ALASTAIR BROWN
Professional Narrative Designer
C.V
An experienced Narrative Designer with over 10 years experience in the games industry, starting in QA and progressing through Level Design into Narrative Design.
I have contributed to multiple shipped titles across studios such as Rebellion Developments, Cloud Imperium Games and most recently, Abrakam Entertainment in partnership with Paradox Interactive.
With a proven track record of mentoring talent, collaborating across departments, managing complex multi-discipline pipelines across multiple studios, in addition to student outreach through Abertay university's Dare Academy, Staffordshire university's mentoring programme and Limit Break. I’m a big believer in being the change you want to see in the industry, and it’s that attitude that I take into my professional work, student outreach and mentoring, while aiming to foster a positive, creative environment in whatever studio I work at.
Personal Statement
Professional Experience
Lead Narrative Content Designer at Abrakam Entertainment, working in partnership with Paradox Interactive to deliver engaging narrative content, expanding the already vast galaxy of Stellaris.
Working on content for the Season 09 expansion pass. With content released featuring in the BioGenesis expansion, as well as the Cosmic Storms pack. With new content pending release in the upcoming expansion, Shadows of the Shroud.
Responsibilities include:
Leading a team to create content in collaboration with Paradox interactive, onboarding new team members as needed.
Liaising with Paradox Interactive creative leads to maintain a cohesive, consistent tone and vision through design documentation and Jira tracking.
Working alongside production to create and maintain effective sprint planning.
Writing narrative content for each DLC pack. Ranging from stand alone events to branching choice driven narrative event chains.
Running collaborative writer workshops with both internal Abrakam Entertainment writing teams and Paradox Interactive writers, to review and feedback content before delivery.
Abrakam Entertainment: FTC March 2024 - July 2025.
Remote Lead Narrative Content Designer - Stellaris DLC Season 09.
Cloud Imperium Games: April 2023 – March 2024.
Lead Narrative Designer – Squadron 42.
Worked as part of the dialogue team, focusing on championing the team’s development to create the best practices and documentation for dialogue implementation across the title, as well helping facilitate a smooth relationship between any dialogue dependent departments.
Responsibilities included:
Leading, supporting, mentoring and training members of the dialogue team in their tasks and responsibilities.
Working directly with other department leads and stakeholders to remove pre-existing pipeline blockers and create new support tools with the aim to facilitate a smooth and easy to follow dialogue implementation pipeline.
Championing the creation and maintenance of a centralised dialogue database, in addition to other required supporting narrative documentation to enable easy tracking of narrative asset implementation across dependent departments.
Creating and maintaining onboarding documentation for new staff and those involved in the dialogue creation pipeline.
During my time at Rebellion Developments, I worked a number of positions, starting in QA before moving into level design with a focus on narrative before ultimately becoming the company's Principal Narrative Designer.
Due to the nature of my work at Rebellion Developments and the resulting responsibility overlap across multiple projects, I balanced all of the content listed below whilst also fulfilling my work as a level designer of increasing seniority, before moving full time onto narrative design during Sniper Elite 5’s development.
The below responsibilities and achievements were relevant and applied across the following titles and roles as a designer. Strange Brigade, Zombie Army 4, Sniper Elite 5.
Principle Writer (Sniper Elite 5, Strange Brigade) and supporting writer when needed (Zombie Army 4). working collaboratively with both in-house and external writing teams.
Ensuring, through collaboration with both internal and external dialogue dependent disciplines, high quality in game implementation of all narrative deliverables for all projects within production scope.
Working closely with core engine teams and key project stakeholders to champion new dialogue tools systems for Rebellion's proprietary engine (Asura) across multiple projects, creating and maintaining the required supporting documentation for these tools across the dependent departments and designers per project.
Used Confluence and Jira to create and maintain easily accessible and trackable narrative documentation for every piece of spoken or written content across all titles (Sniper Elite 5, Zombie Army 4, Strange Brigade) for all dependent departments and external partners. Covering but not limited to, narrative scripts (cutscenes, recording sheets), Player and NPC dialogue (behaviour barks, mission conversations, survival and PVP content), collectible journals, mission objectives (core level, side mission, bonus objectives etc.), item descriptions, character descriptions, level descriptions, weapon descriptions and DLC supporting narrative documentation.
Mentoring and training junior narrative designers across multiple projects to be able to create, maintain and implement the deliverables listed above on their relevant project.
In addition to special thanks credits on Atomfall and Sniper Elite Resistance for work done during those titles development before leaving the company in 2023.
Rebellion Developments: Various Positions - June 2014 to April 2023
QA Analyst - 2014 to 2016.
Level Designer (Narrative Focused) - 2016 to 2022
Senior Cross Project Narrative & Dialogue Designer - 2022 to 2023
Abertay University - Dare Academy Hot Housing Mentor and Judge.
Mentoring
Staffordshire University - Narrative Design Mentor
I have been involved in the above mentoring programmes since 2019 in the case of Dare Academy and more recently have been involved with Limit Break and Staffordshire since 2024.
Contributing on a volunteer basis, I enjoy getting involved and giving back to the universities that helped me get to where I am today (being a graduate of Staffordshire and a Dare Alumni from 2012) as well as helping those from underrepresented backgrounds get their start in the industry through limit break.
Limit Break - Narrative & Level Design Mentor