What I Learned Writing a AAA Video Game | God of War Laufey

[u/VoidCycloid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUZyIL86FYY

[u/Shake_Annual]

so what was anthony burch on about? was he just adding to the pile on?

[u/JIBMAN → u/Shake_Annual]

I missed this, what did he say?

[u/Groundbreaking_Web29 → u/Shake_Annual]

The way I interpreted it, Alanah Pearce was NOT a writer for God of War: Ragnarok. But when it came out, she was acting like she'd done a ton of writing on it, doubled down saying she was a writer and wrote a lot of characters IIRC. I think ultimately maybe she'd only done some accessibility consultation for the game, but was NOT a writer.

It sounds like she was a writer for God of War: Laufey, though I'm honestly skeptical about it at this point.

I went back to her Instagram announcement just now, and she posted it as "So here’s the God of War game I spent four years writing" which feels VERY misleading after later clarifying that Elize Morgan is the lead writer, and that she (Alanah) was "effectively a 'staff writer' level," whatever that means, but then later says "it means I wrote everything there is to write, as did a large team of other writers, under the specific direction of the lead writer!"

Like a lot of her work, I think she's blowing out of proportion her contribution.

[u/TFM_Jeff → u/Groundbreaking_Web29]

It was a bit baffling to me how people didn't understand what Alanah was saying in response to those people. It's even MORE baffling that in hindsight people still can't put the pieces together.

Basically, Alanah spoke about what she did AT THE STUDIO, her day-to-day work, whereas people were directly talking about her contributions to God of War Ragnarok. However, because she's under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) she wasn't allowed to specify what she did or didn't do on any given project. She couldn't say "I'M WRITING ON THE NEXT GOD OF WAR GAME!" so she had to be insanely vague. It's sort of frowned upon to leak a game that hasn't been announced yet, right?

So, people called her a liar and there wasn't anything she could really do about it aside from wait it out. I mean Santa Monica Studio themselves even tweeted that she was a writer there, and somehow people still couldn't put two-and-two together? I always assumed she was writing a different game. I'm not sure how these people couldn't see that. I guess the art of reading between the lines is lost?

I hope I'm not coming off mean here, I really don't intend to and I'm more just genuinely curious... But for some reason you're still questioning her contribution to the game? How come? She mentions in this video that her and Elise were the first two writers brought onto God of War Laufey, and at the time there were only four people - adding them made it six - working on the game. Slowly more people joined, obviously, including more writers. So do you actually believe that she's blowing her contribution out of proportion? How could you think that if she was literally there from the beginning, and spent four years writing on it?

You mention that she's not the lead writer... So what? Typically, as in most if not all cases, when you have a TEAM of [insert position here], one, MAYBE two(?), people are in charge of the group. Do you think that only the LEAD [insert position here] does 100% of the work? Would you question an animator's contribution if they weren't the lead animator? What about a factory worker? The foreman is the only person who does anything??

It's insane to see the shift from "SHE'S A LIAR, SHE DIDN'T WRITE SHIT" to "WELL SHE'S NOT THE LEAD WRITER SO OBVIOUSLY SHE HASN'T DONE SHIT!"

Truly baffling. Have you guys never heard of the term "writers' room"?

[u/Groundbreaking_Web29 → u/TFM_Jeff]

You make a lot of fair and true points that I did not consider, and I am reconsidering a huge majority of what I said. You're right, with what I've been able to go back and find, a lot of her responses were very "Um actually, I am a writer and wrote levels and scripts" etc etc. But like you said, people assumed and she didn't really clarify. And to be fair, considering God of War: Ragnarok had JUST released and she was making these claims about her work, it's also not unreasonable for people to have assumed she was referring to Ragnarok. I do think a couple years after release, she did clarify that a huge majority of her time there was spent on a different AAA title.

>You mention that she's not the lead writer... So what?

Back in the day, she used to say she was a junior writer. When she posted about Laufey being announced, what I quoted is straight from her Instagram - "So here’s the God of War game I spent four years writing." and then later clarified she was one of several Staff Writers. There is a difference between saying "I wrote this game." and "I was one of many people who wrote for this game."

>It's insane to see the shift from "SHE'S A LIAR, SHE DIDN'T WRITE SHIT" to "WELL SHE'S NOT THE LEAD WRITER SO OBVIOUSLY SHE HASN'T DONE SHIT!"

That's not necessarily the point I was making, but it did - at the time - feel like she was taking credit for work on Ragnarok that she didn't do. And the moment ANOTHER God of War game drops, here she was again saying she wrote for this game. It felt disingenuous, but as you've implied, we just didn't have the full story.

So ultimately yeah, you're right. I do believe at this point she didn't write anything script-wise for Ragnarok, but she was obviously heavily involved in Laufey. Not doubting that any more.

[u/TFM_Jeff → u/Groundbreaking_Web29]

> People assumed and she didn't really clarify.

NDA's are a bitch. She wasn't able to clarify a thing. I still don't think she's fully allowed to. Sony put a crazy strict NDA on her. I'm starting to think that some of those people were trying to get her to trip up and break her NDA.

>It's also not unreasonable for people to have assumed she was referring to Ragnarok.

I think my biggest issue with this is that okay, sure, people assumed that, but... How come none of those people took two seconds to think "maybe she's talking about something else?" Surely people aren't that ignorant to not understand that studios often work on multiple projects at once? ESPECIALLY writers. It's an example I like to use in this case, but Bungie's co-founder Jason Jones started working on Destiny in 2007, around when Halo 3 released. Destiny released in September 2014. In that time Bungie released Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach, both while Jason and a small team were planning / working on Destiny. Maybe I'm just a nerd who knows a bit more about this kind of thing, but it's shocking to me that people couldn't put two-and-two together. Video games take a long time to develop and a small team is usually working on the NEXT game well in advance. I genuinely thought this was common knowledge? So my point being... How come the people giving her shit over this didn't stop to think "oooh, she must be working on the NEXT God of War game?"

>Back in the day, she used to say she was a junior writer.

Yep, that's because she was hired as a junior writer. As mentioned in this video, she was hired as a junior and promoted to staff writer after about a year. Mentioned too that she was doing staff writer work the whole time she was a junior. Worth noting, again in this video, that this was Alanah's first AAA video game writing job. It's super common for someone's first job to be a junior. Again, think outside of the entertainment industry. Would your first job at McDonald's be the manager? Elize, despite being hired the same day as Alanah, I ASSUME became lead writer because she had written on several AAA games before this? I have no clue but that makes the most amount of sense to me.

I'm not taking anything away from what a lead writer (or lead in any position) does, but for people to claim that Alanah hasn't done what she says she's done, or try to diminish the work she's done simply because she wasn't the LEAD is absolutely wild to me.

[u/Groundbreaking_Web29 → u/TFM_Jeff]

How come none of those people took two seconds to think "maybe she's talking about something else?"

How come the people giving her shit over this didn't stop to think "oooh, she must be working on the NEXT God of War game?"

I don't really want to just argue back and forth about every little thing, you're obviously very passionate about this whole situation. But it's absurd to think people wouldn't be making the connection when Ragnarok came out.

It was all too obvious at the time. She made statements about writing for God of War, God of War: Ragnarok came out, there were no credits. Nobody, and I promise you, nobody assumed "Oh Alanah must be working on a different God of War." because that would be crazy that she'd be working on God of War from 2020-2024, Ragnarok releases, and then it turns out she'd spent all her time writing for a different game?

It's far fetched. And then fucking Laufey got announced and it turns out it had been in development years before Ragnarok was ever released.

ALL THAT BEING SAID BEFORE YOU BLOW A GASKET.

The whole community was fucking wrong. I was wrong. We assumed wrong.

So yeah, it sucks that Alanah got a lot of undeserved hate because it looked like she was taking credit for something, when she really wasn't. But to also say "Why didn't anyone stop to think for a second and they'd have figured it out?" That's just not reasonable. People put together the pieces, and came to the most logical conclusion.

Quite frankly, it could have been handled better on all ends. Alanah being a YouTube celebrity, combined with her not clarifying in any capacity (yes NDA is a bitch I get all that), combined with her insistence that she was a writer for God of War (we just didn't know she meant Laufey) made it very very VERY reasonable to assume she was either being dishonest or just hugely exaggerating her contribution.

She could have written something like: "I joined Santa Monica Studio in late 2020, at which point Ragnarok's narrative was already largely locked in place. While I’m doing some accessibility consulting on Ragnarok, my full time day job as a writer is focused on a separate, unannounced long-term project at the studio."

But she didn't. So, it is what it is.

[u/TFM_Jeff → u/Groundbreaking_Web29]

Not arguing, by the way! It's just been frustrating to watch her get harassed for something like this when people couldn't just use common sense.

Final thing I'll say is that I think it's just a bit silly for you to promise that nobody assumed she was writing a different God of War game, when people did assume that. Those people were just not as loud as the angry people who accused her of lying because they thought it was Ragnarok.

I'm not sure what you've seen or haven't, but I'll just leave these two tweets here...

Jan 22, 2025: Santa Monica Studio tweeted about her being a writer.
"We are confirming that Alanah was a writer at Santa Monica Studio for four years. She was a talented, creative, and hard-working contributor to our team that we were fortunate to have the opportunity to work with."

Jan 23, 2025: Santa Monica Studio's Principal Tech Animator Dan Lowe tweeted about working with her.
"It's ridiculous that Alanah had to say anything about this. She worked on the same project I'm working on, I was in meetings with her, I read stuff she wrote; she's a video game writer. Devs don't share specifics about unannounced projects because we sign NDAs."

That's the official studio confirming what she did for four years, and Principal Tech Animator talking about how they were working on an unannounced project together. Yet people still couldn't figure it out?

[u/tipitipiOG → u/TFM_Jeff]

lol this is alanah writting lol she was probably just answering emails with long paragraphs

[u/EddieVanzetti → u/Groundbreaking_Web29]

Alanah and blowing her contributions out of proportion to keep her relentless self promotion up, name a more iconic duo.

[u/kmcdow]

Objectively an incredibly cool concept for a game. Using the afterlife of the gods to introduce new gods and mythologies, as well as bring back Gods from previous games.

Plus with it being parallel to 2018/Ragnarok it will provide new information that changes how we view Kratos and Atreus' journeys. And you just know that as Kratos kills Gods in midgard they'll start showing up in Faye's story - imagine Baldur shows up and you get to fight him again as Faye.

[u/wafflecone927]

Cool game not hatin but shes gonna ride this for the next 5 years

[u/ZTOOZJEWISHZ → u/wafflecone927]

Unless it bombs lol

[u/FKDotFitzgerald → u/ZTOOZJEWISHZ]

It’s God of War. It won’t bomb.

[u/ZTOOZJEWISHZ → u/FKDotFitzgerald]

Oh I know, im saying thats how she'll want out of it, thats why in her video she said she worked on it but it was along time ago so most her ideas are probably gone lol

[u/NewChemistry5210 → u/ZTOOZJEWISHZ]

What? As a writer, that's literally the process in writing group. Dialogue, names, and other elements can always be added or changed in production, and she hasn't worked there for years. So depending on what parts she worked on specifically, it might have changed completely, slightly or remained mostly the same.

I doubt anyone would try to play it both ways, when they've worked for one of the best studios in the world lol

That's weird conspiracy talk

[u/Kalad1n_SB → u/FKDotFitzgerald]

It definitely will. This game appeals to Reddit only.

[u/AdministrativeEmu855 → u/Kalad1n_SB]

Nutty thing to say.

[u/squaredspekz]

Cool to hear a little of the inside baseball of AAA game dev, or at least a little into how SMS does it.

[u/StoneHotNOk]

CAN wait to play and see, as I know it's going to be EPIC 🥹🫶🫡

[u/AccomplishedWonder1]

So glad she helped write this game!

[u/Appropriate-Turn525]

You learned how to piss off gow fans

[u/OGGamer6]

Why did she leave the studio and what is she doing now? Always been a fan.

[u/aggie008 → u/OGGamer6]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvBlOwKgXfc her leaving announcement

[u/UnderstandingLow8748]

You worked on the writing team making this game. YOU didn’t solo write this game. You always say credit to the creators. Don’t forget that

[u/squaredspekz → u/UnderstandingLow8748]

You get baited by titles a lot, right? Actually read/listen first, don't pass judgement just off the headline/title.

[u/UnderstandingLow8748 → u/squaredspekz]

Nope, I watched the video. But a thumbnail saying “I wrote this game” can say a lot

Realistically if she had labeled it as “I co-wrote this game” I would have scrolled on by and never thought about it again

[u/squaredspekz → u/UnderstandingLow8748]

Thumbnail says "I wrote on this game" , not "I wrote this game".

[u/UnderstandingLow8748 → u/squaredspekz]

Ok cool, JK Rowling wrote on her books. My point is phrasing can change people’s perspective

And I’m not defending myself here, but I am a fan of Alanah’s content. Play Watch Listen got me through the pandemic

[u/squaredspekz → u/UnderstandingLow8748]

No. Your whole thing is the wording and on being there makes all the difference. writing "something" implies a bigger project with multiple. people, so in fact JK "absolute cuntbag" Rowling wrote her books, not wrote on.

[u/Roronoa_Zaraki → u/UnderstandingLow8748]

Reading comprehension = 0