Narrative Theory Series
Origins of Narrative
Designing Games & Interactive Stories
The absence of a reliable record — and the necessity of reconstructing the archaeological remains — means that there is plenty of guesswork for narrative researchers to do about the origins of narrative in human culture. Some have proposed that narrative was a way for humans to share information about the environment (e.g. where are the predators and food sources?). Others have proposed that the complexity of social life requires ways of connecting past, present and future events.
Narrative in early human history is deeply intertwined with myth, ritual and belief systems, the most common themes of which are death and (re)birth. Early humans liked to sacrifice a lot for the sake of fertility after all. The saucier and spicier side of our human ancestors is easy to glimpse, because even the historical record will point directly at decapitated Mayan ball game players which scholars sometimes call ‘the theme of death’ but it’s not quite natural death, is it?
Such ritualized murder was believed to be necessary to ensure crop fertility. Why humans are always falling back on violence and sex as core narrative drives is outside the scope of this book, sadly. Even though we now know we don’t have to kill sports people to grow food, our popular narratives are as replete with sex and violence as ever it would seem. So much for Myths of Progress!
Today, interactive and digital narrative is inseparable from game mechanics and design at various levels, and so we have to look into the earliest origins of games just as much as into narrative theory to get a full picture. The earliest games were about training young men for war and hunting, since these were not pacifist vegan cultures at the dawn of civilization. Or at least, if there were pacifist vegan cultures in human prehistory, maybe they did not last for very long, being totally surrounded by much more bloodthirsty human cultures.
Core commonalities between narratives and games are a) goal seeking, b) a rivalry between two opposing personas and c) sets of specific rules and structures. In sports it may be Team A versus Team B, but in narrative we call this the agon (the root of the word ‘antagonism’) and provide terms like Protagonist and Antagonist to describe their rivalry.
This transposition of terms is itself very interesting, because it implies that narratives skew in some kind of ethical or moral direction that gameplay does not. With games, it’s just ‘may the best player win’ but with narratives it is usually ‘the good versus the bad.’ Games, like narrative, can range from being highly structured and full of deep rule books, or more informal,with little more than a general aim of having fun. Some kinds of games, like sandbox games (world building) or role playing games (RPGs) are generally non-competitive in the ways usually associated with more ‘combative’ forms of game play.
Related Articles
Narrative in Analog & Digital Media
Narrative Continuity vs Poetic Montage
The Structure of Narrative Time
The Fourth Wall & Direct Address
Fact, Fiction & Narrative Contestation
Character Interactions and Narrative Progression
Agency in Interactive Narrative
Bibliography & Further Reading
- A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark
- A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
- Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach by Michael Sellers
- An Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mayra
- Basics of Game Design by Michael Moore
- Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
- Board Game Design Advice: From the Best in the World vol 1 by Gabe Barrett
- Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: an Encyclopedia Of Mechanisms by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev
- Character Development and Storytelling for Games by Lee Sheldon
- Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford
- Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun
- Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek
- Film Art by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
- Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams
- Fundamentals of Puzzle and Casual Game Design by Ernest Adams
- Game Design Foundations by Brenda Romero
- Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton
- Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans
- Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames edited by Chris Bateman
- Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp
- Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling, by Kelly McErlean
- Introduction to Game Systems Design by Dax Gazaway
- Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker, David Howell, et al
- Kobold’s Guide to Worldbuilding edited by Janna Silverstein
- Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Edition by Scott Rogers
- Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, et al.
- Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction by Kent Puckett
- Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates by David Herman, James Phelan, et al.
- Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Fourth Edition by Mieke Bal
- Practical Game Design by Adam Kramarzewski and Ennio De Nucci
- Procedural Storytelling in Game Design by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams
- Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing by Wendy Despain
- Rules of Play by Salen and Zimmerman
- Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology (Frontiers of Narrative) by Marie-Laure Ryan, Jan-Noël Thon, et al
- Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers by Ethan Ham
- The Art of Game Design, 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
- The Board Game Designer’s Guide: The Easy 4 Step Process to Create Amazing Games That People Can’t Stop Playing by Joe Slack
- The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative by H. Porter Abbott
- The Grasshopper, by Bernard Suits
- The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, by by Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson and Benjamin J. Robertson
- The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies by Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf
- The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory by David Herman
- The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille & John Zuur Platten
- Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja
- Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques by Evan Skolnick
- Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG edited by Wendy Despain
- Writing for Video Games by Steve Ince
- 100 Principles of Game Design by DESPAIN
