Sam Lake is Remedy Entertainment's storyteller.
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Remedy’s Sam Lake on 21 years of game storytelling and transmedia

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 15 min

Sam Lake has been writing stories for Remedy Entertainment’s games for 21 years. He started with the graphic novel tale of Max Payne, and went on to write Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, and Alan Wake. He became creative director on Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, and he did the same on Microsoft’s exclusive video game, Quantum Break.

Lake has given Remedy a consistent creative vision, something that few other companies can boast. His stories often explore transmedia, mixing television-like episodes, characters with broken families, the surrealism of blending fiction and nonfiction, and themes that have to do with stopping or turning back time.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.