University
Writing for Games
Highlight Event: "Different approaches to narrative in games, with Dwarf Fortress as a case study"
During the North London Story Festival 2023, we were fortunate enough to have Penda Tomlinson, Senior Lecturer in Games Design, as a guest speaker. He told us all about 'Golden Path' narrative-design, and emergent narratives.
Find out more by watching the recording of the event directly below.
Highlight Event: "The interactive future of storytelling"
During the North London Story Festival, we were lucky enough to interview Alice Bowman, a Narrative Designer at Trailmix. Our interviewer Olga Kalinska (a student of BA Creative Writing and Journalism) plunged straight in with the following question: "What are the key challenges in writing for games, as opposed to other types of writing?"
The celebrated writer-designer of tabletop and video games James Wallis is an alumnus of Middlesex University. He has written and designed card games like Once upon a Time, roleplaying games such as Alas Vegas (2017), and console games such as Insane Robots (2018), and he edited one of the first journals of game design related scholarship: IF. He has most recently managed the team that rebooted the 1980s classic RPG Paranoia for Mongoose Publishing (2017)
co-authored with Richard Lambert and Andrew Rilstone in print since 1994
Insane Robots
Middlesex University also has a strong tradition in the researching, teaching, writing and publishing of games. Current academic Thomas O’Neill teaches games design and storytelling for games, having overseen the level design and narrative development on both Pirates of the Caribbean and Dead Space.
Similarly, current lecturer Penda Tomlinson is a game designer, developer and writer who has worked on a wide variety of game projects. His most recent work is a sci-fi setting for the classic pen and paper roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu 7th edition by Chaosium, due to launch in 2022 under the title Call of Cthulhu: Dark Frontier, co-authored with John Ossoway.
Middlesex University teaches writing for games and game design as a part of its BA/BSc Games Design and MA/MSc Creative Technology. Games are seriously funny business!
