In honor of folks freaked out about how many things they “have to” do to advance their career, I present a very partial list of things I’ve been encouraged or expected to do/know since I got into games.

Not shown: which of these were fantastic advice, which were legit job requirements, and which were gatekeeping.

history and canon of literary hypertext in the 90s

improv technique

theories of narratology

all works of Infocom, Scott Adams, Melbourne House, Magnetic Scrolls, etc

canon and design trends in CYOA and gamebooks

who’s who in Oulipo

history of text adventures in languages other than English

state of digital humanities as a field

Prolog, Answer Set Programming, and other logic programming approaches

general history of table-top roleplaying game development and some rough concept of what goes on in LARP design both North American and Nordic

Agile dev practices and a bunch of specific associated software and systems

every game ever submitted to the IF Comp in its 24 years of history

transmedia: what are/were the major projects, what are/were the tools, why haven’t we heard so much about it lately

running safe and inclusive spaces, codes of conduct and the arguments concerning these

nonprofit fundraising and institutional development

JavaScript

who is working on narrative games, game AI, or procedural generation at the academic, indie, and AAA levels in the US and Europe and ideally elsewhere also

freelance scheduling, billing, networking, insurance, accounting, marketing and time-management strategies

recent developments in interactive video and audio

conversational pragmatics

stage magic techniques

C#

norms of participation in academic conference program committees and journal reviewing

marginalized authors in games and IF, and standout works that capture unusual experiences

the landscape of London games/writing/journalism/TV/radio personalities specifically

escape room design and canon

interactive documentaries, canon and tooling

roguelites

the complete oeuvre of Telltale

locational games, canon and tooling

Lua

every game that’s nominated for an IGF narrative award or other industry writing award, whether or not I was on the judging panel at the time

uses of interactive storytelling in museums and cultural heritage sites

who’s who in speculative fiction and what they’re doing these days

standard wisdom about running startups, MVPs, and attracting investment

ontology and knowledge representation

writing for voice actors

accessible app design for narrative-heavy apps

art direction

educational game design and requirements for school-facing projects

design practices for VR and AR

how to deal with being interrupted repeatedly, and other apparently gendered behavior that is hard to call out in the moment

TADS, StoryNexus, StorySpace, Varytale, Twine, ink, Tracery, Texture, Unity, Unreal, GameMaker Studio, Hugo, Alan, Quest, Ren’Py, AIML, ChatScript, and assorted specific modding tools; how to plug these together, in some cases

physical object storytelling, both in terms of common practice and in terms of production methods

theme park design

assorted visualization tools, now mostly JavaScript-based, though at one point there was a trend for Processing

IF and narrative game publishing venues

government grant application processes

typography and layout

Tableau

public speaking skills

board games with a narrative or storytelling element

every “blockbuster” AAA game

natural language processing methods; NLTK, assorted online APIs

attend GDC, SXSW, PAX, PAX East, E3, IndieCade, Practice, GamesCom, Amaze, Develop, EGX, AdventureX, Feral Vector, ELO, ICCC, ICIDS, FDG, AIIDE, DiGRA, INT, et al. (yearly)

narrative content design for MMOs

history and current status of academic research programs in procedural narrative

trends and marketing concerns in children’s interactive ebooks

machine learning methods and tools

how to write a literary novel that would garner respect, e.g. by winning the Man Booker Prize

everything that would be taught in an undergraduate computer science course

immersive theatre, what the major shows are and how they work

assorted specific culture references, especially Westworld, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones

advergaming and viral marketing game tie-in methods

how to write a popular novel that would make buckets of money and appear on the NYT bestseller list

assembly language

narrative design for free to play systems

alt controller design

how to wear clothes as a woman at an industry event

current market size and revenues from interactive fiction games and narrative-heavy games

Alexa skill creation

Personal Brand development

computational creativity theories and practices

dozens of books of writing and design advice for game writers, screenwriters, novelists, etc, etc

computational paralinguistics

which parties to go to at GDC and how to get in

detailed CV of the person I just met, who is no doubt famous, but unknown to me

C++

Zizek