Taking a note from the pages of Write the Game’s Keira Peney I have decided to start a weekly post dedicated to sharing articles, blog posts, and anything else I’ve found useful for the aspiring or current narrative designer. Lacking in originality, I’m calling it ‘ND Roundup’, and today I’d like to give a nod to the narrative designers on my blogroll. In case you haven’t looked recently, I’ve re-categorized and added several new links. Here are some of my favorite posts from the aforementioned blogs:

What is a Narrative Designer?

Stephen Dinehart is a vocal advocate for the use of the term ‘narrative designer’ to describe the ‘total package’ writer who works on the project from start to finish and has a full understanding of the development pipeline as well as their role therein.

Writing a Kick-Ass Game Script 1 2 3

I wish I had found Keira Peney’s blog sooner – it is full of entertaining and educational posts of great benefit to the narrative designer, not the least of which is this three part series on writing a game script that interweaves writing and gameplay in a seamless manner.

Good Writers Make Better Game Designers

Most every narrative designer – aspiring, current, or otherwise – has read Adam Maxwell’s opinion piece on, let’s say euphemistically, the merits of hiring a game designer over a writer. Sande Chen and Anne Toole, collectively known as the Writer’s Cabal, posted a thought-provoking rebuttal in the comments section which they then added to their blog.

Portfolio Tips

Spencer Carroll and I have become good friends over our email chats regarding his blog and he now works with me for Rogue Dao Studios. Like myself, he is an aspiring narrative designer. In this post he has shared some great portfolio tips provided to him by an industry writer.

Video Games are Bad for You? Working up to Zero

Brenda Brathwaite has long been an idol of mine and with good reason. I spent literally an hour trying to choose a post to highlight here because each and every one of them contains a wealth of information. Though not specifically geared toward game writing, a narrative designer should be, in my opinion, quite intimately familiar with game design and game theory: this is how great integration of gameplay and story happens. So in short, read all the posts on her blog. To illustrate this point, I ended up choosing a passionate post that is relevant not to game or narrative designers, but to everyone who loves games.