primary job is getting the whole game to tell the same story we help create the story and then coordinate the different disciplines in the project to tell it together our most important storytelling tool is not the written word we use the game's feature set to tell the story and i do mean all of its features all of this is gameplay and it will all tell a story with you or without you so you better join forces ask me sometime about the hydra symbol animation that's hilarious anyway the central part of this primary job is preventing the game's story and the players experience from contradicting each other you've all seen ludo narrative dissonance in some form

if the game's hud if it's the heads-up display um is sci-fi and futuristic but the story involves dragons and archers or if the music is super tense and dramatic during dull crafting game play you get the idea so cool depends on the project the company and the seniority of the position i'm afraid there's no one answer to this i've done a great many things in a decade of narrative design from script writing to monetizing live events i mean there's a real range here and we also handle normal game designer work like tracking tasks and communicating and documenting feature designs and using a game editor but to give you a clearer idea let's see what kind of skills you already have that would apply narrative design is intensely cross-functional so these are the ones to highlight in your job application and also don't freak out i don't have half the skills i'm about to list and you don't have to either hi audio people you have skills that most narrative designers really need

and don't acquire until we level up later and the ability to communicate with an audio designer or a sound engineer in their own jargon helps a lot you will be able to cut a lot of time off of a recording session art 2d or 3d meat space digital graphic design fine art tech art cinematics animation speaking to artists again in their own language means that you can contribute to discussions about visual elements and help create or give feedback on cut scenes non-game entertainment too it's not just acting in directing set and costume design and the research that goes into it comes up surprisingly often and behind the scenes logistics can be pretty similar from getting something on stage to getting something into a cinematic cutscenes a lot of it is project management coding oh i really wish i had actual skills in this field if you do you probably know you can write your own ticket so why not write one that takes you to career and storytelling if you like to do that

qa a narrative designer needs to be able to spot plot holes but uh more importantly a good qa testers meticulous process-oriented thinking will help you keep pipelines and storylines alike straight sales and marketing are about selling an idea and that's what narrative design is too except the idea is the game's story and you get to cuss a lot more production goodness gracious as we advance in our careers these are the skill sets that go from being nice to haves to being the reason you get hired especially as you go up in narrative design a lot of your work is about coordinating other people game designers you'll have an easier time of it than many but you will need to perfect your creative writing and technical writing skills level designers same as game design your familiarity with editors and scripting and player progression all very useful but you'll need to work probably even harder on your technical documentation and creative writing chops

and writers your writing chops are hopefully fine but your task is to beef up your design skills so it's time for a game jam um if i haven't mentioned a skill set you have you're wondering how it would apply please do ask me afterwards so you might be wondering if these skills are enough or if having no explicitly narrative design experience would prevent you from succeeding to succeed prepare you'll need to learn your stuff beforehand as well as learning on the job join the international game design association's special interest groups for game design and game writing ask questions ask for recommended reading i have a few recommendations but this is hardly an all-inclusive list look for the intersections of your current discipline with narrative design in other words find the people who are the storytellers in your fields and then look for content made by narrative designers figure out how you can tell your stories start consuming great games critically

looking at what stories they tell and how they tell them play games outside your favorite genres play on mobile as well as pc and console take notes take it seriously no one will pay you to tell stories and games if you can't explain how games tell stories communication and soft skills in general are not optional game design and narrative design are both basically one percent having an idea and 90 making people talk to each other so work at becoming a facilitator if you want to succeed if you pull your attendees your fellow attendees over a drink you will get plenty of examples and probably rants about major expensive problems caused by a lack of clear and consistent vision i believe one of the best ways to succeed early on as a narrative designer is to become become the designated driver for vision keeping not the person who sets the vision that would be nice but you know but an acknowledged point of contact for

the team's questions about the project's direction use your position as a newbie to your advantage question your teammates about the vision for their features use that to create a list of questions for the leads to further clarify what their intent is and identify any misalignment and then once you know who has the final word on the project's vision and direction get some time on the calendar and make sure you understand their vision using the questions you prepped then use their answers to make reference infographics and put them on the wall it is weird how much more useful a physical game on the wall is than digital documentation one thing you see every time you need to go to the bathroom and one you have to go looking for so keep these updated become the go-to person for questions anyone has if your new team is unused to including narrative in its workflow use the first few weeks to start to identify the ways they could use you including cheap that's a very important word here cheap ways

to add narrative elements to the studio's games using the using the existing mechanics and feature set you might want to use your fellow devs as voice talent add flavor text using the tutorial system that they already have put character backgrounds on the game's website prepare a list of ideas and refine it regularly before however you make any suggestions get time and scope estimates from any other disciplines involved i have an idea that will only take three days from ui to execute and look at all of these benefits is much more convincing that i have an idea and i think it would be super cool the one thing that will most stack the deck for you is a killer narrative design portfolio plan to work on it pretty much constantly from now until retirement i was recently asked to critique someone's portfolio they'd been hunting for months with no luck i gave them advice and i will now give

it to you in a more organized format um i got a nice box of uh chocolates and a bottle of wine from them when they were recently hired at arcane studios so that's the only reason i suppose you should listen to me um every time you apply to a new role the portfolio you submit has to be tailored to that application most relevant content at the top fantasy writing at the top for a swords and sorcery rpg military themed pieces at the top for an fps include only four or five separate pieces in fact create two portfolios a master one with absolutely everything that you're proud of and that is never shown to a hiring manager and a modular narrative design portfolio you can plug and play writing samples alone no matter how good they are won't get you hired and also i don't care how talented you are writing is mostly about editing and revising not talent creative writing is about careful choice

edit first with a machete and then with a scalpel any older work you're even considering should be thoroughly revised and cleaned up before you consider including it in your master portfolio it should contain writing samples that demonstrate your ability to set a scene in a few words to convey different characters through their spoken dialogue and examples of game specific or genre-specific writing and also include technical writing tutorial steps or first-time user experiences are great to see in a portfolio as are item names and maybe marketing descriptions for those items the portfolio you send out should however prove that you can write well and that you understand game design elements so mission design and dialogue or names of achievements and an explanation of why you chose them for that franchise highlight any technical abilities you have if you've made working prototypes or mods or maps link them early on and for god's sakes

check that your links work on mac or mobile too don't ask me to download some sketchy.x file because i am not gonna a link to a playthrough video on youtube will do just fine highlight any experience you have with the process of getting narrative into games briefs for outsourced artists putting contracts out to tender if you're a project manager creating estimates or road maps leverage your existing knowledge set uh one last note on contents narrative design like game writing skews slightly more female than most disciplines if i am the hiring manager and i see a portfolio full of lazy stereotypes or featuring only male characters so that i can't tell whether you can even write female characters then well now on to formatting your portfolio

the tldr is that navigating it should be a curated organized experience even from a recruiter's phone prevent a wall of text with a small intro section even before the table of contents which spells out which skills each piece illustrates use a mad libs style if that helps you remember what you want to talk about the abc section shows mission dialogue in a blah genre setting where i had n lines per mission to establish x y and z to an lmnop audience by contrast in the def section you get the idea this is partly for the optics so that the first thing that a hiring manager sees isn't this long ugly table of contents which will make you go how much reading do i have to do today i've got a meeting in an hour but it's mostly to prove that you can edit yourself and that you can select appropriate content to show off don't make me read lots of irrelevant stuff to find out if you can actually

write and design for my games genre make it clear as to why you chose each sample revise and then edit and then get a second set of eyes on your spelling and grammar a single typo can send your application right down the pile if you've let errors get through in your portfolio which should demonstrate your best work then i'll assume it shows either a lack of attention to detail or a lack of command of your language or both as for your cv or resume there's a lot of good advice out there about polishing it up so i'll just add that if you want to be a designer act like it use white space deliberately one page 12 point font easy to parse that's it moving on so your portfolio is in progress and you're on the hunt so you start by going to one of the major industry websites you know of and typing in narrative

yeah full disclosure this is for the uk only but still you know it's it's you're going to have to cast a really wide net use keywords in your searches and you'll assemble a long list of mostly irrelevant jobs and narrow it down from there peer really closely at game writer job descriptions in particular do they really want just a pure writer or is there scope to offer further services there if they mention joining a writing team they want a writer aim for the salary range of a game designer non-americans considering oops sorry non-americans considering the usa you'll be offered a lot more but remember there's a lot of hidden costs healthcare can be extremely expensive rents in tech hubs are comparable to central london or paris and you will need a car americans considering working abroad the salaries will sound low to you but

remember that you get a lot of hidden benefits paid for by your taxes and the cost of living tends to be much more predictable in europe as for the uk oh sorry yeah ask me again in april or june yes christmas ask me on valentine's day look sell everything you can store what you can't bear to sell and don't be scared i moved to scotland for a contract job with two suitcases a carry-on and a backpack extra baggage fees by the way always cheaper than shipping boxes whether at home or abroad the type of studio you choose will uh determine what kind of work you do so option one spoiler alert for those who who enjoy blood sweat and tears there is indie and there is freelance your expertise from another discipline might make you a really much more attractive candidate here as you will need to wear several hats and a large hat will be branding and

marketing because as the resident language person in a smaller studio you will be writing a lot of ad copy you'll also have to deal with clients without any protective layers of bureaucracy that larger companies might have which can be a serious threat to mental health option two is of course aaa if you don't have any narrative experience yet being hired by a aaa studio as a narrative designer is fairly unlikely unless all the stars are aligned and your portfolio is face meltingly awesome so option three might be more applicable and these are the sort of corporate game mills i don't really know what the term for them is it's it's uh more casual here we go more casual free to play games mobile browser small games um they can make amazing contributions to your cv and portfolio they can really buff it up

uh high churn multiple projects that means you can pinch it and learn new skills on the job caveats they do tend to approach games as a business and depending on the country can have quite corporate attitudes in company cultures they can be less familiar with hiring from overseas so you might need to help their hr department out a little more than you would normally with things like visa processes and you may need to be even more of an advocate for narrative design than normal because they will likely use dev pipelines in which they're not used to including narrative option four sorry hold on option four outsourcing studios especially in asia who do work for hire um the caveats are about the same as they are for game mills but i have an ex-colleague who jumped a huge number of levels all at once by virtue of being an english-speaking extrovert who understood western game design practices in exchange for working in an obscure studio in a less desirable city he was immediately given a team of

designers to train in those practices so that they could use them to make mobile games for other people option five is to grind for xp um if you've been applying a round and you're not getting any responses because of lack of experience you might want to consider doing a narrative adjacent gig for a year or so adding even slightly relevant experience to your cv could tip the balance i taught high school english in pakistan for a year with no training by the way but it put some really marketable skills on my resume speaking to a board audience was one actually um consider companies that provide outsourced translation or advertising or art or voice over animation they often need liaisons to help interpret the briefs and feedback they receive from their clients and communicate back so whether you are job searching at home or abroad there is one more important tool in your toolbox which is convincing a studio to create a job for you

a speculative application is you arguing for a studio's creation of a new narrative design position it's how i got my job at splash damage actually these work when you can identify a need that a studio has for narrative support before or soon after they realize they have that need so find an appropriate team lead on linkedin ask for an informational interview okay informational interviews the important word there see if you can get 20 minutes of their time uh on the phone in person for their take on whether their studio could use narrative ask if the studio is organized by project or if there's central support departments like qa or narrative design um so that you would know what to suggest in your pain letter that is something that says hey here is why you need story and it's causing you trouble and here's how i can provide it to find the studio scour industry news you're looking for

any hints of narrative projects coming up any reviews of games that call out bad storytelling bad voice over bad translation you can offer to help them with that problem look for ambitious studios who are trying to grow beyond perhaps more humble roots or see if and and also see if the studio has any writers already on staff look at look them up on linkedin to see if their game designers seem to be more systems focused than content focused and try not to make assumptions based on the studio's preferred or historical genres of game my partner's current mobile game addiction is a deck building rpg with a surprising number of unique voice over lines for a free-to-play game it's too bad that their translation is not actually very good it's very successful back home but it would be nice if they had somebody to check their uh check their translations when you're writing this pain letter to paraphrase uh start with why by simon sinek dr martin luther king's junior's speech was not i have was sorry was i have a

dream not i have a plan so your first sentence needs to elicit emotion a be an evocative and passionate statement about the the importance of narrative in their games or how important it could be and then you drop some facts which you know i'm not going to do your research for you but then mostly should be based around the fact that good narrative sells more units there is data out there and then you say i have a plan to reassure them that they won't have to do a lot of thinking to say to be able to say yes to you if they support multiple live projects offer yourself as a central resource but if they focus on one or two big ones at a time state how you would add value to those specifically offer them a probation period if it doesn't work out within a year you'll exit gracefully but then you'll have experience the list of what you what they would need to do and what you'd need to do is really sort of should be ready for the second email not necessarily in the first letter as with any job search networking is not

optional look for relevant networking events online and in meet space with any narrative or writing focused groups that you should join there's a lot of resources on networking out there so i'll just say that one if you are job searching and you are not trying to attend at least two networking events per month you are not taking it very seriously and two the best piece of advice i ever got on how to introduce yourself at any networking event hi i'm khan i heard you might be making game xyz next year sounds challenging i'd love to chat with you about it if you have five minutes if not now maybe this week done sorted okay let's pretend a training montage now happens in the horrible expanse of time that stretches between applying to jobs and getting selected for an interview and move right on to interview prep you may get a design test oops excuse me you may get a design test before you qualify for an interview or you may only get one after a successful first interview but narrative specific prep advice again

there's other more general advice out there narrative specific advice for both is the same number one have a very firm grasp of what text goes into a game think about how you would change each one to match a specific setting and what errors you might run into number two play that company's games and prepare opinions on what you would do differently and what you liked and didn't and why all within the context again of narrative character development and story think about and be prepared to answer or complete common design test questions or tasks this is a big one so hold on for a second the biggest reason to prep for these instead of trying to answer them on the fly is to figure out the intent behind the question if they're asking where you would start in creating a new region or quest line for your favorite game what they want to know is where you instinctively look for for inspiration they want to peek

into your head and understand your process do you document first or afterwards do you think out loud or in on paper do you prefer to brainstorm with people or solo these are cultural fit questions as well as technical ability questions i'm happy to talk about um to talk further about interview prep after this talk we will be in overlook uh 3022 which is just across so come find me if we run out of time for questions so after listening to me ramble at top speed for a while um i hope that you have learned a few things narrative design is a misunderstood discipline but the nice thing about that is that you can define what kind of narrative designer you want to be for yourself you can find the studio that fits you you can define what narrative design means to you hello because it's a young discipline um because it's uh you know it's it's still kind of a

little wild west out there when i started out there was no such thing as narrative design it's different from game writing and from game design and you shouldn't apply to narrative jobs the same way you would to those you can not only apply your current skill set to succeed but that skill set is in fact the unique selling point that will set you apart from your competit from your competition if if you can explain how it will add value to their projects you will succeed if you love language if you come prepared if you're willing to learn on the job as well as on your own and if you ask good questions you will succeed harder if you actively use and improve your diplomacy and communication skills to support the team through vision keeping and adding narrative elements to the project that use the existing feature set creating an appropriate portfolio is going to make the difference between your getting hired or not you can find or make a role for yourself and you should prepare for interviews

and design tests in about the same way the point is if you love storytelling and if you keep the above in mind you can get paid for it and that's actually pretty cool so thank you any questions please go ahead and come on up to the mic if you have any questions oh and we have no time for questions at all so i will see you across the hall in overlook thank you very much