Leanne Taylor-Giles

Leanne has been a writer in the video games industry since 2006 and holds a Masters in dialogue systems design.

She started at Pandemic Studios in Brisbane, Australia, as Assistant Writer on Destroy All Humans! 2, working with industry legend Tom Abernathy. After that contract ended, she began lecturing at Qantm College while freelancing with THQ, Halfbrick, and KMM Studios. In 2012, she moved to Montreal where she contributed to titles such as Torment: Tides of Numenera, Watch_Dogs 2, and Rainbow Six Siege. Her final project after 7 years at Ubisoft Montreal was as co-writer on Discovery Tour: Viking Age, the educational component of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

She has since returned to Brisbane, Australia, to raise her two wonderful children and now works at Gameloft Brisbane as a Senior Narrative Designer on an unannounced project. Her most meaningful industry accomplishment remains her work on Orbit Rescue, a game created for the Daniel Morcombe Foundation that provides children aged 8-10 years old with strategies to avoid sexual abuse via engaging minigames and investigative gameplay that slowly reveal the story of the ship’s on-board computer, Sammy. The game is free for all children in Australia to play.

She has written academic chapters on Player-Centred Design in Role-Playing Game Branching Dialogue Systems, Systemic NPC-Side Branching in Linear AAA Video Game Stories, Gamifying Kindness, and Liminality, Embodiment, and Desire. She moderated the game writing panel Everything’s on Fire and No One Knows What to Do at GDC in 2017 and Storytelling Beyond Words at GCAP in 2022. She continues to write academic chapters in her spare time and is delighted to return to the educational sphere with John Yorke Story.