Game storytelling and game design

I have hands-on experience through all phases of game development, from pitch to gold candidate. Some of these areas lend themselves better to be worked through with an external partner. The following are my primary areas of interest. If you have questions on other things I might do for your game project, please contact me for more information.

Story development

I believe that the only way to achieve good storytelling is to work closely with an experienced writer (who knows games and storytelling) and who can be part of the overall design process of the game. My goal as a story designer and writer is create an engaging dramatic experience that melds the storytelling into the gaming experience - in the most seamless way possible. I do not believe it is possible to achieve this goal by only contracting a designated story writer to write separately from the rest of the team, you need someone working very closely with the team.

I work with continuous creation, development and integration of high quality narrative.

Pre-production

It is not uncommon that the core design of a game are quite vaguely stated and developed - even as a game goes into full production. I believe that good design calls for many uncomfortable questions, careful prototyping and a meticulous iterative process. Starting this during pre-production arms the team for later production or design hurdles.

I work with concept development: design foundations, vision, game structure, preliminary pacing and mechanics analysis, story foundations and integration with gameplay.

Teaching

I strongly believe that the educational institutions can provide the industry with students that make very strong developers. The effort to find working production methods, design vocabularies, tools for pacing control, focus testing and so forth should be spread through the schools and gradually transform our industry from young, searching and somewhat groping into a much more mature and systematic one.

Example topics

• Game mechanics design. My experience on creating mechanics, gameplay concepts (or "patterns") and working with those carefully through pre-production in order to know your game, plan and communicate much more efficiently.
• Storytelling in games. Apart from a basic introduction to narrative tools ("Hero's Journey", "Three act structure" etc) I provide analysis on where games have problems with the narrative and present ways to avoid those problems.
• Continuous preparation. My experience of working with large scale games production and how careful design groundwork, prototyping and pre-visualization helps keeping the project on track with better control and higher risk awareness.