THUNDER BAY - Ann Lemay is a storyteller, but rather than spin straightforward narratives of action and adventure, she and a team give you the tools to craft your own adventure in far off lands and times in history.
For the past 20 years, Lemay has built a career in the video game industry and she is now a senior writer with game developer, Ubisoft, in Montreal. Lemay is one of many special guests at this year’s ThunderCon, taking place this weekend.
Lemay’s journey to becoming a senior writer was a little uncommon, as she began her career as a community developer and later as a user interface designer. In 2005, she began working on a new project and was placed in level design, but after speaking with the creative director and expressing her interest in writing, she was given the opportunity to join the writing team.
“It’s a very uncommon path into writing, but I’ve been doing it ever since and I sort of learned on the job,” she said.
As a writer, Lemay has worked on AAA titles including the Assassin’s Creed series, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. When it comes to writing the story for a video game, it is not a simple process and there are many people involved and many unique considerations.
“Interactive narrative is definitely key,” she said. “But it’s also accounting for gameplay. As a video game writer, it’s not only about telling a story. But it depends on the genre. When you are working on a game with a certain level of narrative, you have to account for the fact that narrative is not just writing. It’s teamwork. I’m not just doing a story in my corner. I am working with a team and working out what kind of story we want to tell through all disciplines.”
Everything from art direction to level design will help inform and shape the narrative, which is why, Lemay said, it all comes down to teamwork.
And while women have faced challenges and barriers in the video game industry, Lemay said it is no different than any other industry and the video game world has changed significantly in the last 20 years.
“When I started in video games 20 years ago, there were far less women than there are today,” she said. “I think what’s important for us to look at it is there are a lot more women than there were back in the day.”
“I’m at Ubisoft right now and I’m in an amazing situation where I work with women every day, in every discipline, in every level of management, and it’s absolutely extraordinary,” she continued.
At the end of the day, it’s all about telling a story, providing an escape for people who want to experience a virtual tale and craft their own adventure, which for Lemay, is the best part of her job.
“Connecting with the people who play the games we make really gives me the energy to go out and make more games,” she said. “When I get to be on the floor at a con and people come up to me and say: this was amazing, and it was something I worked on, even if it was just secondary or tertiary, or something I wrote myself and brought to life with level designers and artists, that is the very best moment.”
Fans can meet Lemay at ThunderCon, which continues on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Valhalla Inn. For Lemay, ThunderCon offers something very unique for all fans of sci-fi, video games, comics, and everything in between.
“I think it does something really important and does something that needs to be talked about, which is because it is a con that touches several aspects of geek dom from anime, Star Wars, Star Trek, cosplay, science, it’s a con that allows people who might be interested in several things, but don’t know other people to connect with,” she said.
“That’s a really important thing for cons on a general level. It lets you find birds of a feather.”
