Gem: The Leading Alternative to Spreadsheets for Game Narratives

Spreadsheets may be versatile, but when it comes to the often chaotic world of game development, they often fall short. How do they compare to a solution specifically designed for narrative management?

Want to discuss this in person?

Collaboration killers

Minimal collaboration makes the difficult task of coordinating creative and technical teams across departments even more challenging.

You can't experience narrative

Representing divergence and outcomes in a human-readable format and accurately conveying player experience is nigh impossible.

Complicated, clunky UI

Pushing the boundaries of interactive narrative isn’t easy when staring at a UI that looks like a legacy budget sheet from 1994.

Fussy formatting

Inconsistent fonts, absent cell borders, and misalignments not only look unprofessional but also demand extra editing time.

Tough sheet

Advanced features of spreadsheets like formulas and macros require technical knowledge that many users don't have.

Serving time in a cell

Using spreadsheets for narrative design requires complex data management and is challenging compared to building for JSON.

Enjoyable collaboration

Backlight Gem provides a centralized hub where designers, audio, producers, LOC, and more can work together in real-time.

Painless narrative management

Easy on the eyes and easy to understand. Make pain-free edits across entire projects and explore narratives with rapid prototyping tools.

An easy, scalable experience

Structure and organize your narratives at scale and manage immense amounts of content in an editorially smart way.

Familiar screenplay formatting

Gem’s screen writing tool will be a familiar environment for anyone who has written screenplays before.

Stay flexible for VO and LOC

VO assets, characters, and object assets are indexed, helping to reveal how narrative changes impact your downstream production.

Integrate and automate

Export your project as a .JSON file when it is time to move the project to an engine or integrate with your tools using Gem's REST API.

Export function (.PDF, .JSON)

Team management

Group management

Built-in Script Editor

Asset Catalog

Asset Association to Script

Storymaps

Sequences (Narrative Units)

Branches (Narrative Divergence)

Why Gem?

Gem sets the industry standard for narrative game dev, offering unparalleled support, security, and continuous innovation in line with industry needs.
We’re pipeline agnostic. Creating an RPG? A sports game? Complex dialogue wheels or contextual barks? Gem will flex around the experience you want to build.
We designed Gem to service writers. Its familiar screenplay-style editor is based on Celtx, the scriptwriting software with 20 years of development.
We’re cost-effective. Save the time, maintenance hours, and millions on dev costs you’d spend creating your own dialogue system. We have you covered.