When the games industry gets turned upside down - like it is right now - game writers tend to go one of two (quiet) directions.

Some go dangerously quiet. If they're working in a studio, they keep their heads down, lying low, hoping the project doesn't get canceled. If they're between jobs or looking for their first job, they get paralyzed, pulled in by the hypnotic power of doomscrolling and anxiety.

Others go quiet in a different way: they get focused. They've decided this career matters too much to give up on. They're not going anywhere. And they're getting to work. And quietly - behind the scenes - they’re landing new roles, getting promoted, and working on dream projects.

If you want to be in the second group, you need to understand what's actually happening in the industry right now — and why it matters more than most writers realize.

There are two filters at work in the industry right now. One is external — studios sorting through candidates, deciding who's serious and who isn't. The other is internal, and that’s the really dangerous one.

The External Filter

GDC is coming up, and so I’m on lots of Zoom calls with narrative directors and studio heads - catching up and making plans to meet up. I’ve been asking all of them, “How are things looking for you guys?”

One director, Kristina (name changed to protect her privacy), told me that she recently posted an open game-writing role at her studio. She was flooded with applicants — including experienced, working writers.

And then she started reading the applications.

What she found shocked her: typo-ridden writing samples (“not just one or two - I’m talking typos EVERYWHERE”), general sloppiness, applications that announced, without quite meaning to, "I'm not even trying here."

So while she had a lot of applications to go through, it didn’t take long because so many people took themselves out of the pool.

In the end, she only had a few applications that deserved serious consideration.

And the person she hired wasn't yet qualified on paper. She hired them because of who they were and how they showed up. She saw they were passionate, easy to work with, and showed plenty of potential. Hired!

Studios can afford to be picky right now — about who they hire, who they promote, and who they protect when layoffs come. There's a filter in place now that wasn't there when studios were expanding like crazy. But that filter isn't a 700-foot-high stone wall in Westeros; it's just a signal detector.

Think of it like a radio. Studios are tuning in, looking for a specific frequency. Not credits or years of experience, necessarily — remember, Kristina saw plenty of submissions from experienced writers. They're looking for how you show up for your work. Your seriousness. Your commitment, even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard. If you're broadcasting on that frequency, they'll find you. If you're not, you're just static.

The Internal Filter

That external filter can feel brutal, but it's impersonal — and you can get past it. (Kristina's new writer did!)

The internal filter is the voice that says the industry is too broken, the odds are too long, the timing is too bad. A lot of writers are giving in to that voice right now. They are defeating themselves before they even try. The dangerous quiet isn't just out there in the industry. It can live inside of us, too.

It can feel like playing it safe — but really it means "not playing at all."

In other words, your "radio" is either on or off. Not just to the world — to yourself.

The writers who are going to create and build and ship right now won't be the ones who waited for conditions to improve. They'll be the ones who kept going, who kept saying Yes. The ones who remember how much they LOVE this work, how passionate they are about storytelling and video games and videogame storytelling — and they are using that love to keep going.

The ones who love this work enough to fully show up and show out are the ones who were always going to make it. The filter isn't keeping them out. It's actively LOOKING for them.

I am working right now with writers who are investing in training in the middle of all of this. Not because they're naive about what's happening. Because they are that serious about where they're going. That's what committed people do when things get hard: they get down to business and get ready to show people what they are capable of.

It's why The Narrative Department exists: to train, support, and champion these kinds of writers. Writers like you.

For a reminder of what's possible when we remember that we love what we do, here’s Alysa Liu — the skater who went to Milan and said, "I just need to be here and show people what I can do." And she sure did.

I'm heading to GDC next month — and when I get back, I'm hosting a free live debrief for game writers. I'll share what I heard, what studios are actually looking for right now, and what it means for your career.

It's free. It's live. And I'd love to see you there.

Susan O'Connor is an award-winning game writer with credits on over 25 titles, BioShock, Far Cry, and Tomb Raider. Her projects have sold over 30 million copies and generated more than $500 million in sales. She founded The Narrative Department to help writers learn the ins and outs of writing for games - skills that everyone assumes you somehow already know.