Cara Ellison

thanks karrie!!! you are an extremely thoughtful interviewer

looked at this today and thought wow thanks I will never top this with anything else I am part of. weird to even think I helped

Karrie interviewed me about my work for @official-aias.bsky.social !

Watch the full episode now on YouTube or listen on your favorite #podcast app!
Support the show and get all of our episodes early/ad-free on Apple Podcasts: www.interactive.org/Interviews/t...

This week on the #GameMakersNotebook Podcast, @karriebear.bsky.social chats with @caraellison.bsky.social about her path from television to games, the global dev scene, her desire to bring local culture to the global stage, and her work on @fireproofgames.com's #DICEAwards winning game, Ghost Town!

he got ejected from STARS for taking ten years to get a clip in

I think it was meta

idk maybe Leon really sucked at reloading in STARS school

Yeah honestly I was very surprised by how uninterested in economy it is

YouTube video by Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences The State of Games Writing with Writer & Narrative Director Cara Ellison | Game Maker's Notebook

After making Ghost Town with @fireproofgames.com @karriebear.bsky.social contacted me to interview me about my strange career. I go into the ups and downs of designing stories for games via her expert questions here m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9P...

thanks. the first time jack played it for us I assume that’s what he thought

that’s today’s learnings

I played the RE4 VR version today and the coolest thing about it was your hands look like Leon’s hands. Everything else kind of sucked but that. I couldn’t reload so I died in the village immediately

they are dry af. I wonder if they’d do good in a humid air fryer

I try!! But also, I think this interview has shaved years of jadedness from me somehow

I mean, even the shittiest dudes can be right once.

I promise you i have used every tool and I know all the ins and outs and I can tell you what works for which genre immediately and who to negotiate with who is already making it

If you are someone at Epic who would like to box some narrative tools with your engine and revolutionise the industry get @ me I’ll consult for free if my fellow designers can benefit from it

wait or did I say ‘disgusting’

both

*writes in diary*
“called the absence of in-engine narrative tools ‘a disgrace’ in distinguished publication”

David Mamet's "Penguins" memo is required reading for anyone doing any type of creative writing, and I'm not kidding (don't look up Mr. Mamet's more recent opinions)

Cara Ellison, senior narrative designer on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 before Paradox switched developers, discusses her love of Troika's original RPG: 'Everyone on the team helped really m... The narrative designer of Void Bastards and Ghost Town walks us through what's on her PC.

In this week's Disk Cleanup, @caraellison.bsky.social took me on a tour of her PC. We talked about Titanium Court, Bloodlines, Vertigo and David Mamet's penguins. www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/ca...

I agree with this so much. This results in many studios bodging it, implementing something without narrative input or shoving things in late. It's also very frustrating when mentoring new narrative designers because there's no one place to direct them to learn.

SUDS is something I think Epic should pay to integrate as standard.

THE PENGUINS

No Scrivener is not a videogame narrative tool. I am referring specifically to videogame narrative tools.

when I say ‘basic’ I’m really just saying that it’s out of the box

A screenshot of text cropped from a PC Gamer webpage that reads as follows: I write all of my videogame scripts in Scrivener, unless there's an actual tool, which is rare. I wrote all of Void Bastards in Scrivener. I wrote all of Ghost Town in Scrivener. A lot of it is just because it can organise text in a really useful way. It also has screenwriting format, which is easy for actors to read from. It's mainly because, unfortunately, game engines like Unreal have literally no narrative tools. I think the great shame of videogame engines is that they do not ship with any form of narrative tool. It's a disgrace. Even if you are a sound designer, you can work within Unreal's very basic sound design tools to put sounds in, and most people have a desire to work in Wwise because it's a standardised tool. There is no standardised tool for a narrative designer or a writer in videogames.

Cara also made a Very Good Point about how poorly served writers and narrative designers are by videogame design tools.

This was so incredibly enjoyable to talk to Rick about

SUDs and Ink