- Organisation
- BBC
- Year
- 2019
- In a word
- Workshops
The challenge
Nightfall was a BBC Research & Development project to create the BBC's first online multiplayer game, and build the capability to support online gaming.
The game had brand documentation, but no voice. It also needed content across the app and web UI, the website and the Bestiary: an index of all the game's monsters, lore and characters.
My contribution
I led the co-creation of Nightfall's voice and tone, and led on content across the game.
- Finding the voice together: I facilitated a series of voice and tone workshops with editorial, product, marketing and design.
- Tone in context: I mapped "interaction groups" to guide how the voice should flex in different moments.
- Embedding it: I created the documentation, and co-designed app settings, the Bestiary and narrative content with editorial colleagues so the guidelines became part of how the team worked.
- Testing it: I supported usability testing focused on how well people understood the language and how the voice landed.
The outcome
Nightfall reached over 10,000 downloads on iOS and Android, with a Play Store rating of 4.1 out of 5.
The voice and tone documentation helped editorial teams create clear, usable and entertaining content for seasonal updates over the next two years. Nightfall was decommissioned in 2021, but I went on to work with BBC R&D again, including on Radio 1's New Music Portal.