Matteo Menapace 🍉

What exactly is a Narrative Director, anyway? When I got started in this biz, there were no Narrative Directors. There were no narrative anythings, to be fair, but the point is, the title is a relatively recent branch on the game dev evolutionary tree. When I first heard of someone having that title, I thought about it for a minute, because I'd never imagined such a thing, and then decided it was actually a really good idea to have someone at the Director level on a project focused on narrative, instead of getting one-sixteenth of the Creative Director's attention on alternative Thursdays. Still, what does a Narrative Director do? Having filled the role at three companies, I think the base description of the job is this: The Narrative Director acts as the vision holder for the narrative aspects of the game. They are the champion for narrative to the rest of team leadership and, by extension the rest of the team. They are not the lead writer, but they are the last line of defense when writing or other narrative deliverables need to happen. They are responsible for communicating the narrative direction from leadership to the narrative staff, and for laying out the roadmap to achieve them. They are responsible for ensuring a unified voice and vision so that the entire narrative works in harmony toward the project's needs. And they have a responsibility to the members of the narrative team, to protect if necessary, advise, encourage, and professionally develop them. That....sounds like a lot. And it is. But that's OK - Narrative Director is not a role for the inexperienced or the insecure. Underneath all of those details is a fundamental truth: as Narrative Director, you are not telling your story. You are instead shepherding the narrative the game needs, and you are doing so by placing others in a position to succeed. A Narrative Director whose immediate response to an imperfect first draft is "I'll just rewrite this" has failed. They have failed the team by not communicating in a way that allows others to do their best work. They have failed the original writer by not offering actionable feedback that will allow them to improve. They have failed process, by taking another task onto their already full plate because it's more fun to write than to give notes. Ultimately, a Narrative Director must largely focus on a strategic vision for narrative, not a tactical one. Yes, there are times when the deadlines are tight and the workload is too big and the iteration cycle isn't moving as hoped when you, as a Narrative Director, have to jump in and get your hands dirty with adverbs. And yes, it's OK to leave a bit of ground level work for yourself so you don't get detached from the content and get a little creative joy. But by and large, your job is to make sure the narrative as a whole happens in a way that works for everyone, on the narrative team and off it. ....more next time...

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Moon Studios has announced its full independence, securing the publishing rights for No Rest for the Wicked from Take-Two Interactive. Initially published by Take-Two's Private Division, No Rest for the Wicked entered Steam Early Access in April 2024. Following Take-Two's sale of Private Division in November 2024, Moon Studios negotiated to regain control of their game's publishing. This move allows Moon Studios to pursue its vision for No Rest for the Wicked without external restrictions. What’s Next for No Rest for the Wicked? The studio has announced The Breach, a major update set to release on April 30, which it describes as the game’s “biggest update to date.” The Breach will: - Expand the campaign with new areas, armor, factions, enemies, and weapons. - Deepen the game’s lore and double the size of the game world. Wishing the team all the best for the future!! (source: https://lnkd.in/e4TMmjhU)

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You're 50 hours into Skyrim, some essential NPC pisses you off, and you decide they need to die. One of the most frustrating yet brilliant design decisions is why Skyrim won't let you murder that annoying NPC no matter how many Fus-Ro-Dahs you throw at them. So you unleash hell with your Daedric sword only to watch them drop to their knees, stay there for 10 seconds, then get right back up like nothing happened. Frustrating as hell, right? What's ACTUALLY happening is something called the "Essential NPC" system. It's not rocket science, but it's a brilliant solution to a massive game design problem: how do you give players freedom while preserving your carefully crafted story? It all comes down to a simple boolean flag in the game engine. Every NPC in Skyrim has a property called "Essential" that's either true or false. If true, when their health reaches zero, they trigger a "bleedout" state instead of a death animation. A tiny bit of code that saves thousands of players from completely breaking their game because they got angry at Delphine. Nobody gives a shit about the technical implementation, but here's why it matters for game design: Bethesda chose player experience over realism. They could've let you kill everyone and just fail quests, but they worked their ass off to create a world where you can't accidentally ruin 100+ hours of gameplay with one impulsive murder. I've seen the opposite approach too - where games let players kill anyone - and playtesters literally broke the game in the first 15 minutes. Half the QA team couldn't even finish testing because crucial NPCs were dead. The design team had to rewrite half the game's systems. This isn't some "bad design" decision. It's the thoughtful compromise of a team that understands most players would rather have temporary immersion breaking than permanent game breaking. My manager at Kixeye always told our team: "Design for what players will actually do, not what you think they should do." Skyrim's designers knew players would try to kill everyone, so they built a system that bent rather than broke. #games #gamedev #career #jobs

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