Splash Damage

Splash Damage, Ltd., Bromley, UK – Senior Narrative Designer on Gears: Tactics

2017-2019

• Acting lead narrative designer on the project. Responsible for driving the creation and iteration on the game’s story, cinematic scripts, setting and world-building documentation, and character backgrounds. Worked with two outsourced writers (required by publisher), gave high-level and granular feedback on their script drafts, workshopped all scripts, and shepherded the narrative through iteration and feedback loops within Splash Damage and with the publisher.
• One of 60 leaders studio-wide selected for 1-year-long intensive leadership training course, the Leadership Development Programme. Course focused on theory and best practices regarding leading a team, successfully integrating a team and its work into a project and/or a wider corporate structure, and on coaching, mentoring, and giving feedback to individual team members. One full day per calendar month was dedicated to lectures and classes, plus a half day for discussion forums, plus a requirement to read and discuss one management book.
• Acting studio Lead Narrative Designer (to cover parental leave), organising discipline-wide meetings, mentorship, and support. Proactively mentored two junior narrative designers, and several junior game designers, across the studio. Guest speaker on game design and narrative topics at universities around the United Kingdom.
• Hiring manager for, and line manager of, an Associate Narrative Designer direct report. Created, administered, and provided feedback on a narrative design test for several applicants. Provided career guidance, narrative design training, creative direction, and formally tracked performance feedback (using Appraisd software) during monthly 1-to-1 sessions.
  Feature owner for all mission structures in game; as missions were more often procedurally generated than bespoke, but scope and time available allowed for only a limited number of types of missions to be created, and all the single player campaign missions needed to make use of these limited mission types as well, this proved a tricky balancing act. Provided creative direction for a team of 6 devs, coordinated their efforts with 7 primary contacts and multiple secondary contacts from other teams and disciplines within the project in order to meet contractual obligations for external deliverables, and monitored and updated those deliverables. Worked with the publisher to manage expectations and requirements, and coordinated with Production to create accurate estimates and plug our work into the project’s roadmap, scope/cap plan, etc.
• Feature owner for the entire single-player campaign and its structure. Assigned mission types to campaign narrative beats. Broke up the film-style script provided by outsourced writers into 3 Acts worth of scenes that could be assigned to particular missions. Proposed, documented, and iterated on a structure specifying: how many missions the player would be required to complete, and how many optional missions were to be available; in which missions the various enemies, weapons, and gear would be unlocked, in coordination with the metagame and systems designers; where cinematic cutscenes and any short bespoke animations should be inserted; and in which biomes and missions the various types of in-level combat barks should play.
• Feature owner of all voice-over in game (approx. 26,000 unique lines), which involved: wrangling two outsourced writers; identifying the team’s voice-over needs; preparing recording scripts; managing the scheduling and logistics of working with audio and recording studio vendors; directing voice actors in studios in London and Los Angeles; making audio selects; managing the project’s VO schedule in coordination with the Audio Producer; creating a workflow and pipeline from scratch (due to a publisher requirement that we use an untested tool) for voice-over implementation into the game in coordination with multiple disciplines; and overseeing the content’s troubleshooting, testing, and bug-fixing.
• Creator of all documentation of the campaign’s high-level design and flow, and primary narrative resource for the project both team- and studio-wide.