This job might no longer be available.
Narrative Designer
3 years ago
About Splash Damage
At Splash Damage, we’re dedicated to crafting team-based multiplayer games that ignite friendships as much as they do healthy competition and teamwork.
Our teams celebrated the launch of Gears Tactics earlier this year, and we’re currently developing Outcasters for Stadia along with several unannounced titles.
As an UnrealEngine focused studio, we're excited to be transitioning our teams to the latest in UE5 technology and we're looking for skilled and passionate developers to help us drive this.
We're advocates for work-life balance and offer a comprehensive benefits package focused on the well-being of our staff and their families.
We believe that teams create the best work when they have a range of perspectives and experiences to draw from. Therefore we're committed to increasing diversity across our studio, fostering an inclusive environment to ensure everyone's voices are heard.
Due to the on-going COVID-19 outbreak, we're all currently working from home. We’re still looking to welcome new team members, who'll join us remotely until we return to the studio
The Role
As Splash Damage Narrative Designer you will help us develop and implement the characters, environmental storytelling, story arc, emotional tone, pacing, dialogue as directed by the Project Leads.
You will work closely with designers, programmers and artists to create and maintain fun, playable experiences that marry gameplay mechanics and level design with storytelling moments.
Responsibilities
- Champion the player’s emotional engagement with the game’s storyline, characters and plot developments
- Work under guidance of an IP holder to further develop their existing franchise’s lore.
- Collaborate with writers, game designers and cinematics artists to craft the main storyline for the game
- Understand and create elegant connections between the core gameplay mechanics and storytelling methods
- Implement and maintain the storyline related mission logic, allowing for the game to progress between story beats in logical order
- Drive the design of narrative-related elements within the game, including map and level content to identify storytelling requirements and opportunities
- Work closely with character artists, environment artists and levels designers to develop environmental and alternative storytelling methods.
- Collaborate and communicate with stakeholders across the project to create a compelling journey for the player to explore
- React swiftly to feedback on narrative-related elements, iterating to improve their quality
- Articulate the impact of changes to the game-design to the developers on your team
- Maintain up-to-date documentation to guide the development team’s efforts
- Regularly communicate to the team progress against quality, scope and game vision alignment expectations
Essential Skills and Experience
- A passion for making and playing games
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Industry experience and 1 shipped AAA current gen (Ps4 / XBOXONE) or last gen console or PC title that featured a multiplayer component, worked on from beginning to end
- The ability to work both collaboratively with other disciplines and independently without close supervision
- The ability to take direction, and rapidly absorb and act on stakeholder, publisher and IP holder feedback
- Experience with design documentation, diagram and flow-chart creation
- Experience working with a game scripting language to implement game logic.
- The ability to manage and implement written designs and text and audio assets
- Skilled and experienced in writing to a high standard in all forms including but not limited to concept, research and design documents, blog posts, presentations, internal and external update and marketing videos, in-game tooltips, text logs, audio logs, VO barks, scripted scenes, storyboards, cinematic scripts, motion capture and performance capture scenes
- The ability to create text and dialogue that fits a game’s world and tone
- An understanding of the deep and varied aspects of interactive narrative
- The ability to create game worlds, characters, items, dialogue, backstory and lore to support IPs, whether our own or those of our partners and IP holders
- The ability to rapidly and thoroughly research potential game settings, and technologies, historical events and current cultural issues, writing clear guidelines for other developers
- The ability to convert research into actable, implementable, playable narrative design documentation and scripts
- The ability to write concept briefs for all other disciplines, particularly artists, programmers and audio
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Experience in creating first or third person shooters
- Experience writing, casting and directing actors for voice over, camera, and for motion capture/performance capture
- Presentation skills and experience with PowerPoint
- Experience with wiki-based design documentation
- Undergraduate degree in English, History, Creative Writing, Video Game Design, or a form of technical training
- Experience with source-control applications (SVN, Perforce, AlienBrain, etc.)
- Video camera and editing skills/experience preferred
Splash Damage is an equal opportunity employer. We believe our teams create better work when they have a range of perspectives to draw from, and we are committed to creating an inclusive working environment that celebrates diversity.
Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings.