Meghna Jayanth | |
|---|---|
 Jayanth at the 2019 Independent Games Festival | |
| Born | 6 February 1987 |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Known for | 80 Days |
| Notable work | Sunless Sea Horizon Zero Dawn |
Meghna Jayanth (born 6 February 1987) is a video game writer and narrative designer. [1] She is known for her writing on 80 Days and Sunless Sea . Jayanth worked at the BBC before becoming a freelance writer, [2] and has also written for The Guardian on women and video games. [3] [4]
Meghna Jayanth was born on 6 February 1987. [5] While growing up, Jayanth lived in Bangalore, London, and Saudi Arabia, attending a total of 12 different schools. [6] Her first gaming experiences included Disney's Aladdin, SimTower , and Civilization II . [7] Jayanth studied English literature at the University of Oxford, where she directed The Oxford Revue, following which she worked at the BBC in the department responsible for commissioning video games. [7]
Jayanth first became interested in writing for video games via online text-based roleplaying games in which she built worlds and characters. [8] The first playable game she wrote was Samsara, a choice-based narrative game set in Bengal in 1757, which she has yet to finish. [6] [7] Jayanth is particularly interested in writing stories which explore "unexpected perspectives and unheard voices", including under-represented people and cultures. [8]
Jayanth was the writer of 80 Days, for which she wrote a total of more than 750,000 words, contributed to the writing for Horizon Zero Dawn , and was a writer for Sunless Sea . In addition to other accolades, 80 Days was nominated for a BAFTA Game Award for Story in 2014, and Meg won the UK Writers' Guild Award for Best Writing in a Video Game. [6]
In 2019 Jayanth hosted the Independent Games Festival awards, where she used her opening speech to encourage the video game industry to reject hatred and create a welcoming and safe environment. [9] In May of that year, she announced the formation of a "boutique narrative label" called Red Queens alongside Leigh Alexander. [10]
As of August 2019 [update] Jayanth was working on Boyfriend Dungeon and Sable. [11] [12]
Digital Extremes Ltd. is a Canadian video game developer founded in 1993 by James Schmalz. They are best known for creating Warframe, a free-to-play cooperative online action game, and co-creating Epic Games' Unreal series of games. Digital Extremes is headquartered in London, Ontario. In 2014, 61% of the company was sold to Chinese holding company Multi Dynamic, now Leyou, for $73 million. In May 2016 Leyou exercised a call option and increased their stake to 97% of Digital Extremes for a total consideration of $138.2 million US. In December 2020, Tencent bought Leyou for 1.3 billion dollars, which included the majority stake in Digital Extremes that Leyou held.
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Sunless Sea is a survival/exploration role-playing video game with roguelike elements developed by Failbetter Games. The game was released on 6 February 2015 for Windows and OS X following a successful Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the project. The game takes place in the universe of Failbetter's browser adventure game Fallen London, in which Victorian-era London has been moved beneath the Earth's surface to the edge of the Unterzee, a vast underground ocean. On 11 October 2016, the game's first downloadable content Zubmariner was released, which allows players to explore beneath the surface of the "zee". A sequel, Sunless Skies, was announced in September 2016. It surpassed its funding goals on Kickstarter and was released on 31 January 2019.
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Boyfriend Dungeon is a dungeon crawler-dating sim developed and published by Kitfox Games. Taking place in an urban fantasy setting, the player character must fight through dungeons with the help of a human partner who can transform into a sentient weapon. Outside of dungeons, the player can date their partner in visual novel-style sequences that increase their power in combat. It was released for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows on August 11, 2021, followed by a PlayStation 5 version on February 14, 2023.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is a third-person action role-playing game published by Wizards of the Coast and developed by its subsidiary Tuque Games. Based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing system, the title of the game alludes to Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, although its story and gameplay are not related to those earlier titles. The game was released in June 2021 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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Meg Jayanth on X
