Writing (as) the Diplomat
How do you make a distant, complex story feel relevant and interesting?
When I took Race for the Arctic to A MAZE, I wanted to see how players responded to the game, its concept, and the feel of it. But secretly, I was watching how players responded to the story.
I was testing a question I keep coming back to: How do you make a distant, complex story feel relevant and interesting?
I gave players three different voices from the Diplomat, three kinds of text layered into the game without ever announcing themselves as ‘this is a story’.
First, the opening letter.
This is the only time the Diplomat writes directly to the player, not quite a tutorial, not quite exposition. It’s personal and slightly mysterious. A kind of emotional permission to enter the game. To me, it needs to feel like the beginning of a relationship.
Second, her logbook entries.
These are where she writes about what she sees in the Arctic: fragments of true stories and real-world information, merging with her reflections and observations.
Sometimes she digresses. Sometimes she gets it wrong. Sometimes she’s poetic.
These entries are grounded in real-world Arctic research drawn from interviews and reports but always filtered through her lens.
And third, her private journal.
These are the most intimate to write. They’re not meant to move the plot forward. They’re written in the quiet, in-between moments, as if she’s trying to make sense of what’s happening to her, not just around her.
I brought a notebook and wrote the first two pages of her journal by hand, then left it beside the computer where players were testing the game. I also left the bookmark players find and collect in-game. I wanted to give her shape. To make her more than a storytelling device. To make her human.
In the beginning, when players asked me if she was real, I’d say no.
But then I started to say, maybe?
What surprised me most was how differently players responded.
Some were drawn to the real-world content, even recognising some of the places or stories we referenced. Others connected to the journal entries, maybe because they’ve kept a journal too, or because it made her feel real. And some loved the letter. It pulled them in and gave them a reason to care before the game even began.
And I started to see quite clearly the three kinds of players we are creating the game for:
Those who read everything. They went through both journal entries, read the full letter, and collected every pop-up. These are the narrative-driven players.
Those who skimmed tactically. They read what they needed to move forward, or when something caught their attention. These players enjoy story, but only when it serves the flow.
And those who barely engaged with the writing. They played the game (or left it midway). The story didn’t quite land for them, and that’s okay, too.
It made me realise something important about the game, and about the Diplomat:
She can’t be one thing. She has to exist differently for each of these players. Not everyone will connect to her journal. Not everyone will finish the letter. That means her story needs multiple entry points for different kinds of curiosity. But that doesn’t mean we need to make her less than what she is.
To me, the Diplomat isn’t a narrator. She’s not a mouthpiece. Nor a climate explainer.
She’s someone who listens. Who records, moves between stories, between truths.
She’s inspired by the real people we’ve spoken to, those who sit between knowledge systems, who carry the emotional weight of witnessing change. She is the kind of person who keeps a notebook because she knows memory fades. She writes because it helps her hold complexity.
She doesn’t have all the answers. But she is trying to notice.
And that’s her invitation: Not to fix the Arctic. But to listen to it.