Abstract: Last year, I had the privilege of being invited back to the University of Washington’s Game Development Club to do a talk on narrative design. Here’s the content of the talk. This is a brief introduction to narrative design and what it is.
Before we begin this talk, I have to clarify a very common misconception that will make understanding narrative design very difficult. The narrative design does NOT equal “story”. Narrative design itself is a methodology that applies to almost every stage of game design – from pre-production to post-production. It is important to keep in mind that, even though there is such a position as a “narrative designer”, narrative design itself is not a specific task that applies to a single job title.
Even though “narrative design” is not something people talk about in a professional manner in a lot of game development settings, people discuss plots and stories in games casually all the time. It is also something that is usually missed when developing a game. Narrative design is usually mixed with “narrative packaging” where people want to wrap a core mechanics or creative gameplay with a coat of “narrative”. However, as a big advocator of tailored narrative design in games, I would like to try to show you why you should care about narrative design from the early stage of development.
Why should you care about narrative design then? People enjoy a good story, and they like it when the story is good, but it does not stop at telling a good story. People play video games for the immersive experience and the emotional responses that they might get out of their interactions with the game. As a designer, you should have a clear goal and idea about “why are you making this game”, “who are you making this game for” and “what kinds of emotional responses you want to echo off of your players”. From the designer’s perspective, for example, you have a cool concept for a game, which you and your team are super excited about; you have chosen “game” as a medium to deliver this concept. I believe that narrative design is the bridge between the designer and the player, where designers can try to make the players care about their concept. Therefore, whether you’re in indie development, or working in the industry, or even just making games in your free time for fun, narrative design is important for you to deliver your game idea across to your audience, and it is why you need to care.
Just in case I was not convincing enough, I played a little game with the audience during the talk. I put out a little description on the left of the slide, outlining the core gameplay and mechanics of the game, having them guess which game it is. And after they have put out their answers, I put out a “Description+”, where narrative design aspects are added to the description. It immediately added interesting elements and points of interest to the game. Here are the two examples I have used:
(They loved this little game and the examples I used and thought it was a great display of the importance of narrative design :p)
As you can see from my two examples, the gameplay is important in a video game (because without it, it would not be called a video game), you need narrative design to drive the players and make your game stand out - catch the eyes of your audience. Therefore, gameplay and narrative design depend on and drive each other.
After we have established why we should care about narrative design, I want to share how I would like to break down the narrative design process, and the elements involved in it. But before I start, I want to say that in narrative design there are No Rule, Only Tools. I believe nobody can tell you what is the perfect formula to have the best narrative design, but everyone can try to learn and gather a series of tools that is best suited for them and their project.
I have organized what I think is a suitable deconstruction of the basic elements of narrative design. And it has three different levels - high-level design, low-level design, and even-lower-level design. Their relationship can be presented in this slide:
High-Level Design
It consists of a broad and general direction of the concept. The high-level design does not only affect the writing or the story of the game, but it also influences the art direction and design direction. Once you have decided what theme you want to design around, it is easier for the whole team (or just you, if you’re going solo) to narrow down the scope of the game. A high-level design should include these:
Low-Level Design
After setting the scene of the game and the game and you are now trying to figure out, who is your main character, what happened to them, why are these things happening to them, and so on. I know that there are a lot of writers and designers who pre-meditate a scenario, or a highlight in the story, and then iron out the entire world around that point, in order to make it the highlight. In my humble opinion, both are valid approaches to narrative design, if it works out at the end. Personally, I prefer to create the world, and then imagine what will happen in this particular world that is interesting to me. This process might take more time because building a world is not an easy job, but it allows me to consider all the perspectives in this world and what could possibly happen, which is helpful to me. My advice would be: pick what works best for you and your project! Inspirations do not come in one form, so follow your inspiration.
Moreover, no matter which route you have taken to approach this narrative design, it is important that at the end of the day, these elements are included in your narrative outline, and that the designer knows it by heart:
Even-Lower-Level Design
After figuring out your high-Level concepts and low-level design, it is time to think about delivery - how do you deliver this information to your audience to make this content valid and received by your audience. This is the part where writing skills, cinematic skills, and all kinds of skills come into play. When you deliver your story in a game, you need to consider the visual, auditory, and sometimes even sensory experience for the players (if you are designing for hardware with motion control, haptic feedback, controller vibration, etc.). These designs are delivered through scripts, graphs, charts, and visuals, which contain a lot of details that designers need to keep in mind.
Another important thing to keep in mind is to always surprise your audience. You can surprise your audience through plot twists, change in visual presentation, change in audio style, etc. You need to keep your audience interested at all times because if your audience already knows what is going on, they would not have the interest to keep playing.
The elements above are how I would deconstruct a game narrative structure, it helps me identify missing pieces in my story, and acts as criteria for when I want to check for design flaws or narrative inconsistencies. I believe it is helpful for me so I want to share it here.
Last but not least, I would remind everyone when they are approaching narrative design for their games that:
I wish everyone happy game dev-ing!
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