Outsourcing Studio: The Halp Network
Role: Game Writer
ROLE
In 2024, I had the incredible opportunity to write on an upcoming video game title for SEGA Japan — my first AAA studio contract! They flew me out to Japan for a week with the senior narrative lead, Adam Dolin, to meet the game’s creator, director, and high-level producers, play through the in-development build, and ask as many questions as we could about the system, its design, the story, and the characters we were working with.
Tasked with bringing a global perspective to a deeply Japanese franchise, our goal was to make the game’s tone explode off the screen with humor and wit, to inject color and quirk into a cast of character voices suffering from same-ness-itis, and to wrought ka-POW! cutscenes that’ll leave a buzz-worthy impact on players.
Under the guidance of the senior narrative lead, I helped complete the game’s cinematic scripts — I wrote many of the first drafts, provided as many edit passes needed, and gave constructive feedback on or edited my lead’s work as needed. I had the pleasure of tackling many final pass edits (and unlocked a secret bonus level: final-final reviews and edit passes). In addition to the cinematic scripts, I had great fun writing robust sets of barks for many of the NPCs that players will encounter throughout the game!
Beyond the writing and editing I did on this project, I was also tasked with diving deep into research and creating lists of names, titles, and locations. Because these names, titles, locations, etc, were intended to be strewn throughout the game’s varied environments, these lists were created both with the creative and SEGA Japan’s legal team in mind.