Below are just a few examples of some of the writing and game design I've done over the years. If you're looking for something in particular that you don't see here or would like to see more samples, please let me know.

THE ONION

I was a Freelance Contributor to The Onion, America's Finest News Source, for one year ending in July of 2009. My job was to supply fifteen humorous concepts each week that could be turned into videos. The freelancer pool came up with a lot of these each week. Few would be approved and even fewer would actually be made into videos. Below are two concepts of mine that were eventually produced and put up on the site. Note: I can't take credit for the excellent scripts, as my role was limited to providing concepts only.

Report: Growing Ranks Of Nouveau Poor Facing Discrimination From Old Poor

U.S. Condemned For Pre-Emptive Use Of Hillary Clinton Against Pakistan

LEISURE SUIT LARRY

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude was by far the most dialog intensive game I have ever worked on. It was a lot of fun and a really fantastic learning experience. The game included over 12,000 lines of audio, dozens of characters, and forced myself and the other writers to hone our skills at a lot of different types of interactive writing.

In addition to writing interactive dialog, voice calls, cut scenes, and more, I spent a lot of time directing voice actors and directing motion capture. The game earned a 2005 Best Writing nomination from the Game Developer's Choice awards and a 2005 Best Dialog nomination from the Game Audio Network Guild.

What the critics said about Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude

PAIN

Pain is a downloadable party game for the PS3 developed by Idol Minds. It involves launching your player character into a fully destructible city landscape and inflicting as much pain and destruction to yourself and others as possible. Idol Minds needed a ton of writing done in a very short time, but I managed to turn it around quickly and I'm proud of the end result. The game is targeted towards a young male audience.

I'm convinced that writing voice calls like these is the most challenging writing you can do for games bar none. Voice calls are also some of the most important. This is the dialog your players are going to be hearing 90% of the time, and as such will do a lot more to tell the story behind each of your characters than a few quick cinemas.

They take much longer to get right than you think. Each one needs to be in character and consistent with the circumstance the player is in. And unlike this intro, they need to be short. If you want to add humor to the equation it's even more challenging. This is why for most studios doing your own voice calls doesn't make sense. Unless you have a full time writer on staff (and sometimes even then) you simply won't have time to make these rock.

CSI

Twice I worked with Telltale Games on a series of adventure games based on the popular T.V. series CSI: Crime Series Investigator. These projects involve more game design than actual writing: plotting out the player's progression step by step and allowing the game to unfold in an interesting, rewarding fashion.

There's a lot more documentation involved with one of these, but I don't want to post anything proprietary to Telltale. Here's a walk-thru for one of the cases I worked on.

NORTH STAR

Edocero Games was a Christian gaming company that had a vision for a historically accurate action/adventure game based on the Underground Railroad. I put together a living design document for them that includes a story I created. Although the doc isn't finished (the game was canceled) I'm proud of what we had accomplished up to that point.

Often enough, start-ups struggle at the beginning of the "fuzzy front end" of a project. It can be hard to narrow things down when the possibilities are seemingly endless. A good living design document is a great start.

I can always travel to be on-site for meetings in order to help put these together for my clients.

Download Northstar Living Design doc.

FUSION FALL

Fusion Fall is the new MMORPG being developed by Cartoon Network. Although I did not end up working on this project, I included this sample because I think it does a good job illustrating mission design as well as writing.

Download Fusion Fall Mission Design Document rtf.

COLORS

Colors was a 3D action shooter much in the same vein as the highly popular Grand Theft Auto series. The platform was the ill-fated Gizmondo, a handheld. The studio was in Sweden and this template was provided by them.

I include it here because it demonstrates my work on a serious action game and my ability to write scrolling text for a handheld device.

Download Colors Mission Template.

The plan for Colors was to start it off with a cutscene (or FMV). The plan was to have rapper DMX record it, so this was written specifically for him.

Download Colors Opening Cinema doc.

BACKYARD WRESTLING

I wrote this pitch for my employer at the time, who was in the running to develop a game based on the popular series of Backyard Wrestling DVDs. This version doesn't have any artwork, which is why there are blank spaces throughout.

I include this sample here not because I'm in love with the subject matter but because I think it really nails the license.

Download Backyard Wrestling pitch doc - word doc format.

CATS

A very different kind of pitch. The publisher wanted a "value" title; something that would appeal to mainstream audience, mainly women who love cats. Very family friendly.

Download Cats Wrestling pitch doc - word doc format.

Here's an article I wrote for Gamasutra on my experiences working on Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041112/kuehnel_pfv.htm

Here's a marketing piece I wrote for IGN, a gaming website. Our publisher, Vivendi/Universal Games, had us write mock interviews with each female character in Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. The "interviewer" is an effeminate sophisticate named Garland Merriweather.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/545/545724p1.html