Senior Narrative Designer

**About Splash Damage**

At Splash Damage, we’re dedicated to crafting team-based multiplayer games that ignite friendships as much as they do healthy competition and teamwork.

Our teams celebrated the launch of Gears Tactics earlier this year, and we’re currently developing Outcasters for Stadia along with several unannounced titles.

As an UnrealEngine focused studio, we're excited to be transitioning our teams to the latest in UE5 technology and we're looking for skilled and passionate developers to help us drive this.

We're advocates for work-life balance and offer a comprehensive benefits package focused on the well-being of our staff and their families.

We believe that teams create the best work when they have a range of perspectives and experiences to draw from. Therefore we're committed to increasing diversity across our studio, fostering an inclusive environment to ensure everyone's voices are heard.

Due to the on-going COVID-19 outbreak, we're all currently working from home. We’re still looking to welcome new team members, who'll join us remotely until we return to the studio
**The Role**

As Splash Damage Senior Narrative Designer you’ll be in charge of implementing the narrative work of the game. You will be responsible for creating, developing and implementing the characters, environmental storytelling, story arc, emotional tone, pacing, dialogue as directed by the Project Leads. You’ll also be responsible for implementing and overseeing the narrative team’s work, and driving the work of more junior Narrative Design staff on the project.

You will work closely with designers, programmers and artists to create and maintain fun, playable experiences that marry gameplay mechanics and level design with storytelling moments.

Working with the Creative Director and Lead Narrative Designer, you’ll help establish and implement core Narrative Design pillars, ensuring the narrative vision is upheld, maintaining constant alignment across all disciplines. You’ll work closely with in-house and external writers. No text or dialogue will go into the game that you have not signed off on with your Lead.

You will assist in assigning work and ensuring it’s done to a high standard, on time. You will facilitate constant communication between team members, ensuring they understand their goals and how they feed into the bigger picture. You’ll have excellent written and verbal communication and be are able to clearly and enthusiastically communicate your narrative / design intentions.

You will coach and mentor more junior staff, making sure they have what they need to do their jobs effectively.

You will be responsible for verifying task estimates provided by junior staff and in turn work with your lead to give your own accurate estimates for work as well as logging work in management software.

You will provide input to Production / Management on project schedules throughout development to prioritise tasks / workload for the developers responsible for their assigned feature-set, in alignment with the product vision.

You will help articulate the impact of changes to the narrative to the developers on your team, help maintain morale, and set a personal example of professionalism and best practices.

You will have a thorough understanding of the narrative delivery / storytelling mechanisms and how the levels will deliver/showcase them, taking into account project goals, and the target demographic. You will need to maintain up to date Narrative Design documentation, ensuring Narrative Design guidelines, best practices and metrics are thoroughly documented.

You will be expected to have a clear understanding of the technical constraints of the game engine, the capabilities and workflow of the game editor and level design pipeline. You will also drive ideas to help improve them.

You will collaborate and coordinate with the art and level design disciplines to maintain a focus on the narrative / atmospheric aspects of the characters and gameplay areas. You will be expected to present your vision for the narrative and your work to the team, upper management and the wider company at various stages and be happy to accept positive critique from all sources.

You will pro-actively work with the other narrative designers to share knowledge, review content and ensure consistency both on the immediate team and across the studio.

You will be expected to regularly monitor the bug database and fix issues in a timely fashion to maintain stability and ensure that the game remains playable at all times.

Where necessary you will regularly and effectively communicate with any external partners or publishers; managing those relationships, presenting the creative achievements of the team, negotiating feature / change requests. You will manage and work closely with external writers and vendors. You may be required to communicate outwards to press, communities and fans in various formats from live appearances to p