Jesse Scoble
Senior Narrative Designer
Jesse Scoble is a Senior Narrative Designer at Beamdog.
Previously, he was lead writer on Ubisoft’s Hyper Scape, and contributed to Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Far Cry 5, AC Origins, and Watch Dogs 2.
He was lead writer on Wizard101 and has worked on Armored Warfare, City of Heroes, Webkinz, and many pen&paper rpg projects.
He has published essays, co-edited two short-story collections, and is working on a novel and a comic. He lives in Montreal and makes a mean mojito.
Talks & sessions
Tilting At Windmills: The Quest for Better (Narrative) Quest Design
From writing on Wizard101 to Assassin’s Creed (and other Ubi titles), narrative design works best when it is married to all elements of the game. In this talk, I turn a critical lens to narrative quest design. What works and what doesn’t. Why do we sometimes feel like we’re stuck in a never ending loop of killing ten rats to prove we are the chosen one?In development, narrative is the cheapest way to add retention. It's a key element in helping an IP break out past the traditional bounds of gaming and yet it's frequently relegated to being delivered in the same ways we've delivered narrative for a hundred years.
There have been enormously innovative games in the past decade, and it behooves us to try to identity what works best (and what works well enough when we don’t have a budget for “best”), and what old, bad habits we should try to avoid.