Video Game Writer, contractor position
16 hours per week at NZD $50 per hour
We’re Balancing Monkey Games and we LOOOOOOOOVE Space Whales. We are a majority female studio, with a mixture of remote and in-office staff and a flexible working environment. Our first game, Before We Leave, won awards for best audio and best NZ game, and has sold nearly a quarter of a million copies. We’re now working on its sequel, Beyond These Stars, a city building game set on the back of an ancient Space Whale named Kewa. Read our Studio Handbook here.
We’re looking for a writer on contract to join our small team. Please be based in Dunedin, that would be lovely. 😉
Responsibilities
- Write interesting, quirky, memorable and poignant dialogue that matches various character voice and tone requirements set by the creative director and game designer
- Write and test your draft dialogue when implemented into Unity via Yarnspinner
- Deliver ready to localise dialogue that meets standards set by the creative director with minimal rounds of feedback and minimal intervention
- Collaborate with other members of the BMG team, with a focus on accepting feedback and editing existing work
- Maintain, troubleshoot, and track branching dialogue and scenarios
- Write texts for in-game non-dialogue elements, including tooltips, building descriptions, UI elements, and other ancillary texts
- Collaborate with other members of the team to answer questions regarding dialogue and story elements; for example, assisting the community manager with lore related questions.
- Any additional creative tasks required to support the storytelling of the project deemed appropriate by the creative director
Who We're Looking For
- You are a confident writer with experience in games, and sci-fi, writing
- You are willing to put player experience and game mechanics first
- You are a self starter and happy to work alone proactively
- You seek feedback and assess your own work critically
- You are able to write a range of interesting and believable characters and various kinds of content for them, including (but not limited to) branching dialogue, barks, descriptions, random events
- You are collaborative, and can demonstrate an ability to work well with others
- You have experience pitching your ideas to others
- You are fluent in written English
Requirements
- Ōtepoti (Dunedin) based (applicants from further afield will also be considered as long as you are able to work within the NZ time zone)
- Yarnspinner experience is a nice to have
- 3+ years of experience. 1+ shipped game title is a nice to have
Please send us a cover letter, resume, and a 200-300 word example of your writing which demonstrates that you are able to match the style of our game. Play the free demo here, and find our dev blogs here. (Dev Blog #17 might be particularly inspiring!) Email anna@balancingmonkeygames.com with the Subject line "Writer Application."
