Cara Ellison

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

Thanks Rick! I really did enjoy this and it makes me think I should talk to people more often hahah

Please

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’m too lazy

Oh nice!!!

This is probably sad news for the folks who were holding out for Embed With 2 (which is not totally out of scope for the future) but it does make it harder to plan. I think South America and Egypt to South Africa game dev interviews would be really interesting

I never thought I would get here but I actually hate leaving home now and I miss the silly little idiots who live at my house the moment I go. I always thought I’d be the forever traveller type but it’s getting a lot harder to do the stuff I thought was interesting when I was younger

The young males just have the devil in them and very pointy little horns and they are evil. I like lambs but they are just satan in waiting

They like music!!!! Sheep hate music because they’re scared of it because they suck

they respond well to friendship and they are WAY better than sheep, who are bastards

IMPULSE BODY SPRAY

no regrets I’m drinking my childhood

I just got a blue cocktail that tastes like that tropical body spray smells that we all bought as teen girls in the late 90s

If you’ve seen Derry Girls the whole soundtrack was the soundtrack of my summers, plus all the older girls I knew in Belfast were that way. It was amazing to behold I was quite shy back then

I will be power showering the entire time

My grandparents lived in Antrim, so I didn’t ‘live’ here but my summers were pleasantly spent eating every gummy sweetie out of the local youth club and beating the older boys at street fighter 2

Oh hey! I won’t be sadly but I will be back soon!

I’m in my teen haunt of Belfast enjoying the slang so much. something incredibly life affirming about how women emasculate men by describing them as a ‘ride’ behind their backs

me and @craigpearson.bsky.social also occasionally got this job but we had much less of a philosophical crisis about it probably because our tolerance of bullshit was a lot higher

the best material is made by giving him an existential crisis where the refrain WHY is the screaming subtext of the copy

what’s the point of brendy if you don’t confuse and torment him with your pointless pr shit

Jank I guess I could read about PC games.

the thing I hope the most about jank.cool is that I hope they indulge in the age old tradition of sending brendy to a game event he both is unequipped for and also does not want to attend