As the video games industry continues to face massive layoffs, narrative jobs are taking the biggest hit. The industryâs job cuts over the past couple of yearsâmore than 30,000 roles were eliminated in 2023 and 2024âdisproportionately affected narrative designers, the creative professionals who craft the story elements of the game and give a title its emotional punch.
Even the director of the game Avowed, Carrie Patelâa successful author and narrative developer with over a decade of experience at the game studio Obsidian Entertainmentâfeels lucky she was able to start her career years ago. She canât imagine trying to break into the industry under todayâs conditions.
âIt just seems to be harder and harder to find a path in,â Patel says. âI’ve heard colleagues hired within the last three or five years say essentially the same thing.â
Patel has been with Obsidian since 2013, when she started as a narrative designer on the first Pillars of Eternity, a role-playing game released in 2015. She was narrative colead on the 2018 sequel, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and went on to work on the narrative design for 2019âs The Outer Worlds.
Avowed, a first-person fantasy RPG set in the same universe as Obsidianâs acclaimed Pillars of Eternity series, is available today on Windows PC and Xbox Series X via early access. The gameâs official launch is Tuesday, February 18.
Patel is excited to launch a title with a rich, immersive storyâespecially as the talent required to make such a game becomes more scarce in the industry. âI think RPGs, especially the kind we make, give players an opportunity to show that they’re excited about games that are deep, nuanced, and respect their time,â she says.
Part of Obsidianâs storytelling success has been its unwillingness to rely on artificial intelligence. âGood game stories are going to be written by good narrative designers,â Patel says. AI use at studios has grown over the past few years; a survey of industry workers published earlier this year reported that 52 percent of respondents said they worked at companies using generative AI to develop games.
Despite corporate interest in the tech, however, game makers are less positive about AI than they have been in past years. âI don’t think any technology is going to replace human creativity,â Patel says. âI think what makes our games special, our stories special, and our dialogs and characters special, are things that I haven’t seen any AI replicate.â Other developers are certainly trying. Last March, Ubisoft showcased a conversational generative AI prototype that allows players to voice-chat with a non-player character.
Patel feels encouraged by the reception to games with intricate narratives like Baldurâs Gate 3, which speaks to there being âan audience for these thoughtful, sometimes complex games.â
âOur goal has never been to make the longest game you’re going to spend hundreds of hours in,â Patel says. âOur goal has always been to make a really great game that gives you an adventure that you feel like you’re at the center of in this immersive new world.â
While Patel says every teamâs culture will be a little different, depending on whoâs on it, strong leadership is key. Itâs important to have âenough decisiveness to drive the project toward completion, to give people clarity about what they’re doing.â That still means being open to feedback about whatâs working, or not. âYou want a team to be an organism that is always improving,â she says.
Less effective: attitudes like those of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently said that companies need more âmasculine energyâ in their workplace. As tech companies roll back their programs supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion, and politicians take aim at policies that assist marginalized communities, Patelâs leadership and attitude are firmly the opposite of âmasculine energy.â
+ There are no comments
Add yours