Hello everyone!

My name is Helene Vitting and I’m a freelance game writer and narrative designer with experience from interactive fiction, visual novels, puzzle games, and more. I spend a lot of time watching talks and reading articles related to game writing and narrative design to continue to develop my skills, so I’ve decided to collect these into monthly posts that I want to share with you. I hope you find these useful!

Videos

Ludanarracon Last month Ludanarrracon was hosted on Steam. All the talks have now been uploaded to Youtube.

WGGB Video Games Event Writers’ Guild of Great Britain also had an event with talks on game writing. All of which are now on Youtube.

Lessons for Narrative Design from Modern Tabletop RPGs Kathryn Hymes’ GDC talk on what narrative designers can learn from tabletop RPGs.

Plunge into Storytelling: Transitioning into Narrative Design from Other Disciplines Ayesha Khan’s GDC talk full of tips on how to transition to a narrative design career from other disciplines.

Technical Tools for Authoring Branching Dialogue Carrie Patel & David Szymczyk’s GDC talk about the dialogue tool they use at Obsidian Entertainment to aid in creating branching dialogue.

Articles

Choices Was the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Escape I Needed Somdyuti Datta Ray writes about the interactive narrative game Choices, and how it allows you to live out a variety of identities, but also comments on the lack of diversity present in its books.

Want a job in games? Stop applying Susan O’Connor on how to get jobs as a game writer.

Seeking alternatives to revenge narratives in games Malindy Hetfeld on moving past narratives of revenge in games.

Storytelling with Interface: The Narrative Design of User Interface in Video Games Sisi Yuan writes about how to incorporate storytelling into UI.

Resources

Monthly Narrative Newsletter for Entry level and Junior Game Writers Samantha Webb has started a newsletter with resources focused on new/early career game writers.