Principal Game Analyst, Narrative Design

Lightspeed Studios; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Lightspeed Studios is seeking a Narrative Design Expert to join the Game Research Center team in London. The role focuses on developing narrative capabilities, providing narrative guidance for key projects, and tracking global narrative trends.

Applicants should have over 8 years of experience in narrative design, a strong understanding of RPG and GaaS genres, and excellent communication skills. The position offers the opportunity to work with global teams and contribute to innovative game design.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in game narrative design.
• Core narrative designer or Lead Narrative Designer on successful projects.
• Strong business-level English proficiency.

Responsibilities

• Track global narrative design trends and produce strategic insights.
• Provide guidance on narrative structure and character frameworks.
• Develop narrative evaluation frameworks and enhance capabilities.
• Collaborate with teams to align narrative design with product strategy.

Skills

Narrative design experience

Cross‑cultural narrative expression

Strong communication abilities

Logical reasoning

Job description

Business Unit Tencent Games was established in 2003. We are a leading global platform for game development, operations and publishing, and the largest online game community in China. Tencent Games has developed and operated over 140 games. We provide cross‑platform interactive entertainment experience for more than 800 million users in over 200 countries and regions around the world. Honor of Kings, PUBG MOBILE, and League of Legends, are some of our most popular titles around the world. Meanwhile, we actively promote the development of esports industry, work with global partners to build an opening, collaborative and symbiotic industrial ecology, and create high‑quality digital life experiences for players.

About the Hiring Team Game Research Center (GRC) is a department focusing on game industry study, game analysis, game design research, data analysis and game development supporting. We’re one of the world’s leading research facilities in game industry, building a global knowledge tank to help our teams make better decisions. We’re looking for innovative and passionate team members who love all kinds of games and have insight about the challenging global market.

What the Role Entails

This position sits within the GRC team. Its core objective is to introduce an international expert with leading narrative design experience to develop systematic narrative capabilities, establish content strategy methodologies, and provide narrative empowerment for key projects.

Responsibilities

1. Market Research & Narrative Trend Insights

   Continuously track global narrative design trends, including branching narratives, immersive storytelling, and narrative systems. Analyse top global narrative works (across GaaS, console, PC, and mobile) and extract replicable creative frameworks. Produce strategic narrative insights, market structure analyses, and player preference reports for senior management and project teams.

2. Narrative System Design & Project Enablement

   Serve as the core narrative expert, providing guidance on story structure, character frameworks, worldbuilding, and narrative style for key projects. Review prototypes, key milestones, and narrative versions, delivering actionable narrative optimisation recommendations. Support teams in building systematic narrative toolchains (narrative pacing, chapter planning, dialogue systems, branching structures, etc.). Guide teams in improving narrative consistency, character depth, and emotional pacing within gameplay.

3. Methodology Development & Capability Building

   Develop narrative evaluation frameworks, including narrative experience assessment standards, pacing models, character strategies and worldbuilding logic systems. Consolidate best practices from successful projects into internal playbooks, toolkits, and case libraries. Enhance company‑wide narrative capabilities through trainings, workshops and public lectures.

4. Cross‑Team Collaboration & Strategic Support

   Collaborate closely with project teams, producers, marketing and user research to ensure narrative design aligns with overall product strategy. Provide opportunity assessment and investment recommendations for narrative‑driven genres to strategy teams. Support key project decision points by offering narrative perspectives that help build team alignment.

Who We Look For

1. Experience Background

   8+ years of experience in game narrative design. Served as a core narrative designer or Lead Narrative Designer on successful or highly reputable narrative projects. Candidates with award‑winning narrative works, industry award nominations or teaching experience in universities/industry platforms are preferred. Familiar with narrative structures across RPG, action, adventure and GaaS genres.

2. Professional Skills

   Capable of independently building worldviews, character systems, plot structures and narrative pacing. Understands narrative‑system integration and can create effective links between gameplay and narrative. Able to assess narrative experience quality and break down the core logic of successful works. Familiar with cross‑cultural narrative expression and localisation requirements.

3. General Skills

   Strong communication abilities; able to clearly articulate narrative strategies and design intent to diverse stakeholders. Strong logical reasoning and structured thinking. Cross‑cultural collaboration experience is a plus.

4. Language & Location

   Strong business‑level English proficiency is essential. Open to being based overseas or maintaining long‑term collaboration with overseas projects (NL/UK).

Equal Employment Opportunity at Tencent: As an equal opportunity employer, we firmly believe that diverse voices fuel our innovation and allow us to better serve our users and the community. We foster an environment where every employee of Tencent feels supported and inspired to achieve individual and common goals.