Last year, I gave a GDC talk at the Narrative Summit with my friend Alexa Ray Corriea on improving feedback within story teams—particularly between leads and their staff. We ran surveys, read oodles of research, and examined our own experiences in game development. We were blown away by the reception of the talk and heard from countless people who shared their stories about feedback struggles they've had during their time in game development.
However, Alexa and I didn't get to cover everything. We realized early on in creating the 2023 talk that there was no way we could discuss everything we wanted. We hoped that we'd have a chance to cover the rest in the future. Thankfully, the Narrative Summit had us back in 2024 to let us finish where we left off.
This year, we focused on interdisciplinary collaboration between different skill sets. The result was a whole second talk, Effective Feedback for Game Writers, Narrative Designers, and Collaborators, Part 2.
Alexa Ray Corriea and Lis Moberly before their 2024 GDC talk, Effective Feedback for Game Writers, Narrative Designers, and Collaborators. Photo Credit: Amanda Farough.
We took everything we found for our talk in 2023 and let it guide our preparation for 2024's talk. We conducted dozens of interviews with developers in design, production, art, and story. We also read up on the latest research on interdisciplinary collaboration for creative-based teams. Ultimately, over time, we found several patterns that shaped our talk.
Alexa and I discussed barriers between departments, ideal team composition for narrative growth, and best practices concerning cross-disciplinary feedback as informed by research.
The talk and slides are now available on the GDC Vault. I will update this blog post later to include the complete works cited that informed the talk.
I cannot thank Alexa Ray enough for going on this GDC talk journey with me. Pitching and creating any GDC talk is wild—I can only speak for our experience, but it took us several months of preparation and hard work. We spoke at least twice a week for months, updating each other on our findings, research, and interviews.
We also want to thank everyone who spoke with us. Your experience and insight guided our presentation.