MEGHNA JAYANTH

Around the industry in eight games: one writer's journey through indie to triple-A and back again.

- ALAN WEN

That so many developers still contract out their games’ writing might suggest that narrative is a secondary concern for the medium. But for Meghna Jayanth, who over the past decade has worked across a broad range of titles and roles, from building worlds to writing barks, it’s been a boon. “My career trajectory is unusual, and my professional circumstances are not everyone’s,” she admits. But she’s happy with the tradeoff of getting to work on multiple projects at once. “I really value that kind of freedom, and the independence of that.”

Just as unusual, perhaps, is how Jayanth came to video games. Born in 1987, and spending her childhood between Bangalore, London and Saudi Arabia, she didn’t own a console before buying an Xbox 360 to play Grand Theft Auto IV. After studying English literature at the University Of Oxford – where she also directed sketch comedy group The Oxford Revue – it was during a year at film school that she found herself drawn to parser-based games and interactive fiction. That resulted in her final-year project being an interactive Web series rather than a film, a choice that “was not hugely popular with my tutors, who were into cinema as the purest artform”.

A job at the BBC, commissioning games, brought her into contact with other developers including Failbetter Games, creator of the browser-based Fallen London. It was in that game’s Storynexus engine that, after being made redundant, Jayanth began writing Samsara, a choice-driven game about dream walking in 18th-century Bengal. While it remains only partially complete, it set her on the path she’s followed for the past decade. Looking back over her career so far, Jayanth reflects: “I’m so trained to think in possibilities now.”

80 DAYS

Developer/publisher Inkle

Format Android, iOS, PC, Switch Release 2014