Jon Manning
Narrative Technologies Lead
Tasmania, Australia
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolJon Manning is an award-winning game developer, technical author, and narrative technologies lead with 14+ years crafting tools and story systems for narrative games. As co-founder and technical director of Secret Lab and lead at Yarn Spinner, his work underpins acclaimed titles like Night in the Woods and A Short Hike and powers storytelling in tens of thousands of games. He holds a PhD in human–computer interaction from the University of Tasmania, where his research examined how ranking systems are manipulated in social media—bringing a rare blend of academic rigor to game UX and social design. A seasoned speaker and educator, Jon bridges design, tooling, and AI-informed narrative techniques while keeping a playful streak (he owns an award that says "Good At Twitter" with a tiny bird statuette). Based in Hobart, Tasmania, he excels at turning complex narrative requirements into practical, widely adopted engineering solutions.
13 years of coding experience
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Human Computer Interaction, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Human Computer Interaction at University of TasmaniaThe Hutchins School
Stackoverflow
143reputation
6kreached
1answer
2questions
Github Skills (118)
visual-studio-code-extension10
dialogue-systems10
depot10
game-development10
tabletop10
framework710
godot10
spinner10
obs10
audio10
skill10
unity3d10
ffmpeg10
vscode-extension10
vscode10
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
TasGameMakers/TasGameMakers.github.io
Aug 2020 - Jan 2025
The source code to tasgamemakers.com.
Contributions:30 pushes, 1 comment in 4 years 6 months
thesecretlab/MobileGameDevWithUnity1stEd
May 2014 - Jul 2017
Contributions:134 commits, 9 pushes, 1 branch in 3 years 2 months
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