If the video The game industry still has great discharge, narrative posts take the biggest hit. The job cutting of the industry over the past few years – more than 30,000 roles were eliminated in 2023 and 2024 – has influenced narrative designers, the creative professionals who manufacture the story elements of the game and give a title its emotional punch.
Even the director of the game Committed, Carrie Patel – a successful writer and narrative developer with more than a decade experience in the Game Studio Obsidian Entertainment – fortunately she could start her career years ago. She can’t imagine trying to break into the industry under the circumstances of today.
“It just seems harder to find a path,” says Patel. “I have heard that colleagues have been rented in the last three or five years, essentially say the same.”
Patel has been with Obsidian since 2013, when she first started as narrative designer Pillars of eternitya role play released in 2015. She was narrative colead on the 2018 successor, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfireand worked further on the narrative design for 2019s The outer worlds.
Dedicateda first-person fantasy-rpg in the same universe as Obsidian’s award-winning Pillars of eternity Series, are available today on Windows PC and Xbox Series X via early access. The official launch of the game is Tuesday, February 18th.
Patel is excited to introduce a title with a rich, exciting story – especially because the talent needed to make such a game becomes scarcer in the industry. “I think RPGs, especially the kind we make, give players the opportunity to show that they are excited about games that are deep, nuanced and respect their time,” she says.
The reluctance of relying on artificial intelligence. “Good game stories will be written by good narrative designers,” says Patel. AI use at studios has grown over the past few years; In a survey among industry workers published earlier this year, 52 percent of respondents said they worked at companies that use generative AI to develop games.
However, despite corporate interest in technology, game manufacturers are less positive about AI than they have been in recent years. “I don’t think any technology is going to replace human creativity,” says Patel. “I think what makes our games special, our stories special and our dialogues and characters are special, things I haven’t seen any.” Other developers are definitely trying. Ubisoft displayed a conversational general AI prototype last March that enables players to vote with a non-player character.
Patel feels encouraged by the reception to games with complicated narratives such as Baldur’s Gate 3What talks to it is “an audience for these thoughtful, sometimes complicated games”.
“Our goal has never been the longest game you will spend hundreds of hours,” says Patel. “Our goal has always been to make a wonderful game that gives you an adventure that you feel like you are the center of in this exciting new world.”
While Patel says that each team’s culture will be a little different, depending on who is on it, strong leadership is key. It is important to have “enough decisiveness to drive the project up to completion, to make people clear about what they are doing.” It still means open to feedback on what works or not. “You want a team to be an organism that always improves,” she says.
Less effective: Attitudes like those of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, who recently said that companies need more ‘male energy’ in their workplace. While technical enterprises are rolling back their programs that support diversity, fairness and inclusion, and politicians strive for policies that help marginalized communities, Patel’s leadership and attitude are the opposite of ‘male energy’.