It's our last episode of the year! Emily Grace Buck (narrative designer at Telltale Games where she worked on The Walking Dead: Michonne and Batman - The Telltale Series, and previously designed and wrote educational games at Kognito) and Julie Marchiori (level designer, mission designer, and current Assistant Narrative Director at Ubisoft Montreal, and has worked on such games as the Army of Two franchise, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 3, and Assassin's Creed Unity) drop in to talk about using agency to empower players to build their own stories, gameplay verbs, the narrative potential of systems, environmental storytelling, level design, the research phase, design processes, subtext in games, the importance of downtime with your characters and why it's difficult for studios, minority content, examining the choices of players, and a heck of a lot more!

Our Guests on the Internet

Emily's Twitter and Tumblr.

Julie's Blog about going from gamer geek to gamer geek mom, and her other Blog where she talks about things like her beef with gendered games.

Stuff We Talked About

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Fallout 3

Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard

Assassin's Creed: Unity

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Batman - The Telltale Series

Gears of War 4

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Until Dawn

Life is Strange

World of Warcraft

Mystic Messenger

MR. ROBOT:1.51EXFILTRATI0N

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