I planned and wrote a portion of the content of the fourth “digital expansion” for Star Wars: The Old Republic as a freelancer. Specifically, I was responsible for the eight new “class story” missions, revisiting the themes and characters of the original game’s Player class storylines. I also wrote minor miscellaneous content (such as “light” side quests and barks).
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The second “digital expansion” for Star Wars: The Old Republic introduces a new player-versus-player spaceflight component. I wrote additional content as a freelancer (including companion character dialogue and “technical specs” for ships and components).
Although not officially part of the expansion, I also wrote content for the planet Oricon, added to the game between the first two expansions.
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The first “digital expansion” for Star Wars: The Old Republic continues the game’s storyline and introduces the planet Makeb. I served as Lead Writer during much of this expansion’s development and, in addition to overseeing the writing team during that time, had the privilege of writing a substantial amount of content myself (primarily focused on the Makeb Imperial faction storyline).
This expansion is also notable for introducing some of the first LGBT characters in the Star Wars universe, and while some fans criticized the addition as “too little, too late” (while others decried such additions altogether), I was very pleased to have had a part in adding diversity to a mass market franchise that, in truth, has always been unfortunately homogenous.
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The largest project I’ve ever worked on–and very likely, the largest project I ever will work on, due to its unprecedented scope. This massively multiplayer online role-playing game is set several thousand years before the Star Wars films and allows players to take on the roles of eight different character types (classes) serving either the democratic Galactic Republic or the tyrannical Sith Empire. Each of the eight character classes has a unique storyline with as much quest and conversation content as a complete single-player game (a la BioWare’s Mass Effect). In addition, the game contains vast amounts of non-class specific story content that can be played solo or in groups.
Star Wars: The Old Republic was my first video game, and I could hardly have asked for a better initiation into the industry. For over half a decade, I designed areas, branching storylines, and quests; wrote interactive dialogue; and helped manage a team of over a dozen writers under the brilliant Daniel Erickson. By the time the game launched in December 2011, I had written the complete “Imperial Agent” class storyline (along with large amounts of non-class-specific content) and been promoted to Lead Writer myself.
The game launched to favorable reviews and easily surpassed subscription numbers for any other game of its type aside from the market leader, World of Warcraft. The game won four Game Developer’s Choice Awards, was selected as MSNBC’s Game of the Year for 2011, and is the Guinness World Record holder for Largest Entertainment Voice Over Project. Despite all this, the game eventually switched to a free-to-play model (by which time I had already worked with the team to develop post-launch content–see “Rise of the Hutt Cartel”–and moved on to other projects).
Of course the game has its flaws, as does the story–I certainly wouldn’t deny that. Nonetheless, I am immensely proud to have worked on the game and been part of such a terrifically talented team. This early review from PC Gamer covers much of my own work and represents, I think, the best of the critical reaction. Now and then, I still hear feedback from fans and am enormously gratified to have helped create something that touched so many people.