Rebecca McCarthy - Game Writer & Narrative Designer

BBC 4 extra scheduling for The State of the Art

Due to be available on BBC Sounds later today👍

An headshot image of red-haired Rebecca Heineman whilst performing at an industry talk

Rebecca Heineman will posthumously receive the Ambassador Award at the GDC Awards.

A games industry legend - first ever game tournament champion in 1980, Interplay co-founder, Bard's Tale 3 designer, worked on the PSP, PS4, Xbox360, many ports... 👏

(Read more at GamesIndustry)

Friday Late: Player/Performer - Special event at V&A South Kensington · V&A Friday 27 March 18.30 – 22.00

V&A Friday Late x LGF26

Join us at the V&A Museum for a special evening exploring the intersection of video games, performance and spectacle.

Expect live-coded music, LARP, cosplay, drag, and insights into video game acting.

27 March | 18:30-22:00
www.vam.ac.uk/event/Wl9jvz...

I once did VO for a Sims machinima that was shown in cinemas before Shaun of the Dead.

My time on the project was brief but I really appreciated the oppotunity. A lot narrative design is about bringing out strengths that are already there. I am still open to this kind of consultation work. So if you're in the early stages of a project please get in touch.

Outside of personal work I don't often get to explore these parts of my experience in my creative work. Glowfrog Games have since gone out to put so much more of themselves into Pieced Together so take a look.

I did some narrative work on this at a very early phase of development. So it's lovely to see a finished game years later.

Please do take a look. There are so few games that tackle female friendships in this way.

Casting call! Looking for a woman voice actor, 50+ who is versatile and a vocal chameleon / can play many different bit parts in an audio comedy.

We’re recording in London on 13th & 14th April. This is a paid opportunity. Actor does not need to be autistic!

1/

Already planning to do this for AdventureX lol

🌍 Official Selection 2026 🌍

We’re excited to reveal more games Official Selection titles for 2026 - showcasing bold ideas, distinctive voices, and games from studios across the globe

Check out the line-up | festival.games.london/official-sel...

Photo of the Game Narrative Kaleidoscope

Look what arrived. I opened it a random and landed on my article lol 🤩

an image promoting a substack article titled ‘25 medieva manuscripts you can look at online right now’

i made a starter back of beautiful and unique manuscripts you can browse online! (with links) for anyone that wants a good way to spend an afternoon :)

open.substack.com/pub/weirdmed...

Amberspire, our dice driven science fantasy city builder, will release MAY 6!

Roll dice, grow a city, forge alliances, interact with an ecology, and read a history of the future.

PC, Mac, Steam Deck - May 6!

s.team/a/3350750

📖 THE GAME NARRATIVE KALEIDOSCOPE ❄️ is out NOW!

www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope

100+ essays on writing & narrative design, with articles from the writers of Baldur's Gate 3, Control, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Sam and Max...

ALSO the Kaleidoscope Podcast with 2 full eps!

The creator of ChatGPT is named "Altman," as in "alternative to human" and he leads OpenAI, which is completely closed. His main opponent is the company Anthropic, meaning "human-centered" is led by "Amodei," as in "loves gods". Then there's "Gemini," meaning "two-faced," from a cmpany that says it will do no evil. Brilliant work as always Kojima! [picture of kojima, watermark of @mediocre_mason on tiktok]

* computer game

Finished up a contract, and the client paid straight away. On to the next thing!

I still have slots available for this month. So if you need any game writing or copywriting, get in contact. ✨

holy shit guys (real)

Some feedback to PR folks that certainly wasn't asked for but hey: I find that I'm way more likely to redeem a Steam key and look at a game when it's sent to me directly via email than when I need to click through to some other site. Especially if you write "key enclosed" without enclosing a key.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope launches this Wednesday!

Over 100+ essays on the craft of game writing and narrative design; affordable priced.

… AND we’ll also launch with the first two episodes of the podcast series, where we talk to the article writers about their craft.

Yes! I wonder how much time we spend reinventing the same stuff. I'm so grateful things like Ink exist at least.

However, this has happened many times over to me and industry colleagues for GaaS games which live or die by how cost effective it is to add new content.
Tooling and how you design the content of you game is vital but especially so in live service.

The extra "lol" on this is, even when I've been in early project stages, narrative tooling gets budgeted and then put off. For a vertical slice, it's annoying but possible to do things by hand. So I get why this happens.

A few folks asked me to blog about narrative tools a while back and I'm still not done because it's all a mess.

I agree with this so much. This results in many studios bodging it, implementing something without narrative input or shoving things in late. It's also very frustrating when mentoring new narrative designers because there's no one place to direct them to learn.

Happy birthday!

* glorious purchase

Front page of the spec for the scripting language we came up with back in '89. This became the foundation for Virtual Theatre, and all the Rev games that followed😎 #indiedev #coding #brokensword