Jen Allaway Writes Games With Big Hearts
@allawayj.bsky.social
Game Writer & Narrative Designer of 11 years! Contracting @ The Pokémon Company International until 7/27/2026. Previously at Monolith Productions, Hidden Path Entertainment, Pixelberry Studios, and more. she/her
Writer Reviews Books Her Child Makes Her Read 10 Times A Day: The Rainbow Fish The moral is good. Don't be selfish, share with others, you get friends. But why does the rainbow fish have to *rip his own scales off* to do that!? That's his skin! We shouldn't have to hurt ourselves to be liked. 7/10
The Odyssey was an utter triumph. Run to the theater to see it if you haven't. A lot of classical literature struggles in modern adaptation, but Nolan's Odyssey grabs the story's connective tissue by the throat and bangs it into you every scene like a war drum. Quite literally, given the music.
PSA from your friendly neighborhood bookseller: a lot of bookstores are currently finalizing their big Fall '26 orders, so now would be a great time to preorder any new releases coming out in September - December with them. An example from this past week:
Gotta nip this in the bud: These games are not unaccounted for. The ICS's collections were owned by the Computerspielemuseum and the USK ratings board. They still own them. This museum project is on the cusp of shutting down, but the games themselves are not going to a dumpster
Games That Weren't@gamesthatwerent.com · 4w agoGermany's largest game archive closes, leaving 60,000 game files unaccounted for www.notebookcheck.net/Germany-s-la...
Happy Summer @gamesdonequick.com to all who celebrate! (It's me) Nothing makes my game dev heart happier than watching people play games in wild, broken, "unintended" ways to raise money for charity, especially one as important as @msf.ca.
Instead of dream projects, highly recommend cultivating a list of your dream people you've worked with. You're way more likely to work with them again than on a dream project. :)
Raj Patel@rajio.bsky.social · 4w agoVery few (close to zero) career gamedevs realistically get to choose what games they end up working on. Working on a cool and/or successful game is not an inherent reflection of the skills of the individual in question.
My heart is with everyone laid off today. The heartbreak and grief of losing your studio is hard to put into words. You're not just losing a project - you're losing the creative ecosystem you made your home. If any writers laid off today want to have someone look over their samples, I'm here.
Husband likes to ask absurd questions at the start of dinner. Today's edition: "You're dead. You can see any statistics about your life. Which ones do you want to see?" The speed with which I said "Total creative writing word count", lol What numbers about you are you looking up?
The Founders wouldn't be shocked by the abolition of slavery, though perhaps more by equality and integration, and ditto for women. Nor even by technological progress as much as we might think. Such ideas were not unknown to them. But they would be flabbergasted and astonished by an American pope.
250 years ago, Americans rebelled against one tyrant, then became different tyrants in what they built next. Let's go back to our roots and rebel against tyrants, the true American pastime, but let's not make their mistakes either. What we build after must be for everyone.
The old games industry is dying. The new games industry is struggling to be born. Now is the time of absolutely batshit corporate decision-making.
All of the *gestures broadly at games news lately* sucks, but I'm gonna get up today and I'm gonna work on my own game stuff. And help my friends making their scrappy game stuff. and just make games because making games makes me happy. FTE, contract, hobby level. Any of it.
Absolutely devoured Yes, Your Grace by @braveatnight.bsky.social this weekend and was blown over by it. What a powerful game about sacrifice, endurance, and hope. I picked it up on the Switch sale for only 6 bucks and now wish I had picked it up at full price.
Well, I've been affected by the Bungie layoffs, and I guess I'm now looking for work. I'm a senior narrative designer on Destiny 2. I'm going to thread a little list of stuff I've done on the game; normally I go out of my way to avoid attention, but today I'd appreciate reposts.
Gutted for my friends tossed out of Bungie, Compulsion Games, and whoever else just hasn't hit the timeline yet. The people responsible for this are sitting in their C suites getting tax breaks and golden parachutes for destroying your lives. God, I hope we can do something about that soon.
Continuing to Love Island to bond with the SIL, and I've decided Love Island and Bridgerton are telling the exact same story. Should X girl be with Y boy or Z boy? Are these two a good match or are they just following the societal expectations that they should be in relationship? It's the same.
I am so happy for and about Congressman-elect Lander.
Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · last mo.Brad Lander may not end up as a national figure on the level of AOC or Mamdani, but more than just about anyone else in the US right now, he feels like he has the capacity to help break the assumption that "Jewish politics" in the US means AIPAC. And that is a wonderful thing.
✨ Hello! My name is Jen. 📝 🎮 I'm a game writer/narrative designer of 11 years. 🌲 I'm local to Seattle. 🎭 My favorite games have emotional, dramatic stories. 🧁 🧶 🧝♀️ In my spare time, I bake, knit, and LARP/make LARPs. 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ ♀️👨🦽 🧑🏾 The best games are for everyone! Have fun here and be nice!
When I can't sleep these days, I've just been writing random snippets of spicy romantasy / fantasy erotic literature and then chucking it into small communities, and I feel like it's been the best thing for me as a writer in ages?? I needed to ship something so bad. And in a way, this is shipping.
So I like to talk about sociological storytelling a fair amount, and a frequent question I get is "Isn't that just worldbuilding / environmental storytelling? Why does it need its own terminology?" Which is fair! Game Narrative has enough jargon we don't agree on! But this is what does it for me:
Hey, are you employed and upset about what's happening to your game dev friends but your company doesn't have any openings? GO BUY AN INDIE GAME FROM YOUR WISHLIST. That's the only way to save the industry.
In an effort to bond with my sister-in-law, I've been watching the new Love Island season (not my usual media diet) and as someone who writes romance a lot, looking at it from a lens of romance media is really interesting. Despite being unscripted, it feels far more contrived.
Finally making time for Arco and loving it! I finished Act 2 the other night and it has me thinking a lot about how truly, there are no bad narrative tools, just bad executions of them. False choices have a bad rap, but Arco uses them masterfully to show the power of an oppressor on a >>
I am slowly returning to bsky! Mostly to use this space to talk about narrative in games and other works of storytelling. So tell me what you've been playing/reading/watching recently and how it's making you think!
I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.
Dan Nguyen@dancow.bsky.social · 6mo agoVC, founder, dumbass
