narrative designer

Aenne Schumann is one of the narrative designers of Arcade Spirits and Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers, a pair of visual novels set in a fictional timeline where arcades still reign supreme. Both games feature a diverse cast of characters to meet and, optionally, romance, while telling stories of personal discovery and social justice. When not writing games or speaking on convention panels about romance in games, Aenne is a streamer for Stumptgamers and Rainbow Arcade and works by day as a licensed veterinary technician.

In this podcast interview, Aenne and I chat about how they and Arcade Spirits director Stefan Gagne divvied up the script; weaving social justice into game narrative; the storytelling options introduced by the Fist of Discomfort 2 minigame; how to know when it’s time to end a podcast; deciding what games to stream to Twitch and which to host on YouTube; juggling multiple jobs when living with ADHD; and an alternative history for full-motion video (FMV) games.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for a transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:19:55 — 92.5MB) | Embed

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Jordan Jones-Brewster is the narrative designer of We should talk., a short-form narrative game available for Steam and consoles. During a single night at a local bar, players will interact with several characters while maintaining a conversation with their girlfriend via text message. Using an innovative “sentence spinner”, players can choose from dozens of responses to each prompt, leading to one of nine possible endings.

In this interview, I ask Jordan how We should talk. challenges traditional transactional romance in games; how We should talk. represents gender identity and sexual orientation; what constitutes the “good ending”, both in video games and in relationships; how the pandemic affected the game’s development and Kickstarter; what their role is in the annual PixelPop Festival, this year being held online; and what we should expect from their script, Saving the Day.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode and a full transcript.

Full disclosure: I backed this game’s Kickstarter at the $7 level.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00:40 — 28.8MB) | Embed

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Tag Archives: narrative designer

Polygamer #126: Aenne Schumann of Arcade Spirits

Polygamer #103: Jordan Jones-Brewster of We should talk.