Cara Ellison began her career in the games industry as a QA tester on GTA 4, and went on to become a games journalist writing for publications such as Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and The Guardian. She later moved into narrative design, securing a role as senior narrative designer at Sony Santa Monica, before joining Gravity Well in 2023, a studio formed by Respawn and Infinity Ward veterans Drew McCoy and Jon Shiring. Ellison was chosen as a BAFTA Breakthrough for her work on the VR puzzle adventure Ghost Town by Fireproof Games.
How does it feel to be nominated for BAFTA Breakthrough?
It feels amazing. It was such a surprise and a shock.
What advantages do you think it can give?
I think it can help you figure out what’s next. It feels almost like a milestone for me. I’ve been in the industry for over 16 years now, and it reminds me that you can still learn new things, and grow, and become something else. All of those things are really useful to think about, because one of my greatest fears is that I’ve become creatively stagnant, and I stop thinking that I can learn something new.
Also I’ve been talking with BAFTA about leveling up my leadership skills, and really thinking about how I can keep a lot of our creative talent in the UK and in a sustainable position. It’s been devastating to look at how many layoffs there have been, and I’m really afraid that we’re going to lose a lot of our really experienced game designers. A lot of people have to move out of the UK to find jobs.
One of the things that I could think about doing in the future is reinvesting my experience and knowledge into the UK games industry, and seeing young people who are graduating from places like Abertay University. So I’ve really been thinking about the future and about returning a lot of the experience that I’ve managed to get around the world.
So you’re thinking about more of a teaching role?
Yeah, for certain. So there’s a lot of that, thinking about how I can reinvest and try to grow the industry here.
You mentioned layoffs, and narrative design in particular has been very hard hit in recent years, especially with the rise of AI. What’s been your experience?
I think narrative is generally one of the first departments to get hit, along with QA and sometimes production. I think it’s because people think that those rules are very fungible: like, if we need a writer, we can always just swap in another one. But that’s not really true.
The institutional knowledge that people gain from being inside companies – the knowledge of tools, knowledge of the engine, knowledge of how things work, how to get things done – all of that is lost when you lay someone off. But what’s interesting about narrative design is that it’s always seen as expendable, because it’s not top-level game design: it’s not engineering, that kind of thing. Which is such a shame, because personally I think that your game’s story or narrative, even if it’s not a traditional narrative, is the thing that actually keeps people picking the controller back up and continuing to play for a longer amount of time. In many instances, it propels you towards the end of the game.
What have you been working on recently? I think you advised on The Séance of Blake Manor, didn’t you?
That’s right, yeah, which was amazing. What an opportunity, and what an incredible game. Even from those early builds, I knew immediately it was going to be 10 out of 10.
I’ve also been working on a smaller game called Sleight of Hand from RiffRaff Games, which is really great. And my full-time job is I work with a company called Gravity Well, and they’re a bigger studio, but they haven’t announced any of their projects yet.
You worked on Void Bastards, too – what did your parents say when you told them you were working on a game called Void Bastards?
They were not surprised! I’ve always been quite a sweary child. A lot of the characters that I developed for Void Bastards are also extremely sweary as well. Some of them are wee Neds that come and try to attack you. But it was really fun to work on.
Obviously you’re a very senior writer these days, but are you personally finding it harder to get gigs, or are fewer people coming to you with writing assignments?
No, but I think that’s rare. I don’t actually know why that is. I guess part of it is that I know a lot of people through working as a journalist for The Guardian and PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun. But also, I’ve done a very broad amount of work across the globe. So I worked on God of War: Ragnarok, and I did lots of work in Seattle and Australia. Because I had an interest in travelling, that’s helped me to broaden the types of jobs that I’ve taken. But obviously that is a privilege, because many people have kids and a mortgage – I was always renting, so within five seconds I could just drop everything and move.
So that’s been a boon to me, but I also recognize that that’s a privilege, and I don’t think that should be the norm to get jobs in the industry. You should be able to be in a cottage in the middle of the Highlands and still work on games.
This is a point of controversy, isn’t it? Because some companies are insisting that employees come into the office now.
I mean, there are some things that are easier in person, but I don’t think those things have to happen every day. Companies generally have the ability to fly their employees in for a couple of weeks to do that important teamwork, then go back to remote working. Because I think actually you get more done remotely, and I think it’s more productive. You have less commute time, and you have less stress, and you don’t have to pay for childcare sometimes, so that is really important to retain. And I feel like happy employees make better games.
One last question: what does it mean to be a member of BAFTA? How does it help you?
I think it helps me feel like I’m connected to my peers. Because living in Dundee – even though we have a small games industry here and we do talk to each other – I feel like I need a broader sense of what my peers are doing and something to aspire to. BAFTA gives me this idea that I’m part of a cohort of people who are really trying to push forward our medium, and are trying to do something special in spite of all of the horrible things that are happening around the world.
Art gets me up in the morning. It’s the reason that people do their jobs and do their chores and try to keep going, because they want to know what happens next in their favourite comic, or what happens in the next video game that comes out, or what happens in the next episode of Pluribus. Art is something compelling that makes people feel human. And what I get from BAFTA is this feeling of plurality, and this idea of people from loads of different backgrounds all telling stories.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Discover more about the other members of the 2025 BAFTA Breakthrough games cohort: Kyle Banks, Stanley Baxton, Sally Beaumont, and Mark Choi.
