Ellen Jurik is a professional Game Director, Designer, Writer, and Producer with ten years of experience spread across those disciplines. She currently fills all of those roles on different projects at Blowfish Studios in Sydney, before which, she was Producer for Ice Age Adventures at Gameloft in Auckland, and Content Designer-turned-Producer at Interzone Games in Perth.
She is passionate about storytelling across media; she studied theatre, is involved with the Australian Writers Guild (AWG), and is currently writing a novel in her spare time. During her career, she has been involved in the pitching, production, development, design, and writing of games across a variety of genres and platforms, both original and existing IPs, client games and original projects.
Ellen’s most recent project, Storm Boy: The Game, was nominated for four categories in the Australian Games Awards 2018 (Australian Game; Independent Game; Family/Kids Title; Mobile/Handheld Title of the Year), two categories for the Australian Game Developer Awards 2019 (Art; Sound Design), as well as being a finalist for The Pav Awards 2019 (Across the Pond award), and nominated for The 52nd Annual AWGIE Awards (Interactive Media category).
Overview of interests:
• Social Psychology, Trauma (psychological and physical) and PTSD, Psychology of Play/Leisure Studies, Philosophy.
• Adapting concepts of theatre to interactive media, transmedia and nontraditional storytelling
• Mythology and early religion, Fables and Cautionary Tales, Tragedy (narrative genre), Narratology, (eg, The Hero’s Journey)
• Archetypes/archetypal psychology and personal style/colour theory and their applications to character design
Other things you might find her spending her time on:
Acting, singing, writing, playing board games & pen&paper RPGs, drawing, kayaking, looking at pictures and videos of parrots and chickens, talking to the visiting cockatoos, drinking coffee or craft beer.
Ellen Jurik 