WRITE BETWEEN THE LINES: Writing Games for a Polarized, Distracted, Media-Illiterate World

Today’s media landscape is hyper-polarized, algorithm-driven, and designed to reward outrage over nuance. In a world where clickbait headlines dominate newsfeeds and complex themes are flattened into hot takes, can games that require deep focus and critical thinking still thrive? This talk argues not only that they can, but that they must.

In this talk, veteran game writers Adam Dolin (God of War) and Alexa Ray Corriea (Black Panther) explore how modern media illiteracy is shaping both the stories we tell and the way studios choose to tell them. Drawing from industry experience and recent research, the talk unpacks what it means to design stories for an increasingly distracted and polarized world.

We begin by examining the systemic forces behind this shift in media illiteracy: the rise of the attention economy, the dominance of algorithmic content delivery (from TikTok to OnlyFans), and the growing cultural pressure to “not make it political” for fear of online backlash. As thoughtful, longform critiques are being pushed aside in favor of LLM-generated summaries and clickbait social media discourse, development teams are seeing increased executive pressure to avoid topics that could be a potential flashpoint–especially in projects with political, personal, or culturally resonant themes.

We’ll also tackle online discourse. How much should devs worry about backlash? What’s the difference between a good-faith critique and a hate campaign, and how can you tell which one you’re facing? We’ll offer real-world examples of when to engage, when to retreat, and how to support your team when the conversation moves beyond your control.

This isn’t a doom-and-gloom talk. It’s a practical survival guide for developers who want to keep making stories that assume audiences are smart. Because if we want to push the medium forward, we need to adapt to the world we’re living in, not the one we wish we had.