Rosa Dachtler & Ben Arfmann

Script Lock

NARRATIVE DESIGN! WHAT IS IT? Today we're super lucky to have Rosa (narrative designer at Criterion Games, previously an audio designer there, and her credits include Battlefield 1, Star Wars Battlefront: Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and Battlefield 5's Firestorm mode) and Ben (writer at Insomniac Games, where he worked on last year's Spider-Man, and he's also a writer and director of film and TV) joining us to answer answer one of the most perplexing questions of our times, plus chat about going from audio to narrative design, building narrative teams, enthusiasm being undervalued, how to sustain yourself through dark periods, how to nail the voices of established characters/IPs, the greatness of Yuri Lowenthal, methods for getting the best possible performances from your actors, whether directing has impacted their storytelling processes, storytelling quagmires they've found themselves in, how do you know when you're done with something (especially when you don't have a deadline), do they feel obligated to play other games to stay up to date with the state of storytelling, games that impressed them recently, stuff that takes them out of a game's story, things they want changed in game development, and one or two more things!

Our Guests on the Internet

Rosa's Twitter.

Ben's Twitter.

Stuff We Talked About

Writing and Narrative Design: A Relationship by Eric Stirpe and Molly Maloney

Return of the Obra Dinn

Brawl Stars

Mortal Kombat 11

Spider-Man

Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: X-wing VR Mission

God of War

Detroit: Become Human

Another Case Solved

Guildmaster Story

Alto's Odyssey

Celeste

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.