Kelsey Beachum & Olivia Alexander

Script Lock

We've got Kelsey (game writer and narrative designer on Outer Wilds with Mobius Digital, along with Stormland for Insomniac, and wrote the unreleased Tales from the Minus Lab for USC’s Interactive Media & Games Division) and Olivia (script writer and narrative designer at Ubisoft Montreal on Far Cry 5 and Far Cry: New Dawn, and previously a scriptwriter at Ubisoft Quebec on Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and its DLC) in this month to talk about the hardest parts of working with nonlinear storytelling, stress, taking feedback, nonlinear murder mysteries, quantifying values that are hard to quantify, assuming that players are smart, tracking all the permutations in branching narratives, player assumptions when it comes to knowledge of the story and vice versa, letting players pull in information instead of pushing it on them, what makes a good opening and ending, DnD, and more.

Our Guests on the Internet

Kelsey's Twitter and Website.

Olivia's Twitter.

Stuff We Talked About

Outer Wilds

Twine

GDC 2019: Technical Tools for Authoring Branching Dialogue by Carrie Patel and Szymczyk

Steven Universe

Overqualified by Joey Comeau

Our theme music was composed by Isabella Ness, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.