Matthew Burns & Carrie Patel

Matthew (writer, composer, and game developer on titles including the Call of Duty and Halo series, Destiny, The Infinifactory, The Arboretum, The Writer Will Do Something, and TIS-100) and Carrie (narrative designer on Pillars of Eternity, writer of The Buried Life and Cities and Thrones) join us this week to talk about maintaining your writing momentum, outlining, the writing process at Obsidian, Large Teams and the Problems they Cause, creating a Total Work of Art in video games, offering decisions that lead to chokepoints, motivating players with different play styles, the negative space that defines players’ experiences, how The Writer Will Do Something came about, that part of the meeting when everybody turns to look at you, when gameplay doesn't trump story, the linearity of relationship portrayals in games today, and should creators ever be involved in the post-release discussion.

Our Guests on the Internet

Matthew's Twitter and Website.

Carrie's Twitter and Website.

Stuff We Talked About

The Writer Will Do Something

Gesamtkunstwerk

The Expanse by James S. A. Corey

My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante

The Moth

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.