Full Sail Stories

For Full Sail grad Wes Locher, finding his niche in the writing world meant exploring different mediums to keep his work fun.

“Writing is always way more fun when it feels simple. If it’s a slog, then we’ll look for 20,000 reasons not to do it,” says the Creative Writing grad.

Wes’s broad career, which includes experience in journalism, copywriting, ghostwriting, comic books, and graphic novels, eventually led him to his sweet spot: video game writing. He’s currently the Lead Narrative Designer at mobile game developer Magic Tavern, where he’s contributed to hit games like Project Makeover and Modern Community. Although it took him a while to find the work that best suited him, his range of experiences paved the way to his success.

Wes originally pursued music as a career, earning a Recording Arts degree from Full Sail and playing in bands throughout his 20s. Despite his love of music, Wes couldn’t quite make it work on a professional level, so he returned to Full Sail and pursued his other passion – writing – with the Creative Writing degree.

“I went into the writing program initially with the goal of writing comic books, which is something I was always into growing up,” he says. “I developed a really good relationship with Roland Mann, the comics writing instructor, and he helped me learn a lot. I was running a lot of stuff by him, kind of leaning on him as a resource and a mentor. And Christopher Ramsey taught storytelling using visuals, which is obviously very important [for what I’m doing now].”

After graduation, Wes jumped right into the working world, writing for a newspaper and landing contract and freelance positions for copywriting and comic book writing. Although he was accomplishing his childhood dream of writing comic books, he eventually felt the need to move on.

“I spent about 10 years writing comic books and published six or seven different graphic novels with independent publishers, and it was just constantly like a battle,” Wes says. “You’re having to pitch ideas and you're getting rejected, or you're trying to work with people and they're not doing what they say that they're going to do. There's just a lot of frustrations. And it got to a point where it just felt like every day was an uphill battle with that.

“So I said, ‘This is something I like to do, but maybe I should allow myself to explore other things.’ I really had career tunnel vision [about writing comic books],” he continues. “Then I was freelancing and constantly reaching out to people, seeing where there’s work. And one of the things that I found during that time was working on a video game, and I realized that my background in both comic books and journalism really played well into [game writing], because it's all about word economy and being as concise as possible.”

Wes started getting more contract work with different companies for video games, and he landed a full-time role at Magic Tavern in 2019. He was the lead game writer for Project Makeover, a mobile game that spent more than eight months as the most downloaded game in 160 countries; it’s also brought in more than $200 million in revenue for Magic Tavern. In his current role as Lead Narrative Designer, Wes runs a team of writers and designers who create new games and manage existing titles.

“We work on anything that you read in the game. We do everything from high level story generation, which is a lot of working in like a writer's room-type environment, just kind of spitballing ideas. And then we're doing all of the dialogue, everything any character happens to say at any point onscreen. Our studio is primarily mobile games, so we’re also doing every menu screen. Any time that we're introducing like a new obstacle, we need to have a tutorial on how the player's supposed to approach it. Anything that’s words falls to us,” Wes explains.

Wes also helps update titles like Modern Community, a game where players design and revitalize an imaginary city. He reads what the other writers on his team have created, edits and gives feedback, and reviews content before it finally goes in the game. A few weeks before the game lands in mobile app stores, his team also watches someone play the game to make sure everything makes sense and is working correctly.

Working on mobile games wasn’t where Wes thought he’d wind up when he graduated. But the skills he developed earlier in his career, his willingness to try new things, and the collaboration and creativity at Magic Tavern make his work feel like play. He’s also continuing to branch out as an author: Wes has written three books for young readers for Penguin Random House’s Who HQ series, Where Is Tornado Alley? and the upcoming Who Is “Weird Al” Yankovic? and What Is AI?

“Don't be so blinded by your dream job that you miss other opportunities that might come your way,” he says. “You could very well go into that position and just hate it, and it'll ruin what you like about that company's products, it'll ruin what you thought it was going to be. So just stay open to opportunities to work with people who respect you creatively and who encourage you and push you to be better, because at the end of the day, that's a true dream job right there.”