The Art of Video Game Narrative Design 101
What is ‘narrative design’ and what makes for good narrative design?
The joy of narrative design for me is that it is designing how players play the story. It is the art of considering what the player does in the game as vital to the telling of a story.
Video game narrative design pairs what players do, the gameplay verbs, with the meaning-making, the metaphor, the heart of the story.
I’ve been working as a narrative designer of small games and larger narrative titles, like Control, and in this article, I will share my initial thoughts on narrative design because I’m often asked what the daily tasks of a narrative designer are and how they differ from writers.
What Does a Narrative Designer Do?
‘Narrative designer’ is a highly collaborative role that can vary between game studios and levels of seniority. The tasks of a junior narrative designer are different from those of a more seasoned narrative designer, but the essential nature of it is the same: how players interact with the story.
Narrative designers may work with the writing and game leads to develop the story, world, characters, and help translate them into an evocative game experience. They will work with their team to design the narrative features in the game, like the dialogue system, and oversee their creation and implementation into the game.
Narrative designers may work with the writing and game leads to develop the story, world, characters, and help translate them into an evocative game experience.
They will create and maintain narrative documentation that communicates the narrative, story, and world to the development team. They may also track scripts during dialogue recording sessions, and assess the pace of the dialogue when it’s been put into the game. They may also track narrative-specific elements (like objectives, menu text, and lore) in the game and ensure they’re in the right place.
It is integral a narrative designer understands storytelling and game design, but how do they get these skills?
Narrative Design and the Craft of Storytelling
It’s important for a narrative designer to understand the mechanics of storytelling (structure, characterisation, and theme in particular). It provides a shared storytelling language to use with the narrative team. It also allows them to advocate for the integrity of the story when working with the development team.
If narrative designers understand the arcs and motivations of the characters and the importance of each narrative beat to tell the protagonist’s story, they can better design the ways players will interact with the story. It will also enhance their communication with writers.
If narrative designers understand the arcs and motivations of the characters and the importance of each narrative beat to tell the protagonist’s story, they can better design the ways players will interact with the story.
Narrative design differs from writing, the two cross over, but they have a different focus. In their GDC talk, Eric Stirpe and Molly Maloney, writer and narrative designer respectively, describe this difference as follows: narrative designers are primarily concerned for the player’s experience of the story, writers are primarily concerned with the character’s experience of the story. This being the case, both disciplines will certainly do well to understand and have the skills of the other.
Where to start?
You will hear other writers and narrative designers talk about a character’s “inner journey” or the “three-act structure” or the “climax” of a story, and it’s important to know what they’re talking about and why these elements are vital to storytelling.
These terms come from literature and film experts like Joseph Campbell, Michael Hauge, Robert McKee, Paul Joseph Guilno, and Blake Snyder who have provided us different frameworks to look at how to tell a satisfying story. But where to start? Pixar, of course.
The Pixar Storytelling on Khan Academy is free, accessible and will get you thinking more deeply about how stories work.
After that, I recommend driving into Michael Hauge, whose work is covered on his story mastery website (start here), and he goes into more detail in interviews with Film Courage on YouTube. His work is accessible and immediately applicable.
With some of the fundamentals under your belt, the next best thing to do is to write a story. Just a small one. You’ll be surprised how much you learn.
The ‘Design’ Part of Narrative Design
The design of a game has to do with how we allow players to interact with the story world. Are they searching, scavenging, shooting, talking, exploring, growing, jumping, or investigating? Players will perform these actions over and over again and for the game to feel cohesive, they have to have a narrative meaning. The closer narrative design and game design can work, the better, but of course, it depends on the game.
The narrative designer can be primarily responsible for those game mechanics that are used to convey the story.
Game design involves designing the rules, mechanics, and systems of the game that combine to create a certain type of play experience (shooter, stealth, strategy). There can be many game mechanics that are disconnected from the game’s narrative, such as the inventory, health, points, and economic systems. Game designers are not necessarily considering the context and meaning behind these rules and systems (though the ones with an eye for story generally do).
Narrative Designer and writer, Kaitlin Tremblay has a wonderful talk on the GDC vault that explores how what we do in games, the gameplay verbs, can suggest a certain kind of emotional experience. The narrative designer can be primarily responsible for those game mechanics that are used to convey the story.
- Gameplay design questions might be: What abilities will the player gain over time and in what order? How do these abilities work with enemy abilities to create interesting combat scenarios for the player?
- Narrative design questions might be: Why do characters gain abilities in the world and how does gaining more abilities inform the protagonist’s adventure? Does the protagonist gain an ability every time they realise something about their own personal journey so the player and the character grow together?
Where to start?
To get a feel for how the rules of a game affect the telling of a story (the world, the characters, the themes), without having to make a video game, try playing a table-top roleplaying game.
Table-top roleplaying games provide a rule-set and a world for you to use to tell your own stories. You will have to consider the character’s personalities, skills and the overarching story. You’ll also have to keep it fun and engaging for your players.
Table-top roleplaying games provide a rule-set and a world for you to use to tell your own stories.
I recommend starting with Fate Core by Evil Hat. You can start with Fate Core or their more paired back version, Fate Accelerated. It is designed for those who haven’t done table-top role-play before. Here, the site provides everything you need to get started from game creation to character creation. Will Wheaton has an excellent YouTube channel where he plays tabletop role-playing games, and in this one, you can get an idea of how the game works.
Another way into understanding how to make a story interactive is by making a text-based, non-linear game. Twine is a widely used tool for this style of game as well as prototyping story and dialogue choices for larger games. You can, of course, always do a paper prototype. Consider being visual, too. Draw or collect reference images of how players may see your story — maps, characters, dialogue choices or even key items they will use. Think about it visually and as elements players will ‘use’ or interact with.
Play The Story
With all of this in mind, play some games and consider how you played the story and how it made you feel. Here are some games with great narrative design that are accessible and not too challenging to play.
- Monument Valley by UsTwo (iOS, Android)
- Journey by thatgamecompany (PS4, PS3, PC, iOS)
- Florence by Mountains (iOS, Android, PC, Switch)
- Device 6 by Smiogo (iOS)
- Gone Home by Fullbright (PS4, Switch, XBOX1, PC)
- Her Story by Sam Barlow (iOS, Android, PC)
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (iOS, Android, XBOX360, PS4, PS3, PC, Switch)
Further Reading
Video Game Storytelling by Evan Skolnik, combines an overview of storytelling craft and developing video game narrative.
So many wonderful game narrative talks are available for free on the GDC YouTube Channel
Brooke Maggs an award-winning narrative designer who has worked on Control, The Gardens Between, Paperbark and Florence. She works as a Senior Narrative Designer at Remedy Entertainment. She writes fiction and has published academic papers on narrative design, storytelling and the links between digital and traditional literature.
Brooke offers a range of narrative design and writing consulting services for entertainment and educational experiences and platforms. Go to her website for more about Brooke and how to contact her. www.brookemaggs.com
