In a previous post, I discussed how I got into the games industry.  The second-most common question I get is how to become a games-writer or narrative designer.  This one is slightly harder, but I’ll talk about the traits that I think helped me get in.

First of all, the six years in theatre might not have hurt.  Writing and directing for much of that time could not have hurt my chances.  Since I was able to write a page of text, I have been telling stories.  I would write the adventures of “Anthony the Explorer” nearly every time I was invited to write a story and could talk myself to sleep with my fanciful ideas.

When I decided to change industries, I got lucky and got a job quite quickly, moving on through luck and maybe a little skill.  The thing was, that time in the theatre stayed with me.  My lighting and set-design experience guided my approach to level-design, just as my experience on the stage helped me pick out moments where the characters’ ‘performances’ didn’t ring true.

It was little surprise to me when I got a chance to do some writing, just place-holder text at first, and found that it excited me.  I wanted more.  I wanted to write the release-quality stuff, but the producer (quite sensibly) pointed out that there was a writer on-contract for that and I was needed in the design team fixing the AI behaviour I had broken.

For a second time, I got lucky.  We had a writer on-contract, working from LA.  He was trying his best, but he just didn’t know the game like I did and the time-difference made it hard to give good feedback except by email.  I started fixing the script as it came back to me…

As time went on, the deadlines got tighter and we realised that he was going to have issues hitting them.  He brought in a friend as a writing-partner, but it was obvious that the two of them together would only just complete the first draft in time.  I started re-writing full-time.  I was writing the second draft even as I entered his lines into the system.

Luck was with me again, as I was asked to supervise the recording sessions (hey, that theatre background again…) and started editing the scripts in the studio.  I was writing extra lines to help smooth over difficult plot-holes.  I even added more dialogue for the background NPCs.

When the studio needed new dialogue a month later, they didn’t even look at external writers.  Talent and luck had put me in the right place at the right time again…