Principal Game Analyst, Narrative Design

This Principal Game Analyst, Narrative Design role at Tencent Games' Game Research Center focuses on developing systematic narrative capabilities and content strategy. The role involves tracking global narrative trends, analyzing top narrative works, and providing strategic insights. Key responsibilities include guiding projects on story structure, character frameworks, and worldbuilding, as well as developing narrative evaluation frameworks and enhancing company-wide narrative capabilities through training and collaboration. Candidates need 8+ years of experience in game narrative design on successful projects.

Must Have

• 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
• 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 localization requirements
• Strong communication abilities
• Strong logical reasoning and structured thinking
• Strong business-level English proficiency

Good to Have

• 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
• Cross-cultural collaboration experience is a plus

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 open, 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 facility 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.We seek candidates with core creative experience in globally successful narrative-driven projects, a proven ability to build mature narrative systems, and an industry track record that includes awards or teaching/speaking experience in narrative design.

Responsibilities:

1. Market Research & Narrative Trend Insights

• Continuously track global narrative design trends, including branching narratives, immersive storytelling, and narrative systems.
• Analyze 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 optimization 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 localization 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).

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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.

Who we are

Tencent is a world-leading internet and technology company that develops innovative products and services to improve the quality of life for people around the world.

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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.

Read More