I have a confession. When I started as a game writer, I had no idea what I was doing. I felt lost. At the time, this surprised me. I'd worked in the game industry years before in a different discipline, had successfully published my fiction and poetry, and worked on a couple of Sundance films.
You would think I would have known where to turn. But I didn't. Fast forward to now, and I get regular requests from people asking the same questions I did,
"How do I do what you do? Where do I start? How do I learn this stuff?"
And I've been surprised by who does the asking. Of course, there are university students and recent grads, but there are those who've worked fifteen years in a different industry and want a change. There's the old acquaintance from high school or my friend's seven-year-old daughter who has fallen in love with Little Nightmares. All of these people deserve some answer because heaven knows I was once that person.
Just two months ago, my mom's best friend asked if I could present to her middle-school classrooms about being a game writer. Apparently, many children have asked her such questions in their English classes. Here's a tweet right before I was attacked on Zoom by a barrage of those students' questions.
These requests frequently come now, and thus I have finally decided I'm going to button-mash my keyboard to spell out the resources that have helped me progress in my career.
I should caveat that my game writing education was eclectic. It still is. There was no single course, seminar, book, or silver bullet that gave me all the answers. There are several reasons for this, but I developed my own compendium of game writing instruction over time.
Here's what that compendium is comprised of:
Blogs
Twitter
Podcasts
Mentorship
Critical Play
Practice
Books
I'm going to write a post for each bullet point. It will take me some time, but I will get through it. I pinky-promise, cross my heart, and hope to die.
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