Seth Paxton

Senior Narrative Technical Designer

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As Marathon's only Narrative Tech I was responsible for shepherding hundreds of story moments across half a dozen story channels - including cinematics, in-run dialog, codex entries, systemic events, and comms messages from Faction Agents.

This work included Narrative Design to shape what kinds of information was delivered to the player through which channels, Systems Design to define how that content interacted with other aspects of gameplay, and cross-team collaboration with UI/UX, external art houses, combat and player animation, world art, and more. I was also responsible for the engineering support of the Narrative team, ensuring that pipelines & workflows were both understood and effective in a live service environment.

The Maze Gallery
Project Lead

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I created the initial pitch for the Maze Gallery - an interactive fiction game set in a surreal art museum that is intent on keeping its patrons forever - developing the project's timeline, technical basis, and a demo of the final product before bringing on a cohort of over 30 contributors who filled the gallery with incredible stories, characters, and puzzles.

I managed the team of writers, editors, artists and musicians for 8 months; 6 for production and 2 for post-launch support. The game was well recieved by critics and players, earning a top-20 spot in IFComp and being featured at the 2025 Seattle Indies Expo.

The Maze Gallery was the first game developed under the studio I co-founded, Cryptic Conservatory, a volunteer-led group helping new narrative designers find their voice. We run regular events on the craft of writing for games and offer community projects that give authors collaborative development opportunities.

Senior Narrative Technical Designer

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Destiny 2: The Final Shape was the last major expansion for the franchise, and I had the honor of delivering emotionally powerful story beats through beloved characters. My technical work included not only the Narrative Performance of NPCs during the campaign, but also the systems of background characters in social spaces and the supporting combatant allies.

Destiny 2 Live Service
Senior Narrative Technical Designer

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I worked on every Destiny 2 Release, seasonal and annual and in-between, from Season of Arrivals to Episode 3: Heresy. This set of 22 shipped products over 7 years reflects the incredible pace of live service games: every 3 months we would create missions that delivered story through radio dialog, NPC interactions, and engaging progression systems, and every year we would deliver a full campaign on top of quarterly major events and weekly content updates.