Bungie is looking for a Narrative Lead to focus on supporting our partners in the Destiny IP. The successful candidate has experience leading narrative teams from concept to launch on live service games. As a Narrative Lead, you will support our international partners by guiding them in making Destiny-style content, creating style guide documentation, and giving feedback on roadmaps, schedules, frameworks, specifications and playable builds. The Narrative Lead maintains the quality and consistency of the Destiny IP while giving our partners enough freedom to meet the needs of their players and markets.
The Narrative Lead works closely with the Creative Lead and is a part of a cross-functional leadership team that is responsible for delivering timely feedback to our partners.
With the uncertainty and rapidly changing circumstances surrounding COVID-19, most positions at Bungie are expected to onboard and work from home for a significant portion of 2021. In 2022, most Bungie employees will adopt a flexible schedule working from home part time (outside of positions identified as either 100% onsite or fully remote in WA & CA). Currently only a select range of positions are available for full-time remote work in WA & CA (please review location for details). Prospective employees located outside of CA & WA will need to establish WA state residency within 45 days of a start date. Bungie’s work from home, flexible work schedule, and remote policy is subject to change at the company’s discretion.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Work closely with Destiny creative and project leadership teams to create and enforce Destiny IP guidelines for external developers
- Advise, direct, and facilitate the external development of narrative content through documentation, review, and regular syncs with external partners
- Provide mentorship on narrative feature and asset development to external partners across multiple disciplines
- Champion partner creative plans to internal IP stakeholders
- Define and defend a project-specific narrative quality bar required to meet Destiny IP standards
- Identify and mitigate narrative product risks (e.g., IP conflicts, scope proposals, production schedules)
- Mentor and guide team members to level up their narrative craft and core development competencies
- Generate and maintain canonical story treatments, character bios, environment guides, casting documents, and other supporting narrative documentation based on partner information for inclusion in the Destiny Narrative Bible
- Drive any execution of project narrative content internally created at Bungie, as needed
REQUIRED SKILLS
- Working knowledge of the Destiny universe
- Game industry experience in a creative leadership role
- Outstanding communication, diplomacy, and negotiation skills
- Ability to handle ambiguity, including effectively leading a team in spite of that ambiguity
- Detailed understanding of all aspects of the narrative design development process, including design methodology, craftsmanship, production, and collaboration with external cinematic and voice vendors
- Experience writing and maintaining brand bibles, detailed scripts, and game glossaries
- Willingness to work outside of core hours for conference calls with partner team (typically 5-7 PM)
- Willingness to travel and host partner visits on a regular cadence (likely every 2-3 months after restrictions are lifted)
NICE-TO-HAVE SKILLS
- Experience working with external partners preferred
- Experience working on a live game ("game as a service") preferred
- Mandarin language skills are a plus
