Volunteer Game Narrative Designer — AI Apps & Dialogue Simulations

Craft compelling dialogue, authentic character voices, and branching narrative arcs for interactive role-play tools that help people navigate challenging, polarized conversations.

Crossing Party Lines is seeking a perceptive, empathetic Game Narrative Designer to join our Apps and Agents team. We are building interactive conversational modules and serious games where players encounter realistic, ideologically varied viewpoints in settings like workplace discussions, holiday family dinners, school board forums, and local town halls. Your writing and structural narrative design will ensure these scenarios avoid caricatures, honor authentic human motivations, and offer players meaningful choices that reflect real-world communication dynamics.

About the Apps and Agents Team

Our team blends generative AI agents with Crossing Party Lines’ proprietary frameworks developed through nearly a decade of moderating real-world political dialogue. As we prepare an application to Y Combinator and expand our digital simulations, we treat conversational design not just as text, but as an interactive mechanic. High-fidelity writing is vital to creating experiences that feel emotionally authentic, psychologically grounded, and genuinely constructive.

What You’ll Do

• Write and structure branching scenarios, contextual story arcs, and multi-turn role-play encounters centered on nuanced social and civic disagreements.
• Develop multifaceted character bibles, authentic backstories, and distinct conversational voices that reflect real socio-political perspectives without resorting to stereotypes or satire.
• Blend traditional branching narrative structures with dynamic generative AI prompts, giving autonomous agents authentic emotional boundaries, triggers, and values.
• Design narrative choice architectures, player response options, and debriefing beats that reward active listening, perspective-taking, and de-escalation over "winning" arguments.
• Collaborate with AI engineers, game designers, and conflict-resolution subject-matter experts to tune agent tone, reactivity, and narrative coherence.
• Playtest narrative flows, gather player feedback, and iterate on pacing, emotional stakes, and dialogue believability.

You May Be a Good Fit If You

• Have experience in game writing, interactive fiction, narrative design, or screenwriting (Twine, Ink, Articy:Draft, Yarn Spinner, or standard script formats).
• Excel at writing natural, colloquial dialogue with distinct subtext, emotional tension, and varied regional or demographic speech patterns.
• Can write convincingly and sympathetically from diverse political, ideological, and cultural standpoints, even those that differ from your own.
• Understand how player agency and choice design influence emotional engagement and learning outcomes.
• Are curious about bridging linear writing techniques with open-ended, LLM-driven character agents.

What You’ll Gain

• Practical narrative design experience integrating interactive writing with generative AI agents.
• Published writing credits in functional serious games and educational communication simulations.
• Direct collaboration with developers, game systems designers, and experts in depolarization.
• Professional references recognizing your narrative craft, voice, and contributions to a growing civic tech initiative.