Portrait of Brooke Maggs, Narrative Designer

The portraits are part of a series of articles highlighting people working in the world of video games. This article was originally written for the gameher.fr.

For today’s portrait, we met Brooke Maggs, Narrative Designer who worked on the games The Gardens Between, Paperbark, Florence and Control. We wanted to know more about his daily work and his relationship with video games.

Hello Brooke, thank you for accepting this interview. First of all, can you quickly introduce yourself to the Game’Her readers?

I’m a narrative designer for video games and a writer of fiction. I’m an Australian living in Finland, I love reading, weight lifting and bike riding. You can find out more about me at www.brookemaggs.com.

As a narrative designer, I think you probably have to play video games. What games have marked you in one way or another? And what games do you play?

My first console was an Atari, and some of the first games I remember playing are Frogger and Donkey Kong. Games that have left their mark on me include Full Throttle by Lucas Arts and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines by Troika. Full Throttle has a great story line, interesting characters and snappy dialogue. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines has an interesting, modern world, characters with hidden motives and the ability to play it multiple times in different ways — I love that! I grew up playing these games and hoped to be able to write for them some day.

Now, I play a range of different games to keep up with the latest in terms of storytelling. Naturally, the games I like to play are rich with stories. I’ve enjoyed playing games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, A Plague’s Tale and God of War. All have very good writing and narrative design.

These are very interesting games! And if not, where did you study and what school course did you take?

I studied Multimedia Systems Design at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. It comprised of design, computer science, engineering and business subjects with lots of room for students to specialize. I took a few creative writing subjects as part of this degree and loved them. This led me to do a more skills-focused course in writing screenplays, novels, short stories and editing professionally. While I was studying writing, I was teaching games studies and user experience design at another university, which helped improved my communication skills, and further study in these areas.

It’s a beautiful route. Especially since studying while teaching next door is not something simple for everyone! But did you want to become a younger narrative designer? What attracted you to this profession and what is your typical day?

I knew I wanted to be a storyteller and be involved in making up the stories for games. I thought this meant being a writer. I’ve always loved to write and have studied writing, and it was one of my short stories I wrote in my writing course that I used to forward on to The Voxel Agents who were looking for a writer to help with their new narrative puzzle game. It soon became clear that this game would not have any writing or spoken dialogue, so my writing was for brainstorming ideas with the team. I was helping convey the story by working with the artist, the game designer, animator and programmer. I realized this is narrative design. Using all aspects of the game to tell the player a story. I loved it and decided narrative design is what I wanted to continue to do.

My day-to-day work depends on the phase of development. I write design documentation, communicate the story to other members of the team, provide feedback on scripts, collect gameplay information for our writers, discuss design ideas with level designers and brainstorm environment ides with environment artists.

It sounds like an exciting job! What are your plans for the future?

Make more great games and write a book!

An ambitious project, I wish you every success! What are your inspirations for your scripts (video games, news…)?

For my own short story writing, I’m inspired by books, video games and comic books. I’m also inspired by my own life, what I am trying to understand at the time, and issues I feel passionately about.

How long does it take you to write a script?

It’s so hard to say as it depends on the story. Yes, it’s complicated to evaluate, especially when you know that a game can contain a lot of dialogues.

What has helped you to progress the most and what were the decisive moments of your journey?

The Voxel Agents have a studio in a co-working space for game developers in Melbourne, and I came to know more people in the industry which lead to more narrative design work. I also received an XBOX Women in Games Creative Impact award for my work in the games industry, which had a positive effect on my career. I was also awarded a Women in Games grant from Film Victoria. The grant allowed me to travel to well-known studios overseas like Double Fine and Remedy Entertainment and meet other writers and developers in the industry. While working at Remedy, they offered me a full time job, which I accepted.

Many women in the game industry have helped me progress. From being a friendly face, to encouraging me to apply for the grant, to offering me work, other women have been instrumental in my success as a women in the games industry. I have also had the benefit of working with very supportive development teams who have encouraged me and help me grow.

Congratulations on receiving these different awards! Being well supported helps a lot to develop professionally, especially in the video game industry. What is your greatest pride ?

My greatest pride is that the games I have helped make are interesting, story-driven games where the play experience (game design) directly relates to the story experience by being metaphorical and thought provoking. I was especially thrilled when The Gardens Between won Game of the Year at the 2018 Australian Game Development Awards, and Florence won a BAFTA for best Mobile Game. Being a part of such talented teams who have made great quality games is very humbling!

I loved playing The Gardens Between. It’s a very nice game, which makes us think about a lot of things. But as a narrative designer, how do you build your story? Do you start with the universe or the characters? How can we avoid falling into clichés?

There is no right way to go about it. For me, I have found it best to start with a world because it provides context for the other people on the team. For example, Level designers, game designers, concept artists all need to know where the game is taking place, what we want players to do in the world, and what the style and tone will be for the game. To avoid falling into clichés, I look for a variety of references and inspiration outside of games, in art, books, film and architecture. Characters also stop us from falling into cliché. We might have an interesting world, but players need ways to connect with it. Characters give the world texture and flavor, they should be relatable and have motivations and desires. When we build complex characters, the story will rarely be cliché.

Do you take into account the gameplay and the player’s participation in the progress of the story from the beginning of the writing process or do you focus only on the story even if it means making changes to the script so that it is articulated with the gameplay?

I focus on the player’s participation when I am figuring out a structure for the story. It’s important for me to know what a player will be doing in the game and how they will participate in the story experience. I will have ideas for gameplay when I’m writing and when talking to game designers, I have ideas for the story. It’s all connected, so if the gameplay changes, the story sometimes needs to change and vice versa. Often it’s the story that will change, as it’s usually cheaper to re-write a few lines of dialogue than it is to change a game mechanic. We often talk about recreational-narrative dissonance (Nathan Drake who kills hundreds of people but is presented as a sensitive and moral person); how to find the balance between a character’s characterization and his actions in the gameplay phases? It’s tough and it’s a decision the team will make depending on the game. If there is a lot of violence, we might fix this dissonance by abstracting the enemy and making them monstrous (not human at all) and life-threatening. I think this dissonance happens more so when the combat becomes tedious. Another way is including the dissonance, like in Tomb Raider, where Lara’s first kill was significant and traumatic for her.

As a side note, I would love to see more game developers working to remove violence as a central game mechanic. For example, there are a few games now, like GRIS that are non-violent and still work so well as a story game. They overcome this recreational-narrative dissonance problem by simply not having a contradiction at all. Lastly, I think if we do a good job at drawing the players into the game, many will suspend their disbelief and see past the dissonance the same way we do for action films.

I see, then with improvements in design, the kinematics of video games look more and more like movies. What are the differences between working on the scenario of an independent game and that of a triple A?

The teams are much larger, so are the games and the stories, which means a lot more work needs to go into designing and communicating the story internally and to the player. It’s a challenge, but it’s also exciting, because there is more room for story — especially at Remedy! I have been able to work with other narrative professionals, as well as be involved with shoots with actors and even able to work as the narrative designer on some of the side missions in Control. This is my first triple-A game, and it comes out August 27!

Congratulations on the work done on the game, I look forward to playing it! As a woman in the video game industry, what is your opinion on the evolution of the place of women?

It’s important for more girls and women to want to join the video games industry and we have a lot of things to address to do so. First, game development studios need to be places women can thrive in and be supported by offering mentorship, paid maternity leave and flexible hours. Second, more representations of female characters in games means girls and women can see themselves in games. They will then see games can tell stories about them and they’ll want to be involved in making games. Lastly, we must combat gendered ideas of job roles and skills (like programming) across all Science, Technology, Maths and Engineering sectors so women are not shut out or deterred from these areas early on.

I have not experienced direct sexism in my work, however, there are subtle gender differences. I am more likely to be spoken over in meetings, and I have sometimes received more feminised administration tasks simply because I’m organized and also a woman. This isn’t unique to the games industry. I believe the games industry would benefit from more diverse development teams which will create more diverse characters (who are queer or of colour for example) and stories (I’d love to see more games that are romantic comedies!). Not only will this elevate games as a medium, it will mean we will potentially make games that speak to more people, and that’s great for business, too.

Thank you for that thought, and I agree with you! Diversifying teams is a very good thing! To conclude this interview, do you have a little message for young people who want to enter the video game industry?

It’s important to play games, study them, learn how they are made. There are many different kinds of games, they don’t have to be huge, big budget games. Remember to have lots of other experiences, too. You don’t need to put everything into video games in order to grow skills that are beneficial to game development. You may like photography, film making, writing, or painting. All of these pursuits can benefit you on your way into game development. Study what you find interesting and challenging. Make games with your friends using Twine or Inkle and be sure to finish the things you start if you can. It’s important to build a portfolio of work as it will eventually be your calling card.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer this interview! The entire Game’Her team wishes you every success in your journey and the rest of your adventures!

You can find Brooke Maggs on social networks:

— Website : https://brookemaggs.com/
— Medium : https://medium.com/@brooke.maggs
— Twitter : https://twitter.com/Brooke_Maggs
— Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/brooke.maggs/