I’ve been a whole lot of places for work and conferences over the years. China, Brazil, Sweden, France….even Wisconsin. But never before have I had the chance to go to Ireland.
Today, that all changes. I’m headed over to do a narrative summit with my team at Romero Games, and I could not be more excited. Looking forward to the adventure!
Earlier in the week, the nice folks at the GenCon Writers’ Symposium posted a short interview they did with me about, well writing. You can check it out here.
Coming up this Sunday, I will be teaching a workshop on video game writing at the Orange County Library in Hillsborough, NC! All the details are here, and it’s not too late to grab one of the few remaining seats. Did I mention it’s free?
I am rapidly closing in on the finish line for my first full non-fiction book (unless you count uncredited work in various video game-related projects), The Video Game Writer’s Guide To Surviving An Industry That Hates You. It’s a book that I jokingly tell people that I have been writing for 25 years, but there’s a kernel of truth to that.
What the book is, is a guide to navigating the ins and outs and day to day of being a working video game writer. Very little of it is about how to write. Most of it is about how to survive as a writer, navigating team dynamics, deliverables, feedback loops, career building, and more. In other words, it’s about the stuff they don’t and largely can’t teach you in school.
I’ve been doing this a long time, and at times it feels like I’ve hit every pothole on the professional road. Now, though, I am at a place in my career where I can dispense some knowledge in good conscience with the hopes of hoping other people out. I don’t claim to know everything, and I know my circumstances have been weird even by the standards of the video game industry. But I have been there for some big games and some big moments and some big disasters, and I have some stories to tell that I think will simultaneously amuse and instruct.
In any case, I have completed the first draft of the manuscript and sent it to readers for feedback. This, I am already in the process of incorporating. With luck, what will emerge will be equal parts entertaining and educational, clear-eyed and encouraging.
We shall see…
Incredibly happy to announce that I have started a new job at Romero Games as Narrative Director! As much fun as my time at Crytek was, sometimes a story just reaches its natural endpoint and it’s time to move on. I was lucky enough to be able to start a new story with some amazingly talented people, and I am really looking forward to be part of of a team that’s making some magic!
Kayleigh Dobbs of Happy Goat Horror was kind enough to turn her eye to me and A MEETING IN THE DEVIL’S HOUSE. She reviewed it, and you have to love any review that includes a break in the action to question whether the author is all right – which you can find right here.
She also sat down for a pleasant hour’s conversation which covered everything from writing for games to the true story behind the zombie frog tale “Meemaw’s Frogs”. If you have the time, check it out – the conversation was a lot of fun. You can find it here.
Meanwhile the reviews keep rolling in on Amazon – two new ones say nice things like “MEETING IN THE DEVIL’S HOUSE is a meeting you don’t want to miss” and “The amazing thing is that each story is a master class in short fiction. Dansky’s writing in this collection reminds me of the first time I read Bradbury’s October Country. That’s the highest praise I can bestow!”
Next week is the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. I’m going, in part because I’m part of the advisory board for the Game Narrative Summit (which runs Monday and Tuesday) and in part because I’m running narrative round tables during the main show Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and in part because my employers at Crytek are kind and generous people.
Part of the Game Narrative Summit will be the presentation of the winning entries from the student narrative competition that I judge each year. I am honored to do the judging and happy to see what each year’s crop of up-and-coming game development students think about the narratives of their favorite games.
I’ve been going off and on, mostly on, since 2000. My first talk was about believability versus realism in Ghost Recon; since then I’ve spoken on various other topics and run my roundtables, and it’s always a pleasure and an honor.
GDC is also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends and professional peers. I’m looking forward to seeing folks I see maybe once a year, but whose voices are loud and clear in the narrative and design communities. And if we have a few drinks to celebrate each other, that’ll be fine, too.
This week I started my new job at Crytek, working as Franchise Narrative Director for Hunt: Showdown. I am pleased to say it was a great first week. I like the team I’ll be working with and I’m looking forward to doing great things with them.
This pretty much says it all.
After 23 years, I will be leaving Red Storm Entertainment at the end of December and starting work at Crytek to work on their horror game HUNT: SHOWDOWN. I am incredibly excited about this new opportunity, and I am looking forward to joining the team that has already done so much great work creating the world of HUNT.
I am nothing but grateful to Red Storm and Ubisoft for the opportunities to learn and grow they have afforded me over the years, but this was an opportunity I could not in good conscience refuse. It’s literally everything I’ve wanted to do in a game for years.
I’ll be staying in North Carolina and working remotely, and I look forward to sharing more with you as things progress.
Earlier this year I was cajoled into giving a talk at East Coast Game Conference. I hadn’t given a talk at a game conference with a powerpoint in years – mostly I’ve been concentrating on narrative roundtables at GDC, as well as helping put together the content for the Game Narrative Summit and ECGC. But this time I went ahead and did it, talking about the differences between writing fiction and writing video games. Enjoy!
I am pleased and proud to announce that I will be giving a seminar on how to write for video games at the upcoming Scares That Care AuthorCon, in Williamsburg, VA. Attendance is limited to 20 folks, so grab your spot now! You can find out more about it here!