Here’s the talk I prepared for #EGX2022 at the GI Academy. I was scheduled to perform on Saturday 24 September, but alas tested positive for Covid that morning! However, I always planned to share the slides online.

So You Want to Be a Game Writer?

It sounds romantic, right? But although most people have mastered writing an email, not everyone has skilled up to write creatively and dramatically, or is interested enough in the history of art and the humanities to tell thematically-relevant stories. Then there’s writing on a game team—what’s that like? What are the challenges of getting hired in the first place? And what are the red flags to look out for while doing the job? Tim will use his ten years’ experience as both writer and narrative designer, across AAA, AA and micro indie, to help answer these questions.

Bio:

Tim has worked in the games industry since 2010, initially as a gameplay scripter, before going back to school and emerging as a writer. Now he’s usually some combination of writer and narrative designer on indie projects. He’s currently finishing up the open-world action RPG, Kandria.

File download:

• It’s a Powerpoint 2016 file (17MB), but it should also run in Google Slides
• The best way to “read” it might be to launch in presenter view mode, and then step through the slide animations, while reading the accompanying notes in turn (the numbers in the notes are the cues to trigger the next slide animation, to “keep in time” so to speak)

It’s kind of a companion to my How I Became a Game Writer blog post (which has also been recently updated)—but this one is more an overview of the practicalities of getting hired and doing the job.

Tim