As the video games industry continues to face massive layoffs, narrative jobs are taking the biggest hit. The industry’s job cuts over the past couple of years—more than 30,000 roles were eliminated in 2023 and 2024—disproportionately affected narrative designers, the creative professionals who craft the story elements of the game and give a title its emotional punch.
Even the director of the game Avowed, Carrie Patel—a successful author and narrative developer with over a decade of experience at the game studio Obsidian Entertainment—feels lucky she was able to start her career years ago. She can’t imagine trying to break into the industry under today’s conditions.
“It just seems to be harder and harder to find a path in,” Patel says. “I've heard colleagues hired within the last three or five years say essentially the same thing.”
Patel has been with Obsidian since 2013, when she started as a narrative designer on the first Pillars of Eternity, a role-playing game released in 2015. She was narrative colead on the 2018 sequel, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and went on to work on the narrative design for 2019’s The Outer Worlds.
Avowed, a first-person fantasy RPG set in the same universe as Obsidian’s acclaimed Pillars of Eternity series, is available today on Windows PC and Xbox Series X via early access. The game’s official launch is Tuesday, February 18.
