Narrative Designer

Narrative designers build the story side of video games: branching dialogue, quests, characters and the lines people in the game world say. The writing part of this job is among the work AI is best at. A 2025 Microsoft Research study of AI chatbot use ranked writers and authors 3rd of 785 occupations for how much of their work AI can help with (Microsoft sells AI tools, and the authors warn a high score does not by itself mean job losses). The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects little or no change in writer and author jobs from 2025 to 2035 and says directly that "increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) for writing is projected to dampen demand for these workers."

Game studios are already using AI for first drafts. Ubisoft built an in-house tool, Ghostwriter, that writes first drafts of "barks", the short lines characters say during combat or when you walk into an area, which scriptwriters then pick from and polish. Ubisoft says the tool is not replacing writers, but it takes over one of their most time-consuming tasks.

The industry around the job is shrinking and unhappy. In the GDC Festival of Gaming's 2026 survey of more than 2,300 game industry professionals, 28% had been laid off in the past two years (33% in the US), and 63% of people in game design and narrative roles said generative AI is having a negative effect on the industry. An earlier version of this entry said the survey found narrative had the highest layoff rate of any department, at 19%. That was a misreading: the 19% was the share of executives and business staff who think AI is good for the industry, and the public summary gives no layoff rate by department.

We keep this at 4, a notch above game design (3). The writing at the center of this job is some of the most AI-exposed work measured, the government expects AI to cut demand for writers, and the game industry is cutting jobs. We have no count of narrative jobs lost to AI, so this is our judgment, not a measured fact. What would change the score: evidence that studios are hiring as many junior writers as before while using these tools would bring it to 3. Studios shipping games with most dialogue written by AI would push it to 5.