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Narrative Director

Our studio is looking for a talented, motivated, and experienced Narrative Director with deep experience in narrative storytelling for major titles to build and manage its narrative department. This is a high-level position, a member of the company’s leadership team, with impact and influence on current and future projects, and a voice in a strategic direction setting.

You’ll be responsible for driving all narrative efforts, building, and leading the narrative team and internal and external developers. You’ll work closely with a project’s core design team at every step to develop a strong symbiotic relationship between the game’s design and supporting narrative elements.

We are seeking someone who is organized, with exceptionally strong communication skills, and a proven track record driving the narrative for AAA games. Our ideal candidate is a highly capable leader, an enthusiastic collaborator, and a creative problem solver who thrives on complex problems and big challenges. Are you the rare talent that will help us write our next chapter? If so, please apply and tell us why.

Responsibilities

• Build, lead, and grow a world-class narrative department
• Lead and support all narrative work for our studios, playing a hands-on role as needed to ensure best-in-class in-game storytelling
• Work with teams across the studio to define an effective narrative design and implementation strategy for both standalone and co-development projects
• Work closely with Creative Director, other leads, and a diverse group of disciplines to deliver a cohesive high-quality narrative experience across the entire game
• Oversee the creation and updating of detailed storyboards and animatics for in-game and standalone cinematics
• Generate and maintain detailed project voice over scripts
• Work on original and licensed properties, coordinating with teams and licensors to ensure brand consistency and presentation that reflects the licensors’ needs
• Inspire, motivate, and mentor the narrative team, and educate the team at large, in creative techniques, efficient processes, best practices, and effective communication
• Work with the narrative team and across disciplines to clearly define department goals and standards and to articulate these on a company-wide level
• Be the advocate for the narrative department and ensure that it has all necessary resources, equipment, and build out to create AAA experiences
• Provide leadership and strategic vision to determine how the narrative department will increase its capabilities without sacrificing quality to support business demands and growth in a cost-effective, scalable manner
• Build and manage relationships with external partners to supplement in-house resources
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with publishing and development partners Represent company online and at recruiting and industry events

Requirements

• 10+ years leading narrative design and implementation for AAA games, including experience across platforms and genres
• Expert understanding of visual theory, storytelling, plot, structure, and character
• Passionate about gaming and the film and entertainment industry as a whole, possessing expert knowledge of narrative design and implementation in games, and strong proficiency in the fundamentals of game design
• Proven ability to craft clear, coherent, compelling storytelling in games
• Experienced manager with a strong focus on mentoring and development
• Proven implementation experience with a strong understanding of the entire narrative process, including world and backstory development, scriptwriting, storyboard development, and in- and out-of-game cinematic creation from conception through completion
• Experience building a narrative team from scratch
• Strong ability to multitask, self-driven and self-motivated, consistently following through on a wide variety and number of tasks from inception to completion
• Highly analytical self-starter with awesome work ethic, loads of initiative, strong prioritization and organizational skills, a passion for quality, and amazing attention to detail
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Expert networker, well-connected in the video game and film industries, with extensive experience with recruiting and speaking to the press and at public events
• Thrives in a highly iterative and highly collaborative, environment

Extra Credit

• Bachelor’s degree in English, Creative Writing, Theatre, Film or related field
• Experience in 1 st or 3 rd person shooter, action-adventure, or action role-playing game development
• Experience developing for Xbox One or PS4
• Experience with a wide variety of narrative and cinematic systems and tools in existing commercial or proprietary game technologies (Unreal 4, Source, etc.)
• Well-known, highly respected industry figure

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Certain Affinity does not accept unsolicited referrals or resumes from any source other than directly from candidates.